Science Leadership Academy @ Center City

Text Based Macbeth game (Macbeth Creative Project)

Posted by Tobi Hahn in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 11:09 am

For my creative project, I wanted to show the development of Macbeth's character through the quotes, and also how Macbeth justified his actions. I ended up making a text based game that showed the quote and a decision that Macbeth had to make. If you chose the wrong answer, it would tell you why it was the wrong answer for Macbeth. My process while making this game was at first making a code template for the decisions. Next, I added the quotes and the decisions. I then added the responses. A difficulty I encountered while making the game was that at first, my code would not run. I looked at documentation for a while and ended up finding the answer. I am proud of being able to engage an audience while showing Macbeth's character. If I was given the chance to do something differently, I would add more interactivity to the game, and multiple endings. I learned from my classmates presentations that you can incorporate the quotes and characters of Macbeth into a wide range of projects, from videos to sculptures to board games. I learned that I should take more time to look over my code while debugging it, as I spent a very long time finding a simple mistake.

You can play my game by downloading this .zip file, then unzipping it and opening the app inside. It requires internet the first time you launch it.

Friedman; Creative Macbeth

Posted by Michelle Friedman in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 11:06 am

This creative project is an extension of an analytical essay assignment. This project shows Lady Macbeth’s transformation from a ruthless woman to a frail lady is both beautiful and pathetic.

The process of crafting this project started with an extensive period of brainstorming. It took nearly 3 weeks to come up with a pleasing idea for a project. The idea for news articles came from the fact that this story is very two-sided. After some planning on what the articles would be on, and how the quotes would be included, it was fairly easy to start writing. From there is was simple.

The greatest difficulty, by far, was just getting everything done. The initial plan was to have many more articles that there are now, however due to lack of time, that number was reduced. The struggle was completing everything.

I am most proud of the contrast between the news sources. One article does not stand out to me in particular, however their relationships are very interesting and I am proud of them.

If I had the chance, I would start this project much sooner and create a legitimate news website and paper for the articles. However, due to limited time, this was not possible.

I did not get to see any of the other projects because I was sick; so, sadly, I did not get to learn from my peers like I would have hoped. However, I learned something about myself. That is that I am not very excited about writing. I thought I might be, but I'm not.

This is a collection of news articles from two news sources- "Scotland's Best" and "Scottish Times". "Scotland's Best" is more positive towards Macbeth and what he does; whereas, the other is against his beliefs.

Macbeth Creative Piece (Yam)

Posted by Brandon Yam in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 11:06 am

This is the creative piece for my Macbeth benchmark. My creative piece shows and proves my thesis and the character's journey throughout the story. My thesis was: Although Macbeth was a crooked man at the start of the play, he became more deeply corrupted later on to the point of no return.
The task of actually making my creative piece was pretty hard. Yes, it looks pretty simple, but getting the materials was a pain. I needed red clay for the hearts for the coffin and I didn't have anything. I had to look all over my house to see what I could use as a replacement. In the end, after two whole days of searching, I found little miniature hearts that I could use. Once I found them I was able to make the actual coffins, put the "corruption" inside the hearts, and make any changes to tidy it up.
I am most proud of the project as a whole. I liked how I recycled most of the materials I used in this project. For example, the box I got from a supermarket, there were strudels in there, the "flowers" are just pieces of paper nobody was using.
If I was given the chance to make any changes to my project, I'd most likely change the signs in front of the coffins. When I came up to present, the signs weren't holding up too well. Sometimes it would fall over and other times it would just tilt to the side.
I learned quite a lot from my classmate's projects. For example, August's project taught me about the show Breaking Bad and how it is very similar to Macbeth. This was a unique take on the creative piece because nobody that I saw had anything like it. I also learned that the project itself isn't everything. As a presenter, you must be able to talk about your project clearly and make sure your audience is engaged. I see it as a 50/50 thing. What I mean is 50% of the project is the project itself, while the other 50% is the presenter.
Something that I learned about myself is that I'm not bad at public speaking and keeping my audience engaged. I have presented many projects here at SLA where public speaking was involved, but nothing like how I had to present this project. With this project, I had my peers come to me and I was able to talk to them individually instead of as a whole class. This allowed me to feel a little more comfortable and confident. I had friendly little chats while explaining my project and threw in some comedy here and there.

