So, in the process of migrating my blog to hippie hosting my final reflection post was lost. I posted this on friday sometime, but it is now gone. So here it is again. This is my final post about my time in ds106. I am sad to be done with ds106 for this semester, but I am keeping my website so be on the look out for more stuff next semester!
For my final project I chose to make animated GIFs of fish. I am a biology and math major here at UMW. Biology is by far my favorite, and what I plan to do with my life. Furthermore, within the field of biology, marine biology is my favorite. For as long as I can remember my goal has been to attend Virginia Institute of Marine Science for grad school. I have taken two classes about fish. One was here at UMW, and the other was at Highlands Biological Station in Highlands, North Carolina. Also, I grew up near the Bay and love to go fishing in my free time. I guess you could say I really love fish. I hope one day to study, or have a career involving fish.
At the beginning of the semester Jim taught me how to make animated GIFs, and I sort became obsessed with them. I made them for every assignment possible. When it became time to think about a final project, I knew I wanted to do something with animated GIFs. With Jim’s help I decided to do the animated GIFs of fish. This allowed me to put together two of my favorite things.
I tried to make animated GIFs I have caught, or learned about to some extent. That way I could give a little background information about the fish in the post. The fish I ended up using are some of my favorite fish. I found all my images of the fish off google. I linked to the sources of the images in each individual animated GIF post. So check out each post if you are interested in finding the sources. I used GIMP to make all my animated GIFs. The lasso tool was the most important tool in making the GIFs. For most I simply used the lasso tool to select a certain area, and copied that area. I then either rotated the piece or placed it in a different position on the fish to make it seem as if the fish are moving. Finally, you save the animations and you have your animated GIF.
I hope that everyone learned a little bit about fish through my project. I wish I had more time to make some more fish, but the impending finals are taking up too much of my time. I do want to try to make an animated fish tank to put all my animated fish in. Also, it would be cool to add some different fish to the collection. I think if I have some free time next semester I am going to see if I can get this aquarium made. Jim, I might need you help on this!
I just finished taking my last lab practical for my Biology of Fishes course, and I thought it would be a good time to make my last fish animated GIF for my final project. For this practical we had to know about 50 marine fish from around here. We had to know their common name, family name, and scientific name. We had to do the same thing for freshwater species around here. The marine test was easier in the aspect that the fish were easy to tell apart, but some of the scientific names were very hard to remember. I chose one of my favorite fish from this practical to make a animated GIF of. This fish is called the Northern Sea Robin. We caught these on our field trip down to North Carolina, and they are pretty neat fish. They have huge pectoral fins to move around. They actually have nothing to do with flying fish, and are actually bottom dwellers. Their name comes from the large fins, which they use to move around the bottom of the ocean. They also have lots of spines around their head which makes them dangerous to pick up. The long thin fins that you see closest too the mouth are used for sensory. The fish uses them to feel along the bottom of the ocean. I found this picture of northern sea robin, and opened it up in GIMP. I then used the lasso tool to copy the portions of the fins I wanted to animate. I then moved the around to make it seem as if they are moving. The final step was to save the image as a GIF.
The next assignment I created was a visual assignment. For this assignment you take a picture you have taken and change the colors in the picture to make it better or to get the point of the picture across better. I chose a picture I took one summer at the beach. We drew a heart in the sand and took a picture of the wave coming in and the heart in the sand. I stated out by opening the original image in GIMP. Here is the original image:
Next, I used the lasso tool to select the heart part of the picture only. The following screen shot shows the heart selected.
Now that the heart was selected I could do things to the photo, and they would only be done to the heart. I went up to the top of the GIMP program and clicked the color tab. Under this drop down menu there was a button called colorize. The following screenshot shows where this can be found.
I next used this colorize tool to change the color of the heart. I slid the hue bar back and forth until I found this correct pink color for the heart. The following screen shot shows how the hue bar was adjusted. The other bars such as saturation could be adjusted too, but I liked the colors I found by adjusting the hue bard.
The other part of the picture I wanted to colorize was the water. I thought it looked boring clear so I decided to change the color. I once again used the lasso tool to select only the water. I next used the colorize tool and adjusted the hue in order to turn the water into a nice blue color. The following screen shot shows the adjustments I made to the hue bar for the water.
The final step was to save the file as a jpeg and upload it to flickr so I could embed it into the post. Here is the final product:
I decided to create a new audio assignment. The title of this assignment is My Favorite Song. For this assignment you must pick your favorite song, and use clips from that song to describe why that is your favorite song. My favorite song is Chuggin’ Along by Luke Bryan. The lyrics int his song are great and really good to live by.
I used audacity to complete this assignment. I first started about to recording and introduction. In this introduction I just talked about what I was going to do and introduced the song. Here is a screen shot of audacity showing one track in place. Many of you are probably familiar with audacity so I simply used the record button to record this first track.
I next recorded the beginning few lines of the song. I simply added a second track and lined them up so they would play back to back. Here is another screen shot from audacity showing the two tracks lined up correctly.
