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The themes I emphasized in my project were societal judgment and public vs private. I basically created a blanket, one side represents the negative thoughts of society about Juno and Hester and the other side represents each characters positive qualities. My idea for this piece was to show how society can sometimes cover up a persons inner good with their harsh words and actions. I tried to make the design speak for itself and not have to write anything more than adjectives. On the societal judgment side, I made the background black and I put a large scarlet letter in the middle. The adjectives are written in black and red sharpie and in capital letters. The reason for the black background and the black and red sharpie is that this side is the darker side of society, the more harsh and cruel side.  I wanted to write the words in capital letters because I feel like society is yelling it at these two girls or making it so obvious about the two characters decision that it is like yelling. Lastly I created the scarlet letter to represent that side because society judged the physical aspects of each character (Hester the Scarlet Letter and Juno the baby bump). Some of the words used on the blanket were “ Hussy, Harlot, Immature, whore and irresponsible.”  because people in both the book and movie associated the characters and real people in their situations with these words.

            For the other side of the blanket, I took a completely different approach. I decided that I wanted this side to show the great quality that each character has on the inside. I made the background bright yellow and the words are written in different colors because I wanted the audience to see the positives and know that this side represent the good. I created a heart and sewed that in the center of the project because the heart represents something that is covered, but still the most important part of you. Those aspects of the characters are covered or ignored by society because of their situation, but they are still important. Some the words I decided to use were “caring, passionate, wise and forgiving” because I thought these words were applicable to Juno and Hester.

            The first step was o go to the thrift store and by all the components: blanket, yellow sheet, white sheet, red fabric, shapies etc. Then I came up with the words I wanted to use by looking at my notes from the Scarlet Letter and Juno.  After that I cut out pieces like the heart and “A”. Lastly I sewed everything myself on the blanket. The project took about 7 hours in total to complete because it did take a while to sew on the A and the heart. The only issue that I had was sewing because I hadn’t sewed something so large since I was 10 years old. My fingers were also soar after hold the needle for such a long period of time.

            The part of the project I feel that I did well on was the idea behind the project. I thought that it was different from the projects that we did in class and the ones that my peers were creating. I wanted to make my project different, which I did. The only aspect I want to improve on it the aesthetic part. I imaged it would look ten times better in my head, I felt like if I had another week I could have spent more time perfecting the minor errors. I am not saying I hate my blanket, but there are some parts that I wish I could have fixed.

            If I had to do this exact project again I would have changed a few parts of the original design. First off I would have made the blanket longer so that I would fit more words on it. I would have also added some pictures from the movie and some cartoons of the book because I feel like it would have added something different to my project. Lastly I would have added more detail, like have a colored border around the words because that would have made it more visually appealing. To conclude I enjoyed working with both Juno and the Scarlet Letter, they are both timeless pieces that I teach our generation a lot.

My creative piece focuses on the theme of society interfering with relationships by keeping the individuals apart. To portray this theme I first wanted to make a photomontage of me doing a puzzle, but that idea was scrapped as I realized it would take too long. I ended up making a collage that featured mostly people found in magazines or newspapers. The pictures from the collage were split into two categories, people that represented a relationship or togetherness and people that represented society. The people in the society pictures were almost always in a crowd or angry. I put the pictures representing society in the middle of the collage, and then cut the other pictures up and put one half on each side of the collage. This was to represent couples being split up, or kept apart because society was between them. I also included two quotes from The Scarlet Letter that I thought showed a part of how society would view Hester and Dimmesdale’s relationship. The quotes were “Upon his congregation” and “Beloved minister”. When making the collage I bolded “his” in the first quote because it shows how possessive they are of their minister and the things that he stood for. I think that this emphasis on the quote brings more meaning to how people look at Dimmesdale and how much would have gone wrong if the secret was let out. I chose the second quote because it shows how big a part of the community he is, meaning a scandal of that magnitude could really mess up the community.

