Sex Trafficking Narrative

Sex trafficking is such a sensitive topic that needs to be handled with care. There is over twenty-four million victims of human trafficking in the United State; and counter to popular belief within all fifty states. The narrative project inspired me to do my project on this topic. It is a difficult subject to capture in video as the graphics would be so repulsive and nauseating, but I believe this kind of visualization is necessary to inspire movement in the government, health care, and citizens of the US. It slightly frustrating because I so badly want to create a video that creates such strong ethos that whoever watches it, will feel an obligation to move; to help these girls in every way possible. I want to educate with this piece of art, but I need the knowledge of how to use all of the tools to my advantage. I am super familiar with using cameras, but I am looking forward to creating a piece of work that will inspire change.

My thoughts on blogs

I do not like blogs. I like creating. I like projects. I like videos. I am an artist. Definition of artist=visual learner. Our brains light up in the right hemisphere, not the left. The right side is responsible for euphoria and beauty. I am not fond of how I have to purchase a hundred and fifty dollar book to learn anything I could type intoyoutube, and to go even further in youtube I'd actually want to learn and I would learn, for free. The generation has changed to digital art, why not change the whole way we teach art? Books are the standardized way of learning. From a young age our creativity is wrung from us and we are forced into creating a lifetime structure of how everything must work and how we must learn: how we must sit in the same spot every class, who we must hangout with, and how we must always go in chronological order. Art goes against all rules, and for the most part so does this class, but the blogs are grueling and no one even actually reads the entire chapter, that is unless they should really be an English or Elementary Education major instead of an art major. I hope this is not offensive, but in all reality its just the truth, and you know it too.

My first two weeks in Drupal

Now don't get me wrong. I will stay with my claim drupal is a better content management system, but like I said in an earlier post it is difficult to learn and adjust to. My first two weeks in drupal, I had no idea what I was doing. I had never touched drupal, messed around in drupal, an everyone who works within the drupal development team at my company has years of expertise within the CMS. I watched  72 tutorials by "Scott with the level of Tuts." I listened to Scott for so many hours that I am pretty sure if I heard that guys voice anywhere in the country, I could point him out at this point. Okay, probably not, but I do know that voice well. After my grueling hours of dedication to the CMS I at that point hated, I started creating pages and working with the different modules I could get my hands on. I started liking it, a lot. Although I still have tons to learn about this CMS, I have a book I've started reading on drupal and I am still actively watching videos to increase my knowledge in the development of websites.

Wordpress vs Drupal

In my internship (the one where I was hired to create a website) I have been asked if after the website is created if I would stay and be on the drupal development team. Drupal is a content management system, and content management framework. Drupal is much like wordpress in the fact that they both provide avenues to more readily manage your content without stickily coding through modules or as wordpress calls plugins. I have found one very distinct difference from worpress though, its user friendly. Wordpress you can be about anyone off the street and is you can use a computer and can navigate webpages, you could build yourself a decent looking website just by relying on a well made theme. I would have to say through my experience between the both at this point, I would choose drupal. Although wordpress is simpler, easier to navigate, and understand; drupal provides you with a way to do anything that you can think of doing to your website. Wordpress assumes to often it knows what you want, but if you have the knowledge of how to make a drupal website, in the end, it kicks wordpress butt.. But, in the case you're only looking at aesthetics, and its not a content heavy website, I would say wordpress is your site.

Work in Progress website

I recently got a job that wanted me to create a website for them, and instead of going into details about that story lets just get to the nitty gritty and talk about whats going on within that website. I am currently working on my website within wordpress. I started using wordpress last semester and I am quickly learning that I need to learn more about html, css, and the beginning workings of php. I have a basic understanding of html, and a little css, but the people I have begun to work with are far beyond me. I am attempting and succeeding on creating a visually appealing website, but there are detailed things I would like to change in my theme and because I am not knowledgable in these code languages, I have been left flabbergasted with these requests from my customer unsure which steps to take next.
As of right now, I am attempting now to move my main menu from the right side bar to center page, but I do not have a customizable menu. Moving the menu may sounds trivial but whether it is or is not, it still has been a challenge for me. I face new questions everyday, but on the very bright side, I am learning fast. Very fast.

Problems with my Digital Recreation

I had a rough start with my first project. It seemed as if everything I learned last semester was completely erased from memory. I couldn't figured out how to laso my background photo in photoshop within a new layer, and I had a very difficult time remembering many solutions to simple problems such as these. I probably spent approximately 5 to 6 hours actually just troubleshooting my project of these issues before I actually getting to the meat of my project and wrapping things up. I am hoping that I don't have this problem again in future projects. I didn't have my finished project in the gif as I would have liked it to have been, but I can always go back and get it just the way I like later.