The Game of Life: Scream or Run Away

Smiley is just your typical hovering face, he only wants two things out of life; cheese puffs and to not die. Guide him through his adventure using the arrow keys and decide whether he should "scream" or "run away" to get out of danger (just like in real life!).

"Scream or Run Away" features three levels and a bonus room where Smiley can enjoy some cheese puffs in between his untimely deaths. When he encounters a monster Smiley will ask what he should do, it is up to the player to type either "scream" or "run away" into the answer bar. Upon hitting enter Smiley will one of two actions that will either get him killed or defeat the monster and allow the player to advance onto the next level.

I Made A GIF

My very first experiment with Flash resulted in the monstrosity you see before you. Behold and cower before my mighty GIF (pronounced Jiff– like the peanut butter). It's not pretty, but first tries seldom are.

One Coffee Everyday

I've been hopelessly addicted to caffeine since I was in high school. So when I was trying to think of something that I do everyday coffee instantly came to mind.
It was really interesting for me to see the progression in this video. The changes on my tastes and obsessions over the last few months are pretty easy to see. As the semester progressed more and more travel mugs showed up because I got busier and anyone watching close enough can get a feel for my usual weekly schedule. This was a fun project, but I'm looking forward to no longer having to record my coffee before I can enjoy it.

Shameless Plug: The Potter Virgin

When I started my Harry Potter class I decided that it would be very fun to write about my first encounter with the wizarding world, and The Potter Virgin was born. Five days a week I post Harry Potter related news, musings, and most importantly recaps of the books from the perspective of a person who has no idea what's going on.
It's probably obvious to anyone familiar with The Boy Who Lived that I drew a bit of inspiration from the font used on the Harry Potter books.

I borrowed the sharp angles, uneven letters, and the notable shaped stem on the P. Unfortunately I'm not a Dark Lord defeating witch with a totally awesome scar on my forehead, I'm only a writer. So I took up my wand and transfigured my P into a fountain pen.
Back when I started the books I had to take a quiz on Pottermore to be sorted into my Hogwarts house. I'm a Slytherin (so was Merlin... shut up!) and I tried to reflect this in my blog's color palette by making dark green and grey the primary colors.

After creating my logo I decided to create a header for my blog that includes the title and blog description. All of the text on my blog is Georgia font so I used that for the body title letters and description.

Fahrenheit 451: It's Getting Hot in Here

“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

There's nothing quite like spending a Friday night stretched out on the couch catching up on some Netflix. I've always been a bit of a film buff, and Netflix really helps me keep up with my favorite shows despite my increasingly hectic schedule. As much as I like watching movies when the end credits roll I don't feel the same way as I do when I close a book. When you read a book everything that happens, happens in your head not on a screen in front of you. You are forced to fill in the spaces between the words with your imagination, making the experience a very personal one. While Breaking Bad was an incredible experience, it was someone-else's experience.
Now enter the newest craze sweeping the nation! Books! They're wireless, have an infinite power supply, and are basically indestructible! Go ahead throw that sucker against the wall! or into your bubble bath! It'll be fine! You can bookmark, highlight, and even share it with friends (face to face contact required for sharing).
When I was a kid I read books constantly. As much as I liked watching cartoons they never felt the same way reading books did. I would sit with a book hidden under my desk with my eyes glued to the pages (a practice I continue to this day). When my teacher inevitably called me out for not paying attention I'd hastily dog-ear my page and sit up feeling like I just woke me up from an unexpected nap. I never got that feeling from a movie. The library was my safe haven, the one in my middle school was always my favorite. It was a large room, quiet but full of life if you knew where to look. It was here that I mastered the Dewey decimal system. The librarian there liked me and would often get books for me out of the teacher's collection which was usually off limits to students. I read a lot of the classics there and became a big fan of Poe and an even bigger fan of Doyle, so much so that I've since written multiple papers on the great detective.
Reading is what ultimately drove me into the comforting arms of writing. When I was in high school I spent many Friday and Saturday nights shut up in my room writing fantastic tales about heroes and heroines in far away lands. The dream of one day becoming an author planted itself in my head and I still haven't been able to shake it. I discovered my beloved Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Tolkin became an old friend that I revisit often. I took every assigned reading in stride and honed my taste in literature. (The Good Earth? No thanks. The Great Gatsby? Yes, I'll take two please) It was in high school when my habitual reading began to draw unwanted attention from my classmates. They would pause from relaying how totally wasted that weekend, or discussing how totally wasted they were going to get the coming weekend, to ask me why I was always so quiet and why I always had a book. Apparently my idea of mental stimulation was a bit different than theirs. They would begin to talk about me as if reading somehow impaired my hearing. When I finally got to college it was a fascination with Ender's Game that made a history professor suggest I consider writing as a major.
If I had grown up without haunting the library I'm not sure if I would have ended up where I am today. I am sure that if I hadn't read as much as I did I would not have the same mind. If I had only watched cartoons and sitcoms I would probably have willingly subjected myself to a life of mediocrity. George R. R. Martin once wrote,