As mentioned before I was going to do a photomontage based around me making a puzzle. The puzzle itself would have had a meaning towards the theme, but there would have also been creative ways of putting together, like making pieces almost connect but then being torn apart because of society or something blocking the path. I started to do the puzzle over a weekend, but I realized that it would be very hard just to complete the puzzle by itself in that time, and almost impossible to do the creative aspects of putting the pieces together. I brainstormed other ways that I could represent this theme, and came to the conclusion that a collage could represent it well.

 It took me a few days to get started on the collage because of surgery, but I started cutting out pictures of people whenever I could. I spent a lot of time cutting most of these images to make sure that there wasn’t much outside of the lines. The cutting of the pictures took the most amount of time for everything. I wish that I had spent a little extra time getting more pictures to cover every part of the background, but I think the amount that I had was pretty good. I think that my way of representing the theme with the collage was unique, having the people in relationships physically separated by society was interesting. I do wish that I had gotten more clever pictures to represent society, but I think some of the ones that I do have are good at what they’re there fore. I feel like I could have planned out exactly what pictures were going where better, because there were some that I would have liked to be seen but are instead mostly covered by others.

If I could do this project again I would try to find some way to do my first idea. I would look for puzzles that represented my theme, but were less pieces or easier to put together. I think that this idea is much more creative than a collage, and I would have enjoyed doing it more. If time was still a big issue, I would do a collage again but try to organize it in a more creative or interesting way. With more planning on the layout I could make a more though evoking piece for whoever is looking at the collage. 

For this project I worked with Alysha. We created a trailer to an episode of True Life in which we followed a day in the life of Alysha. In this video Alysha is revealing her true self by wearing a t-shirt which has all of her personal history written on it. To begin, we chose not to tell any of the students used in the video what the project was. That we received honest reactions, not fabricated rehearsed ones. When we did the interviews with students Alysha and I told the them what the project was and that we were looking for honest comments on how they felt about t-shirt. We never imagined that the students would say such harsh things however, it only emphasized our purpose which was to examine how harsh the high school environment can be and how to show how a high school student feels pressured to his their true self as a result.

¡Hola! Mi nombre es Todd Samuels pero todo el mundo me llama TJ. Mi familia soy de Filadelfia. Tengo catorce anos. Mi cumpleanos es el diez y nueve de enero. Ahora es mucho frio en Filadelfia porque es tiempo de invierno. No me gusta invierno es demasiado frío. Me gusta para escribir música. Odio tener que limpiar, especialmente alrededor de la casa. 

¿Que no te gusta hacer? ¿Que te gusta hacer? ¿Que tiempo hace hoy en _________ ? ¿Cuando es tu cumpleanos? Y Cuantos anos tienes tu?

Regrards Tipo, 

Todd Samuels Jr. or TJ

Although I enjoy the range of approaches a creative project allows, when assigned to me I tend to stick with what I know best. Usually, that results in a written and performed monologue or some other type of theatrical piece. Two themes that I found to be particularly interesting throughout this unit were the confines of religion and culture and and fear of the "other". I noticed that these two themes can not exist without the other. Religion and culture create the "others" that are feared and that fear is then multiplied as the number of "others" increases. This became the foundation for my project.

Initially,  I was working alone. Because of that, I struggled to create a single character that embodied both themes. After some soul searching, I combined forces with Aja to create a dual monologue. Our first idea was to have one character who was a recovering drug addict, meet a woman who was struggling to find herself within the Baptist church, but that idea fell through when we began to loose sight of the themes. 

Figuring out how the characters would interact on stage was difficult;  considering that the two characters were the same person and at no point would be directly talking to each other.To close the gap, I decided that we would use space to show the progression of time and when a character required a physical being for communicate with, they would talk to the other actor who would be still and silent. Also we played around with the use of tense in the piece. As the characters shifted into their final positions in time, the tense of their dialogue changed as well.  Throughout the process of writing the dual monologue, I think that it shifted from being a story-like piece to one that was more technical and more interesting. 

