My Emoji Story
I knew right away what recent text consumption I wanted to present in emoji fashion for this assignment. This recent indulgence was satisfying in so many ways, but I really valued the story telling, characters and depiction of events that were thoughtfully portrayed in this text. Having said that, thoughtfully portraying this text in emoji form was something else. I would definitely say that I stick to the “old fashion” way of communicating through text messages and emails using written words. I rarely find myself scanning through the emoji smorgasbord for an image to convey my thoughts, ideas, or feelings. Because of this, I did find this task challenging. I knew what I wanted to say about the text that I picked out, but I had no idea what emojis were out there to get my description across. This led me on my first journey through this task which involved raking through the emoji selections on www.emojikeyboard.io. I really had no idea how many emojis existed in the world, let alone the fact that there are different emoji keyboards and styles. Scanning through the different emoji keyboards gave me my weak but now existent foundation on which I could build the plot of my text.
To build the plot using emojis, I decided to use the symbols to represent the keywords that I thought were important to the plot. I presented the keywords in some form of an emoji sentence separated by a new line in an attempt to add some clarity and readability to my description. I went back and forth on this decision, not really knowing if an emoji sentence required punctuation that would be standard in a conventional english sentence. This specific process in this task really made me think about other languages and whether connecting words (was, and, etc.) are really required in order to get an idea across.
When I was comfortable with the selection of emojis, I decided to start with the title instead of jumping right into my description of this text. My reasoning for this was to figure out some standard symbols that are important to the title that I would also use throughout the rest of the text to continue with a consistent theme and description. In the case of this particular text, these symbols were a TV, a flag, and two other common symbols. It is very noticeable how important these symbols are to the plot of this text just by scanning the emoji description.
I selected this text as the example for this task because of the pure enjoyment that I got from the consumption. I enjoy any text that provides thought provoking messages, ideas, and visualization. After finishing this text, I knew that it would fit perfectly with this assignment based on the immense amount of description and detail in the work. I figured that this would easily translate into images portrayed through emojis. And, although this task definitely was not easy, I did find almost all of the symbols that were required in order to paint a complete picture of the plot.
At first, I thought perhaps you had watched a show about Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament but upon further exploring the plot I am guessing that you watched a show about the Chernobyl disaster. Possibly the mini-series called ‘Chernobyl’.
I tried to focus on key emojis within the text in the context of the ‘Ukraine’ and something to do with ‘nuclear’. It as the medical emojis (ambulance, hospital, etc.) that lead me to my guess. I didn’t read your text until after and found it interesting that you thought that keywords would be essential in communicating your story, which for me was absolutely true (providing I guess correctly).
This has been a very difficult task to try to decode the emoji stories, particularly in cases such as yours where the heavy topic isn’t matched by the embedded light-heartedness of emojis. Therefore, the language it is being presented in doesn’t well fit the message and therefore is much more difficult to pinpoint.
Hi Tanya,
Well done! Thank you for your insights. I also thought about the contrast of the colourful and cartoon-like emojis representing such a dark, and real history. It made some of the emojis difficult to choose because it was hard to find ones that portrayed the seriousness and sadness that is portrayed in the series.
Kelvin
Okay,
I swear I did not peak! 😛
Chernobyl!
I picture you doing some programming the way you have created chunks of information out of emojis that repeat.
Great Job Kelvin.
Hi Ryan,
Thank you for your comments. I have a very limited programming background, but this assignment definitely made me think in the same way that programming does. I found myself going back and editing the “code” of the emojis and realizing that I was missing some key components in some of my “sentences.”
Kelvin
Hey Kelvin,
Awesome job!
I could tell right away from the title that the show you have written about is Chernobyl. What I found interesting is that you needed to create the title using Emoji’s because there isn’t a direct translation. This was a great show to use for this task and I really liked how you used the clocks to illustrate time. I noticed how the clocks illustrate time moving forward and isn’t the same clock repeated.
Hi Katlyn,
Thank you for your thoughts. I went back and forth with the time emojis, trying to decide if it was clear what they were there for. As for the title, I thought it was interesting reading other people’s posts (yours included), where you were able to directly substitute emojis for each word in the title. Because of this, it took me a while to figure out which emojis I needed to portray the title. The emojis in the title also ended up being key to the rest of my plot description.
Kelvin