I next continued adding new tracks. I alternated between myself explaining the particular lines, and then actual lines from the song. I would play the song and then describe why that part of the song was important too me. I finished with a closing statement. The final step was to export the file. This next screen shot shows where the export button is located under the file drop down menu.
The final step in exporting is to name the track. This final screen shot shows how you name a track.
The last thing I did was upload the mp3 file to sound cloud so that I could easily embed it into this post. I really liked describing why Chuggin’ Along is my favorite song, and I recommend y’all to listen to it.
On friday I went on a field trip for my biology of fishes class. We went out on a research boat out of Morehead City, North Carolina. There was a trawling net that was pulled behind the boat. We probably went offshore about 6 and 7 miles and pulled the trawling nets. It was a lot of fun and I liked seeing all the fish. We caught about 22 different species. Some of the common ones we caught were skates, croaker, lizardfish, spot, butterfish, and more. One of my favorite was the striped burrfish. We caught two different species of pufferfish, but this one was my favorite. He had very pretty colors and patterns. His name fits him because he has stripes and burrs on him. Everyone in the class wanted to hold him, so we all passes him around. This has to be done carefully since the burrs could be prickly. He was puffed up and would just sit in your hands. It was so neat to get to hold him. I went onto google and found this picture of the striped burrfish. I then made an animated GIF in gimp so that his fins would be moving like he was swimming through the water. Here a picture of me holding the striped burrfish on the boat as well as my animated GIF.
Here is an update on my daily creates from this week.
4/22/12- Tell a story using only 7 words (repeated words are okay and articles don’t count!) I recorded a story about getting holding a puffer fish on a field trip for my biology of fishes class.
4/21/12- Using a picture taken today, add a caption or title from todays news headlines. I was at home for the weekend and took a picture of a pretty blooming bush at my house. I added the front page headline from our local paper to the picture. Even though the two don’t really go together they both make me happy.
4/20/12- Take a picture of a word or sign that represents the kind of day you’re having. I went on a field trip for my biology of fishes classes. We ate at bojangles on the way back from the trip. This represents how awesome my day was because I go to catch fish on the field trip.
I chose to create the animated GIF for this fish because I have learned a little bit about it through my fish classes. This fish is called the red breasted sunfish, and its scientific name is Lepomis auritus. This fish belongs to the sunfish family, and lives in freshwater. It is very common in this part of the country. I took a class last summer at Highlands Biological Station in Highlands, NC. The class was titled Fishes of the Southern Appalachian. This was one fish we caught on our field trips with seine nets, and we learned a lot about its family. Also, we were there during the peak breeding season for many freshwater fish. Part of our grade was to walk around the ponds, and rivers in the area looking for fish nest or fish breeding. There was one pond in particular on the property that had a lot of sunfish nests. The following is a picture of a Lepomis auritus nest I found here on google. Each of the light colored sandy circles is a sunfish nest. These nests are where they go to spawn.
One day during the class we were walking around looking for spawning fish and we came upon an active Lepomis auritus nest. It was really neat to see this and we all stood about 10 feet from the nest watching. The male sunfish was protecting the nest and chasing off a big bass that kept trying to come in the nest to eat the eggs. Even though the sunfish was much smaller than the bass he was still going to protect his nest. It was so cool to see this in real life, and I will probably never see it again. Here is the animated GIF I made of the red breasted sunfish.
Here is an update of this weeks daily creates!
4/15/12- Record one side of a conversation; the other side not audible. End with a question.
For this assignment I recorded a phone conversation about meeting my parents outside of my apartment once they get here.
4/14/12- Take a photo of a bumper sticker; what is the relationship to the vehicle it is on?
I took a picture of a turtle bumper sticker my friend got me from her spring break trip. I haven’t put it on my car yet, but it is the perfect bumper sticker for me because turtles are my favorite animal.
4/12/12-Take a photo from behind someones head looking at something.
I took a picture from behind my friends head looking out onto the softball field about to take batting practice.
This will be my last remix assignment. Even though I have enjoyed working not these remix assignments I am glad to have them finished because I have a lot of other work to do for next week. The remix generator gave me the Splash the Color Assignment with the opposer remix card. I thought this was a really good combination and would be a fun assignment to complete. It was also good that a lot of people had already completed the Splash the Color assignment so it gave me a lot of assignments to choose to remix.
I started by looking through the completed assignments to find one I liked. I wanted to make sure the one I chose had the original photo before they splashed the color in their blog. That way it would make the editing process easier. I came across this beautiful flower splash the color and thought It would be perfect for this remix. This assignment was executed amazingly and I thought it would be cool to switch it up. I decided the opposite of the Splash the Color assignment would be to leave everything in the original color and make one object black and white.
I started by saving the original image used in the splash the color assignment. I uploaded this to aviary. I then selected the single flower so that I could only make that flower black and white. I decided to select the flower that was originally left as purple when everything else was black and white. I thought it was going to be more difficult than it was trying to make only one spot black and white, but the select too made this is. After I selected the flower all I had to do was use the desaturate tool. This remix assignment was worth 5 stars. 2 for the original assignment, and 3 for the remix card. I know have 18 total remix stars.