In the past I had the opportunity to work with Aja, but never on this type of project. The two of us have completely opposite writing styles and there were quite a few discrepancies about the tonality and overall structure of the piece. Along with those discrepancies came busy schedules, confusion about what we were doing and why, and a bit of negative feelings toward each other. Despite that, I trusted Aja's ability to create and perform our  project. I think that it was the disagreements that we had that helped flesh out the ideas that were at the forefront and create something of which we were both ultimately proud.

If I could do this project over and was working alone, I would have used the technique of breaking the fourth wall as I had planned when writing a monologue. This technique makes the audience feel uncomfortable and I think that when dealing with a topic such as drug addiction, it is necessary for the audience to feel what the characters are feeling through dialogue, movement, or their place  in the room.  However if I were to redo the project with Aja, I think I would  add more lines for Past Emily, because her story about bullying and what lead her to using drugs. 

Overall, I think that I created a thoughtful, creative piece of which I am truly proud. I enjoyed the writing process, but the performance is what I am looking forward to most. 

Click here to read Silence.

The book The Scarlet letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the movie „Juno,” written by Diablo Cody, both explore the theme of internal destruction. To illustrate this theme, I decorated an old cigar box. The exterior of the box is decorated with a wood carving while the interior has the appearance of it being burnt. The box is meant to mirror the them of internal destruction because from the outside there is no visible sign of damage, however on the inside there is. 

In order to construct my creative representation of ‚internal destruction,’ I first had to find a box and plan out how to represent my theme. The design on the exterior of the box is symbolic because the cherub was a common design placed on puritan gravestones. The cherub was used to symbolise immortality, which I found paralleled both the story of the The Scarlet Letter and „Juno,” because while the character will eventually die, the story lives on forever. The idea for the roses on the exterior came to me because roses were a common symbolic theme in the The Scarlet Letter. The carvings on the outside of the box symbolise the continence of life or spirit, from the outside, nothing appears to be wrong. However, if you open the box, the interior is blackened as if it was burnt. The box symbolises ‚internal destruction’ because only after you look on the interior of the box, does it look like something is wrong with it. 

I chose to use a box to represent ‚internal destruction’ because the theme reminded me a bit of Pandora’s box. Pandora’s box was filled with everything bad in the world, so it embodies destruction. However, from the outside, the box could be very misleading. I had decided that burning the inside of the box would be the easiest and most effective way of illustrating destruction. To burn the box, I just used a candle and held it really close the the box, to avoid burning a hole in it. I chose to carve the exterior design because I thought it would look more polished in the end than if I had painted it. Carving the wood was much easier than I had originally anticipated, however, I did have to get a little aid from my mother when it came to the roses. I think that the exterior could have looked a little better, had I had more prior experience with wood carving. I’m sure that if examined more closely, one could tell which parts of the design I carved first because I definitely got better throughout my wood carving. 

Overall, I think my creative project went well and tat it represents ‚internal destruction.’ The interior of the box has the physical appearance of being destroyed by fire, while the exterior shows no evidence of destruction. If there was one thing that I would change, it would possibly be the wood carvings on the exterior. I had struggled to come up with a design for the outside, and I got my inspiration from puritan graves, which resonates more with The Scarlet Letter than „Juno.” If I was to do this project again, perhaps I would make the exterior designs more symbolic of the innocence of both Reverend Dimmesdale and Paulie Bleeker, instead of just Dimmesdale and his puritan community. 

I am satisfied with how the box turned out because I believe that it does accomplish the mission of a creative project that represents the theme ‚internal destruction.’ While there are multiple ways of showing this theme, this box is both a more literal interpretation as well as symbolic.

Our creative piece is about the meaning of showing public vs private self and showing the acceptance of difference. We went to crafting our piece by wearing a shirt of past things that happen. Our process was easy due to us knowing how judgmental our world is it was easier to catch people action. Only problem or issue we went along with was getting people first expression. Due to this school being a project based school People I’m assuming thats why the reactions was not as fully as we extended. I believed the aspects of the project that I done well is brining a message on what we was trying to do. Aspects of the projects I feel I could have done better was the way I spoke I could have planned it instead of freestyle it. If I can do it all over again I would have change the way I reactivated. 

