About:

I feel like over time I have started to use digital networked medias more often. As a kid, there were not as many digital medias such as we have today. Technology has made digital networked medias much more accessible and demanding for everyday life. As a child I loved VHS tapes, my brother and I used to watch movies on VHS all the time. However, now we can watch movies on our laptops or even through our phones.  I believe the only media texts that I dislike are accounts such as Tumblr because to me they are boring and just a bunch of random pictures. I do enjoy reading blogs though and looking at all the different types of blogs. I am interested in this class because I am excited to see what other digital networked medias are out there that I never even knew about.

Essential Narratives List:

1)Breaking Bad, series 2008-2013

Breaking Bad is a series that I got into about two years ago. It was a shock to all of my friends when I started watching it because I am not usually into shows that are so gory and suspenseful. When I watched the first episode on Netflix I was hooked and could not stop watching it. I even found myself at times putting my laptop on the table while I cooked meals so that I wouldn't have to stop watching. It is an awesome story that always keeps me wanting to watch more.

Wiki page

IMDB

Season One Trailer

2)Bridesmaids, film 2011

Bridesmaids is by far my all time favorite movie. When I first saw it in theaters I could not stop laughing and every time I have watched it since I continue to laugh just as much. Kristen Wigg is my favorite comedian/actress and so her in this film is hilarious to me. Also, all of my roommates love the movie just as much so it is almost constantly being played in my apartment and we quote it all the time.

Wiki Page

IMDB

Trailer

3)Beyoncé's album (B'Day), 2006

Beyoncé is my favorite artist and her album B'Day is my favorite album of hers to date. Beyoncé's songs always have such a good dance beat and this album has some of my favorite songs that I love to jam to. This album is filled with up beat music and it is also one of her most popular albums that have sold the most songs.

Wiki Page

Beyoncé IMDB

Freakum Dress Music Video

4) Saturday Night Live, series (1975-now)

Saturday Night Live is a show that I look forward to watching every Saturday with my family. I started watching it back in high school and now love watching reruns of my favorite skits and look forward to new hosts and performers. I used to do theater back in high school and have always loved improv, so since SNL is a majority improv I always found it fascinating. Some of my favorite comedians include Kristen Wigg, Andy Samberg, and Maya Rudolph who all became popular off of SNL.

Wiki Page

IMDB

Garth and Kat skit

5)Footloose, film 1984

When I was in high school and in theater, we performed the musical Footloose my sophomore year. Since we were performing it we had to watch the film to learn more about the story and get into the music. My high school friends and I soon started to love the movie and watch it every time we get to see each other, sort of like a tradition for us. The music is super catchy and fun and we always have a fun time dancing to it.

Wiki page

IMDB

Trailer

Gif:

This is an image from the Beyoncé music video of "Check on It". I decided to make a gif out of it because it shows Beyoncé being excited and happy and I feel like a lot of different titles could be placed with this gif. The background with the waving satin pieces of fabric show almost a beyond happy and fantasy type look and I think this gif could be used to represent happiness.

Portfolio Project Proposal:

Growing up I always loved to play games online especially fashion ones and ones that were interactive. I used to play this game online for Seventeen Magazine were you were the editor's assistant and had to run errands and make sure everything was on time. Now, being older and actually working in the real world at Nordstrom I decided to make an interactive game based around the store Nordstrom. It would first start out to where the player would have to choose from certain pieces to sale in their store for the upcoming season. They then would have to open shop and assist customers and overcome tricky customer needs to see what they liked and what they wanted. The main goal of the game is to have shoppers leave the store happy and with the items they needed. The more you sale and the happier your clients are the more points you earn. Also, making clients wait causes points to be taken away and clients to become angry. Throughout the game there could be several things that pop up that the employee must overcome such as tricky customers, low inventory, or even a boss sending them on a task. It'll be a fun interactive game with a teen player in mind. Similar to the game Diner Dash, it will be interactive and show the customer's mood at all times. You want them to stay as happy as possible and the faster you work, the faster  you gain points. This game will move in levels and by passing one level you will then move on to the next.

Project Design Prospectus:

Log line- The point of my Nordstrom game is to give audience members a real life look at what it's like to be a Nordstrom associate. It is suppose to be a fun game but also a realistic game and one that people will walk away from with a better understanding of what goes into the everyday job of someone that works at Nordstrom.

Layout- I plan on using twine to make my game layout.