Lady Macbeth poem

Posted by Angelica Owens in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 11:05 am

For my creative piece of Macbeth I did a poem about Lady Macbeth's character journey through out the whole story. It shows how before the death of Duncan she was the man in the relationship but after Duncan died she became very cautious and she wanted it to go away. To craft it, I thought it would be a little bit easier to write it since I am a poet but it was not as easy as I thought. Even though I am a poet to create a poem is not always easy to do but I already had an idea of what to put in it. The difficulties during making this poem was that I had to figure out to word it. I am most proud of the whole poem because it was hard but I still did a good job creating this. If I did this project over I would have definitely created something else more creative like an art piece or a sculpture out of clay. What I learned from looking at my peers projects were that they are really creative and are good at something. What I learned about myself during this project were that to try something different even if my specialty is poetry because I may be good at something else.

Macbeth's Road to Betrayal

Posted by Lauren Hummel in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:34 am

English Reflection

This project was about Macbeth's process as a rising dictator and how he begins to betray everyone he was close with. This particular piece ties into my thesis of, Macbeth is a lovable character with a strong moral compass, however, in the end, he betrays everyone's trust. My scratch video is representation of this thesis.

While I was beginning to brainstorm ideas for the creative portion of the project, I was at a standstill with no good and original ideas. Morgan Caswell-Warnick was a great help though by generously offering me the idea to do a Scratch animation. I had used Scratch before so I was familiar with it but I was also well aware that it would be time consuming and very frustrating, and it was. I went through all of the acts in sequential order, giving a little bit of background information before introducing the quotes. I also tried to add music and sound effects in order to bring the video to life. Towards the end, I added a some comical bits to keep the crowd entertained and I think it worked well because all of the people who viewed it, laughed at those last parts. I did come across some obstacles such as malfunctioning sounds, words moving to quickly across the screen or too slowly and frustration with the program. With some patience and moral support, I was able to overcome these obstacles and some constructive criticism also helped. I am most proud of the patience I had during this project with all of the malfunctions and setbacks, I was able to come through it to put together a project that I am, overall, proud of. I say this because, I usually am not patient and don't worry as much about the quality of my work but I was intent to hand in a piece of quality work for this project. If I could change anything in this project, I would be more selective with the music I chose. From my peers, I learned that there are a lot of options when crafting a project and that unless you hear it explained, it could make no sense. Also that Lady Macbeth has many different personalities that can be interpreted in different ways.

As a result of this project, I learned that I can put together really good work if I put my mind to it and that I am more patient than I realize. Also, that I am pretty good at making things using Scratch.

Macbeth's Road to Betrayal from Lauren Hummel on Vimeo.

Here is the video with sound.

The rise and fall of Macbeth

Posted by Alejandro Bautista-Garcia in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:29 am

      a. What is this project about? This project is about Macbeth’s rise and fall of his life and loyalty. Macbeth was a trustworthy man that let his dark desires change his life, he was a clean hearted man that over the time his heart grew of power and ambition making bad decision and at the end he was filled with regret.

    b. What was your process like in crafting the creative portion of this project?

My idea for the first time of making this project was making a collage of Macbeth’s life of how it went from a rise to a downfall, but then to make it much better and interesting I chose to make a comic with the quotes from each act and have a little side story so the reader could understand what’s going on with Macbeth’s life.

      c. What difficulties did you encounter in doing this project? How did you overcome them?

Some difficulties that I encountered doing this projects was finding the pictures from the same play but I overcame this idea by changing my idea of the collage into a comic with quotes and a little more information to make a story.

      d. What are you most proud of in this project? Why?

What i’m proud of making the project in one day not because I was procrastinating but I just got the date that it was due wrong, also because some of my friends thought the comic was really good due to the fact that i read comics I must had picked up some ideas on how to make the comics, I’m proud of this also because it’s my first comic project that I made and most of my friends thought it was really great.

      e. What would you change/do differently if given the chance?

What I would change if I do this project again would be making the story longer or making an actual collage.

      f. What did you learn from your colleagues' presentations/projects?

What I learned was that they had a lot of brilliant ideas on how to do this also they kind of knew what to do since the beginning of the project so they were very prepared for this.

      g. What did you learn about yourself as a result of doing this project?

I learned that Macbeth after all was easy and I remember I used to say it was confusing in some parts of the story.

Macbeth Creative Piece

Posted by Jamison Turner in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:29 am

My creative piece is about the downfall of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as to where my written piece is only about the downfall of Lady Macbeth. The creative piece took me a while only because I am not a very artistic person. My first idea was to draw a castle crumbling on one end and on the other it is perfectly fine but I am not good at drawing elaborate pictures like that. So I stuck with the castle idea but changed it up a but and I still kept the same concept. The hardest part of the project was probably thinking of a project that would be not just fit in with the others and I am pretty sure I am the only one in the class with a power point. I'm proud that I came up with my own type of project because all of my life I just did what every one else did. If I could change something I would add more slides. I learned that other people also did very individual projects and I found out that when I put my mind to something I come up with some good ideas.