Table of Themes:

Forgiveness and acceptance:

[ retribution … clarity ]

Love

[ love … thick&thin ]

Outcast

 [ weird … scorned ]

Public vs. Private

[ expression …  erosion ]

Motif's

[ runners … habits ]

Colors

[ red … maroon ]

Emotions

[ anger … disappointment ]

Birthing life

[ imp … hospital ]

Relationships

[ knowledge … peace ]

Since this is a creative project I wanted to take some thing normally bland and show it in a different light. Word art seemed to be a good fit for the idea I had. I choose a guitar because I thought it represented expression and that was a main theme throughout both texts. The reason the guitar isn’t too colorful is because of the combination of the puritan times and the indie/soul of Juno.  choose themes such as; Love, Outcast, Forgiveness etc, because they show the brunt of the media without going into detail. Branches of the themes are the words, which associates with the theme through different angle and perspectives. I choose words that were on a level that anyone can understand it, while trying to go advanced with other words. Overall, this project is shows expression through words using different themes.

The process of creating this project was tedious, but not too much. The themes represented, were some of the many of things we discussion about when reading/watching The Scarlet Letter and Juno. The words are what I associated with that idea, or what I what I would feel in those situations. The only real problem that happened was trying to put the words into an image. It was difficult trying to find something that can represent both media, but I’m happy I choose the guitar.

I am most proud about how all of the pieces fit together with each other and building on each other. Everything has a purpose and each part rely’s on the whole. Although, maybe the words I choose where a bit too mundane and should have opted for more complexity. If I was to do this all over again I would probably change the representation of it. My original idea was to do a stained glass window, but that seemed too time intensive for the amount we had. As a whole I feel this creative piece is a well portrayal of the themes in The Scarlet Letter and Juno.

The theme of my creative project is “secrets and their consequences.” I got this point across by making a succession of heart drawings that could represent how secrets could affect a person. The first is a heart that has a lock and chain on it. As a caption for the picture I have, “Hold them back, seal them away.” This symbolizes someone who has a secret; they would try to hide it from the world, and in the process, they would hide themselves and their true feelings away. The second heart has a lock pointing towards the lock and chain. The caption I have is, “Prying eyes see through the lies.” This symbolizes people who may try to see past the exterior of a person and potentially find their secret. On the third heart, the lock is unlocked and the chain is falling. The caption is, “Collapse in character, lapse in security.” This symbolizes what happens when someone is afraid that someone may know their secret. They may become paranoid and start acting out of character because they are afraid they could not hide their secret. The fourth heart is on fire. The caption is, “The guilt burns; the heart’s an inferno.” This symbolizes the guilt someone would experience while holding the secret. It would feel like the secret is burning them from the inside out. The last picture is a pile of ash. The caption I have is, “Destroyed from the inside out, scorched soul, blackened reputation.” This symbolizes someone after they have held their secret for so long. Either they would feel terrible about holding that secret or someone would find out about their secret and no longer trust them; it would ruin what others think of them. 

The first thing I drew was the heart. I didn’t mean for it to come out as detailed as it did, in fact I only wanted it to be a simple line drawing, so I would be able to draw it over and over again. Since it came out as shaded as it did and I didn’t feel like I would be able to replicate it, I had to find another way to produce my transitional pictures. On a separate piece of paper, I drew an outline of the heart. I did this for each different drawing. I drew the object that would lay on top of the heart or around it; the chain and lock, key, and fire. I cut the pictures out and lay them on top of the drawing to take pictures of them. The corners of the little pictures kept curling up, however, and it would have been difficult to scan them with my scanner because the pictures would fall off. This caused me to have to find another way to get the pictures onto the hearts. I thought about tape, but it would show up in the picture. So I decided to try using plastic wrap. I pulled the plastic wrap taut around the heart picture and glued the little pictures on top. It still showed up a little in the pictures, but it looked better than I though the tape would. 

