Semester take away

    Well, the semester is just about over. The final class for seeing sideways is finished and I'm going to miss it. The best I can do at this point is to remember the lessons I received from the class and the assignments within, and use them as I continue on with my creative processes in life. For my last post pertaining to this class, I'll be discussing three points from this course that I'll be able to use while going forward in my creative career. I'll list them in ascending order of importance to me.

    First is "Polly Wolly doodle all the day?". I had never doodled before until this assignment. Whenever I would draw something, I would always have a clear idea in mind; so having an assignment where I'm not really supposed to think about what I'm drawing was a new concept to me. I found it to be a positive experience; actually coming a bit out of my shell for an assignment was a good experience. I might start trying to think outside my normal boundaries for when I get into a more professional setting while creating. It was one thing to think outside the box while doodling, but looking back on it was pretty nice too, I still don't think I'm much of a doodler, but I might try it again some time.

    Next is "Who am I and why am I here?". To this day, I have still not figured out the question for Who am I, but I'm keeping this assignment in mind so that I don't forget to keep trying to figure it out. This assignment affected me positively, and is one of the few assignments I've received in all of my school years that I actually appreciated doing. I don't have much additional to say about this that has not already been said in the actual blog post, but I'll keep searching for who I am as I continue through life. I hope that I can use the experiences while learning more about myself in my creative processes as well.

    Last and probably the most important was from "Fear". It can be very beneficial to talk about one's fears with another person. Through all the fears that I discussed in class, I'm not sure if I mentioned in the blog on how I can use those fears to my advantage rather than just as a detriment. If anything, I think I can use my fears as a constant reminder of what can happen if I don't try my best in everything I do. If I think of it this way, I'll those possibilities as a reason to never give up my goals. I can't be afraid of trying something for fear of failing, because I'll automatically fail if I never try in the first place. That's probably what stuck out to me for that assignment the most, just the idea of being able to use something as powerful as my own fears to actually aid me instead of harm me. With summer and a new semester around the corner, I have plenty of time to see if a new method using my fears to my benefit will work, and I really hope it does.

    I'm definitely looking forward to the semester being over, but I'll definitely miss the classes I'm taking for this semester. I hope that the rest of my college time goes nicely.

Class take away 16

    Today we discussed our "Altared" Book. Since Beth was still down in New Mexico, we decided to record all the presentations to send to her so she could grade them. I'm not used to getting recorded while presenting things, but I think it went pretty well.

    We had some students create things out of their books, using their books, and inspired things from their books. I altered the book to match a couple traits about myself, including my protective side; I sealed the pages of the book together to keep the outside world safe from reading it. Overall, I just want to turn it into something that I would actually like when looking at it, instead of the original book that made me hate it. At the end of it, I actually find some enjoyment in this new book I've altered, so I consider that a success.

    There were a lot of other students presenting too, but I'll admit that I did not pay attention as well as I wish I had. I was up until 5:30 in the morning working on three finals for that day, then woke up really early as well, so I was pretty tired.

    Near the end of class, we took some picture of the whole class with a cake that Jake brought in. I may have mis-heard it from the class before, but I thought we were going to be doing something with sending candy to Beth with another cake, but I don't remember if we actually did that or not, but I did bring Smarties for it.

    It was nice fun class to end the semester on.

Class take away 14

    I have purposely decided not to write this post for the assigned time because of what I have to say. I did write it down on my laptop immediately after class, but did not want to put it online. I know that this means that I will take a deduction in points, but I would rather take that than to have this message be read too early. I did not like the class we had last week. It will be uploaded just minutes before the final class ends.

When creating something, always keep the word “Predictable” in mind. Avoid cliche things, create my own formula of doing something that other people have not done before. Cliche photos are out of control.

One student devoted an entire week to changing what he normally does to address his fears

At the end, Jake talked about something that was really tough for him to do just this morning, which took a lot of courage to do.

He also showed us pictures of his work, he’s a sculptor and he seems to do it pretty well, creating life sized pieces.

We were then show a video of a man who creates art only through ten keys on an old fashioned typewriter. He has a disability that doesn’t allow him to make art with pencils or brushes, but he still found a way. What we learned from this is that we should not say “I could never do that.” because that asks the question, “What can I do?”. It's one thing to see a good artist, but to have them say things like that is just really nice to see these days.

Jake talked about one student and how his fear assignment was of outstanding quality, above everyone else’s. He talked about this quite frequently after his presentation was complete, and gave me an impression that he didn’t think that anyone else really tried compared to him or didn’t sacrifice as much as he did, I think he actually said something along those lines as well. I did not particularly enjoy how much he went on and on about it, I took a risk of being arrested for the way I dressed to push my fear assignment beyond being just an assignment, and to use it to learn just how powerful fears are in my life. I showed a lot of my true feelings and emotions, and even talked in my normal voice which never sees the public. Not only did I have to force myself out my apartment door for fear of revealing the design of a character I’ve worked on for almost 10 years in secrecy, but then I had to take that design into the school of Media Arts & Science, where I knew that everyone there could be a potential storyteller who might get inspired to make an evil villain out of a design I made to be that of an unusual hero. While in class, someone took a picture of me in my costume If my design turns into a villain before I make it as the hero I've dreamed about, I'm going to be lost. After all he had said about just one person’s assignment and how he didn’t think anyone else sacrificed nearly as much, I felt as though I had completely failed in my assignment, which happens to be one of my greatest fears. I know that the student did indeed make tough sacrifices to do his project, and I give him enormous props for it. His project was very well thought out and covered many important topics. I would have been fine with Jake saying that his project was very well thought out and there must have been a lot of sacrifice. Was his project the best? I don't think so. Was mine the best? I have no idea, probably not. But to give off an impression that nobody else sacrificed or risked anywhere near the amount that he did was a bit unfair to everyone who did make a huge sacrifice or take a big risk in making the project. Talking about personal information, revealing bold or even weird fears, and even taking risks with the simpleness of how they showed up to class; I may not have made a big sacrifice for the fear assignment, but nobody knows how much I feel like I risked to just walk in the door and take off my mask. I took a big risk with a bit of sacrifice today, to potentially sacrifice almost everything I've worked for in the past 10 years in exchange for a grade and getting myself outside of the walls I put up for myself. If somewhere down the line it turns out that my big risk turned into a major sacrifice, I'll look back on that time and say that it's my worst and biggest regret, and I'll probably think of it that way for the rest of my life. 

I just said a whole lot about something that everyone else in the class might not have thought of as a big deal, but it was to me. Normally I don’t like to talk about the small things that people say (not necessarily to me) that might discourage me, but this was so stupid that I felt like I needed to say something about it. I'm not a teacher, I have no experience being a teacher, and I doubt that I will ever teach professionally; but I wouldn't ever make such a point out of one students work to say that nobody else risked or sacrificed as much as previously said student, that's assuming way too much and is playing the favorites game. I honestly feel like I'm taking this out of proportion, but despite the fact that I normally stay very reserved, don't like to talk about things that bug me, and don't really like to give criticism, this was too much for me to keep inside.

Overall, I did not like this class, I almost want to say that I hated it, but that's too strong. Despite everything I risked to make it, I feel as though I failed my Fear assignment.

This is it. The "Altared" Book of the Self

    Well, it’s finally time; time to submit my Altared Book of the Self. It’s been quite a journey this semester and is probably the toughest semester I’ve had in all my years of school, before and during college. For a bit of recap as to what the Altared book assignment is, We are all to take a book that we do not like (putting it very nicely) and “altar” it to make it into something that we do like. We are allowed to alter it in any way that has some kind of positive expression of ourselves. The alteration should also answer the question “What is identity of self in the digital world?” As inspiration with ideas to use while creating it, we can use the experiences we got from all our previous assignments for things to add in our alterations. We also had an assignment earlier to have the cover of the book complete, which did help with time management.