Macbeth Machinima

Posted by Miles Cruice-Barnett in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:28 am

This is the creative extension of a Macbeth quote analysis. This is a machinima made in minecraft that shows the journey of Macbeth and how Macbeth started as a loyal subject to King Duncan, but when the weïred sisters told him he would be king, Lady Macbeth convinced him to kill Duncan and he lost himself in the murder.

To create this I had to build all of the sets and find “skins,” or costumes, that went with each character. I then had to use my screen capture software to record the different scenes and then edit them together and voice over them.

One problem I had was that I did not have screen capture software on my school laptop so I had to use my home computer and only work from there. Another problem I had was that I had finished recording about half of my scenes and I realized that the texturepack, something that changes how the game looks, was wrong. I had to re-record everything and start from scratch.

I am really happy with the way it turned out. Building the sets was fun and they looked great on camera. Minecraft is a game of blocks so some things are not easy to replicate, you have to be creative.

If I had time I would redo one, or two scenes that I think could be better. There was one where it was daytime when it was supposed to be night, and another where I was going to do a voice but forgot and had two voices for one character.

From seeing my classmates’ projects I realized that there were many ways to creatively represent our papers and that there are other things that I could have done when I did not know what to do.

You can also view it here
Skins here

The Journey to Success that led To Failure

Posted by Sattera Mark in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:27 am

Reflection

For my projects I decided to do journals. These journals are Lady Macbeth’s. They show how Lady Macbeth’s character changes throughout the story.
I wanted to do these journals so the reader can better understand the character of Lady Macbeth. In the story it seems as if she doesn't really have a heart. She seems cold and cruel. I wanted to show the readers that Lady Macbeth does have feelings and does regret her actions. I did these journals by incorporating quotes from the story.
It was hard to come up with creative ideas and it was also hard managing time. Usually teachers give immediate deadlines, but we had complete control over what we wanted to do.
I’m proud to see my writing progress.
If I could I would have started the project earlier.
My colleagues’ projects were all outstanding. From them learned that they’re are so many ways to show case work. I saw projects that I would never have thought of doing.
I learned that I should stop putting limits on what I can do and excel.

"Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely"

Posted by Stephanie Dyson in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:26 am

In this blog post, I present to you the creative extension of my Macbeth quote analysis. This project, based on the tragic downfall of Lady Macbeth, is one of my favorites that I've done this year. It, as I stated, represents the downfall of Lady Macbeth. I intended to portray my thesis visually, which read "Lady Macbeth, the epitome of a power-hungry woman, has a querulous personality that swells with an ambition that eventually leads to her demise."

The small orbs on the top of each box were painted with specific colors. I referred to a mood-ring chart to show Lady Macbeth's various emotions throughout the play ranging from stormy and passionate to lonely and paranoid. I set the boxes in descending order by height to visually show her downfall, and because the boxes had lids and could be opened, I put the quotes that I analyzed for that specific body paragraph in each box and I was done.

The process for my project was actually rather timely; it only took about an hour and a half to finish and I did so the night before with ample time left in the night for me to sleep. The only problems I encountered during the creation of this project were gluing pieces in the wrong order and having to reorder things, mixing colors to properly coincide with those on the mood chart, printing problems, and actually getting my project to school. However, there were very few learning walls and mind-blocks for me to experience.

I'm definitely most proud of the design of this project. It was something I wasn't sure exactly how to put together; it sort've began as an idea without a plan, but for me to pull through and make it look relatively professional and artistically display my thesis. This is, as I said, one of my favorite projects thus far in my freshman year and I'm sure I'll remember it down the road.

In my classmates projects, I saw a deep thoughtfulness throughout. The artistic qualities of my classmates and the ability to be as innovative as some were was extremely noticeable. I appreciate their hard work and I feel that there was a level 'playing-field'. No projects were absolutely utterly mind-blowingly incredible, but no projects were dull, drab, or pointless.

In my own project, I do see a bit of myself and my project should certainly reflect who I am. It's clear and concise, but it does require someone to present, making it interactive and enjoyable at the same time. I learned that once I can take an idea and run with it, my creativity flows from my fingertips. My process for this project is certainly something I'll take with me for the rest of my years at SLA.

Please pardon the relatively poor image quality on the pictures of my project.