I think, despite all the challenges I had to overcome, that the heart drawings came out well. They were not what I had pictured, but I am still proud of how they came out and how I figured out a way to overcome the challenges.

I feel like I could have found a better way to add the pictures onto the heart. Though the plastic wrap was efficient, it still shows up a little in the pictures. If I would’ve had more time to edit, I would have tried to add the pictures on digitally, so they still had the stand out effect that I aimed for after the heart came out very realistic (cartoonish vs. realistic), but so that it looked much cleaner than it does.

If I could do it all over again, I would try to make a simpler heart drawing, so it would be easier to replicate it and add things onto it. If I were not producing the heart drawings, I would make a succession of different drawings instead, this way I would not have to be worry about the sizing of the picture and how similar they look to the others, as I had to do with the heart drawing. 

Contemporary dance is a term that combines many dance forms such as modern, hip-hop, Jazz, African, and ballet. The techniques are expressed with the music. It follows the beat, which can change at anytime also speed; rhythm and direction are mostly used in this form of dance. We chosen this category from the list because it would be unique to express the feelings in the book with the modern day music that we all listen to. Each song in the mix goes directly to all of the main characters in the book. The mix starts off with Rihanna song Unfaithful. We start it off with this song because in the Scarlet Letter Hester was not faithful to her husband. She had sex with someone she was not married to and got pregnant. In the song lyrics mention that one unfaithful girl is cheating in her relationship, and her spouse knows something is going on. He stays because he is loyal to her even though she is not to him. If Chillingworth were to leave the society would have been against him for leaving his wife. Our Second song, which is Daddy’s Little Girl by J-Cole, we dedicated to growth of Pearl. She was a reckless child that even her own mother couldn’t handle her. She was an outcast; nothing was normal with her. No one could tell her what to do due to her being in her own world. She would rather do that then to be in the world of a society that judges her and her family. In the mix our last song is Save me By Nicki Minaj for Hester and Pearl. They have both lost something in their which was each other and Dimmsdale. They are all asking for forgiveness at the end when the y finally realizes that they needed each other In the long run.

            We created our piece by first picking the songs that we thought would fit the type of dance and the themes that we wanted to include. The actually used three which are movement, internal destruction and responsibility in relationships. We chose these three because each one of them fit each of the songs that we chosen to do. One did come to one problem, which was trying to find a clean version to our J-Cole song. Unfortunately, we didn’t so we tried our best to choose the best less explicit lyrics in the song to dance to. We also ran into difficulties when we where trying to find a way to set our dance to the audience. We overcame this by working together to agree on a set up that turned out to actually be easy.

            I feel so good about this project. We have spent a lot of time on this dance for the last week. Working in all class period and even staying after school to make sure our dance was polished completely. I feel very confident and comfortable doing this dance. Even though I feel this way I know that I will have some bubble guts to try to get over before the show. Something that I would have like to do different is choosing the songs. They are great for the project, but when looking back at it I know there where other songs that I could have chosen to use.  I am very excited to perform this dance and hopefully everyone will be delighted to see our final piece. 

I decided to make my slide look like this because I want people to know about my creativity. My brain is always flooded with original and detailed ideas that I can use for any of my hobbies. I love to use my imagination when I read, write and make films. Not only do I express my creativity in my writing and film directing, but I also use it when I play music. I play the double bass and piano. Often, I would attempt to compose one of my own songs to define how I am feeling at the moment. Also, I would use my compositions to include in my films to see how my final project looks and sounds. Whenever I put my imagination into words, I feel like a successful teacher. My creativity is my strongest trait.

This slide represents me by stating exactly what I like.It is telling you exactly what I am interested in.

I love skateboarding (my favorite thing in the world) so I had to put that up there. I want a penny board really bad. I am getting a gopro camera and they are one of my favorite things. I love surfing. I love photography, skim boarding, biking and music. I made the slide look the way it does so that people would be able to understand it and like the way it looks. What influenced my decision making was the blog that Mrs. Hull read.

