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[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

For my final project I did a 24 hourly comic, most of the comic is from my day of 4/21 and the last page is from 4/22 as I fell asleep haha, but I managed to do 24 hours worth of panels.  I really enjoyed doing this project as it is a representation of myself in a sense, one of my favourite hobbies is drawing, and this comic represents one of the 24 hours in my life makes it more personal and more of who I am than anything else.  I had considered voice acting everything and putting the comic to video but it proved to be too difficult as I would not be able to accurately get everyone’s voices correct and I would not be sure how to pace the video without the VA as everyone reads at different speeds, so instead here’s a 15 second video of a panel from 4/21′s 6pm-7pm for a better idea of what happened

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwsQwpYM6ctMNm13SzVSQl8tWVU/view?usp=sharing

I got help from my friend Viktorija (who was vaguely mentioned in some of the panels as just my Russian friend) for the video, you can find more serious forms of her work here

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

FINAL FINAL proposal: 24 hours of my life

I’m going to change my project to be a 24 hour daily comic. Basically what I’m going to do is do two panels for each hour for one whole day. An example of a 24 hour comic can be found here

Regardless if nothing interesting really happens during that hour I am going to force myself to draw something even if it’s just a passing thought that I’ve had.

I would like to show the comic in it’s raw form, so the entirety like the example shown, as well as a video form of it so that you do not have to scroll to read it with music maybe to go with it. (if I can get cooperation I would like to voice over the comic for the video but it may prove difficult if I cannot get the cooperation of the people I included in the comic to voice their own lines haha...though it would be funny if I did everyone’s voices myself)  Like the example shown I will write a short paragraph about the day and how I went about the project.

This represents myself as it is a documentation of a day in my life as well as something that I consider one of my favourite hobbies, drawing.

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

Final Selfie Project

For my Selfie Project I have the idea of taking many pictures of people and things as well as events that made up who I am and then turn it into a picture mosaic of an actual selfie of myself.  I can use photoshop to create this image.  The idea itself is sort of a pun because I could choose to take a bunch of selfies and then mosaic it into ultimately a bigger selfie that I have taken of myself haha.  Regardless, I want the meaning most of all to get across as it is a bunch of pictures from my life that make me who I am but also are making up a picture of myself.

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

I really liked this as it looked like a mini segment for like a news interview or one of those variety show interviews.  It is very clean and very well put together and light-hearted. It is very professional looking and impressive that it was put together in imovie.  I don’t have much to say about it as I don’t think there’s anything that needs critique about it.

NOTE: 

Due to our conflicting schedules,I was not able to go through with my original idea of interviewing my friend, Kevin, and his opinions on  the relationship between cultural/economic background and career path. Instead, I decided to interview my cousin, Josh, and his interest in magic tricks/illusions. I asked him:

What/who got you into magic?

What about magic appealed to you? 

How often do you practice illusions/tricks? 

Do you use magic as a way to destress? 

Have you always liked entertaining people? 

What advice do you have for people getting into magic?

This interview was filmed with my iPhone and was edited using iMovie. I decided that filming this interview was the best direction because I was able to incorporate some of the Josh’s illusions. Some tricks may not be perfect and others may be too simple, but that is why I titled this as “The Joker: Answers from an Amateur”.

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

I thought this was a lot of fun thanks again for commissioning me haha. I found it interesting you were able to incorporate 3 languages.  Honestly I think my only gripe about it is the title screen as something else could’ve been done with it and maybe only putting the English translation at the bottom rather than the Swedish and Japanese so that way you don’t have to wait for Oskar and you to finish saying what you wanted to say and have a direct translation.  Though it can’t exactly be helped by now as you said the computer crashed and the files are now lost.  It’s quite alright though, as this was a unique and different approach.

CW Interview in Three Languages

(A/N: My computer crashed and i lost my files for the project so I wasn’t able to update it but at least i was still able to record it with a screen capture software, if you’d like to play it there are dl links in a previous  post!)

