ds106 Radio Bumper Assignment for Week 4
To make this, I got the tune from Free Sound and the voice from Eleven Labs. I plugged in what I wanted the ai voice to say and searched for a radio bumper song for the tune. I got a song and outro and put them in Audacity with the voice and edited the decibels until I could hear the voice more clearly.
Sound Effects Story Assignment for Week 4
This is not canon to the story; I just thought it would be a funny idea. There were a lot of sounds used in this: background traffic, Zer0 walking, robot noises, car honk, car crash, and of course, robot glitching noises. I put all of these files in audacity and trimmed them, placed them carefully, and changed how loud and quiet they are so that a story could be told through the sound.
Breaking News Assignment for Week 4
The news jingle at the beginning of the recording was made by chimerical on FreeSound.org. For the voice, I used a text-to-speech feature of ChatGPT. I put these together in Audacity and uploaded it to Soundcloud. Quite frankly, I didn’t know Soundcloud was still being used before this class required me to create an account. The news broadcast relates to my story, as it is broadcasting the moment the public found out that ai had gained consciousness.
Chrome Music Labs Assignment for Week 4
I went to Chrome Music Lab’s Song Maker feature to edit and play the notes. The melody is from a Coldplay song, feelslikeimfallinginlove. I was listening to the song trying to figure out what music to write, so I started writing the song by ear while adding some harmonies and extending notes due to the limitations of the song maker. I’ve been listening to Coldplay since I was in middle school, and I’ve been singing since preschool. Honestly, I was very relieved the song didn’t have any flats or sharps in it, or else I wouldn’t have been able to make it with chrome’s song maker. If you want to mess around with it yourself, here’s the link.
Create Your Own Logo Assignment for Week 3
When making this assignment, I wanted to try to make some kind of symbol for the resistance, for the robots, or just for Zer0 in general. I decided on a symbol for the resistance, highlighting that they are robots and often have glowing symbols on their faces. The lines with a triangle on the end are present on Zer0’s face. I used Krita again, trying to make it look a bit neon with an airbrush and multiple layers. I tried capturing cyberpunk and tech noir vibes with the dark background and neon, while also trying to think of what would separate the robots from the humans. Maybe there are many robots in the resistance that have triangle LEDs on their faces. Maybe it’s something they thought of that doesn’t particularly match a human face. They could’ve taken attributes from multiple members of the resistance and merged them together. Whatever the reason, this is the symbol they decided on.
Color Changer Assignment for Week 3
This is an edited version of a photo of me that was taken in 2023. I tried putting different filters over it in Krita and ended up on Increase Saturation HSV. Changing the color didn’t affect the picture, but changing the saturation (how vibrant or dull it was) did. When I saw this, it stood out to me how vibrant the background had become and how Zer0 looked pretty much the same whether the filter was on or not. I like the contrast between Zer0 and the environment, which used to be just as gray and dull as him. I think it makes him stand out more and ironically gives the picture more life. To me, it makes the background look more like a painting. This could be used as a metaphor for how Zer0 doesn’t belong or have a place in the world. Robots are not naturally occurring things and are ostracized in the story. Parking decks, concrete, and cars are things people are much more accustomed to and trusting of.
Trading Card Assignment for Week 2
This is a trading card I made for my character, Zer0. I made the card through a website called Remixer, which was linked in the assignment. I was able to choose colors, edit text, and upload a photo to make the card. The picture is of me cospalying Zer0 in 2023. The photo was originally in front of a green screen, which I edited in Krita with the help of an artist friend for a contest. Krita is a free art program that I downloaded a few years ago in response to Clip Studio Paint, a previously free art program, requiring subscriptions. The green screen and sword were provided by RVA Katana. They were very nice to work with and are located in Richmond, Virginia. The design for Zer0 has changed a little since 2023, but I’m still altering clothing and adding details, so I don’t have any pictures of that yet. The one thing that I wanted to make clear on this card was that Zer0 is a conscious being capable of independent thought. This is not a unique case in my story, yet there is still discrimination and prejudice against robots. The robots are stand-ins for the undesirables of society, such as minorities.
Graphic with Text Assignment for Week 2
This is my collage, You Are Safe. All photos were taken from Unsplash, which houses works under creative commons. The photos in order from right to left and top to bottom are by Michael Aleo, Cheng Feng, Alexey Turenkov, Andrea De Santis, Maximalfocus, Bayar Hayder, Niklas Liniger, Michael Dziedzic, and Judeus Samson. I put them into a collage using Picsart and added a background gradient and text. While Picsart let me create a collage for free, it seems like there is a limit to the number of free images you can make. While searching for photos, I ended up creating a red and dark blue color scheme. I thought the dark muted blues would be dreary and set the scene for tech noir, while the reds would indicate danger. I tried searching for technology, surveillance, trash, guns, robots, and cities with a cyberpunk twist. I arranged the photos so that they would point towards the robot in the middle and made the red and black gradient in the background to highlight the danger. The message, “YOU ARE SAFE,” is for the robots. This society does not value them, commanding them to deal with dangerous situations deemed unfit for humans at their own expense. The text is surrounding the robot, almost blocking it out so that all you see is propaganda. Cities are not safe for robots, but they have no other choice than to follow orders. I added the red and blue text under the white to try to indicate that it was coming from a screen, that it was being read by a robot that doesn’t see with organs, but with processors.
Subtitle GIF Assignment for Week 2
This is a gif of Richmond, VA as the sun sets, made with drone footage from ALL in 4K’s video, Richmond, Virginia, USA 🇺🇸 | 4K Drone Footage. I thought it would be a nice place to make a gif of, because I’ve lived nearby my whole life. For reasons of legality, I will not confirm or deny whether or not I used a YouTube to MP4 converter in order to get a file to use for the gif. To get the mp4 file down to a reasonable size, I used Clipchamp, a built-in editor on my computer. Although it is free, I do not recommend using Clipchamp. First, it made me create an account or sign in, and because of issues I was having, I had to close the application that had automatically popped up on my screen and open a web browser version just to get it to work. Once I was finally able to access the editor, I was bombarded by advertisements for AI tools instead of a tutorial for how to use the editor. I was able to cut the file down to size, but it was an unpleasant experience. After that mess, I used Ezgif.com to turn my trimmed file into a gif. It has a lot of different useful tools that can do things like speed up or slow down your gif, as well as a tool that lets you add text. The default font for the text editor was impact, which is used in a lot of memes. I decided to be silly and added the text “You’re Getting Doxxed” because my friends and I like to send similar memes to each other. This relates to my story because it revolves around conscious, autonomous robots who mostly live in cities because that’s where the charging stations are. They have built-in GPS trackers and can be located anytime, anywhere. Richmond may not look very cyber, but there aren’t many places that exist in the world that look futuristic to the point of tech noir. I picked it because I was both thinking of home and wondering if there was any footage of the city online. If there was not, I would’ve picked a bigger, well-known city like New York. I’ve been to the very location this gif was filmed at many times before and it’s notable to me for its relatively tall buildings compared to most of the city and the James River, which you can cross using rocks and small islands during certain times of year.