Here are the Daily Creates I completed:

#tdc2290 I’m floating along, having fun, but also I have no clue what I’m doing pic.twitter.com/BBoE7XSOSI

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 17, 2018

’nuff said

#tdc2296 I can’t limit myself to one person so here’s Checkers, who’s been with me for over half my life (ft. @simpsonlibrary) pic.twitter.com/uPl7rtHQ6P

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 24, 2018

I found out that drawing with a picture for reference is crazy hard, also nothing can be as cute as my dog was 11 years ago!

Here’s my first attempt at putting a GIF into a picture using GIMP- my ice cream flavors are all 4 states of matter (liquid, gas, plasma, solid). If I had another hour I’d clean it up and make all of them GIFS #tdc2297 #ds106 #theend106 pic.twitter.com/sRZgotHZxH

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 25, 2018

It took me a long time to figure out how to insert just part of a GIF into a different picture, and even then the final product wasn’t gorgeous. BUT, I forced myself to leave it and not spend hours working on it.

#BeastsOfTheSouthernWild touches on natural disasters/climate change and humanity both as a whole and individually and it’s so beautiful please just watch it #tdc2300 pic.twitter.com/dKY2MKPeAl

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 27, 2018

Such a great movie. Also, the fantasy/fiction aspect was what really drew me in. Actually, what made me first watch the movie was listening to the AMAZING film score on Spotify.

Chiphog? Hogmunk? #tds2301 pic.twitter.com/CUayk7e6Pd

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 28, 2018

When you mix a chipmunk and a hog, what do you get? Something that looks more like a brown skunk than anything.

My word was “affinity” and I have an affinity toward playing with words (thanks, Riverby Books) #tdc2303 pic.twitter.com/ixQSbd4Lcg

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 30, 2018

I could have stayed there all day making sentences out of these magnetic words.

The Culmination of Our Entire Semester

For our final project, my group and I decided to make a video attempting to explain all of the crazy stuff that’s happened this semester. It’s a compilation of evidence, analysis, images, and found footage that together tries to solve the DS106 mystery. It’s pretty crazy what we found, check it out:

We created the video using various tools. Initially, we made the timeline of all the evidence, and from there we wanted to dive deeper.

All of us together wrote a script using (what else?) Google Docs, expanding and combing through until we finally landed on three solid theories to use in our video. Our goal was to make a video much like this one that took evidence, analyzed it, and gave possible explanations. We didn’t want to give a fool-proof, 100% confident answer, so we decided to leave it open ended.

Cypherpunk recorded some dialogue and Chris did an AMAZING job editing the piece of audio that we found in one of Martha’s video. I personally created some images (like the rate my professor reviews) and dug through a few hours worth of videos to find the good bits to use in ours. Finally, Cypherpunk did most of the (really well-done) editing and brought it all together.

I couldn’t have asked for a better team, I’m so happy with everything we accomplished! I think we worked really well together, even if there were both times when we were working and times when we were just going insane (but at least going insane together).

Thank you to everyone who worked with me and helped me this semester, you know who you are. Digital Storytelling has been an amazing experience and the skills I learned here will help me immensely in no matter where I go next!

I meant to not do two assignments from the same category, but that didn’t really work out since two audio assignments were just calling my name. Here are links to all four of the works I created this week.

World War Z Remixed Ending

Phalanx, the Cure for All Your Pandemic Worries!

Why So Serious? You’re in Zombieland!

A Fragment of What World War Z Sounded Like

Evidence

I found some crazy connections this week! I first set out to see what types of things Dr. Rausch was questioning Martha on, but then I fell down a rabbit hole that included a strange disappearing student (or maybe never even a student at all but an employee at the Simpson Library?) and Millard Rausch’s real identity!

Millard Rausch Isn’t Who He Says He Is??

My own evidence strangely tied into Cypherpunk’s findings. I also read though Joshua’s proposal that Martha is indeed infected with the E.N.D. virus (including lots of detailed evidence for this!) and that her hat is being held hostage until we as a class cease our investigations. I think there is so much more to figure out about this, and we only have a couple more weeks ahead of us so who knows what new information will come to the surface?

Question of the Week!

Look to your right. The thing you see is the only weapon you’ll have during the End. How will you use it to survive?

So the thing I see to my right is my closet door. It is thinner than a normal door, so I guess that’ll make it easier to carry, though it is pretty heavy. I could maybe break it up in various ways, keeping one large piece as a shield, other parts I could break down into tools, and maybe I could make a spear out of it from a long edge. If I couldn’t take it apart, then I would have to use it to smash zombie’s heads in or, if there are many of them, push them out of my way?