In conclusion, this is everything that I like and the reason and decisions that I made.

The reason I used this theme is because its simple and to the point. I did it based on Instagram, which is a photo sharing app. The font is in a bunch of places to make it look  like a collage. The photo stands out and makes it something to look at, the photo was taken by my friend. So it’s not just something off the internet. The photo is recent and has not hit the internet yet except for Instagram of course.The little hashtags are what makes it look like Instagram. Instagram is all about me the photos that people take on there is amazing. The reason I picked Instagram is it's the #StoryOfMyLife. It shows me though my photos.

Self-Reflection

            Recently, in Sexuality and Society, we read the interesting tale of The Scarlet Letter, about the complicated relationships of Hester Prynne during colonial times. Shortly after reading The Scarlet Letter, we watched Juno, about the struggles that a girl named Juno has with being pregnant. Our project is loosely based upon both of these stories, mainly the themes we pulled from them. Matt and I chose to base ours off of theme of the main character finding it hard to change, while the world is rapidly changing around them.

            For our project, we wanted to create something that could show our theme very well, and what came to mind was making a stop motion film. Making a stop motion film showed one person (me) staying the same throughout the entirety of the video, while everything else around me, was changing very fast. The process of making the film was rather tedious, but in the end it was worth it.

We didn’t want the film to be the only aspect of our project, so we spent a good amount of time searching for songs that would relate to our topic. At first, we were thinking about using the song at the end of Juno, but that would be too closely related to the movie, so that song was scratched from the list. But, after much more searching we came upon song via Pandora, called Tire Swing by Kimya Dawson. We believe this song was just what we were looking for, the lyrics strongly related to our theme, and the beat was similar to the one at the end of Juno.

Putting the project together on the computer went without toil. But, taking the pictures was extremely tedious, getting the angle correct, working around the city folk, etc. When we had to take the pictures in the night time, the camera acted as if it hadn’t had sleep, and kept capturing blurry pictures, which prolonged our night, but was not a major setback.

With the minor setbacks that we had, I believe we crafted a well put together project, showing our understanding of our theme, as well as making an interesting visual. The project should show via the pictures, how much time we put into this project. The only part I wish we could have done was rather than choosing a song off the Internet to play in the background of our video, was Matt and I each playing a guitar in the background, like the ending of Juno. I believe that would’ve been much more personal, and much more powerful for our project. We couldn’t complete that aspect due to the fact that I have never played a guitar before, and we did not have enough time for me to learn it. And, if we could do it again, I would’ve taken the time from the start of the project to learn at least how to play the chords on the guitar so that we could have added that in, but that’s about it.

My creative piece is about a combination of themes between the scarlet letter and Juno. What we had to do for this project was to come up with a creative idea that represents at least one theme present in the book and the movie. The idea that I chose was to create two-canvas painting, which represent two themes. The two themes that I chose were “Forgiveness & Acceptance” Also “Freedom and the cost of your true self”. To get my point across I went through different ways that I could express each theme and I believed that painting was a bold choice that would convey what I wanted to express.

While I was going through the process of brainstorming and trial and error for this project I hit a lot bumps along the road, but the end results show how much I worked on it. First thing was to figure out how I would represent each theme, which required understanding what the theme meant and looking for possible examples to further my ideas. For the first theme that I tackled was “Forgiveness & Acceptance” which is a little broad since there were a lot of things that I could draw for this. But I wanted something that would stand out and look well, the first idea was to be two people hugging which didn’t go to well because the proportions were incorrect. The next thing that I tried was having two people holding hands but the proportions were incorrect again. The last idea that I really like was to have a girl kneeling on the floor and crying, then I though about the fact that I would need someone to forgive and accept her. So I then drew a male putting his legs and arms around her, which represent the theme though at first the proportions were incorrect. So I asked my uncle who was more experienced in drawing and he told me to have models pose in the way that I wanted them two snap a picture and draw them. The last thing that I have which look ten times better as well as a lot more natural.