DNN Final Project

For my final project, I designed an interactive game using twinery. The game takes place as the player being hired on to the Nordstrom store team. They then are confronted with multiple real life issues that come up on a daily basis for a Nordstrom employee. It is a fun place to work however the employee must pay attention to each client's needs and make sure to make the right choices to make them walk away happy and want to shop with you again. Also, not all of the work is fun, sometimes there are tasks that pop up that someone may not want to do, such as put away clothes or confront someone for stealing something. These are all issues that the person if they worked for Nordstrom may have to take care of. I wanted this game to be as realistic as possible, and I feel that since I am a Nordstrom employee myself that I know what the correct answers for each issues are and wanted to give the player the different ways they could take care of a task but be sure to lead them in the correct direction to get more points. The audience that I had envisioned for my game would be middle-high school aged girls since once girls are out of college they don't seem to play games online anymore. Also, this game could be played by a male because being an employee at Nordstrom rather thye be male or female everyone has the same tasks, however the male would still have to play under the females identity because I did not make it to where it could be chosen at the beginning of the game. As stated in my proposal, I used to play an interactive game when I was younger that was where you played it as if you worked for Seventeen Magazine (http://www.seventeen.com/fashion/news/a530/editors-assistant-game-fb-062907/) . I used some ideas from this such as the player getting options on what they were going to do and also that if they run out of time they will lose points. However, I made my game different because I used more realistic problems such as theft where as the Seventeen Magazine game was about getting the editor coffee and such. Another thing I did in my game was by using Nordstrom's website (http://shop.nordstrom.com/) and my prior knowledge to what the store sells, I was able to give the player options to what they can supply for their client since Nordstrom is a one stop shop. However, since Nordstrom does offer so much I had to cut down a few of the selections so it was easier to play for the player. Lastly, since the audience for my game is girls that are in middle or high school, I wanted to look at other popular games and see what I wanted to do the same and do differently. I used a popular girl game site (http://www.games2girls.com/jobgames.htm) and made my game similar in the fact that you are playing the game as a 21 year old and it is relatable but different in the sense that it was not immature and addressed real issues.

Click to play game:

http://twinery.org/2/#stories/11e87317-af41-ec39-4eb4-fa5cc587d2d3

Nordstrom final.html

Further Vission for my game:

This is obviously just a little bit of a storyboard for the game. Although it is still playable, I really thing this would be a fun game and I think people would really like to play it. I would love to see if it were made into an actual game, it should be longer and have more tasks to overcome. Also, I think it should have more images and videos such as the Seventeen Magazine game. This would make it more fun to play for the eye and more easy to follow along with. I am however pleased with how the game came out and hope that my vision really came across. I'm excited that my Nordstrom game turned into a reality.

My 5 photo story:

My five photo story is to show the sequence of events of someone finding a recipe on pinterest and then once they try to make the recipe they end up burning the food. This is shown through the first picture of the girl on her laptop looking around, the second image shows what she is looking at on her screen which is pinterest with a bunch of recipes. The third picture shows the woman shopping at the grocery store for the items she needs. Then, the fourth picture shows her chopping up the foods and the fifth shows the food on the stove burning. This is all showing that pinterest recipes aren't as easy to make as they appear.

DNN Critical Review: Gone Home

Ever since the beginning of the semester when we discussed the game Gone Home in class, it has always interested me and made me want to play it for myself. I decided to do it as my critique so I could tell what I personally thought about the game. I first went online and figured I’d play it for myself, however once I saw that it cost $19.99 to play, I decided to find clips of the game on YouTube. I ended up stumbling across an hour long YouTube video that someone videoed of them playing the entire Gone Home game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak4wU8Gp2RQ). It was a great video because I felt as if I was actually playing it for myself. I was excited to watch this video and do this critique because I am the ideal audience for this particular game. This game seems to be one that is suppose to be for age groups of high school through mid twenties. I believe this because the story line is one that involves a high schooler and a college student. Also, it shows that hardships that both girls go through at these age groups. The video starts out with the player being a young college aged girl named Katie who has just come home after studying abroad. She is greeted by no one home except for little letters and notes that are left around each room. There is even a note waiting for her at the door.

All of the notes are left behind from her sister, Sam, who come to find out is a few years younger than Katie. The house is a huge historic home that people around the town call the “psycho house” and there are many turns, rooms, and secret passages around the house. It is up to the player to find hidden keys to unlock the secret passage ways and to find all the letters to piece the story together. Throughout the game there is narration that can be heard and it is Sam reading her notes aloud that she left for Katie. In the notes she first starts off telling Katie about how she has started this new high school and does not have many friends but then befriends this girl Lonnie.