    One quick note to add, I absolutely hate the book I chose. I have not said the name of it yet, but all will be revealed in time, no spoilers.

     Let’s begin with the inspirations I got from my past assignments in chronological order: starting with The Egg and Eye. I decided that I wanted to protect others from reading the book, something that was not done for me back in high school, so I sealed it shut. This also ties in with The flavor of a sand pear sounds like… in which the fruit is basically a outpouring of resistance that does not want to be eaten. The flesh and juice of the pear is blood red, so I combined these two assignments into one example for the book. I dyed some glue to look as blood red as possible and sealed the pages of the book shut. What I did for the egg was that I protected it in a box with cushions inside it. Combining these two, I am protecting the outside world from it, using a deterring barrier to keep it sealed.

In Polly Wolly doodle all the day? I didn’t necessarily create a specific example for it in the book, but I used the example to think about what the book might say about me at first glance. It has a lot of blue color on it, but has been sealed with red glue. To be honest, I’m still not sure what it will say about me, but I’m not too concerned with what people think about me based on an altered book. Don’t get me wrong, I have turned the book into something that I like now, but I prefer to let my words say what needs to be said about me rather than a book I didn’t write, even though I did alter it.

    For Rules were made… I think that coloring the glue red might be something similar to a rule being broken. If that doesn’t cut it, all the trouble and mistakes that I had while trying to glue it shut should be enough. Anything with wet dye typically becomes a big mess, so parts of my covers look like they have red finger prints. I broke my own rules for this one; I didn’t want any red to be on the covers.

For Bible dipping, we were given the word “reused”, and that’s how the cover of my book got created. I reused the cover of the book to turn it into something that I could like about it. Because when the book has its own natural cover, it’s the cover to a book that I despise. But after randomly using the word “reused” it is something that I like.

    For “Who am I and why am I here”, I used it as inspiration while making this book. It was one of the few assignments over my entire time of school that I really enjoyed, and I wanted to make something for this assignment that I could enjoy just as much. As of right now, I did kind of enjoy creating this altered book, but I enjoy the fact that I turned something that I despise into something that I actually like.

    For “You’ve got this covered!”, that happened to be the actual assignment for making the cover of the book. Since that was already done, I altered the spine of the book a bit more to resemble the cover.

   For “Media round robin”, this assignment helped to work on two classes at the same time. The actual process wouldn’t help me much with the altered book, but I did think of a way that the altered book can apply to two problems at the same time. For one, it can provide a way turn something I don’t like into something that I can enjoy at least a little bit. Two, it settles the need for the assignment. Three, I just thought it was a bit fun.

 
    For “Bliss”, the altered assignment itself is to make something bad become something good. This ties in well with the bliss assignment, as it turned something that I would never ever find blissful, into something that I could actually look back on and think of in a good way.

 
    “Fear Factor”. I don’t know what people will think of me when they see this book. I’m worried about failing this assignment. I’m worried about what I might discover about myself some time down the road after looking back on this book. I’m also worried if there was some way that this assignment might affect me negatively now, for the future. These might be strange things to fear, but I always consider my fears and the risks when I do anything.

    And now we are back to the “Altared” Book of the Self. I’ll answer the question “What is identity of self in the digital world?” I drew a small picture on a note card, and put it on the inside back cover of my book. The picture is of a person, but there are no facial features, no clothes, it’s completely filled with black. The way I see it, self in the digital world does not really have a complete appearance. In a digital world, our physical appearances do not usually become apparent, unless by an actual picture of ones self. It would seem as though we create our own self in the real world and in the digital world, but both are at least slightly different. We can decide on an identity for ourselves in the digital world, but not even that decision needs to be permanent. It’s easy to get or create a new image for ourselves in a digital sense, but much harder in the real world sense. Given the fact that it’s easy, it means that we have more of a freedom to change it whenever we desire. If we can change it whenever we desire, then what is an actual good representation of the identity of self in the digital world? To me, it’s a blank slate, a basis that can be formed whenever and however. It may be simple, but that’s what the identity of self in the digital world is to me.

    By the way, the book is Peace like a River, by Leif Enger. It hurt me to say the name of that book and the author just now. If you asked me why I hate it, I honestly could not give you the answer. I just remember that I hated the book so much, that I purged all my memories of it soon after reading it. It was a required book for a high school english class, and I passed the class but probably failed the assignments based on this book. The description of the book talks about it being a spiritual journey, which kind of surprises me on how I must of thought it was bad back then, considering that I am and was religious at the time while reading this book. Either way, the fact remains the same, I personally think that I would have spent too much on that book if I had paid for it with my own crap. I know, toilet humor can be gross, but I need a laugh of any kind with finals week starting.

    I don’t think I’ll ever have a class like this again, which makes these last few lines bittersweet. On the bright side, I can take everything I’ve learned in this class and apply it to all aspects of my life, and make my own experiences with the new perspective. I really wish Beth Lykins could have been around for the Fear assignment as well as the last class, but life happens, we all have experience with that. I might keep posting to this blog, but I’m not completely sure. So until next time, always try to look at things from a different perspective, what lies behind the first appearance might be surprising.

Class take away 13

    I talked about some of the things that scare me most, to people that I hardly know or really trust. Not only did I do that, I wore a costume that naturally gives people some sense of fear just looking at it. I feel like I took a lot of risks in class yesterday, but I just had a feeling as though I really needed to go through with it.

    I know that I couldn't actually walk into the school with the full costume on, because I did the same thing last semester (for extra credit in a class) and almost had the police called on me. I did not do anything wrong nor plan to, but my costume apparently gave off a suspicion that I was going to do something bad. So before entering class, I made sure to keep the mask off and went in as usual, talked with a few classmates and basically did normal stuff. I took my usual seat which is right in front of the door, and the majority of the class walked in before class started. When class was beginning and Jacob started talking about how we would present our Fear assignment, I put on the mask and assumed the different personality than I usually have in class. After the mask was on, I noticed some people were staring at me, one person took a picture, and it basically seemed as though nobody knew who I was. I remember thinking to myself, It's almost as though they never saw me walk through the door, even though I'm seated right in front of the door. After a bit of talking, Jacob asked if I wanted to start us off today, for a reason something like, "Because I'm definitely scared of you at the moment." He said it in a joking manner and I did find it funny, but I didn't laugh or even move in a way that would hint that I would. Plus, I felt like I wanted to go first just so I could be finished for it, talking about my fears isn't something I like to do.

    I began talking about my fears and how they affect my life, expectations, feelings, ect. I made sure to speak loud enough that everyone could hear me through my mask, it was kind of hard to keep doing consistently, but I made it through. I'm not sure if my voice sounded forced or not, but I did not try to make it sound that way. While I was answering questions from Jacob about certain things, a few people would laugh every now and then when I responded. I'm not quite sure how to take it; whether to think it was good to get a few laughs out of a very serious situation, or whether to think of it not to be good since I was being completely serious with my answers. I feel as though it may have been the way that I answered the questions, short and straight to the point without a pause in between them, but I really don't know. During the time I noted it, but didn't think anything of it until later when I took the mask off. When I was finished talking and describing how fears work in my life, the room seemed very silent. I kind of wondered why everyone was so quiet when I finished. Was it that I set the mood to be really serious and nobody wanted to add any input to it? I did mention that I normally don't like to talk much, but that I "put on" a different personality when I go out in public that would say otherwise. I didn't want that to be confused with anyone thinking that I don't like to make friends, I really do like making friends, but normally I'm very quiet and don't go out just to meet people. Whether this reason or another was behind everyone being silent, we were all silent for a while either way. Jacob asked who I was so that he could write down the name for some notes he was taking on everyone's assignment and mentioned that he did not know who I was while I had the mask on. I assume that most of the rest of the class did not know who I was either, despite it being my usual seat and that my seat is right in front of the door to class where everyone sees me at least once when they walk in or out.