William Shakespeare's Macbeth

Posted by Lauren Thomas in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:22 am

In Ms. Dunn's English Class we collectively read Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Everyone had to write an analytical essay. In the essay, we had to analyze 5 quotes from Macbeth and/or Lady Macbeth. I chose to write about and choose quotes that showed how Lady Macbeth manipulated Macbeth. Based off of our essay we had to do a creative piece including the five quotes. I chose to do crayon art.

I decided to write Lady Macbeth's suicide note. In the note, I wrote about how sorry Lady Macbeth is for changing Macbeth's integrity. I wrote/paraphrased the quotes I chose in red, both on canvas and on the computer. To read the whole suicide note, click here. To listen to my suicide note and watch the process, click here.

For what couldn't fit into the suicide note, I used the crayons to symbolize. Also, you can't read the note on the canvas because it was done purposeful.

I put the colors in a specific order to show Lady Macbeth's journey through the play :

Black & Gray: to symbolize how evil & deranged Lady Macbeth was in the beginning
Purples: Lady Macbeth's need for royalty & the want to be the queen
Red: Lady Macbeth's need for royalty transitions into the need to kill; the red symbolizes all the blood that was shed
White: how Lady Macbeth was blinded by everything she wanted & how she didn't care about the consequences
Pink: when Lady Macbeth realized what was happening & how ended her life with an essence of innocence

Reflection upon my work:

What was your process like in crafting the creative portion of this project?
In the beginning I knew I wanted to do crayon to show Lady Macbeth's journey; however, I didn't know how to incorporate my quotes. One day in class I had the idea for a suicide note. I decided to type up my suicide note and have a peer of mine, Dillon, to edit it. I then hand wrote the letter onto the canvas in pencil and then again in sharpie. Here is a video I made of me melting my crayon and reading the suicide note that I was covering in the crayon.

What difficulties did you encounter in doing this project? How did you overcome them?
I almost ran out of room to write the note on the canvas, which scared me, but I added more lines to write on and the problem was some-what solved (it goes to the very end of the canvas).

What are you most proud of in this project? Why?
I am most proud of the way it turned out. I thought it wouldn't look as nice, but I was glad when I finished.

What would you change/do differently if given the chance?
Maybe a more symbolic piece, like sculpting, but I am proud of my project and wouldn't change much.

What did you learn from your colleagues' presentations/projects?
I learned that many different people create differently. We all had the same base (quotes, the book, etc.) and we all branched off uniquely with our own talents being displayed.

What did you learn about yourself as a result of doing this project?

I learned that I can do anything I set my mind too, even if someone else in the class does something similar to you.

Macbeth Creative Piece

Posted by Jesse Shuter in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:20 am

For my project I chose to do a continuation of my written piece. In my written piece I talk about how Macbeth was not always a bad guy. At the beginning of the book he was a good person. It was only through being provoked and triggered into changing that Macbeth changed his personal traits and became such an evil person. To represent this I started by making Macbeth's head. The head that I made is similar to the head that is shown at the end of the Macbeth movie. Then to show all of Macbeth's triggers I made small sculptures of the triggers and placed them on Macbeth's head to symbolize the fact that Macbeth was only taking action based on what other people inspired him to do, not because his own brain told him that these actions were okay. For Act 1, the trigger that I chose was Lady Macbeth; for Act 2, the trigger was the crown and the role of kingship; for Act 3, the trigger was the Weïrd Sisters; for Act 4, the trigger was Malcolm; and for Act 5, the trigger was the kingdom and everything that comes with being king (wealth, power, followers, etc.). The hardest part of this project was coming up with the idea. Once I had the idea the project was relatively easy. The only trouble I had was deciding which things I would pick as the triggers for each act, and also making the sculptures. If I could do this project again, I would put more work into making the sculptures better.

A Macbeth Machinima

Posted by Andrew Roberts in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:18 am

This is the creative portion of my Macbeth project for my English class. I made a Machinima in Minecraft portraying Macbeth's character change: he goes from a loyal and praised thane to a feared tyrant. You can see that video here.

To make this project, I took a series of shots with some of my friends as actors and later put them together into scenes. I added scene title slides and then finalized my video and uploaded to vimeo to make it easier to watch.
I encountered several difficulties in this project. The foremost is getting the actors to do exactly what I imagined; it can be hard to convey a thought that you cannot put into words well. I also had trouble with timing the stage directions. My final difficulty, and perhaps the most annoying, is creating this reflection; I have accidentally deleted it twice.
I am proud of the backdrop the video is in, especially the courtyard. I also like how when a character dies, he drops what looks like blood (it is actually a minecraft item named redstone).
I would change several things, though. The intro for each scene is too short; there is not enough time to read the quote. I also would get rid of the little yellow circle that appears at the beginning of every shot, though I am not sure how to do this.
I learned from my colleagues' presentations that there is almost never just one way of doing a project. All of the different projects surprised me; I had trouble coming up with an idea.
One thing I learned about myself is that when someone does not understand what I am trying to get them to do, it annoys me. It is also oftentimes my fault. I also learned that I dream bigger then what I am able to do. I wanted to add a couple other shots as well as the ones that are there, but ran out of time.

