Muse Soundslide

The Soundslide was a lot of fun to make. I had never used the Soundslide program before but it was really easy. I simply saved my PowerPoint as pictures and uploaded them into Soundslides.

For the audio, I chose "Bliss" by Muse because the piano intro is amazing and perfect for the sound/look I wanted to achieve for the Soundslide. I used Audacity to cut and paste parts of the song to loop it throughout the whole presentation. I found Audacity really easy to use. After I edited the song as a WAV file, I imported it into iTunes to make it an mp3 because that is the only audio type Soundslide supports.

From there it was just a matter of picking how long I wanted each slide to show for before transitions. It was an enjoyable project and if I had more time I don't think I would have changed anything. I am happy with the final outcome.

Muse CD Release Poster

The CD release poster was a fairly easy project. It was my first time using QuarkXpress but it didn't give me any problems.

Since it was a CD release poster, it needed to be eye catching so that was my biggest priority. I also wanted to play on the title of their new CD, "The Resistance," so I used that in the headline. At first, I used a brighter blue color for headlines, but when it printed it had low resolution. I fixed that problem and also added a hot pink and a lime green color in the headline to make it more eye catching. I also changed the font and the font size.

If I had more time, I would have worked with the background more and try to figure out how to use a transparent image with text over it. I simply did not have the time to figure that out and I think it would give the poster my texture. Overall, I am happy with it.

MUSE PowerPoint

For the music Powerpoint project, I decided to do the band Muse. I had already done the Beatles for a past project so I felt I should mix it up a bit.

I am very familiar with PowerPoint so this project was enjoyable and easy. I didn't want to go for a "cute" look with this, since Muse is progressive rock and I love them because they are so unique. So I didn't use bright colors and I made sure to use pictures that are either from live shows or the band in the studio being themselves.

I used the transparency effect on all my slides except the title slide. I liked the way it gave definition and texture to the slide without any animation. Also, I tilted pictures to make them seem more 3-dimensional.

I did not run into any problems really with this project, it was fairly simple. I also was able to drag images right from my browser to PowerPoint. I am most proud of the project as a whole. I liked the "look" and the colors I chose. It is very Muse-like. If I had more time, I would have worked with time transitions more and figure out a better way for them to flow with the music. The presentation could not be over a minute long so it was difficult to get the timings where I wanted them.