    At the break in the middle of class, I took my mask off. The reason for keeping it on for half and off for another half was for a few reasons: one was to get a sense for the class while I was myself compared to how I normally see it, another was to see the different actions by my classmates while wearing the mask as opposed to not wearing it, and the last reason for it was because part of the mask was getting a bit tight and I wanted a break from it. There was a pretty big difference in how people acted in class with the mask on or off, mainly the number of looks I got while wearing it. It makes sense though, if someone wears a mask in a place where most people normally don't, the masked person tends to get a lot of looks or stares. None of it bothered me, but I did keep note of it. After my mask was off, my personality changed to how it normally is in class, and I went on listening to other students presentations while still paying attention to reactions. The conclusion, there were some initial reactions while I was taking the mask off, but after that there was nothing at all. It was probably because I became a normal person and nothing really interesting, but there was such a noticeable difference. It's as if I went from something to nobody. I do like wearing the mask, it kind of gives me a new perspective on things, which is something we try to do in Seeing Sideways.

    After it was all finished, I'm not quite sure what to think about the experience. It was kind of nice to get my fears out in a way of speaking, but I'm not sure if I really liked it overall. Granted, wearing a costume with a mask was the best part of the assignment, I'm not sure if I got any enjoyment talking about my fears. I think it's possibly a good idea to talk about them, but not to a class of people that I may or may not ever see again. This is just my opinion, and I'm sure it's great for some people to talk to strangers about, but I'm a bit less enthusiastic than that. It's a really good idea to have assignments where we can actually think about our fears and how they affect us, but I personally didn't get much enjoyment or feeling as though I had taken a burden off my shoulders after presenting it.

    Overall, parts of the class were enjoyable while others weren't, but I liked it.

Fear

What makes me fearful?

Let me begin instead with a few things that do not make me fearful. I don’t think I have any actual phobias anymore. I don’t really look at anything and feel an instant sense of fear and not wanting anything to do with it. I think that when I was younger I may have had arachnophobia, a fear of spiders, but I’ve had experiences since that time which would say that I’ve overcome it. Another thing I don’t fear is people. While I do occasionally fear what people may think of me or rejection, I don’t fear anyone for who they are or what they can do. This fear as well as the next could be faulty to a point that perhaps I do not fear them enough to be more cautious of them. I’m not a reckless person, and I do exercise caution, but I don’t let fear control what I decide to do. The next fear is the fear of death. This is one of the most common fears that people have, and it’s not as if I have nothing to live for, but that I’ve accepted that someday I will die, there’s no avoiding that. I also have to thank my religious beliefs for not fearing dying anymore, I believe that after I die, I’ll be going to a better place as long as I keep doing everything I can to be good. I’m definitely not in a rush to die, it will happen when it’s my time. I also believe that God expects certain things for me to do, along with keeping my beliefs, so while I don’t want to die until it’s my time, I don’t fear it either. I’ve had a few near death experiences in my lifetime, but I only feared the first one, and I have not feared it since.

            Refocusing back to what I do fear, first it’s a few common ones: Fears of failure, rejection, and maybe public speaking. I say maybe for public speaking because I don’t like to publicly speak, unless I have time to prepare for it. If I prepare for it in advance, the fear is gone. With the fear of failure, this is a pretty common one. I…Really… don’t want to fail in life. This is a hard fear for me to cope with, even harder than it was for me to stop fearing death. I don’t want to fail people who rely on me, I don’t want to fail God, I don’t want to fail while pursuing my dreams, there are just so many things that I’m very fearful about failing. I’m not only worried about failing whatever job I get into or ideas that I create, but I’m worried about failing to even reach that position. I want to write stories for visual mediums, the window of opportunity for getting a job in that field is smaller than one of my eyes, and probably even tougher to get into without connections. I actually freeze up sometimes when I think about how tough this choice might be, but I need to go for it. I know that trying to do this means that I’ll either make it or break down into nothing. I have a backup plan of studying 3D modeling and animation, but what if I fail that? Even if I pass through college with flying colors, but fail at getting a job or keeping it, I’ll basically fail everyone I’ve ever talked to or ever known, I might even fail God. I know failure is a necessary obstacle to reach success, but it brings up the question: How far can we fail before it gets out of hand?

            Rejection kind of goes hand in hand with failing to me: If I or my ideas are rejected, I’ve failed. I used to have another part of rejection that I feared, rejection from other people, but I’ve learned to get over that as time went on. While I do like being accepted by people, I don’t usually let that govern how I am as a person, though it kind of does. I don’t really like to talk unless it’s something that needs to be said. I feel as though I need to put on another personality while in public just to be at least half accepted by others. I don’t change either personality for people, but know that everyone has different opinions, and that it’s completely impossible to please everyone. The kind of rejection I really fear is having my ideas rejected outright. I have three main ideas that I want to spend a lot of time working on, two of which are extremely important to me. I can definitely think of other ideas for production, but if I can’t work on those ideas because they’ve been rejected, after all the time I’ll be spending to get into the business, I feel as though I will have completely failed again and I’ll truly be useless. A short side fear, the feeling of being completely useless. It’s not that great of a fear to me, but I just don’t want to be useless.

            These fears sometimes manifest as a blockade against me. They’re not phobias to me, but are more along the lines of anxiety and worries. I notice these fears in ways that just really get me down sometimes. I can be having a great day, but if I think about the problems that the future might hold, I definitely feel a sinking feeling. I do a good job to put on a mask to disguise the fact that I fear certain things, but the fact remains, I fear. Sometimes these feelings keep me from taking risks, I feel like I need to be so careful or risk doing something stupid and ruining my chances of ever succeeding in the pursuit of my ultimate goals. This kind of ties into how I am trying to learn to use these fears to my advantage; though sometimes, it’s hard to look at the bright side. I use these fears to keep myself in check of what I say and do, just to make sure that I don’t do something too risky or stupid. I also use it in a way that I know I need to try my best in everything my do, because there is a purpose for everything, and it’s because of that reason that I’ll always do my best wherever I can. I definitely feel as though fear affects my life in a creative sense, I feel as though I have to limit myself sometimes to stay realistic. As mentioned before, these fears take the form of a blockade. They can either be a blockade to protect me from certain choices, or the blockade that prevents me from moving forward.

            In the end, making a project about fear does in fact provoke all of these mentioned fears. Will it be rejected by the audience? The instructor? Will I completely fail it? Will I speak correctly while presenting my fears to a bunch of people in my class? Will the idea I made for the presentation scare the class? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I feel like actually saying something about a topic like this could be beneficial to me as well. Believe me, I’m extremely worried about this assignment and I’m not sure how it’s going to work out. But like the fears I have with my ultimate goals, I just have to go forward and try my best.

    

Bliss

Ah, the Bliss exercise. How very nice it is, as well as how very nice it makes me feel. Having times where I am able to just play or think are so nice. I like playing video games and I like to just think about certain ideas of mine. During this block of time that we are to spend out of class, I’ll enjoy such a time of bliss in a time of really needing to do stuff for school, just a bit of a break would be nice. A few conditions that are needed to make sure I stay in a blissful mood are as follows: I need to not think about anything serious, have fun, do some good thinking about things I want to think about, and overall just stop feeling worried and anxious about stuff. I’m going to keep this rather short, since doing homework does not keep me blissful. I’ve never really heard of an assignment where we’re just supposed to take some time to do stuff that we want to do, so this was very refreshing and it’s pretty enjoyable.

