Blog post #8 - Introspective

  

  The prospect of a blog sparked my interest at the beginning of CURRINS 547. I have had my share of experience reading and engaging with them in my younger years, but I feel that I missed the cutoff to live in and experience a time where they were truly in their "golden era." Furthermore, I never had the chance to create and engage in one of my own. That being said, setting one up along with customizing it to my liking was a joy. In a time where every social media platform feels like an intimidation of the other, it's hard to distinguish yourself and make something feel genuine and "human" within each website's limitations/algorithms. Blogs, and specifically blogger give me the impression that I as the creator am in control of everything. This kind of customizability and personality calls back to my adolescence to a time where the internet felt so much more mysterious, exciting, and "unexplored." The quirks and jankiness of setting up my own page made it feel as if I was creating something analog, DIY, and entirely my own. In turn, I had a lot more of a sentimental attachment to my end product as compared to something pre-manufactured like a canvas discussion board/google doc.

1) professionalism. The blog post that I found most professional would probably be the writing coach reflection post. I'm proud of this post for it's honest exploration of the writing coach experience. I worry that I might have harped on my negative experiences/sentiments in this blog post, but also can back up these criticisms with the fact that I supported my arguments with quotes from the assigned readings. Furthermore, I think this blog post set the ground work for my writing coach analysis paper, which turned out really well and I think gave a bit more of a positive and well-rounded examination of the writing coach role. 

2) multimodal design. Without a doubt my mini-multimodal blog post. This is an obvious choice, but I chose this post mainly because of the large amount of positive feedback I received which I wasn't really expecting. I felt that I kind of took a risk in making a movie poster because it wasn't a format/genre that was specifically mentioned in the guidelines, but nonetheless met the qualifications of a multimodal media piece. 

3) creativity. I would choose my digital storytelling/zine blog post  for "most creative," but this has less to do with the content within the blog post itself and more to do with my mindset and interest in digital storytelling/zines. Specifically, the idea that "writing doesn't occur in a vacuum" is a sentiment that I hope to hold onto for the entirety of my teaching career. 

4) civic engagement. I think blog post exploring my "writing process" would be best suited for this label, as I go off on a bit of a tangent in it about how I feel like so many English classes failed to keep me engaged and involved as a reader and writer. I want to hold myself accountable as an educator and ensure that my curriculum serves my students not only for their academic needs, but for their creative endeavors, and serves as a creative/artistic outlet in expressing whatever students decide to write about. This way I will help students actualize their identity outside of an academic setting, and hopefully instill a love for reading and writing rather than giving it to them in the form of busywork/homework. 

My people's choice award is David! His blog is very professional, whether in its presentation, use of visuals, cohesion, formatting, connection to readings, or of course the writing itself. David has clearly put a lot of thought and effort into his blogs and his entries are a joy to read. His blog displays his reflective and creative mindset. In addition, all of the comments he has made on my blog posts have shown a commitment to engaging with other's writings, seeking understanding and further questioning.

Blog Post #7

 

    For my mini multimodal project, I decided to make a movie poster for Dry. I thought about all of the different formats and what elements of each appealed to me. The movie trailers in particular were fun and interesting, but I shied away from making one myself since we already saw a few in class specifically for Dry. Looking at other mediums I liked such as zines and PSAs, I got the idea to combine elements of each of these mediums and make a movie poster. Before I started, I had a few things in mind that I wanted to achieve with this poster:

• Use shades of humor while still conveying the grave circumstances through urgency and seriousness. This is something I noticed the book did quite well. 
• Give the viewer an idea of each character's personality without spoiling/giving away too much. 
• Create a poster that is visually cohesive and remains faithful to the book. In other words, though I was making a movie poster, I still wanted to make a poster which could be appropriately used to advertise or introduce the book. 

    With the finished product, I think I achieved these three core goals. I used canva to create the poster, which was generally pleasant to use, but my main gripe with it was a lot of tools that it provided were behind a paywall. As a result of this, four of the five character illustrations are watermarked which is lame. Beyond this though, I will give credit to canva for it's vast yet easy to navigate toolset that it provides the user. All of the graphics, fonts, and images were as easy as searching or clicking around for your desired tool. I tried my best to get character illustrations that were both cohesive (keyword tried) to each other while still resembling the characters of the story in some ways. I think the characters that mimic my internal interpretation best are Kelton and Jacqui. This is mainly due to their physical features and their posture/stance, such as Jacqui's sassy and aggressive presentation, to Kelton's shy yet approachable personality. 

   

    Beyond this, I knew the pictures alone wouldn't be enough to tell the viewer which character was who, so I included their names along with a short descriptor. I found this to be harder than I first expected, as certain characters differ depending on if we look at them outwardly, versus how they portray themselves from their own perspective and point of view. For example, throughout the book, Jacqui reveals that she doubts her strength and abilities to make tough decisions, while the other characters see her as a "badass" type character who is capable of anything. With this in mind, I defined each character through how they were viewed from an outside perspective, and not how they viewed themselves internally.

    Another struggle I had with this project was maintaining a balance of visuals. I wanted to make something that looked half decent and also gave the viewer a good idea of what Dry is about, whether in movie or book format. At one point, I had a water faucet graphic along with some fire illustrations, but however I orientated them, it just made the poster look too cluttered and busy. I think one of the best visual elements of my poster is the background, which helps the title stick out while also maintaining the tone/style of the book. Without the background, I just had a red/orange gradient background which fit the theme of the story but looked a bit unprofessional and was too clean/friendly for the story. 

    With the multimodal approach, I think the process of brainstorming and creating the poster very much amplified learning. Although canva provided me with a lot of useful tools and resources, it was still up to me to pick and choose them and then arrange them in a way which I was happy with and fit the book's already established identity. I would definitely consider having movie trailers/posters as an assignment in my own class, as it would give students an opportunity to think back to their experience reading the book, and force them to be selective in what they choose to then create something artistic while remaining loyal to the story covered in class.