Looking back at past readings, looking forward to the essay about the movie-making process

Some of the readings that I think would be useful for this reason are obviously the first 2 books that we read, Strunk and White and Williams book's. Those can be used for anything that you are writing on because they are pretty much just grammar books. I also think that Ong could have some sort of a connection with this, his writing was about writing as a technology after all. McCloud could also fit in here, because in a way a short movie could be like a comic. You could always break it up into one easily enough. Most of the readings that we have done in class could be related to this essay and project in one way or another.

YouTube/Low-bridge videos: Are they good? Are they bad? Are they writing?

So far the process hasn't been too bad. Everything has its own bumps though, so it was expected. The actual video making is fun, but could be more fun if we all didn't have to work and go to school for so much time. Given enough time you could make a pretty good movie to teach people a little something about writing. I think that there is a gap in the writing process and video making process. This is not because it is a video, but because it's an extremely low budget video. With proper tools and editing, or atleast a better understanding of the editing, than the video could be much more informative. I can see a small point for Anderson's argument, but I think it could be better if there was a better website for the work that we are doing. There should be a learning video website, where only learning videos could be posted, and they were organized. Putting these video's on youtube does make the whole idea of this video as a learning tool kinda useless. I can't even find our video on youtube anymore. There is no organization, and way too many videos. I think that if the video's were made better and if ther was a better website, I think that this process could work a lot better.

Reading and Writing about Comics ala McCloud, Part 2

After glancing at a few of the comics that our class mates chose, I found one that was interesting to me. It was Alena's post about the comic Croaker's Gorge by Steven Ogden. That cartoon was funny to me because it was pretty much the way I grew up. I used to live in the city, then my mother made us move out into the country when I was about 10 years old. Being a kid, I would rather sit inside and play games with my friends online or on the console, than go outside and play in the corn. The comic she found was funny because of this reason, it directly related to me and my experiences growing up. It's also funny that the kid just goes outside to play the game instead of doing some sort of nature activity outside.
I agree with her statements relating the comic to McClouds Subject to Subject transistion. You can clearly see it in the comic strip scene that she specifically adresses. It's also clear to see the time changes that the strip goes through while the charachter is walking. She did a good job explaining and relating the comic strip to McCloud's writing.

Peer Review Recap, Part 3

In terms of peer review their isn't much of a difference. It's either not enough feedback, or for the most part feedback that is completely useless. I have found that people that are in our actual class do tend to give better feedback, probably because they are in our class and have to see us face to face over the semester. This peer review wasn't much different. One of the e-mails didn't even work, the other two sort of helped but weren't as far in depth. There needs to be a way to monitor if people actually gave feedback. Without that monitoring people are freely able to just do what they want, even if that includes that they don't do anything. E-mail is most definately the most useless form of peer review so far though. It is too hard to get useful feedback. So if I was you I would just take out this form of review and leave it on the google site, and maybe have them start a new document with just the info of who they reviewed, so that you can check if it was actually done or not.

Reading and Writing about Comics ala McCloud, Part 1

The comic I found online was a comic about "funny" ninjas, located at http://funnyninjas.wordpress.com/ . It's a couple different sets of a comic called Funny Ninjas, wrote and drawn by orangeninja. The comic is about two ninjas that are apparently trapped in the middle of a desert, with only each other, a laptop, and communication with a girl over the Internet named sexymuffingirl2891. The comic just starts out with the one ninja explaining to the other, that he is chatting with the Internet girl. The second strip of the comic talks about how the ninja with the laptop found a currecny site that would allow him to make his own currency, but he is deciding on what to name it. The third strip is about one of the ninjas getting a date with sexymuffingirl and figuring out that she is in jail and wouldn't be able to go anyway. The fourth part of the comic is actually very random, and doesn't seem to make sense or relate to anything. It speaks about Shakespeare, which doesn't have anything to do with the previous strips of the comic. The fifth and sixth strip of comics are about the comic first being let go, they are saying that the creator doesn't care for them anymore, and the next one is them saying bye because their series had been canceled.
This comic is interesting because it is a great example of the "icon" use for comics, which is best explained by Scott McCloud, in his book Understanding Comics, The Invisible Art. In his book he explains that icons are used in many different forms of comics, and how they still can represent something real, even though they are extremely abstract and look nothing like the real thing. McCloud wrote on page 28 of his book, "In pictures, however, meaning is fluid and variable according to appearance. They differ from "real-life" appearance to varying degrees." McCloud explains that there is a varying degree of icons to represent real life objects, persons, and even people. In the Funny Ninjas comic, the two characters are represented in the least life-like icon form. They are two stick figures, but you can still tell what they are supposed to represent. The ninja with the laptop represents a human, which is interesting to think about, because it looks nothing like a human, yet we as readers can still think of a human when we see the icon. The next ninja is a cat icon, which looks a lot like the human icon, but with its small differences. The ears and the nose with whiskers gives it away, which allows us to differentiate between the two characters and know that the second ninja isn't a human. Another interesting thing in the comic is in the last strip, last section of the comic. The two ninjas are waving goodbye to the readers, and around there hands are little lines, which are an icon to show movement. It's interesting to see that mark and automatically assume that they are moving their hands back and forth to create a good-bye motion with their hands. Even though the hands aren't moving, the image still shows up in your head that they are waving and actually moving their hands. The use of icons in this comic, as well as others, is very fascinating and put to good use, so that the readers can get more out of a comic than just simple images.

Picturing Texts on the Web

I chose the website www.marines.com, because it was created by the government, which means that they had some very good people designing the site, plus a couple of other different reasons. In terms of balance, I do believe that this website has it. It has a great balance of color for one, with all the colors integrating and creating a nice pattern while doing it. It does offer comparisons on the website also, while they aren't directly wrote. The headings on some of the images, as well as the opening video, give the note that joining the Marines will make you a better person overall, like the 2nd to last picture that has a title "A Better Life." It also has great classification with it too. All of the topics on the website have sub-topics that relate to it, and each one can be explained by clicking on it. It also has great picture descriptions on the site as well. The pictures allow for a lot of things to be said in such a small space, and it also can leave them open ended so that you can get any answer or depiction out of them that you were looking for. There is also great emphasis on the middle text in the page, "Explore the Marine Corps Story," which means that they obviously want you to click on it and explore the story. I also believe that all of the pictures on the website represent a metaphor of some kind. Especially the fourth picture on the bottom, which is of a Hum-V driving fast with the description, "Essential to our Freedom." The act of the Marines in the picture is the metaphor that what they are doing is essential to our freedom. Overall it was a pretty well designed website that hit all of the topics in the Picturing Texts article, and could appeal to all different sorts of people, with all different sorts of answers to their questions.

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