The biggest undertaking I had was my lip sync video. It was hilarious and fun to make, but I am sure glad it is done.

Alt-F4 Lip Sync

This assignment was quick and simple but with an amazing end product. I can’t lie I have watched these videos all multiple times because I love them so much.

Chipmunk Ben Wyatt and Ron Swanson

I submitted a daily create called “Meme Your Friends”. I had pictures of my suitemates that we had joked looked like different memes, so I edited one and used it as an example for a daily create for others to enjoy. I can’t wait to see what people make when it comes up!

I also submitted a writing assignment called Nonhuman Perspectives. This will be a good exercise to get ds106ers thinking creatively and writing descriptively.

@ds106dc I think this is my magnum opus#theend106 #tdc2276 pic.twitter.com/Oe863KpFZW

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 4, 2018

This was one of my favorite things to create this week. My roommate didn’t notice what I was doing until she looked up and my dresser was cleared and I was taking pictures of Ron Swansowl.

The drama teacher tried desperately to keep everybody calm #tdc2278 pic.twitter.com/dsadgdlmhQ

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 5, 2018

This Daily Create was really fun engaging with a good chunk of the class/DS106 community! It was like a GIF version of the game telephone. I am not sure if I should be surprised that Kim and Kanye ended up in the mix, but these stories go their own ways I guess.

This daily create was super fun! I attempted to make the songs go in a logical order stylistically and audibly. I also tried not to add the obscure music I listen to, so this playlist has a weird but fun mix of different genres. Feel free to follow me on Spotify~ #tdc2280 #ds106 pic.twitter.com/vQyjcaL701

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 7, 2018

I love my Spotify and use it multiple times a day, so this Daily Create was calling to me and I had to do it.

Question of the week!
You hear on the radio that the End has started. What do you do first?

I won’t know what to do first (is it real? is this a joke? I won’t mention War of the Worlds panic because for the most part that’s a hoax). Once I know it’s serious, I’d call my parents and probably drive back to Chesapeake ASAP to be with my family. Luckily, I can drive down route 17 and not have to use 95, which would mostly likely be insanely crazy and the prime place for apocalyptic panic.

To tie a video into the radio shows we listened to, I wanted to be vague. What better way to do that than just show my shoes? Making this video helped shape my understanding of coherency through making me tell a story in a small lens.

How My Shoes Saw the Dawn of the Apocalypse

I am most proud of what I did for my Sardonic Tours assignment. I jokingly came up with the idea when I first saw the assignment in the assignment bank, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do it.

Never Before Seen Footage of Patricia Wellington Before She Became a HGTV Star

I also learned more about how to read movies and did my own brief commentary on Night of the Living Dead. This helped me look closer than I would have when normally watching a movie. I looked out for shooting and lighting techniques and how they affected my viewing experience, rather than just feeling my emotions without direct focus on what was causing them.

Night of Reading the Dead

Question of the Week!

What question would you like to ask the class?

Would you rather live out the apocalypse in space or underground?

(For me, even though space will turn my body to mush, I would much rather be in space, seeing all of Earth and hopefully beyond, than hidden in some dirty hole. But that’s just me.)

Radio Show – A Glance Back

The assignment I redid this week was the write an alternate ending.

Here was my original attempt:

The NEW End of the Whole Mess

And here is my new attempt:

World War Z Alternate Ending

I am happy to have the chance to redo an old assignment, though I thought it would have better to do closer to the end of the semester once most of our assignments have been completed. This one turned out great, mostly because I inserted my character into it and expanded more than I had on my first attempt.

Daily creates

#tdc2264 #theend106 Pangolin? more like.. pic.twitter.com/rK6mSJpwmB

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) March 22, 2018

A few years ago on Earth Day, Google had a quiz to see what animal you are, and I got the pangolin. I think they are adorable creatures that look like they’re about to nervously ask their crush to prom.

I may not be the final say on who rules the internet, but I know who rules my heart ? #tdc2265 #theend106 pic.twitter.com/NBuGGrQvVe

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) March 23, 2018

Okay, so only the first dog (the wizard dog) is really mine. The other two were adopted-for-a-day from the Fredericksburg SPCA in order to get them out of the shelter and moving more than they are usually able. I can’t wait until the day when I get a dog of my own, but for now I can appreciate any I can spend time with.
p.s. I tried becoming a cat person, but my allergies put up a hard fight.