Macbeth Dies A Tragic Hero.

Posted by Amanda Thieu in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:17 am

This is my Macbeth creative project for english class. I wanted to show his's stages throughout the play. I wrote Macbeth's name 5 times to represent all the quotes that I incorporated. It also shows that Macbeth's name changes it's font, color, etc because it shows the audience how much his character changes. It goes from bottom to top, Act 1 to Act 4. I used two quotes from Act 3 therefore, I didn't amalgamate quotes from Act 5. For my first quote, Lady Macbeth was conversing with her husband saying that he wasn't a man until he killed King Duncan. That's why I drew LADY over lapping Macbeth to represent the dominance in Lady Macbeth's character. I colored LADY in pink because in the play she was using her feminine features (being a woman) to her advantage. The second quote which is blue is similar with the quote Macbeth saying that he will not sleep innocent any more because he feels extremely guilty on the deed he has done. I drew a night cap, "zzz", moons, and stars to represent his sleep. The third quote which is in yellow represents his royalty and greed. He has finally received the crown and is now convincing the murders that Banquo is their enemy as well. Macbeth is taking over Lady Macbeth's manipulative character trait and using it on the murders. The swords represent how many times Banquo gets stabbed. I drew the ghost of Banquo sitting in Macbeth's seat at the banquet. Whenever you see a gold crown it emblematizes Macbeth. The fourth quote is all red and bloody because the quote regarding that is when Macbeth says he has stepped in blood so deep... The red color betokens the body count that Macbeth has annihilate. The last and final quote which Macbeth recites is that he is not worried that the forest will walk to Dunsinane hill. So I split the Macbeth in half, I drew "MAC" in trees to represent the forest and the "BTH" as the hills. I had the idea to draw the "E" the moving people who carried sticks to the Hills and the crown exemplify where Macbeth is located which is in the hills. All of these Macbeth's are written to show the change in his personality once he was crowned King of Scotland. Since I love to draw and paint, this wasn't that much of a challenge for me. I'm most proud of the creativity I put into the project. I would change the quality of the work. I might add more quotes next time.

"Taking advantage of innocence will backfire"

Posted by Allison Kelly in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:14 am

This sculpture is an extended section of my Macbeth essay and the second part of my English benchmark. This sculpture shows Macbeth's character change, stemming from his wife, and also Lady Macbeth's downfall.

In this sculpture, the hearts represent Macbeth and the hands holding the hearts on each side represent Lady Macbeth. The hands are holding the hearts as a sign of control. The heart starts out as red, which show he was humble, kind, and felt things such as guilt just as any human would. It shows his innocence. The heart gradually gets white, which shows that he became neutral. he wasn't necessarily innocent anymore, but he was far from evil. His heart eventually gets black, showing that he became pure evil and out of control. On the left side, which represents the beginning of the story, Lady Macbeth's hand is black to show that she was pure evil, but as it gets to the end of the story, her hand becomes white and red. The white shows that obviously she is far from innocent, but she is no longer the evil one, and the red represents her own blood after she killed herself. There is a quote on each of the hearts that best represents that character at that point in the story.

My process of building this sculpture was one of which where I needed to be extremely patient. I first had to sculpt everything with the clay and wait for it to completely dry before I could paint. I then needed to wait for the paint to completely dry before I could glue any of the quotes on.

One of my biggest difficulties was just being able to finish in time because I wasn't planning on the clay taking as long as it did to dry, which kind of made me have to speed up the rest of my process. To overcome this I just did different things to speed up the drying process of the clay. I had it constantly in front of a fan and also left it near an open window over night so that it could completely dry.

I am most proud of how this project really shows the character changes in the characters. I think I made a lot of wise choices when it came to color and placement of things to show the development of each character.

If I had the chance, I would just start the sculpting a little earlier considering it took so long for the clay to dry. Other than that I am extremely happy with the outcome of my project.

From my colleagues, I learned how to think about the story of Macbeth a lot deeper. There were even new things that I learned about the story after hearing how deep some of my classmates thought about their quotes.

After finishing this project, I learned that I knew a lot more about Macbeth than I thought I did. I am much more confident when reading Shakespeare now because this project really taught me how to analyze and look deeper into quotes.