After completing the Bliss exercise, I compiled some obstacles and “what if” questions to follow them up:

1.      I’m afraid of talking about my fears

a.       What if I find a reason(s) to dismiss my fears?

b.      What if I try to convince myself that it can be beneficial to talk about fears?

c.       What if I just went for it just to see how it goes this one time, then decide forever more if I’ll ever do it again?

2.      I’m afraid of talking too much about my fears when I actually do

a.       What if I just decide to say only what needs to be said?

b.      What if I plan out whatever items are needed and try to weed out any fluff?

3.      I feel like I need to be really careful about what I say

a.       What if I thought about the class as a safe(er) environment?

b.      What if I plan out what I’m going to say, as in a speech form?

c.       What if I just decide not to care about what I say? (not going to happen)

4.      I don’t really want people to know what my fears are

a.       What if I change the subject of my fears to something away from the deep ones?

b.      What if I be careful to not say too much during class?

5.      Normally I don’t really worry about what people think of me. But when it comes to talking about a subject like fears, I actually am worried about what people will think.

a.       What if I try to go back to a mindset where I don’t worry about it?

I know I’m short on questions, but I can’t think of anything else.

Class take away 11

    Today we did not have an assignment to turn in, so there were no presentations to make. It was nice to have a bit of a break for the week, especially since I had a pretty decent amount of work to do for my other classes. We started to talk about the Fear assignment that we'll have near the end of the semester. It's our big kahuna of projects. While talking about fear, we talked about the different types of fear, those being: Phobias, Anxiety, and Worry. It seems like there's a lot of fear out in the world right now, wars, potential wars, famine, just a lot of things for people to be scared of. Beth said something that I can honestly agree with, "Hope is in rare supply." Someday I hope that I can create things that will give hope to others in some way.  Fears do play a part in my life, but I'm not going to talk about that yet, that's being saved for the Fear assignment.

    We talked about apathy and how it's a growing problem that people have today. It's quite true. Some people say they'll do something, but then lose interest and make up an excuse not to do it. It's a really big problem with students especially. Personally, I only say I'll do something if I know I'll actually do it. It's a reason that I almost never make promises, I can't make a promise if I have any doubt that I won't be able to live up to it.

    After talking about the fear assignment and apathy, we started talking about a different assignment, the Bliss assignment. We will be taking about three hours out of a day (not divided up, it has to be all at once) and just do something that lets us feel bliss. A lot of the classmates were talking more about it and giving lots of input. One interesting thing that Beth brought up is that the overall atmosphere of the room was so much different from when we were talking about the Fear assignment to when we were talking about the Bliss assignment, that was very true. I didn't think of it while we were talking about the two, but looking back, there was a whole world of different in everyone's voice and demeanors in comparison.

    We looked up a video about Jiro's sushi, a movie in which a man living in Japan has been making nearly perfect sushi for decades. He has such a passion for it that he doesn't like holidays, because he'd rather be making sushi than taking a break. This video inspired me, and I hope that someday I can have about as much of a passion for making my own plans come to fruition like Jiro does, maybe not for as long, but if I enjoy it then why not.

    The class was pretty good, I look forward to the Bliss and Fear assignments.

Media Round Robin

In the Media Round Robin assignment, we are to create something in one medium, whether it be digital or non-digital, convert it to digital or non-digital depending on the first choice, then to bring it back into the original medium chosen. I decided to pick the digital to non to digital path. Admittedly, this assignment did seem very odd to me, so I may have deviated slightly from what the main goal of it was to bring forward, but I stuck to it as best as I could.

To begin, I decide to make a temporary alliance between my Creature Design class and the Seeing Sideways class. The main point of this was to help me practice some steps of creative design, while also working on a subject that I enjoy. For a bit of backstory, I created a Leviathan type creature in the Creature Design class that is approximately 2100 feet from head to tail. A creature of this size could host an entire ecosystem of other creatures, some of them being human sized or larger. For this, I began developing a creature that can live inside a leviathan as a parasite. I used a digital medium to write out some of the attributes and descriptions of the animal. Some of these are listed below:

Type of creature: Crustacean
9 foot in diameter carapace, 8 legs, 4 claws (two large, two small).
Antennae have enlarged to provide additional sensory detail of the environment around the crustacean.
Bioluminescent panels developed under the eyes to light the area immediately below and in front of the creature to allow sight in the dark but minimize light saturation in the area around the creature.

The crustacean is omnivorous and prefers to eat decaying material, which can be beneficial as long as the leviathan has decaying flesh to be rid of.


This was a sample of the writing needed for the Creature Design class, but is also part of the basis for the creative process in making this creature. Secondly, I needed to transfer the information provided by this original digital medium and convert it to a non digital medium. For this, I sketched out how the creature might look. I am not a very good drawing artist, so it's really not accurate to how I plan it to look like. Here it is below:

I really should have drawn a person next to it to compare the scale in size, but the carapace (the body shell area) is around 9 feet in diameter excluding the legs and claws, so it's a pretty big size. While the creature drawn is the same as the creature described in both these mediums, they are slightly different, mainly by how they are portrayed. When we read how a design is, we can picture it in our own minds, but it won't be the same image as another person who reads the same description. This is mostly due to different interpretations that people have, such as how people might say the same words differently. With an image, we can see exactly how it looks, but will have different ideas on how the creature might act or behave in an environment. The reasoning is the same as before, but for different reasons.

For the final transition of the Media Round Robin, it's time to go back to the digital medium. For this, I brought the sketch into Photoshop and colored it and tried to give it a type of texture. My skills in Photoshop are on par with my skills in drawing (that doesn't say much about either) but here it is:

I realized that when I was done, that the creature looks kind of like a merging between Kabuto and a lobster. It's kind of frustrating on how I feel as though anything that I draw seems to look like something else that has already been done before. The idea is fairly original (keep in mind that "Simpsons did it") and the design may be interesting, but I'm just not able to draw in order to portray things in ways that I feel satisfied with. I did have fun experimenting with the brush tool in Photoshop to add a texture to the shell of the crustacean, but it just looks (at least to me) like something that's probably been done before, if not already a creature in real life somewhere in the ocean.

Overall, the assignment was helpful and fun in certain ways, but it also brought back to light on how I'm not able to portray images from my mind into pictures on paper. I figure that the best I can do is to create stories on things that I want to bring into the world, and perhaps have someone with actual artistic drawing or photoshop skills help me to make a better image that can actually be seen rather than perceived.

Class take away 9

Yesterday we started off class with going around the room and talking about the foods that we chose to use for the assignment. It was cool hearing all the things that people had never eaten before, some of them I knew, others I did not. There were mixed reactions for each type of food as well, some were good, others were not. Mine was definitely a bad experience, I ate a cactus pear. Cactus are plants that just really don't want to be eaten, so they develop many ways to discourage animals from eating them. Cactus pears taste bad, are blood red on the inside, have a tough outer exterior and chalky interior, and they have very tiny quill patches on the surface. I made sure to describe the experience well to the class, it turns out that Beth has eaten cactus pears before and I think might grow them every now and then. I mentioned on how I managed to still get pricked by some of the quills despite wearing really thick gloves, Beth said that the quills are sharp enough to go straight through plastic gloves.

A few of the students made audio files for how their food sounded. I thought it was pretty cool on how they took the title of the assignment quite literally and made music or sounds to describe the food. One of the students had a star fruit and made a song with I think two different types of guitar for it. I remembered the first time I had tried star fruit and I thought the song fit that first feeling quite well.