GIFS and Pics, pushing out content
like no one’s business. I wasn’t prepared
for the slamming tide of skills
that crashed into me, but now
I am a part of an ocean
of other ever-changing waves.
Together we make each other
both powerful and beautiful. #tdc2268 #theend106

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) March 26, 2018

I like writing poetry, but only giving myself a few minutes to come up with one was a very hard thing to do. I am pretty happy with how it turned out, especially after I added the line breaks in the right places.

Question of the Week

What’s one thing you definitely couldn’t live without during the apocalypse? How would you go about obtaining it?

I think this is a toss up between food and water, since those are absolutely essential to live. On top of that, shelter is really important. My food would have to be scavenged and rationed, and I think I would probably have to get really creative in what I eat when my supplies are low (but hopefully not eat something poisonous). Clean water would also be a problem, so if I could learn to jimmy up a rain catcher that could help (unless the apocalypse causes air pollution, then that might not be very good). If I’m lucky, my shelter wouldn’t have to change too often. I would probably need some place that passerby wouldn’t desperately want to pillage, but also a place that’s safe to live in (and maybe even nice to live in, but nice is a luxury in the apocalypse).

via GIPHY

Thanks to this week working in design, I am now aware of design all around me, everywhere I go. I understand why certain designs get my attention and how they do so.

I have familiarized myself with Canva this week, which has quickened the rate I am able to make my designs tenfold! Also, simply using the templates have showed me more ways of formatting that I could use later if I want to make something from scratch.

I thought about my character more in depth, using my creative writing mind to really understand how Charlee’s mind works.

Though the assignments I’ve completed in relation to her haven’t said all too much about her, I know she will become more well-rounded within the next coming weeks.

I am really proud of all my work this week. I didn’t feel rushed to make anything and instead took the time needed (and not any more) to get a final product I loved.

Lastly, I am excited for Charlee to be in a survival camp with Alex, Cypherpunk, and James! Being in a group of strangers is going to be hard for her, especially when all of the members of the group aren’t necessarily the most outgoing people. I think this will end up making an interesting dynamic that doesn’t fit stereotypical group models.

Looking at others’ work:

Anne Armour’s font for her character’s name is visually balanced between the name itself and the design. The flowers she added are placed nicely and look professionally done. Elizabeth’s font uses both text font and background to give a rounded appearance of what I see as a local family doctor. Chris’s lost and found poster was a hilarious take since it personified Martha’s hat as a living being that is shy and responds to hearing its name.

Question of the Week:

Group dynamics can be tricky.
What’s been the most successful group you’ve been a part of and what made it work?

I’ve had a couple good group experiences. One was during my freshman year, when I was in a group of four. We divided work up as evenly as possible and checked in on each other to make sure things were getting done and everyone was feeling good about their part in the group.

Another group, last fall, was five people and it worked out mostly okay. Besides one member who contributed significantly less than the rest of us, we were able to divide aspects of our project up equally to make the whole thing run much smoother. Like the first group, here we checked in on each other frequently to make sure everything was going okay.

Also this week, I made my character! Her name is Charlee Faraday, and I am excited to go through the apocalypse with her. She is different from me by not really caring too much for others, so that will be fun to write. I wish I got to expand on her more in my assignment this week, but there was no way I could have done it succinctly.

I enjoyed Samara’s radio ad, it is very creative, incorporating elements from the story Finis (which I never read, but now I want to!) with humor and Magic School Bus. Also, Taylor’s Frequency 2156 post was really good in that her submission to the radio was very well acted out!

Regarding my own site, I had forgotten to update my site menu with my new subcategories, so I added those this week.

Throughout Week 5 I didn’t exactly keep my standards of getting work done at a reasonable time like I had proposed at the end of Week 4. Much of my work was completed over the weekend. This lead to rapid release of posts, which created an imbalance both on my site but also on Slack and Twitter. I will try to map out on paper how I will divide my assignments in the future, but we shall see how that works out.

Question of the Week:

How are you feeling? Be specific.

Mentally I am pretty tired, as this semester is kind of hectic for me. I hardly have any free time, what with clubs leadership, classes, a job, and an internship. I’ve been trying to give myself time for self care, so I’m not drowning, but let’s just say I am 100% ready for spring break.