"'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,' said Jojen. 'The man who never reads lives only one.'"

When you read the thoughts of the main character become your own. Their sadness and successes are yours to experience with them. It is impossible to get wrapped up in a book and have your mind wander. Those hundreds of lives I've lived through books have shown me what life can be. The lessons books teach reach a bit deeper than those taught in television shows. Those ideas that I learned from books I read as a kid still guide me. I firmly believe that if I didn't read I would have developed a "Target-esque" style of thinking and followed the crowd into mob-mentality. Jumping cheap trend to cheap trend with each changing season, never questioning quality. Letting someone else think for you is the easiest thing to do, but nothing worth doing was ever easy. Books are not dead, furthermore they will never die. They are simply becoming less popular. Maybe this is because in our volatile world we have enough to worry about in our single life without throwing the problems of thousands of other lives into the mix. Maybe we want to forget and slip into a sort of comatose complaisance through mindless sitcoms. Sometimes I need to shut down and let someone-else's imagination take me on an adventure, but if that was all I did I would never be able to create for myself.

Graphicstudio: The Museum Scene

I've been to art museums from the city of brotherly love to the city of light and have seen everything from DaVinci's anatomical drawings to Warhol's Brillo boxes. I am no art expert. I know that I like the impressionists much more than rococo, but most "modern art" tends to leave me in the dust. What drew me to Christian Marclay's "Klak Klak Klak," was probably the similarities I could draw between the piece and one of my very favorite art forms that I'll never be able to draw from any Manet: Comic books. This piece looks like a comic book firefight to me. It looks like bullet holes chaotically splattered across the canvas filled with the a gunshot like onomatopoeia. I did a little extra digging and I quite like Marclay's work, I've never heard of him before and I'm glad this assignment introduced me.
I'm a pretty big fan of art museums. I spent a spring break up in Philadelphia for a Van Gogh exhibit and walked across Paris to visit le Musee d'Orsay. The Tampa Museum of Art looks pretty cool on the outside, but I am wildly underwhelmed by it on the inside. It doesn't feel almost sacred like other art museums do. Maybe that's a good thing.

One of Christian Marclay's pieces is being featured on the Tampa Museum of Art's website as cover art for the Graphicstudio.

Mark My Work

Fall 2012 was my first semester at USF. While my grades were good they improved in the spring, possibly due to my adjusting to the school but more likely the result of my desire to study abroad. The colors, red and black, are the colors of the school I attended while studying in Scotland, Edinburgh Napier University. I used them because during those two semester I was pushing myself to get the grades to be guaranteed acceptance into the study abroad program of my choice.
Numbers wise I focused on my grades, the levels of the courses I was taking and my GPA. My first semester despite taking lower level classes I received fewer high grades and my GPA was lower. After adjusting to the school and setting my sights on Napier my GPA went up as did the number of As despite my taking higher level courses.
I chose to keep the design very simple, the title and GPA tracker framing the actual substance. A GPA means nothing without seeing the actual grades, and grades are pointless without context. Therefore I thought it was very important to include the levels of the courses I took. I didn't want to include the course titles because I thought it would be far too much to have to look at without getting enough information in return. After four years of college I have discovered that a class title doesn't offer nearly enough information about what the class is actually about.