After having our discussions, we started an exercise in which Beth gave us all a sheet of white printer paper. We then received instructions to do whatever we wanted to do with the paper to summarize their experience with the food in one word, but without using anything other than our bodies. For instance, we could use our hands, mouths, or even feet, but could not use anything such as writing utensils or tools. One person nearby me immediately started shredding it into tiny crumpled paper balls, I thought to myself "Dang, must have been a bad experience. I saw that another person nearby tore the paper into a question mark type of symbol, it confused me probably as much as the mark is supposed to give the impression of, and was probably the way he viewed the experience (unsure). I ripped tiny holes into the paper in shapes that spelled the word "Ouch". The reason for that is because the entire experience of the cactus pear was just painful to me, and sounded like a train wreck or trucks crashing into each other.

After doing this for a little while, we were given another blank sheet of paper and were to use the word we were thinking of while doing whatever to the first page and to draw a character that would use the word with their name, or something like that. I drew a cartoonish pear and named him "Ouch, the cactus pear that doesn't like you" I made him look very angry, be pointing at the person looking at the paper, and yelling stuff like "I'll prick you in places you never knew you had!" The main point of the character is to make him seem like he wants to hurt you if you try to eat him (since he's a pear) but to taunt you with the fact that he's a fruit. I think the character would do good with a Boston accent.

Near the end of class, Beth told us that she was adding a new S to the now 5 S's. The word is "Start". I think this is a great S for the creative process for the following reason: In order for something to be created, it must have a start, and for a person to create something, they have to start creating. It's a stupid reason, but it makes stupid sense to me.

It was a pretty fun class and I'm glad that a new S has been discovered.

The flavor of a Cactus Pear sounds like...

It sounds painful upon first impressions. Just thinking of the word "cactus" I think of words that  relate to; prickly, spikes, pain, hurt, and ouch. However, I do like pears, most pears I've had tasted good, sweet, and nutritious. Something I don't think of much when I eat something is what senses do I experience other than tastes and smells? That's the point of this assignment for this week, to eat something we have never had before and describe all the senses we receive for it other than the primary ones for eating, which would be smell or taste; then create something using it. While grocery shopping with my dad over spring break, I noticed a cactus pear in the produce section, and I knew that's what I would try for the assignment. I had always wondered what desert fruit would taste like, whether it'd be sweet or some other flavor I haven't tried before. I imagine that it would not have much flavor, since most cactus plants do not want to be eaten and will try different strategies to discourage animals from doing so.

This is a picture of it with a size comparison of my hand next to it. It might not be clear, but the small bumps on the surface of the pear appear to be fuzzy. However, with the name cactus pear, I decided not to test to see how fuzzy they actually are. While we were shopping, my dad also mentioned to me how he did indeed feel as though he was pricked by something after handling it, so I decided to cut off as many of these bumps as I could to help the experience.

It honestly looks a bit gruesome, but for the sake of not having tiny little cactus quills poking my cheeks, gums, and in between my teeth, it was worth the time and effort. So now it's time to finally test out how many and what types of feelings I receive while eating a cactus pear. I made sure to turn all noises off possible, close my eyes, and open my mind in anticipation. Just on a side note, before actually taking a bite, I thought of the scene in Ratatouille where one of the rats experiences the flavor of cheese and a berry together in a way of seeing colors and hearing sounds. 3...2...1...

First crunch (yeah, a crunch), it just felt like a train wreck had happened right in my face. Every bit of the pear reminded me of cucumbers and I really do not like cucumbers, mainly the flavor. The initial feeling was that the outer area of the fruit was hard and crunchy, while the inside was really soft but almost crumbly, the texture wasn't that great overall. It smelled a lot like a cucumber as well, which didn't help in any way. It just felt as though while I was chewing the pear, I was just really regretting my choice for the food that I chose. After I had finished up the first bite, I thought that I needed a second opinion, this was also not a good decision. This bite had some of the seeds in the center of the fruit in it, they were hard, small, blood red looking pellets that made me think of blackberry seeds, but much larger. I finally made a good decision in all of this, I spit out the second bite, but after giving it a bit of time for me to think while the flavor was reminding me of cucumbers and slowly making me sick. The experience was not bad enough to make me feel like I wanted to up chuck or anything, but it was just plain unpleasant. After this, I saw in the mirror that it turned the inside of my mouth to a dark red color maybe similar to blood, but not completely. Overall, this really gave me images of a train wreck or being hit by a truck. These images did give me an idea on what I could use the actual pear for in my book, I decided to put it in a plastic bag to save it.

If it wasn't gruesome before, now it looks like part of a heart in a bag. I think I will turn the juice of this heart into a kind of paste that I'll use to seal the pages of the book together so that they cannot be opened. In this way, I can turn two things I do not like into one thing that I do enjoy. All I hope for is that the result of the paste does not attract many bugs, because then I will have something I like that possibly attracts things that I do not like (flies and gnats). I did crush up the fruit to make one of the components for the paste, but I think I will not show a picture of that, because it looks like a smashed up bloody heart in a bag. I'll do some research on how to make a glue or paste with this fruit then incorporate it into my Altered book. Somehow, even though I wore gloves while handling it, I managed to get some tiny little cactus quills in my fingers, one on my face, and one on my foot.

As for the 4 S's, that was the last thing I thought about while I was eating the cactus pear. The flavor of a cactus pear sounds like... a real hassle.

Class take away 8

    Today for class we started out with a video, always a nice start. It was a video of a person from American Idol who was making a video log. At first when Beth saw this earlier in the day, she wanted to turn it off since she thought it would just be some kind of drama. But then she started talking about a much more interesting subject. She started talking about how there's one one of each of us, and that we're not one out of a million, we're one out of one.  I thought the video was super good, it was one of the 4 S's moments: Synchronicity. I really enjoyed the video.

    After the video, we started to talk about the assignments that we did for our book covers. There was a student who planned to make a mask from the book, which will look different on both sides, I thought that was a cool concept. One person wanted to do something game related with it because games meant a lot to her. She continued explaining the questions "Who am I and why am I here", going into details on how she didn't have a very good time in high school, then the emotions started to show. Beth made a pretty good point when this happened, she said to us "That's how you know it's real." and indeed I believe it was. I myself like to play video games, they're fun and it's a nice momentary escape into worlds that people have created. But when I saw her getting emotional while talking about her high school experience, it made me pause to think about it.

    When it was my turn to speak, I talked a bit more about my book and that after I had made so many edits to it, I actually didn't want it to get smudged by taking it to school. I really couldn't believe that I actually cared about the book for it not to get damaged, but the changes I had made to it turned it into something that I could actually like and want to keep in good condition (at least until I make more edits to it). After that, I presented the picture that my partner drew while not looking at the paper of me. Starting with the original drawing, then showing how I like to take things apart in the second picture where all the lines were separated, then showing how I put things back together in my own way in the final picture where I put the lines to make up a portrait of myself. Beth really seemed to like the idea and started thinking up ideas of her own while looking at the picture. She gave me a couple ideas to possibly use for the final book, maybe with putting that picture on the back with movable parts to assemble it in different ways. I kept a few of these concepts in mind, I might use some of them for the final.

    As we drew closer to the end of class, bBeth brought up a point on how it seems like when we grow up and get jobs, companies do not want us to play at all, calling it "slacking off". She then asked us a question: Without playing, how can we be creative on the job? This is a pretty good point, it's hard to think of new things when we're being serious with all work and no play. This led us to our next topic, how it seems as though we can't be kids after we grow up. It really does seem to be this way with all the responsibilities we have to take on when we go out on our own. I hope that I can still be a kid at heart even after I get out there to catch up with my goals.

    It was a pretty good class, I'll definitely miss it over spring break.

I've got this covered!