As the story unfolds, the player comes to find that Lonnie and Sam have more than just a friendly relationship and actually have feelings for each other. Upon graduation Lonnie is set to leave for the Army however once she gets to where she is supposed to ship off she frantically calls Sam and states that she cannot be without her and asks Sam to pack as much as she can and leave her home to come be with her where she is. Since Sam is in love she does as Lonnie says and that’s where she has run off to. This game really was not as exciting for me as I hoped it would have been. I felt that it was more of a story than it was a game and you just had to look around the house to find random keys to unlock certain doors. It was an unexpecting story however, paying $19.99 for a game that only lasts an hour to me just does not seem worth it and the player is somewhat left at the end not really knowing where the story goes from there. However, I do believe that the story line is great for the audience members that it is going for. Since the story line is one that is filled with emotions and you get a peek inside the high schoolers thoughts throughout the game, it may make the gamer feel for the girl and be more understanding with what she is going through. I do think it's a good game for this age group  but I think it may be a little too scary or inappropriate for someone in middle school or boring and immature for someone that is older than college.

Fail Badge

This semester I would say the thing that I mostly failed in is my procrastination. I should have started much of my portfolio at the beginning of the semester so that come this time of the semester I wouldn't have to worry about it and I could already be done. However, my procrastination got the best of me and now I am still working on finishing parts of my portfolio. At the beginning of the semester, when I looked at the portfolio assignments I think I was overwhelmed with all of the different things that I could do that I did not even know where to start. So, I put off parts of the portfolio and only did the little things first such as the required introductions and such. Now getting later in the semester I am working on the bigger parts of the portfolios that I can get more points out of but these activities take more time. If I were to redo the semester I would have done the more time consuming times first and then the easier ones last just to secure that I got the bigger points that I needed. I also kept starting assignments on my own and then never finishing them or never thinking they were good enough to post. Which was a bad idea because I should have posted them to get your feedback on them to see what I could do better so that I could get the points out of them. Overall, I have learned my lesson and wish I could go back in time to redo the semester and fix these issues.

5/6 in class activity

1) Prior to this class I honestly had no idea what a digital networked narrative was and now walking away I have a pretty clear understanding of what exactly it is. The three units helped me to learn about all the different types of DNNs that are available and also how they are all unique. There are countless numbers of DNNs and this allows people to express themselves.

2) If I were to explain DNN to a fried I would probably start out with the more basic ideas of a DNN such as GIFs or online blogs, since these seem to be most popular. Also, I would probably refer to something that they really enjoy and then think of different DNNs that relate back to that topic. So, if someone loved Beyoncé I may show them a fan video or a remix video.

3) I believe that DNNs will continue to grow for years to come and there will be new types of DNNs. They will also continue to get better and grow for these years. I also feel like they will be easier to make and easier to find the information to paste together for such a DNN.

DNN Critical Review: High Maintenance

The other day in my other media class- What is TV? we watched a few episodes of online series'. We happened to watch one called, High Maintenance and I happened to enjoy it so much that I came home and binge watched all of the episodes. The show is about a drug dealer in New York city and each episode centers around a new client of his and he always ends up fixing problems for all of his clients. Each episode is 10 minutes long and they are all funny and it's interesting to see how he ties into play with the characters. https://vimeo.com/channels/highmaintenance

The audience for this series is more or less those in high school to those up to their thirties I would say. Since it is typically those ages that usually participate in pot smoking I feel that those are the best audience members for this series to go after. I feel that they do a good job of getting out to these audience members too because the characters in the show are all typically in their twenties. However, one problem could be that those that do not smoke pot or that do not agree with pot smoking could be turned off by this show since that is what it centers around. Also, each episode physically shows them smoking pot or him holding it which could be the main turn off instead of it just being discussed. So, if they wanted to gain more viewers they could cut some of that out but I do believe then it would take away from the point of the show it self and the sense of humor that it holds.

One thing that I believe they could improve about the show is by showing more of the dealers life himself. They rarely show him alone or what he is doing when he is not with his clients. Also, I think it would be smart to make the episodes longer. I could see this being made into a series on television and therefore the episodes would have to be longer. I do believe though that the shorter episodes do appeal to it's audience members though because since they are short it keeps the attention of the viewer for that short amount of time and gets a quick short laugh. As an online series if it was longer then I don't believe it would have the same spark and appeal that it has. I think that is possible to do to if they did add in more of the dealer himself or broaden what they say about the characters problems at hand. Overall though I do find the show to be one that is entertaining and not like any other web shows out there.

Remix Video: Beyoncé Takes Chicago

It is no lie that I am a huge Beyoncé fan. I mean let's face it, I've already made a GIF of her on this page and wrote about her in my essential narratives. I wanted to include her in my remix video. So I decided to use her music video to Ring The Alarm as the video and then put it to a different song. I used to do musical theater back in my day and while watching the Ring The Alarm video with no sound all I could think about was the song Cell Block Tango from Chicago. When putting the two together it looked like Beyoncé was actually performing the song when I slowed down the music video a bit! I really like the way it turned out and think it could be appealing to both Beyoncé and Chicago fans. It is not meant to be taken seriously but just a funny video to be for entertainment.

beyonce chicago email.mp4