Gummy Bears are My Type

It's true.

Dashing and daring, courageous and caring, yes it's gummy bears. The idea came to me as I was eating gummy bears while watching "the Lego Movie" in theaters... again. I love gummy bears unashamedly, they're colorful delicious little science projects that have remained pretty constant over the course of my life. Around my room I have several little toys and trinkets including, but not limited to, the batarangs, Nintendo systems and Legos that I featured in the photo above. A running joke between me and my family is that "I'm an adult," but only by legal definition. The loveable Irish comedian, Dylan Moran, said it best: 

"You’re not really an adult at all. You’re just a tall child holding a beer, having a conversation you don’t understand.”

Gummy bears are bad for me, I'm old enough and smart enough to know this to be fact. I just really don't care.

             

Peer Review: I'm Judging You

 Will Blog for Work
1. What is one thing my peer does well in his/her visualization blog?
I really like the monochromatic color scheme a lot, it looks very clean.
2. What is one thing my peer needs to work on with his/her visualization blog?
The organization and layout of the blog.
3. What I like most in this blog? (visual display, text description, etc)
 I really like the name, it's clever.
4. What I dislike most in this blog? (visual display, text description, etc) 
 Nothing really stands out and the layout is a bit confusing.
KP 
1. What is one thing my peer does well in his/her visualization blog?
 It's very well organized, the layout is very easy to follow.
2. What is one thing my peer needs to work on with his/her visualization blog?
 It needs a bit more personality, it doesn't seem like there's a person behind this blog.
3. What I like most in this blog? (visual display, text description, etc)
 The way all of the work is displayed.
4. What I dislike most in this blog? (visual display, text description, etc)
It's a bit boring, nothing really draws me in or makes me want to continue reading. 
Wickham Class Projects
1. What is one thing my peer does well in his/her visualization blog?
All of the work is very intriguing and presented well.
2. What is one thing my peer needs to work on with his/her visualization blog?
 The blog theme could be a little more interesting and a bit less minimalistic.
3. What I like most in this blog? (visual display, text description, etc)
 All of the pictures are fantastic, they make the blog very interesting.
4. What I dislike most in this blog? (visual display, text description, etc)
It needs a bit more personalization, other than that it's great.

Create Your Own Comic: Don't Panic.

Creating a comic is harder than it looks. I am a big fan of shows like The Regular Show with a whimsical storyline that people can also relate to. I'm also a fan of Tim Burton with his more Gothic and strange drawings. "Don't Panic" was heavily inspired by those two styles. My own experiences and personality went into the idea as well. Anne is a bit of a failure by design. She likes to blame her brain for tripping her up, she considers getting work done at the last minute to be her superpower and the only creature on earth she feels comfortable with is her dog. A lot of people seem to be able to relate to "loser" qualities like that.

This is the tale of tragedy and woe of a young girl trying to function on her own accord in the real world yet finds herself being pulled into her own mind on a regular basis to do vicious battle with her own brain. Anne is another technical grown-up completely unable to function in the grown-up world. Her best friend is a dog and her archenemy and god-like hero both only exist inside her head, so it’s safe to say she’s got everything under control.

Anne has a lot on her plate. She has to deal with school, her job, family and the evil Brain who keeps trying to foil her attempts at happiness. Every task minuscule task in her life is enhanced into a great battle between herself and Brain. Easy homework assignments, semi-important phone calls and running boring errands become life or death situations and that makes everyday life pretty hard. At the moment Anne is just trying to graduate university with passing marks, but that is easier said than done with the embodiment of evil living in your head. Sometimes she wins, sometimes she loses and sometimes she has to be bailed out by her wildly successful alter ego, Future Anne. In the end everything is supposed to work out, Anne is just worried that it won’t for her.