    For this assignment, we are to work on the outer cover of our Altered book. While doing this, I will be keeping my "self" in mind, exploring possibilities, and keep in consideration how I want others to view my book by it's outer appearance.

    Two weeks before this assignment, we were to make something creative while "Bible dipping" which was the word "reused". For this assignment, I actually reused the cover of my book to create a better cover for it, which kind of overlaps this assignment. I have added a couple extra changes to further expand on the cover and its outward appearance. For the sake of the assignment, I will try to describe some of the ideas I thought of while changing to cover a bit further.

    The front cover looks relatively the same. A picture of it can be found on a previous blog of mine titled: "Bible" dipping.

    I don't think I'm ready to take on the back cover of the book just yet, that will require a lot more planning for how I want to erase one of the many dark sides of the book. So to add onto the cover for this post, I have made a few edits to the spine of the book. I kept the main feel of the front cover, but ran out of space due to the lack of area to actually draw stuff on. Below is a picture of it.

LIKE A BOUSE!!
    I made sure to keep that a constant theme. The section that was cut out on the front earlier was a part that was a bit harder to approach when it comes to the actual spine of the book. I managed to keep the "Like a Bouse" reference, but ran out of room for the "Leaf Anger" section. If I were to cut out that certain section of the title, it could damage the book further than I may want to (incineration is too good for it). Under other circumstances I would not hesitate to completely remove the part of the title that bugs me the most, but for the sake of the Altered book, I decided against doing anything that could destroy it before the end of the semester. I thought about bringing the book into class today to actually have the physical copy to show my progress, but I thought that the ink or colored pencil marks might get smudged in my backpack. It was at that point that I was stuck with a realization, I actually had a single care for the book. It hit me like a ton of bricks, I had actually changed the book enough that I cared about it enough to not have it get smudged, and had a protective sense for it. At first I didn't know what to think, I really don't like the book so to feel any kind of want to keep it safe was just plain strange to me. At the same time, I had changed it into something that I would not mind keeping in a decent condition, which is a major step.

     Below is a picture of the first page after tearing out some of the pages I did not like, and where I thought the book should start.

    This is something that I can pass out to the rest of the class, and possibly the world. Based on my own experience with this book, this is my best recommendation. To anyone who reads this, DON'T!

Class take away 7

    Our class this week was a bit shorter than normal.

    To begin, we had a bit of a recap on last week's class and discussed a little about the assignment given last week. The main point of this discussion was to go a bit more into the fear aspect of how we are able to act when it comes down to being in a pressured situation or possibly a judgmental one. One of the other students presented what he made for the assignment. I did not see how it tied in with the self portrait picture he was given, but his work did have a self portrait type theme, without any visuals. It was an audio file that sounded like a whole bunch of different sounds put together in a chaotic manner, it didn't sound be be like any song I had heard before, unless I count "On Mount Golgotha", though I don't consider it a song since it's impossible to complete. (That's a different story.) The interesting part to it was that it was all made using one instrument that he plays, I think it was either a Tuba or an Oboe.
 
    After listening to his piece, Beth showed a couple of videos to us of a guy who makes music out of anything; yes indeed, anything. The two videos we watched were of him making music from a tree and from a dry cleaner's place. The best part of it was that the music was actually enjoyable and did seem to capture the essence of the items that it was made from. What I took from it was that creativity can be made using the most unlikely of objects and does not necessarily need to be presented in expected fashion.

    A rather short class, but I still learned a bit from it. I'm looking forward to next class where we can finish the lecture and present this week's assignments.

Who am I and why am I here?

    For this assignment, we are to answer the questions "Who am I and why am I here?" To briefly summarize this post, who am I is the question that I should be asking rather than answering, but I do know why I'm here, to learn the skills and gain the experience needed to reach my ultimate goals. In this assignment, we were given partners in class and were told to draw their face. It may sound easy at the first, but there was an additional twist; we had to draw this person without looking down at the paper, only looking at the person across from us. We would then use the drawing and incorporate it into the assignment somehow. Down below is the picture of myself that my partner drew: 

    Yes, that is me. No, I do not look like that. Maybe, there are some resemblances between me and the picture. It was a fun exercise to do in class, and it was funny seeing everyone's reactions to their own drawings and the drawings of themselves. When we were told to use the picture in our next assignment, I immediately thought: I'll probably make a mask out of this. As the week went by, I thought to myself; *I wonder if other people are going to have the same idea and relate it to perception or fears or something like that.* I decided to scrap that original thought and tried to make some sense out of the picture. One detail about me is that I like to break things down, figuratively speaking, and find out how they work. In other words, I like to see things work but also figure out how they work as well. I applied this same concept while thinking of creative things to do with it. In the picture below, I drew the same lines that I saw on the picture onto another piece of paper, being very careful to make all the lines look about the same and trying to stay in proportion. I also made sure to have every part of the picture separated to further dissect it.   

    Now that all of the pieces of the picture were separated, I could see each part that made the picture as a whole individually. I feel like this can kind of describe a bit on who I am. I do like to be prepared for anything as much as I can, so going through the steps of taking the picture apart was a good plan for thinking creatively. I remember seeing or hearing something that said "Each stroke of a pencil/pen/brush can tell a different story." While I think that can be a very true statement, I'm not sure if the person who made that quote would say the same about a medium in which the person could not see what they were doing, but maybe they would. I'm not quite on that artistic level to know how emotion looks when it's drawn on a template and I don't have much experience with drawing either. 

    Getting back to the assignment, after I had everything dissected, I was ready to start thinking of ideas. Another detail about me is that when I see something that is taken apart, I like to see if I can put it back together. This is the idea that I decided on for the assignment. I would take the pieces of the picture that I separated and recombine them to remake a picture of where they would be placed if they were in the relatively correct positions. To do this, I brought the picture into photoshop and moved all the pieces to fit together. 

While making the picture, I could not help but have a lot of fun with it, it made me laugh a lot. Not to say that I was laughing in a bad way, but if an assignment can make me laugh, it's a good assignment. I'm not sure if this picture would say anything about me, but I can say that the effort that I put into reshaping this picture definitely does say a lot. When it comes to other people's work and making edits to it, I don't ever want to lose the same feel that the original work had, the Altered book being an exception. I like to take things apart but also to put broken things back together; I sometimes have a variation in this practice in which I still break something down to see how it works, but I put it together in a different way that I would enjoy better, which is kind of how this assignment worked out. I'm still not quite sure who I am, but assignments like this help me to further explore those uncharted boundaries, and I really enjoy that. I know one thing for certain, I'm headed towards very rough times. It's a part of me to want to be prepared, which is the main reason why I am here, to be prepared for the road ahead. If I can learn enough and be prepared enough to find a way to make my hard work become an enjoyable experience, I'd be able to die happy. I have not stated this much in the blogs and can't state it enough; I can't proceed without the good Lord in Heaven watching over me. I'd be hopelessly lost without God in my life, and I appreciate His presence more than I am capable of expressing in words, actions, or whatever other expressions are possible, but I'm going to try my best and keep praying that I'll make it through the test of time to His expectations.

This was one of the few assignments that I have ever really appreciated. There was only one assignment that I appreciated in high school and a few more after starting college, it's things like this that I want to have a relatively same experience with once I get into the working field. It's definitely something that I had to work on, but it's one of those things where it's enjoyable to a point where I don't consider it a burden. 

Class take away 6

    For this class, we first started with presenting some of our previous assignments in class. The assignment was to create something while using the word "reuse". The way that we got the word was by "Bible dipping".  One person's assignment that stood out to me was how she reused some of her old clothes that she wore when she was 3 years old, to take a photograph of her daughter wearing it, effectively reusing it. When I went up to describe what I did, people seemed to enjoy it a lot more than I expected. I enjoyed the majority of the works that people made for the assignment, they were pretty entertaining despite having the word "reused".

