Final Technology - Rich Likes Crack

I am beginning to think that this project might be an awesome idea for students…if you spend an entire semester on it.

In an attempt to illustrate this story quickly and professionally, I had hoped to forego my usual style for the sake of saving time. The above image is the type of work with which I am most commonly associated: figurative work, relatively 3 dimensional renderings, done in ball point pen. The reason I did not want to do this particular project in this style is because it takes me forever to create the images; it is a very time consuming and laborious process. Thus, I have explored with varying levels of success the following programs. Hopefully they can be of some sort of use to others in their educational ventures:

1 – Bitstrips – This vile program littered my Facebook wall for months with pointless cartoon memes of people I knew. But it seemed to have all of the qualities I needed in that you can easily generate highly customized characters and, to an extent, manipulate them and their surroundings. Unfortunately, it is still not customizable enough to where you can do a complete narrative. The situations are all very bizarre and specific; I saw my illustrated self attempting to rob a bank in a “Mission Impossible” fashion. Once placed in these situations, you can really only make subtle adjustments such as the movement of your hands and the direction of your eyes. Overall, Bitstrips is as not-awesome as I always knew it was.

2 – Strip Generator – While this program is pretty intuitive, it is also fairly limited. You can create extremely basic black and white characters, or you can choose from a catalog of pre-made characters. For backgrounds, your characters are just sort of left floating in a white void. Your only means of incorporating spatial elements is by choosing from a limited selection. Depth can be created only by forced perspective, shrinking and enlarging the objects. However, this website could be really useful for storyboards. You can save it as a PDF and print it, and you can incorporate a number of customizable frames. You are, however, limited to one page.

3 – ToonDoo – This program is actually pretty amazing, and is one I would actually consider purchasing for my students’ use. You can create your own Characters and customize them even more than you can in Bitstrip. Also, you can make as many characters as you want, and you have a wide range of things that you can either choose from a catalog, or just create something if it isn’t available. You can save your projects, download them, edit them later. All in all, this one gets a 10 out of 10 from me. The only thing I don’t like is that you can’t have the characters turn their heads to interact with each other. In other words, all of the characters have to be staring face forward, which makes creating a narrative a bit difficult. Below I have included an image of a potential layout for my book.

Technology #4 - Book Making Technology

As an art major, I have had lots of experience making paper and practicing print making techniques. In fact, one time I even tried to make paper out of meat simply because a print maker said that you need fibers from plant matter in order to make paper.

I learned that he is correct…for now.

In an effort to try and actually incorporate some of these multimodal literacies into my own curriculum, I have decided to see if I can incorporate some traditional book-making techniques with new modes of book making.

Bookemon:

This website started with lots of promise, and ultimately ended up breaking my heart. It does have some cool features, like you can convert PDF and DOC files into books with relative ease. The price is fairly reasonable, depending on what you want, and the templates are fairly customizable. The downside is that you can only purchase bound books, which means that it could be cool if you already have all of your book finished, images scanned, and completely formatted. However, my efforts are focused on trying to find a program that will do all of this for me, as I would like to print them and bind them myself. So, while this program would be cool for having your kids make a high-quality end product, it does little in the realm of teaching them about how to make a book.

Sigh…back to the drawing board.

Native American Stereotypes

I haven’t always been so sensitive to racism. As a white, heterosexual, Christian-raised male, I wasn’t really exposed to it very often. It wasn’t until I lived abroad that I experienced first-hand what it is like to be discriminated against.

The first time it happened, it actually was like a novelty to me. I was with a real estate agent in Korea. I had lived there for a year, so I knew enough of the language to get the gist of what the landlord was yelling to her. She tried to put it to me nicely:

“He says that he cannot show you the property because…well…it’s for Korean people.”

“A Bigot! A real life bigot”, I thought to myself.

After four years, though, the novelty wore off in a big way. I could now understand a good deal of what was being said about me when I was in public. Holding my girlfriend’s hand on the subway was enough to generate whispers and stares. I would say something simple in Korean, maybe I would ask about a price in a store, or tell a cab driver where to turn. Some would respond with a smile, happy that I had made the effort. Most would giggle and say how cute it was.

“Cute” is not what I was going for.

A few weeks before I left, things got pretty bad. I heard a group of twenty-somethings behind me having a conversation. One stopped and said to his friend, “OH! Look, foreigner!”

I stopped dead in my tracks, turned around, and screamed “OH! Look, it’s a Korean person; A real Korean person! Woooooooooooah!!!!” It was completely ridiculous, but indicative of just how far I had been pushed. After I screamed out this phrase in presumably the worst and most aggressive broken Korean possible, I read the man’s eyes. He was drunk and simply curious. I was in a part of the city where it was not commonly inhabited by foreigners. He apologized and walked off.

I never realized how much my experiences abroad had influenced by opinion of racism until I heard the word “nigger” used in front of me recently. It used to bother me. Now, it enrages me. And my experience has made me realize that I can never really sympathize with any hyphenated minority American for one simple reason: No matter how bothered I was by being stereotyped, there was always a country on the other side of the pond that would accept me with open arms. My home would never treat me that way. For black people and for Native Americans, their home was their source of bigotry.

