5th Blog Post: Reflection

My creative field was Baking and when I decided to do my own creative baking project, I decided to make Hawk’s Nest Cookies. The most fun part of this project was the actual making of the cookies. I love to bake and if I had more time, and was better at it, I would do it to relieve stress and to just get my mind off of school and work. The most difficult aspect of this project, for me, was deciding what to change to make it my own. With baking, you don’t have a lot of options because most of the ingredients required are important and if you change or add an ingredient, it could change what you are baking, either in a good or bad way. It took me a long time to decide what to change about these cookies. I hadn't actually figured it out until I bought all the ingredients. I saw the bag of m&ms and it just clicked. I knew that it had to be a small change, so I just changed the color of the m&ms to make them more special to me by incorporating KU. In doing this, it makes the cookies more original. Some people may have had these kind of cookies before, but probably not specific to their college and probably not specific to KU. While I don’t know if that is 100% accurate, I do know that it isn't something most people would think of to do. I feel like I did experience flow while making my cookies. I lost track of time, except while the cookies were baking. I found myself lost in the directions. When it was time to roll the dough, I just focused completely on that and nothing else. It was fun to not have anything else to worry about, besides making the perfect cookie. I really liked Mackenzie Schutz’s way of making shadow art. I thought it was really creative and would be fun to try sometime! It was neat because you could cut out any animal or shape and make it into shadow art. I didn't know anything about it and so it was cool so see how she created something on her own like that. Creativity, to me, is taking something and learning a new way to go about doing or creating it. Putting your own spin on things and making them your own. 

5th Blog Post

          After doing research on my last four blogs, I have learned many things about photography that I did not know before this creative process. Before doing this creative process, I thought photography was just simply point and click. I never thought it was a lot of skill to be a photographer, or that you needed an expensive camera. After doing the previous blogs, I found I was completely wrong and it does in fact take skill and a nice camera clearly works better.

            I really did enjoy this entire process especially the two blogs where we had to take pictures. I thought the Michael Jordan reenactment with Pat and Christian was really fun. This is where I found that a nice camera would be very beneficial because I took it off an iPhone and it took me several tries. Also, I wasn’t able to zoom in as much as I had hoped, but I still really enjoyed it because it was funny taking a picture of one of the more famous dunks. I also really enjoyed blog 4, where I had to do a time lapse of the Budig flowers. Some people gave me looks like I was a tourist or that kid posting a picture on Twitter or Instagram of their campus, but it was actually really interesting. It was cool seeing how much the flowers actually changed every single day, and I was pretty shocked at how well it turned out. The nine-day span for blog 4 couldn’t have come at a better time because I was able to take my first picture when there was only one tulip, and my last picture had every flower fully bloomed. Maybe next time, I would have also gotten a time lapse of a tree to compare how quickly the flowers bloomed, compared to all the branches to fully gain their leaves.

            I think photography is important to me because it’s crucial to having pictures of your life. Whether it be a trip you took with friends and family, or a school picture, or any picture you can take daily, it is always fun and good to reminisce on those days. It sound cliché, but when you do have that picture that counts as a thousand words, or is a priceless photo, it is great to have framed and hung in your house, to remind you. I just think photography is very important in this day of age with social media, because it makes keeping up with people you don’t see a whole lot much easier because you can see any changes in them since the last time you saw them, or what they are doing. I think I experienced flow during this blog and blog 1 because it was writing, but I don’t think I did with the photos because I had to take just one a day in front of Budig, and get one picture of Pat acting like Michael Jordan. I really enjoyed Dylan’s golf videos because I thought the juggling of the golf balls was really skillful, and his new ways to make golf more fun for viewers was very interesting. I think creativity is trying to do something in a different way than normal, or becoming more adapted to that topic than you were before.

4th Blog Post

Golf

I started a fire doing this.

I started out by cutting out gold butterflies and dragon flies and attaching them to the side of a glass bowl. 

I filled the bottom with colored gems and placed a candle in the center. I thought this would make some cool shadows, although I am clearly no artist.

Below is what it looks like lit up, with foil on the top. 

Here is the shadow of the butterfly on the wall. 

Next, I put a few incense in it. It smelled pretty good and looked awesome. At first, I put too many incense in the candle and they all lit on fire D: 

I got it under control though, so no worries. 

a longer attempt at a beat

For this song, instead of sampling music that you would normally expect to be sampled, I sampled a song from the soundtrack of the video game LA Noire. I thought it sounded decent, but something messed up near the end of the song when I was exporting the video to upload to YouTube. I still think that it is an improvement from my last work, and is still decent. Below is the beat.

