Christina Day’s Blog

Ive been on a graphic novel/comic kick this semester and by coincidence was required to read ‘Understanding Comics’ by Scott McCloud for my History of Graphic Design class. McCloud somehow manages to make a textbook in graphic novel form, and I found that it reads alot like watching a great documentary. Outside of illuminating alot of the theory behind creating an effective comic, McCloud really explores the way we communicate with each other. I recommend this read to anyone interested in not just comics, but the artistic process in general.

Once I finished ‘Understanding Comics’, I immediately dove into another acclaimed book by McCloud titled ‘Making Comics’. As can be inferred by the title, this book focuses more on the physical process and engineering behind creating effective comics and so far I enjoy it alot. More on this once I complete it.

Lastly, as a fun read, Im currently halfway through ‘Red Mars’ by Kim Stanley Robinson. My Biochem major boyfriend has been encouraging me to read Robinson’s ‘Mars Trilogy’ for some time now, and I began reading this book expecting something either really dry and laden with technical jargon, or another cheap sci-fi fantasy hybrid. But I am very glad to have been wrong and have thus far been enjoying a great human drama that explores much more than the surface of Mars. “Red Mars’ touches on human psychology and the impact we have as a civilization on the environment around us. Having completed an Environmental Philosophy course earlier this Spring, I recognize alot of the themes addressed by Henry David Thoreau, or some of the contemporary ideas found in Bruce Hull’s ‘Infinite Nature’ pertaining to our impact on our environments. In conclusion, this book is anything but a nerdy sci-fi adventure, and, despite being published over a decade ago, the themes in this book are very contemporary.

Upcoming reads:
I was fortunate enough to receive about $80 in Amazon.com gift cards for Christmas and already spent every penny by liquidating my wishlist. I ordered several books that I am really looking forward to devouring:

‘Comics and Sequential Art’ by Will Eisner

This is another comic ‘textbook’ that was highly recommended throughout McClouds ‘Understanding Comics’.

‘The Complete Maus: A Survivors Tale’ by Art Spiegelman

From what I understand, this is a moving saga about a father and son surving the Jewish Holocaust. Many literature professors consider this ‘required reading’ for their students.

‘The Sandman: Vol 3, Dream Country’ by Neil Gaiman (Author), Malcolm Jones III (Author), Colleen Doran (Illustrator), Kelley Jones (Illustrator), Charles Vess (Author), Steve Erickson (Author)

Book 3 of the Sandman saga that I have been reading. A great series with a celebrity cast of authors and illustrators.

‘The Best of The Spirit’ by Will Eisner

A ‘best of’ collection of Eisner’s classic strip. I bought this in spirit of the movie having recently been released. Pun intended?

‘The Watchmen’ by Alan Moore

Alan Moore’s masterpiece, again, in spirit of the movie being released soon.

‘Laika’ by Nick Abadzis

The graphic novel about the doomed dog that was launched into orbit in the Sputnik II Soviet project. I know that this will be heartbreaking to read.

Well that about ends this rant. Till next time, take care and have a safe, happy holiday season!

This past Fall semester, I took the first in a series of painting classes required for my major. Most of the paintings I produced for this class were pretty boring, but this is the painting I created for my final project. The subject was required to be a portrait, so I painted a picture of me playing with my dog, Penny, on a hot day in July.

This semester was the first time I have painted with oil or acrylic paints since high school, so it was interesting getting back into shape. This time around, I only used primary colors and white to create my paintings. If black was needed, it was achieved by blending all my primaries together, making it difficult to be consistent, but it was worth it to prevent the painting from being neutralized by using a pre-fab black.

The painting I created as my final project

Here is a montage of the process I went through to create this simple painting:

How I created this painting, step by step.

I might make some changes to this later, but for now, this is the card that I will print off for my family. I try to do this every Christmas that I have time. Here’s another design I made a few years ago:

The Christmas card I designed for 2005

For the final project in my New Media class, I assembled a little gadget that lights up whenever someone visits your website. The piece follows the guidelines provided in a tutorial I found for using an Arduino to ring a bell everytime a predetermined website is visited. I wanted an LED to light up instead of a bell ringing, so I kept the python script unaltered, but adjusted the Arduino code appropriatly to make the light turn on. The project uses 3 separate scripts:

-A php script that is saved to the root directory of the website Im counting the hits on. This script just counts how many times this site is visited. This script was unaltered from the tutorial and can be found at the link I provided.

-An Python script that retrieves the counter information from the php script and delivers it to the Arduino board. I only altered this script so it would communicate with the specific domain I wanted. This code can also be found in the tutorial.

-And an Arduino sketch that I have uploaded to my Arduino board that turns a LED on each time the Python script tells it that the website has received a hit. The code for this sketch has been requested, so Ill post it here:

long nextMillis = 0;

int blinks = 0;         // amount of blinks

int state = 0;         // for the state machine

void setup() {

int ledPin = 13;

pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);  // Set LED pin as an output pin

Serial.begin(9600);

}

// define states for the state machine

#define PULSE_ON       0

#define PULSE_OFF      2

#define WAIT_PULSE_OFF 3

void loop() {

if (Serial.available() > 0) {

blinks += Serial.read();

Serial.println(blinks);

}

while (blinks > 0) {

int ledPin = 13;

digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); //sets LED on

delay(1000);     //waits for a second

digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);  //sets LED off

blinks–;

}

}

This is the Arduino board itself with the LED, that I sanded to diffuse the light, plugged into ground and pin 13, the pin that Arduino has conveniently connected a resistor to, so I dont  have to.

Here is the guts of the housing. It used to be a cheap alarm clock from a novelty shop, but now its going to house my Arduino Board.

Final product!