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!

via GIPHY (side note: the new Ghostbusters is far better than the old one, fight me Susan)

Right, this apocalypse has been amazing.

Anyways

My group and I planned out what our project would consist of, and then we even knocked out one aspect of it. Below, you’ll see the timeline we created that shows all of the evidence that was found in this class and the date it was found. It is a really interesting way for all of it to be laid out, so check it out!

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?

I noticed that he mentioned a student who was on the slack but not in our class. I dug into it and found the student, “Neo-Rev”, posted twice at the beginning of the semester (once in January and once in February) and then never again.

Her February post, Heed the Call, is the spookier of the two. At one point, she claims to “sense the approaching end,” whatever that means. This could be a major connection to the E.N.D. virus or simply our class, The End.

So, what happened to Neo-Rev? I looked on our Slack and found a second name associated with the account, “Shannon”. I then looked up the email and found Shannon Hauser under the campus directory. Apparently she is a Technical Services Specialist at the Simpson Library? How does that connect to our class? Let me know if you have any ideas!

Neo-Rev also mentions working under the “Reverend”. Neo-Rev speaks here about the Reverend:

He always pointed to something bigger than himself and he called for action.

The word Reverend itself was linked to a site called “bava tuesdays”. I scrolled through some of the posts, of which I couldn’t quite understand the content, but then I saw a face I recognized.

Look familiar? Take a look at Millard A Rausch’s ID card that was found by cypherpunk.

Crazy right? I did a little more investigating and came upon a twitter account of one Jim Groom, with some pictures that looked exactly like the man who came into Martha’s video in Week Five. While his name isn’t Millard Rausch, the connection is beyond eerie. I even found one tweet that solidifies the connection with Groom through Reclaim Hosting! (Sepcifically: take a look at the third photo!)

.@reclaimvideo has snazzy new carpet, a glass showcase, posters, and a video camera pointed right at you! pic.twitter.com/4nrP08eMYY

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) March 21, 2018

If anyone has anymore evidence connected to this, please don’t hesitate to let me know!

I flipped through my copy of World War Z, trying to find the best setting to use (and there are so many to choose from!). At one point, I remembered the man blinded by a bomb in his youth who, as a man, fled from the apocalypse in Japanese civilization to be in the wild on a mountain.

Sensei Tomonaga Ijiro survived using all his senses but his sight, which I though lent very well to “Creating A Place” using only audio. He mentions hearing helicopters in the distance in the beginning, and later he comes in contact with a bear that serves not as a threat but as a warning. In the scene, Sensei Ijiro makes noises like weeping and shouting, but I decided to leave those parts out. The only part of him I left was footsteps at the very end.

I got all of my sounds from Freesound and used Audacity to edit it all together. It was fun playing with layering sounds, not just creating ambiance but also putting multiple sounds over top of each other to create one sound (for instance: I got audio of a person falling on a wooden floor and layered the sound of a dirt footstep over it to make it sound like the zombie fell onto the forest floor).

Lastly, if you are interested, here are the parts out of World War Z that I based my soundscape on:

I left civilization and trekked into the Hiddaka Mountains.
…

I had no way of knowing what was happening to the rest of my country. I could
hear distant sounds, helicopters, fighter planes, the steady, high-altitude whine of
civilian jetliners.
…

It was a bear, one of the many large, brown higuma roaming the Hokkaido
wilderness. The higuma had originally migrated from the Kamchatka Peninsula and
bore the same ferocity and raw power of their Siberian cousins. This one was
enormous, I could tell by the pitch and resonance of his breathing. I judged him to be
no more than four or five meters from me. I rose slowly, and without fear. Next to
me lay my ikupasuy. It was the closest thing I had to a weapon, and, I suppose, if I
had thought to use it as such, it might have made a formidable defense.
…
I wept as I prepared myself for the blow.

It never came. The bear stopped panting then released a high, almost childlike
whimper. “What is wrong with you?” I actually said to a three-hundred-kilogram
carnivore. “Go on and finish me!” The bear continued to whine like a frightened dog,
then tore away from me with the speed of hunted prey. It was then that I heard the
moan. I spun, tried to focus my ears. From the height of his mouth, I could tell he
was taller than me. I heard one foot dragging across the soft, moist earth and air
bubbling from a gaping wound in its chest.
I could hear it reaching out to me, groaning and swiping at empty air. I managed
to dodge its clumsy attempt and snatched up my ikupasuy. I centered my attack on
the source of the creature’s moan. I struck quickly, and the crack vibrated up through
my arms. The creature fell back upon the earth as I released a triumphant shout of
“Ten Thousand Years!”

To make this concept from the book into some form of media, I decided to create a motivational poster. I figured these would have been everywhere, for the makers of the “vaccine” to have a chance  to scare the most people out of their money.

I got the background picture from Unsplash courtesy of Benjamin Davies. I also happily got to use Canva again. Playing around with the words to make them legible was the hardest part. That and coming up with the exact wording for the “ask your doctor” part at the bottom. I wanted to be true to the company that advertised Phalanx, in how they never outright said they could cure the virus that turned people into zombies.

I did the assignment Why So Serious? in which I had to put funny audio over a dramatic (even traumatic) scene from the movie adaptation of my book.

Initially, I wasn’t quite sure what comedy to dub over World War Z. I played around with using audio from Elf, but I just couldn’t get the right mix. I ended up googling “comedy movies” and saw Shawn of the Dead. From there, I decided to stay within the apocalypse genre and use audio from Zombieland. When I first saw it last fall, I thought the movie was going to be way more raunchy than it really was, and I appreciate it for that.

I highly recommend both Zombieland and World War Z (even if the book and movie are entirely different). To get a taste of both, why not watch the video I created?

I used part of the opening of the movie Zombieland and laid it over the Philadelphia scene from World War Z. The video quality wasn’t the best, but I couldn’t find any better version of it, sadly.

I had to do a little bit of cutting (and thankfully I was able to use a Mac with iMovie for that instead of my HP’s Movie Maker) but in some places the audio fell PERFECTLY into place. Other places were a little more challenging, but I eventually worked everything out.

I went through a good number of scenes online to see which I wanted to remix, and the ending was the one with the most normal talking/sound effects and least zombie noises (which are usually great but not fitting for this assignment. Though, now that I think of it, I could have remixed ONLY zombie noises. Very tempting…)

I did the Context assignment, though I am not sure how much I changed the meaning exactly. The most troublesome part was working around the background music that was already in the movie’s audio. Besides that, slicing and merging and layering the audio was really fun. I was excited to get back in to using Audacity, and I still am, so I wouldn’t be too surprised if I did another audio assignment for this week.

I see the final product as possibly being a dramatic story of an unspecified introvert who wants to just disappear (in all forms).

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.

Making this video wasn’t too challenging. Again, I had to use my phone to record so shout out to my Galaxy s7. I tried to give a more interesting background and use my Marauders Map tapestry that always hangs on my bed. I hope my answers were sufficient for Nessie.