Comics

Have you ever read a comic before? Because I made my own comic myself! My comic is called Paca and Beetle, which is a fable from Brazil. Paca and Beetle is also a Wisdom Tale, which is from a book that has many fables, tall tales, fairy tales, and more. All the stories have a moral, and the moral of Paca and Beetle is to be humble and not cocky. I chose this story because I think its moral is really important in life and because I never heard of a paca before, which is a kind of rodent similar to a rat and has fast legs. 

The story of Paca and Beetle is about a Paca who is very arrogant in his ability to run fast. There is a beetle who is on a journey across the river and the Paca laughed at its speed, boasting about his legs. A wise parrot saw what was happening and decided to have the two race, and the winner would receive a new coat. The Paca thought he didn’t even need to try so he walked to the finish line, only to see the beetle already there. The Paca was confused and realized the beetle has flew over. The parrot then gave the beetle a coat just like its own, brightly dotted with yellow and a green base. The Paca then learned to be humble towards others and oneself.

In my comic, I used the tips that Brittain Peck has gave us. Brittain Peck is an illustrator and visited DA. He showed us how he drew and gave us tips to draw good. In my comic, I started with low detail, with only small sketches of the scenes, then I started to add more details and colors, which then I made a final sketch and used it for my comic. 

The website I used to draw was Sketchbook, which is free app on self service that allowed me to draw my scenes using a variety of different brushes and more. I used the paint brush as my back ground so I had a fading blue sky. I then used a pen that was a little thicker than a pencil and used it to draw all of my props and animals. 

In conclusion, I think I learned a lot making this comic and from Mr. Peck, I enjoyed using Sketchbook a lot with its many attributes. I hope that in the future, I will make another comic on a different story.

 

Habits

Have you ever had a habit where you had to do something every day? Well, in my Language Arts class in DA, our teacher Ms. Donnelly had us create a habit of planking every day and increasing week by 15 seconds. The effect of planking every day was that we were training our core power so it kept us fit. I also realized that I could plank longer and longer between intervals. The most challenging part of planking was climbing back up from a fall. In the final challenge, I planked for 5 min 43 sec. The time surprised me because when I started, I couldn’t get past 30 seconds. When I finally fell, I was EXHAUSTED but happy I got 5th place. In conclusion, I’ve decided to keep on planking, starting from 20 seconds and increasing every week by 20 seconds. I hope this will inspire you to make your own habit! 

Books

 

Reading is hard for me when I’m tired. Have you ever felt the same way? Reading is like immersing myself into a new world, real or unreal. I enjoy reading because it leads me into someplace different from my world. I also always hyperfocus during reading because my mind is too into it. The effects of hyperfocusing for me are that my face may look emotionless, but my mind is thinking and bursting with thoughts and emotions. (Wrap it up)

When I was very young, I thought reading was boring. I wouldn’t read the books my mom wanted me to read. So now, I go back to read the books my mom wanted me to read, but she says that the books are too easy for me. However, I still enjoy reading them and the books my mom says are my level. 

My family and I used to keep over 100 books in our mini library, most of them still unread. When we were stuck in Taiwan because of COVID, we couldn’t bring our books. But eventually we stacked up another mini library containing new books, harder and longer. Now, moving into America has left us with around 30 books, as they are being safely kept by our grandparents in Taiwan. I hope we can build up another array of books soon, that way, I won’t have to worry about hurting my eyes too much from reading e-books.

When I was little, the school library bought a new book called Dog Man, which I know is a comic book now. But back then, I thought the book would be only full of words and was not for my level. My mom begged me to read it but I refused. When I finally agreed, I realized it was a graphic novel and enjoyed reading it very much. This taught me not to literally judge a book by its cover. So now when I am searching for an interesting book, I always read the summary in the first pages, and from that I decide if I want to read it. Comment below for any reading experiences you had before, and thank you for reading my blog.