    Later, we were told to get with partners and draw each other without looking at our paper. I started drawing immediately without any problems throughout, not looking down or anything. My partner seemed to have a bit of trouble getting started and accidentally looked down at the paper a few times.  It seemed like a lot of people in our class were doing the same thing, almost as if having some kind of fear towards doing it. After the exercise is over, we started talking about our experiences with it. Some people were like me where we just started getting to work without hesitating or looking down, others had trouble starting or completing these drawings. Our instructor discussed with us the reason why some of us were not able to easily do the exercise. The main reason was fears to different parts of the situation; whether it's a fear of failure, fear of being judged, or fear of offending the other person. I think one of the reasons why I did not have any fear of doing this exercise is that I realized about a year ago that (in a manner of speaking) college is the time for failure. It's better to make mistakes in college, instead of after we have real jobs. For this exercise, I knew there no way that I could make the picture look good, which is something I usually feel as though I need to do, without looking at it. Because I knew this, it was so much easier to just start drawing without any worries. Our next assignment is to do something with the drawings that our partners gave of us, to us. By something, I mean I don't remember and will have to check the assignment guide.

    Overall, a pretty good class. The talk about fear was pretty nice, and it makes me think that our fear assignment will be soon.

"Bible" dipping

    For this assignment, we are to randomly pick a word in a book and use that word to create something. If I remember correctly from class, we were given the word "redone" from a book that someone had. I'm not completely sure if we were supposed to pick a different word from a book of our own, but I thought that the word "redone" would be a good choice. The reason for this is that it had an important part in the Altered assignment, in which I will be redoing the cover of the book into something that I can enjoy. For something to be redone, it could mean to be done again in the same way, or to be done again in a different way. For the Altered assignment, I decided that the cover was one of the most important parts that needed to be changed, or in this case, Redone.

    I'm not going to say what the title of the book is yet, but it may be able to be discerned through my redone version. Here is a picture of it:

    The first thing that might be noticed is that part of the cover is cut out. This was the first thing that had to go. Part of that title was a summary of everything this book is NOT to me. It was something that I thought just needed to be removed from the book completely. Next is the two words at the bottom, "Leaf" and "Anger", with a marked out section below it. This is where the author's name was. Unfortunately, this book ruined my trust for this person; I wouldn't trust him with my life, with a quarter, and most certainly not enough to read another book made by him. I tried to make the two words look similar to what they might actually look like if the words were comprised of the object and emotion, but I'm not that good of an artist, so it's mainly smooth lines compared to jagged lines. I also added the word "Bouse" after the words "Like a". I had been watching an online game streamer with the name MaximusBlack, one thing that he would say a lot is "Like a Bouse", the word Bouse is kind of something he's adopted in place of the word "boss" though the meaning is relatively the same. It was kind of a spontaneous decision made since I had recently watched him and thought of it when I saw part of the title. At the top, where the words National Seller is, I crossed out the word "Best" which was in-between them and inserted some fancy handwriting of a word which is not quite as fancy. Lastly, I took a blue colored pencil and filled in as much blank space as I could. I like the color blue, so I wanted to see it whenever I looked at the book.

    While this redone version of the cover is most certainly not professional nor production level quality, it certainly appeals to me more than the original cover does. Some people might look at the cover and say, "What did you do to the cover of that book?" I'd reply to them, "I made it better." I imagine a response like that would make someone think either one of two things; How bad did the cover look before, or is this guy a fool to think that such a defacement could be better? To me, it doesn't really matter what someone else might think of it, this redone cover is superior in my opinion. My reasoning on that is not for the art style or the words and most certainly not the fact that the picture has fancy print near the top, but it's because when I look at it, it changes my perspective of the pages that lie behind the cover slightly. This redone version changes my immediate perspective of the book away from immediate bad feelings, to making me laugh at it and just think to myself "Yeah, that's much better than it was."

Class take away 5

    Today for class, we started talking about the Rules were made... assignment and what some of us did for it, some students presented them to the class on the projector. One of the students is a photographer and took some pictures of an object, then did something to break the rules for it. I don't exactly remember what rules he decided to break, but the image did look interesting. Another student was painting a model, but followed some of the instructions wrong. He turned what would have looked like a neatly polished figure into one that looked to have seen battle; bearing marks, scars, and looking tarnished.

    While both creations were made despite not following certain rules, they both turned out rather well. The same concept kind of works out with the piece that I made; although I did not like a single thing about it while creating it and shortly after, after a few hours I could find some appreciation in it. Beth had shown us a piece that she made one time while breaking the rules earlier in the semester. It looked very nice and I would not have expected any foul play to go about while she created it, based on the way the final product looked. It makes me wonder if anyone will know that the doodling that I did was done while I was in a furious mood? Maybe something will be a dead giveaway.

    At one point, we started talking about the difference in looking and seeing. We did not spend much time covering it, but it's probably the topic that I thought of the most throughout the class. The way I see it (see what I did there?(and there)), looking at something is a matter of direction, whereas seeing something is a matter of perception. Going back to before the semester when I first saw the title of the course, this remembered me that we're not only seeing things rather than looking, but we're seeing sideways. I guess that when I signed up for the class, I thought of looking and seeing as the same thing at the time.

    Overall, another good class. I don't think I said a single word until after class when I talked to Beth about looking and seeing, but I'm alright with that.

Rules were made...

    This week, we're doing a "Rules were made..." assignment, which is meant to have us break some rules that play in our creativity. One rule that I always have, in my creativity and outside, is to stay controlled and not angry. I'm breaking those rules. I've never let myself create something while being angry because I thought it would influence my creation in a way that I would personally not like. I prefer to make things when I am feeling calm and controlled so that I don't make something with any influences as to the way that I feel. I'm also doing a bit of a throwback a previous assignment, the doodling one. I was honestly a bit worried what my doodling would say about me, but now I'm doodling with a specific emotion influencing the way that I perform. I don't know what this might say about me, but at this moment I care slightly less than normal. I'm writing this blog while still in an angry mood.

    Let me start by saying that I do not like this picture. It's really chaotic with no sense of direction and to me it feels as though it has no purpose. I have no idea what is going on in this picture, I don't remember what I was thinking about when I made it, or what inspired any of the parts that seem to be present.

    When I decided to do an assignment like this, I thought of some repercussions that might result. This might change the way that some classmates think about me, Beth might not like that the assignment is another doodle as opposed to using software to break the rules, and I wasn't sure if I'd discover anything about myself when looking back on this, I would hope something good rather than bad. Despite all of this, I remember Beth saying something near the beginning of the semester that we can break some of the rules of these assignments, as long as we have reasoning to do so. This assignment is all about breaking rules, something I don't like to do ever if I can avoid it.

    Edit: 4 hours later, after the angry doodling time has long passed, I don't dislike the picture nearly as much as I did a bit earlier. I'm trying to think of what this picture looks like. It kind of looks like a setting of some kind. I find it a bit interesting now, but at the same time, remember how I felt while making it which still leaves me a bit cautious about it.

    Overall, I'm actually unsure what to think of the assignment. I did not really enjoy breaking the rules that I set for myself, but at the same time, I made something that intrigues me due to breaking the rules. It makes me wonder what more there is to discover about who I am or what I am as a person. Sometimes I am afraid of what the answer might be if or when I find it. Despite my fears, I still hold onto my beliefs. From then, until the end.