101 Dalmatians Redrawing

For my final project I took two characters that Ollie Johnston, a Disney Animator, created and animated  and added a new character. Ollie liked to put some of his personality into his work, in this scene Pongo the dalmatian is watching dogs and their owners pass by and notices that all the dogs and the humans look alike. For my new character I put myself and a similar dog to fit in with the scene.

Ghost Hunting Creatively

https://vimeo.com/93106895

One Love - Sign Language

The artist that I was studying, Amber Galloway Gallego, has not done a cover to this song, One Love by Bob Marley, so I decided to look up the meanings myself and make my own cover (With the help of Tom Herr, of course).

Mind Reading Trick

For this blog post I chose to find a way to "read peoples minds" with a simple trick. The steps to this trick are very simple and it's what I'll be showing the class. I got the idea through some YouTube videos and decided to change up the trick just a little bit to make it my own so I can 'wow' people all over the world.

Step 1: have an audience member select a crayon, colored pencil or a marker from a set while your back is turned and place it in your hands

Step 2: mark your finger nail with the utensil while your hands are still behind your back

Step 3: remove one hand from your back and have the audience member stare at your palm

Step 4: as they stare at your palm, you are able to see the mark on your finger nail and also the color that you marked it with

Step 5: then you correctly guess the color that the audience member picked and they are amazed.

its magic

Time Lapse Blog 4

 

 

 

 

Here is a nine day time lapse of the flowers in front of Budig, taking once a day for the past week and half.

"What makes you happy?"

Sports in Motion

Katie's Fusion Cupcakes

My creative field has many opportunities to experiment, but it was still tough to come up with a new idea and contribution to the field. I'm best at baking cupcakes so I thought of what I learned about making them and then thought about frosting. I don't really like much frosting unless it is homemade or whipped cream. So I automatically decided on using marshmallow fluff on my cupcakes. I then contemplated on what kind of flavor to use and then came up with the idea of mixing vanilla and chocolate.

  Then thought about frosting. I don't really like much frosting unless it is homemade or whipped cream. So I automatically decided on using marshmallow fluff on my cupcakes. But what could I do to make them truly an original idea?

Using my creativity, I came up with the idea of combining two cupcakes to create a sort of cupcake sandwich

 

 Along with my cupcake sandwiched I decorated some of the cupcakes in different ways using the fluff as frosting

 The Finals results

Through using what I've learned about the creative process and studying my own ideas I learned a lot about my field and how I am creative

 

 

Original Project

 Together these pictures don't look like much without a story but the story is these pictures were all sent in from different people in different locations during this recent storm. I thought it would be a cool idea to see the storm from different areas. Areas featured include Overland Park Lawrence and Olathe Kansas. As well as Macon Missouri and Columbia Missouri. I like how this came out and how all the people I reached out to had a different idea on how to picture the storm to tell a story.

Hawks Nest Cookies

For my own personal creative project, I took a cookie recipe that my grandma used to use all the time and I changed it up a little bit. You make the cookie dough with the normal ingredients (flour,sugar,salt,etc.) and then you roll the cookies in toasted coconut. Then you just bake them. My great grandma used to just throw any kind or color of m&ms in the middle of the cookie, but to make mine a little bit more different and kind of special to me and us here at KU (if cookies can be special) I chose to put red, blue, and yellow m&ms in the middle. This made them look more relevant to KU. What I contributed to the baking world probably wasn't very significant but I was able to take a recipe that is very commonly used in my family, and I made it something local and creative and special to me and my local family, who bleed crimson and blue. This can be easily done with any recipe. If you wanted to make something more creative or make it fun for a game or event at your school, add some food coloring or your school colors to the thing. Whatever it might be. 

Below are the pictures of the cookies I made. The first picture is the dough, the second is the toasted coconut. The third picture is what they looked like before I put them in the oven, and the fourth is what they looked like out of the oven. The last picture is what they looked like in my kitchen when I made my roommates try them. They loved them because they were fun and had KU colors. 

New Creative Style: Grunge Rock

So for this project, I found a software that helped with mixing different sounds and I kind of got creative with it. I originally wanted an Indie sound but it turned out to be a mix of Psychedelic rock and grunge rock. It's an interesting mix of tunes and I hope you like it!