 

Window Or Mirror? The Hive By Barry Lyga

I read and finished The Hive by Barry Lyga. I think this book is a window for me; a window is like an opening to a different world that I experience. The book is a realistic fiction book. I chose this book because when I first saw it, I read the review and thought it would be an interesting book to read. The book is like a window to me because it shows a perspective in a fiction world. The setting is in a era where social media has nearly taken over. Now, people who do things that are normally not illegal are harassed and chased by people who are called HIVE JUSTICE. HIVE is a online social media platform where everyone gossips about everything. If someone says or does something and is condemned too much, they will receive HIVE JUSTICE. There are 6 levels of HIVE JUSTICE, each more serious than the other. The story focuses on a girl whose name is Cassie McKinney, she is really good at coding and hacking and goes to school. But one day she made a joke that gets condemned by over 200 million people and is on level 6. This means that anybody who participates in HIVE JUSTICE can kill her on sight, and there is no time limit. The protagonist has to run away find a way to decrease the CONDEMNS, which are later revealed to be mostly only fake accounts with bots. I enjoyed this story because I think the settings and plot are really interesting and cool for me.

 

 

Basic Movements Code In Scratch

Basic Coding Skills on Scratch

Hello, human, if you are making a plateformer on scratch and you are new, read this,otherwise, this is pretty easy for you. 

Base Movements 

I’m going to use wasd except for s for movement. First, you need to add a variable, called y-velo (velocity) or whatever that can remind you that its for your y coordinates. If you are making just a ground for you sprite, create a sprite and make your ground, then set the coordinates to X=0 and y=0. Now that the ground is done, set y-velo to 0 every time you press the green flag.

The y-velo variable for your avatar that moves

The ONLY code you need for your ground




Then you make the a and d (left and right). REMEMBER to always use change X by (), if you use the move block, you wouldn’t have any velocity. You also need to do the second code shown below or else y velo is useless.

The second code shown below

Next, I’m going to give you the code for the jumping, its not very complicated if you actually take time to look at it and see why it works that way. For me, Sprite2 is the ground.

Thanks For Reading This Blog, please recommend it to others who need help too.

Camp Kirkwood

Last week, the whole 6th-grade went on a trip to Camp Kirkwood. As we rode the buses, rain was pounding on the windows, while a hurricane was raging not so far away. But in the bus, we were watching a movie. After we reached camp, we quickly rushed to the pavilion to shelter from the still pouring rain. Then, the chaperones sent us to our cabins to rest a bit. We played card games for a while until they said it was okay to go out and that it was still raining a bit. My group(group 2) went orienteering and went to the pool to swim. After taking a break to change in the cabins, we headed for dinner. I can’t really remember what happened after that other than sleeping in my sleeping bag. 

The next day, it was still pouring water as we had breakfast and started a whole new day full of exciting activities. We did some group teamwork activities which were not that fun because when we were playing human knot, I always got stretched out and my arms hurt a lot after that. We also did a activity where everyone put a finger on a hoop and had to slowly descend the hoop to the ground without making it fall off. Everyone thought it would be easy at first but then realized it was hard when the hoop randomly lifted a direction and dropped a direction. We were all confused at this because everybody just wanted to get out of the rain and back in the cabins. In the afternoon after we had lunch, we went to the pool again, but this time it was bright and sunny instead of yesterday, which was dreary and raining. We then went on the Kanga-Jump. The Kanga-Jump is a gigantic air bag that is shaped like a half oval. It was very bouncy and when Mr. Robbins jumped on, everyone just bounced suddenly simultaneously. For dinner, we each had two slices of pizza and pink lemonade. We then went to a campfire to eat s’mores.

The next and last day, we had pancakes for breakfast and did some activities that some groups didn’t get to do. We first went to the V-Swing, where someone would be chained to a line and the rest would pull a line that raised the hanging person, and when we reached a certain point depending on the person, we would stop pulling and hold on while the person had to unlock a rope. Once the person does it, a click would happen and the person would fall and start swinging until it stopped. Next, we went to a zipline that crossed a river around 20 ft in the air. After the zipline, we went canoeing in teams of three. I was steering but it was very tiring. Finally, we ate lunch and prepared to leave the camp. 

I was sad we had to leave so quickly because I really enjoyed all the activities there. I hope next year we go to a nice place to have fun!