Physically, I have yet to feel the sickness that has seemed to spread throughout campus (*knocks on every wooden surface within ten miles*). I’ve just been strangely hungry all the time, like I can’t get enough to eat. I can only wonder what that says about me…

via GIPHY

The first one was when I was supposed to “Make an image that shows or represents bones.” My roommate and I have a few Halloween decorations we keep out year-round (such as our skull named Brenden and two skeleton birds named Pete and Patrick), so I knew this would be an easy daily create. At first, I remembered my roommate has femur string lights, but she took them home at the end of last semester so I sadly couldn’t use those. So, I decided to work with both photography and GIMP to create this:

Hey Katie, you know what you are??
a … BONEHEAD!!
@ds106dc @netnarr #tdc2220 #dda150 pic.twitter.com/Udz6bZ1MZc

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) February 7, 2018

The pun, of course, was obligatory.

The next daily create was #ColorOurCollections and Europeana EYCH Colouring Book, which I thought would be easy since I was only coloring and not creating the entire image myself. I wanted to color the whole thing, but with the time restraint I had to get creative and simply color the woman and bear and alter the background with a filter.

@ds106dc #tdc2223 Today’s #ds106 Daily Create is #ColorOurCollections
I feel bad for the bear here, since the woman is trying to push it out of the tree (presumably by tickling its nose so it will sneeze and fall), but the bear looks just as stuck as she does (if not more) pic.twitter.com/CpSmDOpMy1

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) February 9, 2018

Making my Brady Bunch parody picture was fun, but I already talked about that in my post:

The (un)Dead Doppelgängers!

I connected my Twitter to my blog, so the first post to be automatically uploaded was the assignment where I inserted my dog into a Fredericksburg photo and the rest posted automatically after that. I am still getting used to editing my tweets before I publish my post, however.

In regards to my fellow survivors of the apocalypse, Casey’s photo edit is interesting in that it depicts more psychological ideas rather than physical ones, which is something I’d like to think about incorporating into my future work. And, if Samara can do assignments while sick, then I can do them on-time while healthy! While for my photoblitz I ran around campus and my dorm, she must have been stuck inside her house, so props to her for having a time limit and limited space to use.

Do you think an animated GIF can be considered a story? Why or why not?

In the GIFs I made this week alone there are some with story and some without. This one:

goes through a story of father trying to save daughter from impending danger.

This one:

shows an awesome fight sequence but any story derived from it is supplemented by knowing the plot of the movie or inserting fabricated narrative.

So of course my answer is it depends.

The Amazon review I posted was one of my favorite assignments this week. Finding an item, going to a real place to buy it, and writing a fake review was really fun. I did feel somewhat guilty for tainting the real reviews, but maybe someone wouldn’t take offense and instead get a kick out of my apocalyptic review. In this fictional life of the review, I made a world where Amazon was still up and running during the apocalypse and I was going on a mission to find the hidden facilities in search of other survivors and more supplies.

Amazon in the Apocalypse: Item Review

This week I’ve been trying to not spend a huge amount of time on Daily Creates (since they are only supposed to take ten minutes). The first one was a flash fiction about an alien invasion, and I wanted to try to encompass a huge war through a small object. I heard somewhere that working with symbols is the more effective way at giving large concepts in concise packaging.

Our planets’ invaders had orange blood that never fully dries. Even though The Invasion battles ended last month, today I picked up a small, child-sized glove soaked in a mixture of damp orange and dried, dark red. #tdc2213 #ds106

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) January 30, 2018

Another day, another daily create! For this one, I had to create a randomly generated compliment and put it over an image. The compliment I received lent more toward a gif, so I thought I’d tweak the rules a little. I overlaid text over the gif above using the website gifntext. I love the evolution of this gif as it seems to match the way the compliment plays out.

Checking out others’ posts has been so intriguing and inspiring. Lauren Sergent’s post reviewing an Amazon purchase of a mirror was both relevant to real life and hilarious. I noticed that a lot of people did the assignment of writing apocalypse terms of service. One that I really liked was cypherpunk’s because it was both nonchalant and overtly funny. Lastly, Manny’s Daily Create was so detailed and exotic that I was creating a whole world just by reading a recipe!

The question of choosing between hoarding my supplies and sharing them with others is a tough one. I know that once I start sharing with others, more and more people will ask and it would get harder and harder to put a limit on what I can keep to myself. To save myself at least a little trouble, I would have to specify (to just myself or to others) just what/how much I am keeping to myself and also who I will give supplies (and how much, of course). There are so many factors that still yet need to be considered (like rationing supplies in the hopes that certain people will bring more back), so the decision would be very situation-dependent and there is no way for me to know quite what I’d do.