I believe that the aspects of this project that I did well was choosing two themes and finding ideas that strongly represent them. Also trying new things when it comes to realistic drawing as well as painting and researching ways to prefect them to increase the aspects of the overall project, while at the same time boosting my skills as an artist.

I don’t believe that there was much about this project that I had trouble with and I feel as though I expressed my opinions to the fullest. So I don’t regret anything I created so I feel confident about this project because I don’t feel as though I was lacking in any area. Some of the thing that I had trouble with was centering my ideas as well as choosing a theme.

If I were to do this project differently I would start a lot earlier and would have drawn more pictures to correspond with more of the themes. Other than that there isn’t really anything that I would change if I were to do this project again, since I am pretty proud of it as it is. Though some things that I would change would be to have more experience in realistic drawing, as well as painting on canvas. So that I wouldn’t have made the small mistakes that I did. Overall I am really happy with the work that I did on this project, because it shows all of the hard work that I put into perfecting my skills as an artist. I learned knew techniques such as how to paint with acrylics on canvas. Also I was able to improve my skills in drawing realistically since I always draw things that are anime based.                      

REFLECTION: A STORY ABOUT EVERYONE

The short movie A Story About Everyone was designed to invoke ideas beyond those that are literally shown. The main character, Everyone, breaks out of her paper world, and though she is at first frightened by the great things that can be, she is soon inspired. Back in the paper world though, the stick figures are not happy. They interrupt her fun and drag her back inside the lines. There she struggles to show her newly discovered and colorful personality in a place where there is only black and white. Eventually she tires of their confinement and returns to the land of colors and three dimensions to become a real girl.

This movie posed an interesting dilemma. How to show emotions and deeper discoveries with a poorly drawn figure? How to show the difference between two worlds? I decided to use lined paper for the stick figure world to literally represent the metaphor of living within the lines of society. The characters within this world are all drawn with a charcoal pencil which often smudged. The individual characters living within such strict lines have little definition. In the scene where she sticks her hand and the tip of her skirt into the other world, you will notice that they became colored, providing a direct comparison of the two lands.

I decided to use the metaphor of light for illumination. Everyone is no longer frightened once she has the light. She dances for joy in fact. The following montage of happiness with an overtone of giggles show her learning about music and activity, and making friends with my happy dog, whom she had previously been afraid of.

Finally there was the issue of how to differentiate Everyone from Everyone Else once she had returned to the lines. They strip her of her flower and color leaving her as blank as Everyone Else. I decided to use eyebrows as a tell. In the scene of a hundred faces, she is the only one with eyebrows, and they speak of her sorrow.

There were a couple more obvious metaphors, The title scene with the text A Story About Me, A Girl, Everyone is telling of the fact that this story of self discovery and struggle against society is something Everyone can relate to. 

It was difficult to insure that the watcher would understand all these points. For one, the video camera I have is not of the highest quality and would not focus at times. Another major issue I had is that once transferring the videos into quicktime, the top and bottom were cut off, leaving some of my thought bubble clues difficult to decider. The most effected scene being when she decides to use a cog as a flower. 

When I first sat down and began drawing I did not know the complete story, but as I drew it became clear. I had already picked my two themes self discovery and the individual struggle against society, so after having the complete story in my head, I went back to the beginning and added more drawings to show those themes a little bit better. I finished all the drawing and cutting before filming anything. 

The hardest part of that was getting my dog to do what I wanted. I ended up spoiling him with tiny pieces of steak to get him to be my actor. He did run away with my little character sitting on him a couple times, and I would have to run after him and find where she had flown off. 

After I finished the filming I had quite a few issues first removing the videos from my camera and then, getting their thumbnails to show up on imovie. I cut the videos together, and then added the song. I made some minor adjustments so the music and video fit better, added some sound effects (giggles and jail door slamming sounds) and finalized the project.

