Trans-disciplinary Thinking 04

Week 20 - Day 1

Today, Dane gave us a little exercise about EMBODIED THINKING!!! I paired with Tea and she gave me her favorite memory that I tried to animate fully before I decided it was getting too long so I took out a snippet of it instead. The basic gist of it is that she likes chickens! I like chickens, too. They are so CUTE!!! (AGGRESSIVELY LOVES THEM!)

The part that I animated was: I found a hen nest. I knew that when there were eggs the hen was near, I snatched all of them.

XD

No chickens or eggs were harmed in the making of this animation...

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In hindsight, I shouldn't have made the thought bubble pop up in the top right corner because it made my eyes go too far away from the center point and it was...frankly, quite annoying. Hopefully, I don't do this again in the future. I mean, the lightbulb kind of already started to led the eye in that direction BUT STILL!! SDKJFHDSKJFHDSKJ

(DID YOU LIKE THE CHICKEN I DREW?? SO CUTE!)

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Getting into the proper mindset to write a brief is really hard, especially when you're not used to thinking academically and using big words. I've had to resort to using the thesaurus quite a few times so I don't end up being so repetitive with using the same words over and over again...

I'm using Dane's example as an outline for what to write but, like I said, it's hard...

YAY APA REFERENCING!

Unity 01

Week 20 - Day 1

I forgot to upload what I did with Unity last week. I thought I had to show it IN CLASS so I didn't bother posting a blog about it...but really...I SHOULD POST EVERYTHING!!! Whelp~

So here's the tower with 12 steps going up to the top and 6 squares (or should I use the correct term and call them CUBES) on the top, It was a bit hard to follow during the lecture and, I will admit, a lot of things sort of went over my head. But after a quick explanation from Tea, she showed me that it was, more or less, the same principle as Maya, so YAY! That's quite a relief!

Also, grouping and parenting and keeping the outliner CLEAN AND TIDY is, as usual, muy importante! I am nothing if not organized...and I hope to remain so...

Anyway, the spheres on top of the tower is just for fun. I thought it would be funny to see them tumbling over the steps and fall off into nothingness...But alas, that was not the results I achieved. Allow me to demonstrate via picture slide.

It was so funny to watch...X'D But I'm sure that when I'm actually trying to make a game it will be frustrating as heck...X___X

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Here's the extra thing we were asked to do using just basic shapes (because I don't know if arches are a thing we can make in Unity at this point...). I also figured out how to use the free camera view. OH MAAHHH GAAHHHH...SDKJFHSDKJHFHSKEUF

Trans-disciplinary Thinking 03

Week 19 - Day 1 (It's Friday...but yes, it took me this long to submit it...)

WHAT DID I DO BEFORE ANIMATION? I cooked...

I was thinking of trying to mix culinary arts and animation together to do something fun. I really liked the idea of Dane and Steve Reich's "out of sync" videos and I wondered how I could apply it. I thought, hey, what if there's a group of guys standing in front of a stove and they're doing that thing where they flick the wok and the contents inside it goes SWOOSH, SWOOSH, SWOOSH but then I thought, awh, maybe not...?

So I moved on and tried to think of something else like FUSION CUISINE. When I was studying culinary arts we had a paper based on this and it was WEIRD but fun. And delicious.

According to wikipedia: Fusion cuisine is cuisine that combines elements of different culinary traditions. 

I kind of want to mix stop-motion, live action and animation into the brief. Maybe I'm biting off more than I can chew but I think that as long as I'm clear in the brief and keep up with my time-management then I should be alright...I need to talk to Dane just to get him on the same page first BUT BEFORE THAT, I'm gonna try and write up a mock-up of the brief in the weekend...

Dane showed us a scene the other week about visualizing flavors from Ratatouille and I really want to apply that in a small portion of the animation.

In terms of stop-motion animation I was mostly thinking of movies like "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and...well, the other Tim Burton movies as well but also Aardman with their "Wallace and Gromit" series. Love that show. Have always wanted to have a try of doing something like that!

I'm not too clear on how everything is going to come together but I really want to have a go at stop-motion. I'm not sure how I'll be able to mix in animation into it yet but I think once I've talked with Dane I'll have a better idea of where to go...

WISH ME LUCK!!