New Creative Work: San Francisco

After researching Eliot Porters work with photography I was inspired to take my own pictures. Over Easter weekend I was able to go home and visit with family. While I was at home, I went to the city and took a boat around the bay. On the boat ride I was able to take pictures of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. This picture I took brings a new aspect to other creative works in the photography field. I haven’t seen many pictures of the bay and the bridge from the point of view of someone on a boat. I also think the way the sunlight is hitting the flag brings something new to photography. I took this picture as a way to express my own creativity, and I believe it brings something new to the photography field.

San Francisco

Fragments and other Fun Shadow Art (updated 4/23/2014)

Kumi Yamashita is the artist I chose to study. She specializes in shadow art. The piece below is called Fragments. It is my favorite of hers because it is composed of 40 unique shadow faces. All which represent individuals she met in Pueblo, New Mexico. It is a timeless tribute to ordinary people who make Pueblo the great city it is today. The piece is made out of 40 cast resin tiles crafted to perfection. There is a single light source in the corner.

My two year old son, Cooper, and I had lots of fun imitating Yamashita’s work and playing with shadows. I started off by finding a light source for the piece. After testing out a few duller night lights, I ended up using a really bright desk lamp. The brightness and position of the light is a key factor to shadow artwork because the other objects are nothing without it! Changing the light also directly impacts the size and boldness of the shadow. Below is our set up.

Next, to imitate the cast resin tiles, I used aluminum foil and pressed it up against half of my face to create the bends in it. I molded the two on the right to my face. It takes a little trial and error before the foil’s shadow looks exactly correct in the light. The foil on the top is an example of one of my failures, because I tried to mold it too many times and now it just looks too wrinkly. The smaller one on the bottom left is a mold of Cooper’s face. I thought the two on the bottom turned out pretty well.

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Cooper had a lot of fun playing with his shadow. He kept trying to “get” his foil face shadow, which was pretty amusing!

 We experienced that creative flow tonight. Once we had the basic set up, we were able to make lots of challenging shapes with the shadows. We mostly made animals like birds, dogs, rabbits and even a reindeer. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture of them because my hands were busy making the shapes. I feel like in this case though, the experience was greater than getting evidence of the final project. It is so priceless witnessing a child’s enthusiasm for creativity. I tried to do it alone and it was so discouraging because my adult self did not know where to start. On the other hand, when I had Cooper, he helped me think of all sorts of things to do besides the imitating work. It was a really fun project and I highly recommend it for kids of all ages.

Above is Cooper trying to make hand shadows. 

Works/images Cited

Severn, Bill. Shadow Magic the Story of Shadow Play. New York, NY: David Mckay, 1959. Print.
Yamashita, Kumi. Fragments. 2009. Cast Resin, light source. Permanent Collection of New Mexico,Santa Fe, New Mexico.

My first attempts at making a beat

The artist I studied was Madlib, an American hip hop producer. The areas of his work that I wanted to focus on were how he creates unique sounding beats, and how he samples old records from decades past. For my imitation I created a short loop by pulling a sample out of the song “With Your Love” by Jackie Moore, from a record made in 1980. I then added different sounds around the sampled loop to complete the song. While the song is really simple and I’m just a beginner, I still think it sounds pretty cool compared to the original song.

Tiger Woods Golf Ball Juggling

Tiger Woods is the biggest name in todays day and age of golf. He has revolutionized the game and has drawn more attraction to golf than anyone ever has. When he is not playing, tournament ratings are down and the sport just isn't as exciting. The creative work I choose by Tiger Woods is his Nike commercial done in 2007. This commercial didn't go exactly as planned. When Tiger Woods showed up to record the commercial he was waiting around and started to juggle the golf ball for fun. The director asked him if he could do that for 30 seconds, which he did and proved to be no problem. This change in commercial idea ended up being one of Tigers and golfs greatest commercial. Since I dont have the skill set of Tiger Woods, I couldn't do all the things he could but I tried to do a couple of the tricks he did.

Work Cited 

NikeGolf. "tiger woods golf ball juggle"YouTube.

                                                         Web. 30. Jan. 2006.

Ansel Adams imitation

For this project i tried imitating Ansel Adams, He was famous for black and white landscapes. Also used the suns glare effectively which is what I attempted with the second picture.