If I had more time, I would like to add more scenes between the ones already existing to help the watcher follow the plot line and catch the clues. I might put the project to music that fit a little bit better and use a higher quality camera to catch the already limited details of my drawings. 

The concept of this project is what I am most proud of. My drawings are poor and my video editing is passable, but the ideas and the metaphors that I tried to incorporate are something for me to be proud of.  I think that in terms of concept, this project is a star, I have rarely liked an idea so much. It is a bit frustrating to know I did not do it justice. 

Claire Elliot

For this project, I wanted to create something that was out of the ordinary. I figured that the obvious choice would have been to make something like a Keynote, but I wanted to challenge myself to be more creative. So, the idea came to make something that people could actually touch. At first, I was unsure of how to go about this. I considered making something out of clay but realized that this would be too time consuming. Finally, after watching a commercial, I came up with the idea to make a voodoo doll. I knew that this would well represent a theme from the novel and movie involving pain.

            After I figured out that I wanted to make a doll, I had to figure out what specific themes I wanted it to represent. The best choice seemed to be sin and punishment, which occurred through much of The Scarlet Letter and Juno. The toothpicks that I wanted to put in the doll could be labeled, each with a different type of sin present in the two works that we studied in class. When all of the sin-representing toothpicks were put together, it would show how more sin equals more pain. This then led me to another theme shown in both the movie and book, self-condition. I realized that the toothpicks on the doll could also represent how the aftermath of added sins can take its toll on a person, as the doll seemed more uncomfortable as more toothpicks were added. This was much like the characters in the book and movie getting increasingly uncomfortable as they committed more sin in the eyes of the elite.

At this point, it was time to start making the creative piece. Since I knew it would be impossible to find a real voodoo doll, I decided to make one myself. After seeing a sock monkey online, I instantly thought about making a sock doll, which I could easily stick toothpicks into. To do this, I gathered up the materials, followed an online reference, and carefully constructed the doll. Even though the process went smoothly, I was not pleased with the final appearance of the first two dolls that I created. I felt that the limbs were not proportionate to the head in the way that I had hoped. As a result, I created more dolls and selected my favorite. After this, I labeled a set of toothpicks (each with a different sin) and randomly stuck them in the doll, finally completing my goal.

Now looking back, I am most happy that the final doll came out the way it did. It is one of the most unique products that I have ever created. I was shocked to see that it actually did look like a voodoo doll when completed. In fact, I was so pleased with it that I actually preferred making the doll, as opposed to buying one. The reason is because since I made it, I could make every aspect of it (its size, colors…) the way that I wanted it to be. On the other hand, my least favorite part of this project was the fact that I did not get to utilize my class time as well as I could have. The reason is because I would keep my supplies at home for fear that I would leave them in school. It is my guess that if I had brought my materials to school, I could have taken advantage of school resources, like specialized paint. As such, I will do this the next time I have a creative project.

Technology Slide Project: Micah Henry

Introduction: In technology class, we are creating a slide that describes ourselves, with very few words. Visuals or a visual is being used to show our hobbies, our life, or possibly just are passions and dreams. The purpose of this slide is to show who we are and what we enjoy to do in life. Lastly, the slide should be very short with words to describe yourself, with a picture to emphasize your lightly worded description.

This slide looks the way it does because my favorite, most inspirational quote is hard work & dedication. I admire this saying because it basically sums up everything you need to succeed in life with three words. These three words being very powerful , for they explain how working hard towards your dream an having a motivation to do so, you will be successful. In addition, my slide has a picture of soccer, and on the top, hard work & dedication because the words summarize the picture. For the picture is of a soccer player leaping to his full extent to win the ball and gain possession, this all being to get a goal; this goal is to succeed, to win. My love for the game of soccer, and my thought patterns of how if you work hard at something, you can never lose has helped me to make the decisions on this slide. The message, in text, is short, but could tell a story, with this great picture of hard work & dedication to back up this message of succeeding.