I expected this lecture to be something that I would only half sympathize with, and I have to say that the speaker, Dr. L. Marie Anselmi, did not hit too many of the typical land dispute oriented topics I had anticipated. I was happy about that. She instead discussed the different types of Native American stereotypes, and the way that they functioned.

The two most incredible things that she brought up were: 1- Native Americans carry a card that identifies their Native blood ratio. They are the only minority group asked to do this. That’s bonkers. 2 – There are certain Native American tribes that are not recognized as Native American tribes. This is also bonkers.

 

Frankenstein - Final post SPOILER ALERT

I recently had to read “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” for one of my other classes, and I have to say that it surpassed my expectations. Now, we have all read books where, upon watching cinematic interpretations of them, we have been horribly disappointed by the artistic liberties taken. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for example, are one of those situations where I and probably the majority of people are at least familiar with the story before we read it. It has become such a common reference that many of us, upon being asked if we are familiar with the story, respond with a resounding “of course!” having never actually read it.

The same can be said of Frankenstein. However, this story is so much cooler than everyone “knows” it to be. So I thought I’d point out some of the things that I find to be common misconceptions about the story of Frankenstein.

1 – Frankenstein is a doctor, not a monster. After reading the story, I have no idea how this misconception even occurred. Frankenstein is the name of the doctor that creates a nameless monster, not the name of the monster itself.

2 – Frankenstein’s monster is actually kind of the good guy. The operative phrase here being “kind of.” I think it would be a stretch to call the monster a good guy. But he is certainly not the mindless killing machine that is depicted in most Hollywood movies. In fact, Frankenstein’s monster is actually quite intelligent, and he definitely has good enough reason to be pissed off.

3 – Any and every movie depiction of him is not even close. I have seen him in “VanHelsing” as this goofy and awkward half robot. In many movies…too many to mention…he is depicted as a weak creature that is frightened of the world, or the victim of pursuit. Least of all is he a blonde, handsome, six-packed vampire slayer, such as depicted in “I, Frankenstein.” Aaron Eckhart with a few stitches on his face is hardly what I think Frankenstein was seeing when he said “Horrible wretch!”

In any case, read this book. It’s amazing.  

Frankenstein - First post

I have had a lot of time to think this weekend. Knowing that I would be cramped up in a small, depressing room, I decided to take a book I could try to get into. I read this book in its entirety, so I will dedicate this post to what I thought about the book, and the next to how this completely blew my expectations out of the water.

“Frankenstein” is a book that I have always wanted to read. It has been sitting on my book shelf for over a year now, as I was supposed to teach a class about Gothic Literature last year. The class got cancelled after two weeks, so I never had the opportunity to read it.

I have to say that it could very well be one of the best books I have ever read. I won’t ruin the story for anyone in this blog post, but let this be a preemptive warning to all the people who (usually don’t) read my blog: the next one will be filled with spoilers. First of all, Mary Shelley was just a pretty badass writer. Even when there was nothing particularly spectacular happening, she was able to write in a fashion that is just attractive. And this means quite a bit coming from me, as I am not even really into fictional writing. Anyway, yeah…it’s a good book.

Cyber-Bullying Response

This article I read is not particularly dense with information. However, it does provoke a few curiosities.

I guess I have never thought of how the implementation of technologies would require an entirely new body of laws and precautions. Least of all would I suspect that adults would fall victim to the extent of requiring legal action. I mean, I remember the woman who made a false Myspace account to torment a girl on behalf of her daughter (Read about it here, the Megan Meier case). But adults using a website to post their harassment publicly just seems stupid. It would be like a murderer posting a picture of the murder weapon on Facebook.

I know I am a horrible person, and the first thing that comes to my mind is “You are going to get caught. Harass people more intelligently!”

Interestingly, this article doesn’t really suggest approaching this any differently than any other case of defamation of character or harassment. Simply don’t engage, keep everything on record, and contact the authorities.

Slaughterhouse 5 - Final Post

I think often about how humbling an experience college is. I have to, because I am no longer the person evaluating. Rather, I am under the magnifying glass of my superiors. Often, I imagine Dr. Kaplin reading one of my essays.

“*…there is an entire generation of Koreans comma splicing and punctuating BEFORE their citations!” That’s what he must think every time he reads one of my papers.

*This ellipsis is making his eye twitch

I reflected on these moments often while reading this book. Kurt Vonnegut writes in exactly the sort of way I would tell me students not to write.

Not surprisingly, upon given an assignment where you ask a student to describe an event in a descriptive way, their thoughts immediately go to this strange temporally-focused recollection.

I opened my door. Then I went to my car. There was another door. I opened it, too.

And so on.

I never noticed that Vonnegut’s writing style is basically a refined version of this. Even in a story about time travel, a book that is not even linear by nature, it is the same sort of format. “This happened. Then, there was this. Not long after…”

Anyway, this long winded introduction is an attempt to not reveal anything about the book. It is one 

of those books I see myself revisiting in a few years to try and pick up some things that I might have missed along the way. I am still not quite sure why the entire story is told from the perspective of a guy who only met the antagonist once, and it was while he was “shitting his brains out.”

In conclusion: Slaughterhouse 5 lives up to the hype. And, for those of you who have already read it, I would recommend the book “Rant” by Chuck Palahniuk.