In essence it is a never-ending story. How are we supposed to win when we are our own worst enemies? When the rest of the world seems to have everything sorted out already it can be hard to see your place, especially when you don’t want to settle for just any life. Anne doesn’t want fame or fortune, although it might be nice, she just wants to be happy. Life is constantly reminding her that finding happiness is easier said than done.

Cast:

Anne- The law states that she’s technically an adult, so why hasn’t that magic transformation happened yet? Anne is unhappy most of the time and trying to stave off an anxiety attack all of the time. Perpetually tired and misunderstood she is trying to figure out what is going on in a world where everyone seems to already know what he or she is supposed to be doing. On top of her real life responsibilities she is forced to battle against her own mind as it tries to thwart her every attempt at being a moderately successful and content human being. Armed with nothing but a dog, an alter ego and uncontrollable imagination Anne is determined to essentially stop herself from destroying herself.

Brain- “Didn’t you forget to do something? I’m pretty sure you forgot to do something? I don’t care that it’s three a.m. you seem a bit too comfortable with the fact that you definitely forgot something very important and should be panicking about it!” Meet Brain, or more specifically Anne’s Brain. It's a bit of a jerk. Brain’s only purpose in life seems to be to make Anne miserable. By sparking bouts of severe self-loathing, forgetfulness and Anne’s kryptonite, the anxiety attack, Brain tries to force Anne into mediocrity. Brain is, well, a floating orb of pure energy who follows Anne around and pops up at the most inopportune times distracting Anne with irrelevant thoughts and funny Internet videos. Worst of all Brain is a part of Anne so there’s no escape.

Future Anne- Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it’s Future Anne! Anne’s perfect alter ego who works out every morning, gets everything done on time and has a ton of self-confidence. When everything gets out of hand Future Anne is there to save the day. While constantly annoyed at Anne’s inability to do anything right Future Anne has no objections to cleaning up her messes and helping her find the ability to function like the grown woman she really is. Future Anne is everything Anne hopes to someday be, and can be when she’s able to get her life sorted out.

Geoffrey- At the end of it all Anne cannot count on anyone like she can count on her dog, most of the time. Every superhero needs a sidekick and Anne has Geoffrey, the fluffy dog-like creature who sleeps at the end of her bed. Geoffrey loves sugar cookies and going for rides in the car almost as he loves his owner. Everyone needs a shoulder to cry on and Anne has Geoffrey. Though not everyone can understand him, Geoffrey speaks to Anne a lot and is basically her fuzzy little anchor in her ongoing battles against Brain and life itself. For Anne people aren’t all that great, dogs are much better.

Photography Changes Everything, Peter Parker

It's nice to be reminded that cameras can serve a much greater purpose than just taking selfies. In the essay "Photography Changes What We Know About Spiders" Jonathan A. Coddington discusses how the introduction of photography has progressed arachnology. Prior to the introduction of cameras scientists could only observe the spiders themselves and attempt to sketch out their webs. Thanks to photography and Bill Eberhard's grandma studying the webs of various spiders is shockingly simple. For something as seemingly simple as sprinkling some cornstarch and snapping a picture the development exponentially furthered what is known about spider webs, from how they are made to how they work. If just the introduction of cameras did so much for arachnology how much has it done and how much can it do for other sciences? It's unfathomable how much has been gained with the ability to take a picture. We can now more easily and accurately study everything from the human body to the universe, not only that but we can document and share our findings like never before.

Visual Analysis: Paint by Numbers

 The most challenging part of this project was choosing the art. In the end Pollock's "Number 5" received the highest score of the pieces I chose. The Degas I chose tied with two other pieces for the lowest score, making me question the scale. The latest piece in my collection was more of a sketch done by Tim Burton. I wanted to ad variety to my list and ended up with works created almost one-hundred years apart. A lot of personal preference went into this project. I chose only pieces that I was very familiar with by artists I favor. Seeing the final product and how these works of art that have been featured in museums and admired stacked up against each other was frankly bizarre. I began thinking about all of the other works out there and what it would look like if museums hung charts instead of paintings.