Serge Mass Macbeth Shoe

Posted by Sergei Mass in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:13 am

My project is about how Macbeth's character changed as the story progressed. It shows how he was in the beginning of the story to the end with the use of color. I chose to use a shoe because I have a passion of collecting shoes. The red paint on the shoe shows the blood Macbeth is in and how the blood is corrupting him and his sanity. Then the red turns to black to signify his down fall.

My process with this project was pretty long. I put in about 8 1/2 hours of work for this piece of art. I had to plaster a pair of black canvas vans. Then paint them red. Then let them dry. After I had to paint the back half black. Then after the shoe was done I had to write all 5 quotes on the nylon ribbon. Then to make the white nylon ribbon look like shoe laces, I made gold lace tips. Then on my canvas board, I hot glued red and black ribbon to the canvas and made them intersect at one point to show the transition and change of Macbeth's character. Once all the glue was dry, I glued the shoe to the board and the laces crossing the shoe.

One difficulty I encountered was the plaster would not mold to the shoe. I had to cool the hot glue and glue the plaster to the shoe. If I would of use the hot glue when it was hot, it would of burned through the plaster and ruined my work.

I am most proud of my final product because it was the hardest I have ever worked on a project and I feel passionate about my work.

I would of used a jordan sneaker and I would of used my Angelus paint to make a custom wearable shoe. It would have been amazing.

I learned that time and hard work pays off because I spent my whole day sunday to do this project and it was worth it.

I learned that if I don't rush things I can have an amazing output or product. I am capable of so much if I take my time. It shows in my pictures below. I also learned that I have a tendency to rush things.

Macbeth Creative Blog

Posted by Morgan Caswell in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:13 am

This project was the creative part of an academic quote analysis of Macbeth. I personally chose to write a song because I am a pianist and I found this an effective way to communicate the downfall of Lady Macbeth. While she was not the tragic hero in this play, she is one of Shakespeare's only strong female characters. She was power hungry and then manipulated her husband into killing people for the crown. This eventually lead to her ultimate demise as the guilt became too much for her to deal with as she fell into suicidal insanity.

My process in the was difficult to begin with but it became easier as things went along. It was hard to see how I should start with the music, but once I got started it was easy to tell the story without words through music.

As always, I think the hardest part was to start and to see how this story was going to be told within music. I just played with different sounds and different musical concepts until something felt right and then I stuck with it. Things pretty much fell in place once I got that done

. I am most proud of the ending to the music. I really like the way it end because its very full of tension and very dramatic and then the music is softer and then ends. I think that really fit her insanity and ultimately her death by suicide. This was a dramatic play and I think that fits well.

There are things I would have changes about the music. I would have made a few different choices about maybe using a higher or lower key at times. I believe music is never going to be perfect and with every composing project I do there is something I would change. My music is never going to be perfect; but that's something I really appreciate about the art form. Its a constant strive for perfection we will never reach.

I learned that there are many many ways to show the same concept. People made art in many ways, like sculptures and someone did something dominos and the crown. I didn't think that with something so old, such as Macbeth, that it could be so relevant today and that kinds who are 14/15 could produce such creative things with it.

I learned that I really like using music to express things; that it really is a powerful art form. I never had the chance to use music in middle school for anything academic, so coming to high school and getting to use it has really been something powerful and different. When I read Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade I swore I didn't like Shakespeare; I thought it was very formal, stuffy, and irrelevant to the world today. But getting to use it in both academic and artistic mediums has made it much more powerful and interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXc5tXQm0Zg

The Corruption of Macbeth

Posted by Nashay Day in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:06 am

For my creative portion of my project, I chose 3 quotes from my thesis, and brought them to life in fashion sketches. Each color, and garment, represents an adjective that I feel Macbeth or Lady Macbeth exhibited at that specific point in time.

I have a weird creative process when sketching fashion designs, I go outside and look for inspiration, I try to close my eyes as least as possible because anything you see can inspire you. When I found inspiration, I then went straight to my pencil, markers, rulers, and, paper, and got right to sketching. I spent 1 day for each sketch because I wrote a a brief dialogue discussing why I chose the colors, and garment options for each quote.

I encountered various difficulties throughout my creative process, I did not have enough time to put forth the quality that I wanted. I wish I could go back and give myself more time and manage the time that I had much more wisely.

I learned from the feedback of my peers, that my sketches could have been better, but my reasoning behind them was phenomenal.

I learned that I can put forth much more effort. If I set intermediate deadlines for myself, I would have been able to bring much more to the table for this creative piece.