Class take away 4

To begin our class, we started going around the room to describe some of our 50 "What if" questions, and talk about how they can influence our final decision for the "Altared" assignment near the end of the semester. A lot of people had interesting ones, ranging from how they would destroy their books to how they would break down and rebuild them into something that they could love. For the questions I made, I wrote them all in one night, then did not look at them again until the morning when I woke up the next day. I noticed that a lot of my questions were about how much I... disliked the thing, rather than what I could do with it. I took it as a lot of pent up feelings towards it, not good feelings that is. While I did not make a question for it, I figured out that I need to change the cover completely in a way that will make me associate the thing with something else other than what it once was.

After our break, we began talking about rules and how they can be broken. Once broken, there is always a consequence of some kind. The main point of this discussion was to discuss how rules can be broken in a way that can be completely abstract or just different. Beth is a Photoshop expert, she decided that to provide a good example, she would break all the rules of Photoshop in order to provide an example. A lot of unofficial rules were made to help preserve image quality while editing in Photoshop, for instance, expanding an image can distort pixel quality and just make the image look as if it's a very low quality. Beth then proceeded to break every one of those unofficial rules that she could think of. At first, the image did look to be of rather bad quality; the pixels were stretched out, there was distortion in some odd ways, and it honestly just looked like a worse version than the original. But as Beth kept messing with it, a simple low quality image became an abstract piece that looked nothing like the original image. This tied into our assignment, which is to break rules that were made to be broken in creative experimentation (Provided that none of the rules broken are serious enough to warrant punishment by law). I'm a type of person to try and follow the rules as much as I can, so I'm not sure how this will go.

So far, we have not had a dull class in Seeing Sideways. I really hope it stays that way. Actually, to say that I hope it stays that way might imply that I don't want it to change, which is not technically what I mean. I do want the class to keep changing in very interesting ways, keeping everything the same each week would eventually become repetitious. Let me rephrase that statement; I hope the class keeps exploring new, inspiring, and fun perspectives each week.

50 What if...? questions

I may not have mentioned this before, but one of the required textbooks for the course is a book that we simply do not like, or even hate. For me, I really hate the book that I chose. The book is Peace like a River, by Leif Enger. This is supposed to be a really good book, but when I read it, there was not a single thing I liked about it. That is the least of my opinion about it and there's more from where that came from.

For an assignment, we are to make 50 What if...? questions about the book. So here it goes.

1. What if I had never read the book?

2. What if the title did not have "Peace" in it, which had nothing to do with my feelings while reading the book?

3. What if I tore off the cover entirely?

4. What if the book never existed?

5. What if I knew what I was getting into when I read this book?

6. What if the moment my 10th grade teacher gave me this book, I said that I would not read it?

7. What if I read this book again?

8. What if I punched myself for writing the previous question?

9. What if I crossed out the author's name on the cover?

10. What if I replaced the author's name with "Leaf Anger"?

11. What if I sealed the book shut so that it could never be read again?

12. What if I made a YouTube video describing everything I would do to this book?

13. What if I told the owner of the bookstore that I bought this... paper garbage from that this book isn't worth spending money on?

14. What if I tossed this book straight to the garbage?

15. What if I did not need this book for a class, but had it anyway?

16. What if the writer of this book got tippers from satan while writing this monstrosity?

17. What if instead of dog poop in a burning bag prank, this book was used instead of the poop?

18. What if back in 10th grade, this was not a required book, would I find it less infuriating? (no)

19. What if I covered every page with paint or something to erase every word of the book?

20. What if people could see what I saw in this book back when I read it?

21. What if this book gave me any moment of actual interest?

22. What if the main character of this book wasn't so infuriating to me?

23. What if every page I turned while reading this book didn't make me cringe?

24. What if the book was completely rewritten to fit a science fiction genre?

25. What if the book disgraced the science fiction genre?

26. What if the book was not so bad that I could actually remember the main story of it?

27. What if I had not purged my mind of the story this book tried to burn into my mind?

28. What if I could go back in time to tell my past self NEVER to read the book?

29. What if I actually liked the book?

30. What if I was actually paying attention when I wrote the stupid question right before this one?

31. What if I told the teacher after reading a few pages that reading the book would make me go blind, deaf, and stupid?

32. What if I started to dislike people raised in Osakis, Minnesota because the writer was from there? (that would be unfair)

33. What if I said that burning the money spent on the book was a better experience than reading the book?

34. What if I could actually speak to the author of this mess?

35. What if I stopped referring to this thing as a book?

36. What if this book was a mistake?

37. What if me reading this trash was a mistake?

38. What if I'm the only person who dislikes this putrid pile of tree death?

39. What if I had the choice whether this dung heap ever came into existence?

40. What if I could remove every copy of this disgusting puke fest from the face of earth and beyond?

41. What if I could summarize, in one sentence, all my thoughts about this waste of memory?

42. What if there are a lot more people that hate this swine scribbling as much as I do?

43. What if there is someone who hates this pile of stinking rubbish more than I do?

44. What if the author of this rotten plague was someone closely related to me?

45. What if I could rewrite this dumpster tier stack of papers into an actual book?

46. What if this sack of monkey crap became... no, disgraced a video game?

47. What if this flea bitten messenger of doom is a tool that brings the apocalypse upon us? (the fleas died shortly afterward)

48. What if I misunderstood this pack of diarrhea cased slime?

49. What if I understood that violation of decency completely.

50. What if I had more questions to make for this indecent, castrating, feeble minded, nauseating, infuriating, corrupting, fever inducing, refuse scrubbing, swill treading, failed excuse of a BOOK to provide more entertainment than a fecal encrusted POTATO!

This was the worst stack of papers with words that I've ever read. There was no peace while I read these insidious words that laid in wait behind the cover. Before I read this poor piece of defecation, I never thought that a book could actually make me mad, but it appears as though someone has shown me that it is indeed possible to hate a book this much. (I withheld all swearing to prevent that anger inducing anomaly of pure hatred to bring me down to it's level.)

I feel like I might be a bit harsh on this thing, but it's how I feel about it.

Class Take Away 3

On February second, we begun the class with some quotes that Beth pulled from each person in the class. There were no names put to the quotes so it was completely anonymous. I saw my quote up there and thought to myself "Yeah, I wrote that." There were some good quotes that Beth picked, they did make me pause to think for a moment. These quotes weren't chosen by the students, they were chosen by the instructor, which intrigued me.

After talking for a bit about the quotes, we continued on to discussing the doodling assignment. I personally have never doodled before, so I found the assignment a rather new but strange concept. We all had a chance to discuss the assignment and weigh in with what we took from the doodling. I mentioned how I've never actually drawn something without having a specific purpose to it, which sounds similar to my decision making process as a whole. It felt as though doodling had more of a meaning to the other students in the class than it did for me; I guess that because it was actually an assignment that perhaps it could have been a reason why I did not get much out of it. I might try doing another experiment with doodling some time in the future to see if I get a different experience.

I may not have mentioned our text book in previous blogs, so here it is. Our textbook for the class is a coloring book of our own choice. It seems strange, but I find the idea interesting. This leads to the next part of the class, which was talking to someone that we never met before, no more complex than getting to know the person. So I partnered up with someone, it turns out we're both very interested in space travel and possibly discovering new life. We had a decent amount in common, then when the time was up, we were to introduce our partner to the rest of the class. We both described each other rather well, and at the end of everyone's explanations, Beth said that she has no reason not to believe anything that we said about our partner. Normally I wouldn't expect someone to hear a story for a lot of people and say that there's no reason not to believe a single thing that anyone says, but her reasoning made sense.

For our next assignment, we are to take the book we will be Altering by the end of the semester, and write out 50 "What if...?" questions for it. 50 questions might be a pretty big number, but I have a few what if questions that I've been conjuring up for this book ever since it disgraced my hands and eyes back in high school. While I had this book, none of the 4 S's of creative thought were present. I can think of an "S" I'd love to give this book, but even that would be too much of a grace for it.