This is the interview I did with my boyfriend, Oskar Westin. He lives in Sweden and is currently visiting me now. He’s half-Finnish but only grew up being born into the Swedish language, he learned English because it’s a global language, and he learned Japanese because he wanted to! This is an interview in all three languages with various questions for each. (I even try speaking all of them…)

Credit for art: @kaitiblogsstuff

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

Ocean Voung

I’m exactly sure how I can summarize this interview as he spoke so much about so many different things I wasn’t able to write everything down but I took down the things that I heard that caught most of my attention.

He believes that poetry came to him in the womb because his mother would sing while she was pregnant.

Poetry and Speech are things that go side by side.  Reading and Writing came late but poetry was always there.

Memory operates through image.  Moving out of home was like immigrating

First 5 years of America, in a small Vietnamese village, thrown into English environment in kindergarten, did not understand what he was doing wrong bc did not understand the language.

Not understanding the pledge of allegiance, faking it because of inability to understand English.

Learned that he has many learning disabilities that run in his family, family stemmed from rice farmers, did not need to read, most exchanged via words and visual rather than text.  Learned to read at 11-12. Has dyslexia.

Sees different words within words, sees each letter as its own thing.  Brother has heavier dyslexia, more anxiety when it comes to text.

Books are a refuge.

Put out book with title across his mother’s face, told her it was “artsy” “I can’t talk about the abstract so much because our language starts to fail between my mother and I. The more words I know in English the further away I move from my family.  It’s a dichotomy I struggle with as a writer.”

I heard you’re a writer, I’ll tell you a real story.

Every time he thinks deep into the question, imagination, text, etc.  “This is important to me, and I can only hope it is important to someone else.”

Fear of Judgement.

Wrote with a lot of freedom as he was not concerned with what was going to happen.

“This does not contain me, but I can make a world that does contain me as an author.” A Realm of Control.

“Love is best when it is dependable, mundane, and just there.  Embodied in the sense that it is in everything we do”

Believes that love is something that you create and work at and build.

Somewhere in language there is a dna of how you write.

Takes his influences of other writers with him, also his grandmother and mother, no distinction between his influences and it is the sum total of those people.

Proud of him as his parents called him a scholar and proud that he was reading and writing. “This is wonderful, but when will you open your nail salon”

Mother went to first reading, and mother was crying after the reading. “I never thought I’d see these old white people clapping for my son”

Never really has a routine, writes at night. Makes most of his living doing lectures and such.

Experiences are his life, everything is work and not work at the same time.

Does not write every night but writes AT night.

“when you listen to music, what does it mean?”

Poetry is sort of the reverse, the poem is a feeling, is there a note to this feeling? How is it described, etc.

How does jazz become funk to hiphop etc. evolution of music. Saw that there was a rhythm to how people spoke, how does it relate to the people and the ambience.

Turning towards prose rather than poetry lately. Came from oral tradition, “I’m going to tell you a poem” like “I’m going to tell you a story”, the lines are different and the rhythm is different because it was oral. Wants to see if he can recapture the themes in Nightsky into prose.

Not sure if wanting to try something different or maybe a desire to create a novel.

Excited about this chameleon form of what’s poetry and prose.

Does not experience “writer’s block” as he is suspicious of the term and how it is valued with production. he believes it is a real thing but more of the feeling of shame. He redefines work for himself where it’s not about how many pages or words. The question is “did my day help contribute to my work and if it did it was successful”

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

Q&A Interview

Q: Is there anything that you remember from living in Peru?

A: The streets that I grew up in are what I remember most vividly. The streets having a mix of dirt and road, family owned and operated stores and restaurants nearby; the sound of bus callers that let the people know that a bus is coming. These are all memories that I have from my time in Peru.

Q: What elements of your culture stick with you today?

A: Food and the way my family celebrates many different holidays such as Christmas and New Years.  We feel that our style of food and cooking are one of our strongest links to our home country.

Q: Is there anything in particular that you believe makes you Peruvian aside from your heritage? (i.e. cultural aspect, the way you comprehend or associate things, your mentality)

A: Little quirks like having the need to carry multiple things into the home or rooms, how I greet my fellow countryman, how I form my opinions on people and build my relationships with family and friends.