The Domino Effect

Posted by Anna Sugrue in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 10:03 am

My project is shows how Lady Macbeth and her crazed schemes pushed the first domino in the domino effect of tragic events in Macbeth, that eventually led to both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's deaths.

The process for creating my final creative piece was a fairly easy one. I wrote the quotes from my essay on dominos, and made clay figures to represent events that corresponded with the quotes. One problem I encountered during the creation process was the fluency of the domino effect. Two of my clay figures were too heavy, and the the bases too wide. I rasped the fronts of those two figurines so that they would tip forward with more ease. The Macduff figurine with the toothpick sword could not knock over the final dead Macbeth either, so I added more dominos. By the end of my presentations, the domino effect worked beautifully.
I am most proud of the way the domino effect corresponds so well with my essay. the dominos and the clay figurines give a fluid, fast paced, and hands on version of my interpretation of the play. It was easy to explain and easy to understand, and it demonstrated exactly what I wanted to say. If I had the chance, (and the sculpting skills) I would make the figurines easier to identify. I would also add more quotes to further demonstrate my point.
From doing this project, I learned I could create a smooth good looking presentation without any procrastination stress. This is the first project I have completed in a long time where I completed it long before the due date and felt fully satisfied with the results. In the future, I will try harder to complete projects before I get frighteningly close to the due date, to limit the amount of stress.
Domino effect video coming soon.

The Rise & Fall of Macbeth

Posted by David Leonard in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 9:56 am

My project is about the rise & fall of Macbeth. This is a creative extension of the Macbeth quote analysis that shows how Macbeth betrayed his friends and country.
My process in crafting the creative portion was thinking of the type of creative portion I should do, finding the pictures for the short story, and finding the right dialogue to use. The difficulties I had were finding the pictures and thinking of the creative portion. I overcame them by looking up specific events from Macbeth and narrowing down types of creative portions I could do. I am most proud of how the pictures match the event well because I had a hard time finding a few of them. If I was given the chance I would add a little more dialogue before and after the quote.
What I learned from the presentations was that a lot of people preferred to do Macbeth more than Lady Macbeth. As a result from doing this project I learned that I prefer the non-digital ones more than the videos.

Macbeth Creative Piece

Posted by Esperanza Gonzalez in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 9:56 am

This a creative piece that shows Macbeth's downfall experience. I decided to draw for my creative piece. These two drawings are drawn by me. I decided to draw these two pictures because I thought it was pretty interesting connection to the book. In the first drawing I have the trees on the bottom and the hill with a sword at the top. During Macbeth, he said that the only way he'll be destroyed was if The Birman Wood marched to Dunsinane Hill, we all know that trees can't walk, therefore this would never happen. In the second drawing I interpret the trees actually walking up to the hill. This means that Macbeth if finally destroyed and taken down. My process of this creative piece, was rough. I spend 5 hours drawing both pieces. The one thing I would change about this would be the background, I think I could of done more than just black and white. I learned that it’s very difficult to interpret someone else’s work without having them explain it you. It all makes sense after. What I learned about myself was that I’m capable of drawing both drawings in one day. I never knew that I could actually finish both pieces in one day. It took a long time, but the effort I put in to it, reflects the quality of my work.

Creative Project about Macbeth

Posted by Dillon Hershey in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 9:55 am

This is my creative project to accompany the Macbeth analytical essay. My project is crayon art about the downfall of Macbeth and how greed, his power hungry mind and his ruthlessness influenced his downfall. While I was crafting this project, I really wanted to portray what made him insane and what made him fall into a downward spiral. I chose to use crayons and melt them for each act. I bought a canvas and split it into 5 different sections, one for each act. Then I counted how many kills he made for each act, how much his greed influenced him in that act and how much power he had and used. The red was for the kills/ruthlessness, the green was for the greed and the purple was for the power. Then I glued the crayons down with hot glue.

But before I melted the crayons, I wrote the quotes I used in the essay on the lines separating the acts from each other. I also wrote what act was what on the bottom. Then I got to the fun part, the melting of the crayons. I used a hair dryer on high and pointed it downwards to make the crayons run down the canvas. I am most proud of the way the colors blended together and how much that corresponded with the story without me trying to. Something that I wish that I could have done is take a video of it while I was melting the crayons so the viewers could see how the colors blended. Other than that minor flaw, I am really proud of my work. I learned from my peers that even with other types of medium, people can have the same type of story. I learned about myself while working on this project because I learned that if I keep reminding myself to get it done earlier, I could get the work done and not procrastinate. And thanks to Lauren Thomas for taking these lovely pictures fo my project.

