My name is Kris Kneisley, and I am currently a Senior at the University of Kansas finishing up my Bachelor’s in Film and Media Studies, Creative Writing, and a minor in Journalism. Because of all of these things I’m studying, I spend a lot of time during the day on my computer. Whether it is for class projects or personal work, multimedia is very prominent in my life.
One of the types of media I often work on is a blog I have on this website. I started it my sophomore year in college, and it’s something that I write a lot in. It’s really allowed me to express myself and show off my enjoyment for film, comedy, and anything else I feel like writing about.
For this project where I have to dissect and talk about my different uses of media and how it reflects myself, I thought it would be perfect to write about my WordPress blog on the site itself, and the way I’m choosing to write it is in the exact same format of my blog posts.
The actual “home page” is new as of sometime this year. I made it because in the past I have also added posts I made for class along with my personal blog posts, and I did not want the teachers or anyone getting confused on where things are. Before the addition of the home page, the personal blog posts were the first thing that people saw. Now the first thing people see is the header that I created.
I personally think this is a perfect example of my use in multimedia. It’s a huge collage of many different works, all put together to show-off and display a different part of me. I made this on Photoshop, and three of the pieces in the collage were not made by myself. I circled those below.
Everything I placed on here together works as a display of myself, and those three drawings of me help show that there are many different ways to view myself and the content I create.
The piñata and the squirrel with a pizza digital drawings were one of the first ever drawings I made on a digital tablet. They’re both fairly simple and do not relate to one another in any way, but I wanted to display them because I’m very proud of how they turned out. When I make things, I always try to use it as reference for future works, and it’s important to me to remember them.
The blue/orange drawing of myself drinking out of a coffee mug was the first digital drawing of myself that I ever made. It is also the first self-portrait that I actually like and enjoy sharing. I use it as both my Twitter and Instagram pic, and I think it shows a type of calm demeanor with the blue, and a contemplative mood with the coffee mug in being used.
Technically, this might be considered a “selfie” because I made it from referencing a picture I took of myself through my laptop’s camera. I don’t particularly agree with Goodnow’s definition of a selfie, however. It wouldn’t be listed on the adventure, popularity, or even attractiveness column, but making them at the time was fun to me, and I enjoy looking back at them. I personally think that it shows somewhat of a reflection of me, both by how it looks and how it was made.
So that, I think, is what matters most about the “selfie” and I extended my enjoyment of the orange/blue drawing and made more that referenced off of it.
The muppet version of that drawing just to the left of the original is one I also enjoy a lot. I really enjoy the Muppets and their type of humor, and at one point I wanted to draw myself as a muppet, so I used the one drawing I liked and modeled it just like the original version.
There are many other versions of this mug drawing that I have created over the years, and they can all be seen below:
They were all made at the time to signify a different mood I was having or to celebrate a specific holiday. As I mentioned previously, I use the original on some social media, and for the holidays like Halloween, Christmas, or St. Patrick’s Day I switch the image to the one that would fit best.
All of the other parts of the collage are either things I made that I think are funny, or things that mean a lot to me and enjoyed making. Some of the things are definitely inside jokes or things that you had to be at to find funny, but it is important to me so I added it to the header.
The blog posts themselves had a large growth and evolution throughout the years.
Originally, the WordPress blog site was set in the theme of something similar to a book. The name of the website was still the same, but I titled the collection of blog posts “The Inequality of Man.”
It sounds deep, but that was its intention, because it is anything but.
It’s a title that I used for a few other of my personal projects in the past, and I used it as a nonsense term that I had hoped would cause more thought and analysis than actually needed.
I first used the term back in high school, with an art piece of a rooster. I used it a couple years later with an improv comedy podcast I created back in freshman year of college.
I was still working on that podcast when I started writing on this site, and that’s why I decided to follow my posts with the same title.
None of the posts at this point really matched with each other. They were all just something I felt was funny and wanted to write about at the time, which I really enjoy doing. Comedy is something I enjoy doing, and having an outlet like this to express myself is very useful for me.
Eventually I got really bored with that format and I decided to just title the posts with the title I thought the post is about, instead of chapters. No one would really be able to tell what a post is about if it’s just chapters.
Throughout my few years of writing, most of it has been satire. They started off as jokes between friends during conversations that I decided to write about and expand on. With the Kairos readings, I think Laura’s was the one I could relate to the most, because it’s other people who inspire me just like she mentioned.
I recently started to mix in some posts that are truthful and my actual thoughts, and that started once I began to make a few themed posts.
I have done many themed writings where I continue with the same topic but with a different viewpoint on different posts.
So far, I have done three different themed posts, which are:
I started to talk about movies and the Oscars (remember: I’m a film major), and at the time of writing, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It made no sense to me at all why it was nominated, because there were many other animated films that came out that year that were so much better. Thankfully, it lost to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
2. Aquaman
Last winter, I was able to watch an early screening of the Aquaman film. I didn’t particularly like it, but it inspired me to write something “marine” related each day the week before it’s official theatrical release. It helped start bring a focus into the writing that was not there before.
3. Scooby-Doo
This was actually done very recently at the time of this writing. On September 13, 2019, Scooby-Doo had its 50th Anniversary, and Scooby-Doo is a character I love and grew up watching. Like the Aquaman posts, I decided to write every day before about the character and the many shows to celebrate and put a focus on it that I have not before.
A lot of people have talked to me about the posts and how much they enjoy them. I am really glad that they find them funny and like to read them, but honestly, it was originally made for me to get my thoughts written down, and it’s great that people can find something in them. Hopefully it inspires them to make something for themselves someday.
Kristopher K. Online 