Q: Our cultures, Chinese and Peruvian, do have a mix culture that is in Peru, aside from food do you think there was any other cultural influences they shared? If so, do you have an example?

A: Unfortunately I don't believe that either culture had much of an influence on the other.  Peru, being a very conservative country, would provide many challenges and hardships for Chinese immigrants that arrived on their shores.  If anything, over the years both cultures have come to integrate each others customs in very specific parts of Peru.

Q: In my culture, we have various festivals for various occasions, does Peru have anything similar?

A: Every September a festival named "Mistura" (Mixture in Portuguese) takes place in Lima, Peru.  It is a grand festival for chefs from not only Peru, but all across Latin America to come and share their expertise with people. During Mistura many of Peru's famous dishes are served to many people. 

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

I think that you have a really different idea than anyone else as everyone else is kind of doing something that is more personal to people rather than opinions and stances on such. I think it’d be an interesting topic as you have opposing views on this topic with him and I just hope that it doesn’t turn into an argument. I think your questions are pretty clear and would give you good feedback and I think the idea of recording over facetime would be pretty interesting as nowadays people have work interviews over skype or facetime so it fits in with today’s times.  I don’t really have much feedback as I’m not sure what else I add as it’s an interesting topic in itself.

Interview Proposal

I plan on interviewing my significant other on his stance on capital punishment. 

This country is in it’s biggest divide because of the government and the people. People are constantly challenging in the ideas specifically of color and violence. 

My boyfriend began passionately talking about how we should bring back capital punishment. I was mortified hearing about him talking about how to deal with these sorts of criminals who commit extreme acts of violence.

These are the few couple of questions regarding the interview.

- What benefits do you see in capital punishment? 

- Why do you think this country is trying to get rid of it?

- Explain why the countries who have it continue to use it?

- What do you think causes someone to commit these acts?

- Who should be paying to euthanize these people? 

- Are you religious?

- Do you value your life? 

- Do you value other lives?

- Would you take someone else’s life under the government?

I plan on recording this interview over facetime. It’d all be recorded at a live time with me asking the questions and truly hearing him out. It’ll be edited only to cut long pauses if it’s too long of a video. 

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

Interview Proposal

For my interview I would like to interview my boyfriend, Jose.  He is of Peruvian descent and is bilingual.  I would like to ask him about his culture, heritage, etc. and how that effects him in the world today.  I want to compare his answers with how I would have answered them as we are both parts of minority ethnic groups and strangely enough both of our cultures have mingled at points and there is actually a Chinese-Peruvian mixed culture in Peru so it is something I would also like to ask about or maybe we can explore and look into together.  I’m not sure if I would like to just audio record this interview or have it through text as I am not sure what would be most convenient at this time.

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

Questions for Ocean

What made you want to write poetry?

Is there something overall that inspires you to write?

When you write does it come naturally to you or do you have times where you are stuck and cannot write?

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

Film Proposal

You Won’t Believe How Good This Dog Is!

I decided to do a short video of my dog that I rarely get to see as he lives in NY with my dad.  Cozmo is a Golden Labrador mix and 9 years old, I got him when he was only 3 months old and he’s been a very big part of my life since. Cozmo lives the life and enjoys the snow, sleeping on the couch, walks and begging for food he knows he’s not allowed to have.  Cozmo means the world to me and personally this video is more than just snippets of his life, it’s me spending time with him and it’s hard to measure everything in 3 minutes.  I chose to mute the audio of the video and add in a cute song as I feel the background noises and such would just be distracting or strange to hear as there’s other things happening in the background aside from my dog which is what I wanted to focus on.  I titled the video “You won’t Believe How Good This Dog Is!” as a parody of clickbait videos that circulate around YouTube of dogs doing one trick or just in general being a dog.  One could interpret this video as a parody of clickbait videos or simply as the log of a dog going about his days, enjoying the snow, sleeping around much like a documentation of his life but in three minutes.  The most relevant videos would be of Cozmo playing in the snow, sitting before going back inside from a walk, and knowing that he is not allowed to touch the duck that is being prepped on the counter and instead eats his food.