Creative Macbeth BM Portion

Posted by Joseff Filamor in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 9:53 am

I was always curious towards the death of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare writes about her death, but not about how or why she killed herself. For my creative piece of my benchmark, I wrote a suicide note from Lady Mac's point of view that tells Macbeth's change throughout the book. My process was thinking of the right type of creative piece to do, then writing it in the correct manner.. Which is the thing I had the most difficulties with; correct dialogue. I couldn't write it as a 9th grade student, I had to write it from the perspective of a Queen from the 1600's. I mostly am proud of how lengthy it came out to be. Although, I would go back and change the placements of some of my quotes. A couple of my quotes are hard to understand because of the place I put them in their paragraph. Nevertheless, I'm still proud of how it came out.

Greed Will Be Your Downfall-Creative Portion Zoe Schwingel-Sauer

Posted by Zoe Schwingel-Sauer in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 9:47 am

This project was the creative extension of my quote analysis of Lady Macbeth; In the beginning of the book Lady Macbeth is a greedy and manipulative character, however after Duncan is killed, guilt eats away at her heart as she becomes fragile and depressed. This project shows that greed is the downfall of Lady Macbeth.

My process during this portion of the project was all about using the art supplies and the utilities available to me. I started with painting my hands red and the stamping "bloody" handprints across the poster board as my background. I then took five separate pieces of blank paper and for each paper I had a quote that was the inspiration for it. For every piece of paper I did a collage of pictures that showed Lady Macbeth's personality and mindset at the time.

One difficulty I encountered during this project was deciding what to put on each piece of paper that related to the quotes. Lady Macbeth is very complex and for most collages I couldn't just put one picture in it. I found it somewhat difficult to decide what exact items to draw or paint onto the paper. In the end I decided to put what I felt most represented Lady Macbeth and look at some of the interactions with Macbeth.

On this project I am most proud of my final product, and more specifically my collages that relate to each quote. I spent a long time on each collage deciding what exactly to put into it, and then executing it. I really enjoy painting, but to me I have to be really precise to be happy with my work, so it took me awhile to get it how I like, but I am really proud of my end product.

If I had the chance to redo my project, I think the only thing I would change is get a bigger poster board so I could have bigger collages to show more aspects of Lady Macbeth given the certain quote. I say this because since Lady Macbeth has so much depth to her character it would've been nice to include a little more.

I didn't get to see a lot of my colleagues' presentations, but from the ones I did see I learned that there are many ways you can interpret the quotes and put it into your own creative project. Everyone's projects reflected who they were in a certain way by showing what creative art form they used. I also saw the transition much clearer from different points of views.

I learned that when I do creative projects I really like to combine multiple art forms to get (in my opinion) a better end piece. I didn't just use paint, I used paint, pastels, magazine clippings, my hands, and pencils. I also learned that I don't just like to give the "big picture" of a quote, I also like to show the little things that give the character more depth.

Macbeth Creative Portion

Posted by Michaela Prell in English 1 - Dunn on Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 9:09 am

This creative project was inspired by the quote, “My hands are of the same color, but I shame to wear a heart so white” (Act 2 Scene 2, lines 76-77) Lady Macbeth tells Macbeth this after the two of them kill King Duncan. What she means buy this is that she has no problem getting her hands dirty from the blood of others if it means she will gain power. This also means that she is glad she does not have a pure white heart like her husband. This sculpture also represents the evolution of Lady Macbeth’s character. At first she is similar to the bloody hand. She is willing to do anything to get what she wants. She then starts to regret what she has done. At this point she wishes that she had a pure white heart, instead of bloody hands.
The sculpture is made out of two things, air dry clay, and this material I found the recipe for called “paper mache clay”. I started by sculpting the hand and the heart and then waited for them to dry. After the heart dried I painted it white with acrylic paint and glued the quote to it. At this point the hand was not fully dry, but it was dry enough to paint, so I painted it with oil paint. It turned out that using oil paint was a mistake because it did not dry fast enough and was still wet when I brought it into school. My main issue was with my materials not drying as fast as I thought they would. If I were to do this again i would either use materials that dry dafter, or allowed myself more time, so that they could dry properly.
I learned a lot from my colleagues about how they interpreted Macbeth similarly to me, and differently from me. In this project, I am most proud of the hand that I made, because I think it looks very realistic. The hand is the right size for a parson, and the colors (especially of the blood) seem just right. From doing this creative project, I realized how much I enjoy making things with my hands. I knew that I like giving my hands something to do, but this allowed me to take that, and make something with it.