Triptych Photography: Get Stuffed.

It started when I shoved a bunny my grandmother gave me into a piece of an old Halloween costume. My search for inspiration had carried me to my closet and deep into a box full of toys and trinkets left over from a simpler time. I dug around and messed with a few stuffed cats before inspiration struck me like a mack truck. In a world where children play with dolls dressed up like zombie hookers and video games a bit more violent that a MMA fight the toys of my childhood seem like a far cry from the new norm. So I altered them a bit to fit in with today's toy standards.

Bart

Trix

Wrinkles

I admittedly did not do a lot of planning. It seemed the more I thought about it the harder it became to come up with an idea, so I took the messy route. After dressing a bunny up in fishnet the other images just came to me. Almost as if it was obvious I had planned on defiling my stuffed animals that day. The background of each picture is wood paneling from one of the rooms in my house. Wood paneling is always seen as being kind of cheap and trashy, it seemed to fit with the pictures. I had highly underestimated how difficult this project was going to be. It is a simple enough concept to understand, but it's a bit more difficult to picture.

Friendly Persuasion: Ad-venture is Out There!

How would I convince someone that USF is the university for them? What have I experienced here that has made me glad that I chose this school over another? When I left it. Taking a semester abroad was the one of the greatest experiences of my life, and being at USF made it possible. Therefore if I were going to attempt to get potential students interested in attending I would start in Scotland.

I started with two words, "there's more." When you go to college, especially if you go somewhere outside of your hometown, you discover that there is, in fact, more to see outside of what you know. Originally I wanted to play off of that idea. I sketched out an idea. I wanted misty mountains and rugged Tolkin-esque terrain and a "student" as a focal point standing on a rocky ledge emulating Captain Morgan.

When "Go, Bulls" popped into my head my entire idea changed. Punctuation can be powerful. I wanted open scenery and a minimalistic design that would focus on the landscape and a very simple message. I dug through m pictures from the Isle of Skye and wrote a bit about the Education Abroad office at USF. The intent was to create an ad that would encourage students to come, so they can go.

Lightpainting: Adventures in Metropolis

 Comic books are a versatile art form. They combine the omnipotence of a book with action driven pictures to portray stories often too fantastic for the even the silver screen. Over time comic books have evolved to become more complex and exciting and has established itself as more than just something for kids. Classic stories, such as several Sherlock Holmes adventures, have been adapted into comic book form. Something that has not and will never change about comic books it their ability to portray motion. Weather a character is flying through the air, shooting lasers out of their hands or simply walking down the street the illustrations of a comic book capture that motion.
As children we often play pretend that we are one of the X-Men or Wonder Woman or whichever superhero we happen to fancy that day. We take the actions we see in comic books and reenact them. We don't have to be told what the character was doing to understand, the blanks between panels are easily filled in. In my project I chose four of my favorite comic books characters and brought them into reality. I combined the idea of children reenacting their favorite super heroes with the style of an action panel in a comic book using long exposure photography, several glow sticks, a colored light on a phone and some rather convenient siblings.

I am Cyclops

I am Batman

I am Iron Man

I am the Flash

This sketch was inspired by Cyclops. I wanted to portray laser beams being fired from the eyes to an unseen target. Abilities such as this are one of the greatest aspects of comic books.

This sketch was inspired by the early Batman comics. I wanted to try to capture a fight scene between the hero and an assailant by showing the motion of the fight.

This sketch was actually inspired by a comic book movie. I wanted to capture a hard landing. I used glow sticks to draw lines symbolizing the fall as well as the ripple shock-wave caused by the touch down.

Super speed is a common superpower. I wanted to portray the rapid motion of the legs by outlining them in light. A line symbolizing a sonic boom as well as motion lines also capture the direction and speed.