I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the video as I do not have access to any other video editing software and it was free and readily available.  I used basic transitions as to not have the video be too jarring to the eye when the clips change rather than just cut transitions.  The music I used is just something cute to fit the mood of the video being about a dog.  The beginning is just simple footage of the snow we had during the break but it ties in because even though I might not be happy that my Spring break was freezing cold, my dog is always ecstatic to go out and roll around in it as seen in the video. This video is also something for myself, as sad as it is, my dog is 9 years old and only has a good 4-5 years left so I captured moments of him doing silly things, captured moments of him being lazy, doing his daily routines, and overall being a good dog.  Please don’t worry though, the video is not a sad one.

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

Tangerine

This movie was a wild ride, so much happened and a lot of it was unnecessary. There was about 3 different stories going on, you have the “main” story with Sin Dee who is trying to find Dinah, the girl that her pimp/boyfriend/fiance(?) cheated on her with, Alexandra who is just wants to do a show at a bar, and the taxi driver Razmik who has a rough day with work and spends a lot of his money buying transgender sexworkers as he is constantly stressed either from work or his mother in law.  It shows a lot of internal struggle within friends as well as family and asking yourself who can you trust.  What’s most impressive about this film is that it is recorded all on 3 iphone5s(s) and if I was not told this prior, I would have not guessed.  Though after knowing that it was filmed via phones, the movie does sort of look like a vlog or a youtube video of events happening on the streets at times.  The lighting is very natural looking but it does look like there are filters at some points in the movie just to enhance the scene. The movie itself flows very nicely and while it doesn’t make much sense at first with the Razmik, it does tie in and everything comes together at the end much like a regular book that mentions a lot of details that don’t seem to make sense at first but then later it does.

Personally, I feel this isn’t a great view for the LGBT+ community as this kind of gives the viewer the feel that all transgender people are sexworkers or this crazy and that this is the only thing they can do for money.  That being said I do feel like the character Alexandra is trying to get herself out of that hole by trying to sing at a club as well as staying away from the heavy drugs that Dinah and Sin Dee did.  Albeit she wasn’t hired to do so and had to pay to sing, it showed signs of her trying to get out of the loop. Overall all the drama happened because Alexandra accidentally told Sin Dee that Chester (Sin Dee’s pimp/boyfriend) cheated on her while she was in jail with Dinah.  It shows what happens on the streets with not specifically transgender sexworkers but sexworkers in general.  How some people like Razmik have a preference towards the transgender ones and others frown upon them similarly to what happens in the end with Sin Dee.  I don’t particularly think this was a bad movie/film but the fact that it so heavily featured transgender sexworkers and enforced that stereotype of transgender people being sex workers as we see in most movie tropes in the past.  It tells a good story and shows a lot of internal struggle with having to deal with oneself and one’s actions and how those actions can come back to get you later.

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

I think that this speaks volumes as it is a play on Trump’s words about Mexico about how they do not send their best, meanwhile we have people going to Mexico, Cancun specifically as the title suggests, for vacation and going crazy and partying a little too wildly. the inverted, monochrome colours give a sense of despair and distraught.

Chronicles of Cancun

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

I have no idea who this is, but I’m sure that whoever this person is they contradict what the quote is saying as they probably don’t do anything for their country. I wish I could say more but I honestly have no idea who this is so I can’t really evaluate on this too much, sorry.

Deceiving 

Nikko & Emmanuel

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

I really like the concept of this as it is very much as it relates to what we see today.  We have had many instances where White police officers have shot not only good Black people but other minorities as well.  The idea is very clear as you can tell that the person is an officer as you see the ring and the blue officer shirt and all he sees is the words in the glasses rather than an educated Black child/teen. I think it really speaks about what you want to say as it relates with current events as a lot of these words are bad stereotypes that sadly people have of Black people and other minorities.

Blinders - Text Art by Joy Awadalla and Sahil Chonkar

[kaitiblogsstuff-blog]

Kaitlyn Mui; Audrey Beralo