Trans-disciplinary Thinking 02

Week 19 - Day 5

COMICS!! This week we were given some comics to have a play around with. The basic gist of it is that we should try and change or remove something from the pages so that it tells a different story like how Garfield takes a slightly different meaning when you take away all of his dialogue boxes and it's just Jon talking to himself...It's a bit sad, really. X'D

Anyway, I originally thought I'd play around with the Bert and Sue comic and call it "Death and Sue" instead with the guy in the front as the "third-wheeler" or what have you...I changed my mind and decided to edit the Magno and Copperheads comics instead and change it into Magneto VS Hydra taking over the Xavier Institute...(It was funny but not HA-HA hilarious...I don't know how to do this...)

In the end...I went back to the Bert and Sue comic and made it seem like they're going to Heaven. They end up meeting all sorts of celebrities there!! Which I thought was funny...but that might just be my sense of humor...anyway...here you go!

Does Elvis look like Elvis? Not really...XD I took away the receding hairline and gave him a smirk and some actual irises but ehhhh???

It was fun, in any case. XD

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Dane also gave us a little video of water splashing and try to animate something over it. A lot of people took away different things but unfortunately, what my head saw was just pokemon falling into the water. (Much Pokemon Go was played on the bus to school...)

Whee!!! Look at Vaporeon and Dratini! All graceful~ And then you get Psyduck being a derp. XD I had fun. I didn't bring my cintiq today but I brought my other tablet instead. The quality is not very nice but I was able to churn it out fairly quickly. But...quality-work it is not...

(No pokemon were abused in the making of this animation...)

Environment Design 01

Week 19 - Day 2

Today we were asked to draw 4 horror concepts either interior or exterior and include any of the followings: asymmetry, guiding light, and a room that's not too cluttered. (I forgot how many because the internet is down and the slides aren't up on moodle so I'll have to check again in the morning...)

Anyway, I find the "guiding light" an appealing concept so I ended up using that in 2 of the 4 concepts and mostly in the 4th one. I also included asymmetry as well as the not cluttered room but I was not as successful in the level design of the area...DX

The backstory is that the protagonist has just escaped a "panic room" and leave to find the next area bloodied and daunting...(What a wonderful descriptor...) It's a lot clearer in the 3rd concept but I found the 4th one to be my favorite which is why it's a little bit more detailed than the rest. It also has asymmetry as well as being not cluttered, so that's 3 of 3!!

Here are the rough versions...

And here is the slightly touched-up clean version...

We also had to include sunflowers in our concepts as well as a flower-shaped baby toy...I will fully admit that horror is not my favorite genre...nor my strong point so I found drawing them quite frustrating. I learnt a lot about level design and I feel that it came across more clearly in the 4th concept so, HUZZAH!

Hypertext 01

Week 18 - Day 7

We were asked to create 3 things - a steampunk item, a weapon, and a tome. I like the concept of steampunk but DAAANG if it ain't hard to draw something that's original. I don't think I did very well in terms of originality but I tried not to look up too many items from the steampunk genre and just tried to make do with quick glances and minimal referencing. This is what I ended up with...

We also had to include "flavor text" (ohm nom noms) and statistics to go with the item, so here you have it: O'Connor's Hand-o'matic! It reminds me a little bit of DUM-E from the Iron Man movies. Sure, he screws up a lot but he's cute doing it. I don't even know why I gave it a gender since I'm pretty sure, as a machine, they are genderless beings. Hoyyyy...

For the weapon I decided to have a little fun with it so I mixed the concept of a power bank and and ipod together to get this. Ta-daaaaa:

It's basically a shield with a whip attachment. Huzzah! It's roughly the size of...an oil-heater but a lot less heavy. I threw in some song titles because why not. Kudos to you if you recognize some of the songs. XD (No Copyright Infringement was intended...)

So, last but not least is the tome. It's about 100 words long, give or take and I decided to make mine a a letter from a soldier in the middle of war writing to his sweetheart back home.

Excuse the messiness. I wanted to portray a young person that no longer cares about the legibility of their handwriting. The basic gist behind this tome is that I was heavily inspired by the Uncharted Series from Naughty Dog where you'd occasionally find pieces of paper or books with micro-narrative inside them that is up to the user to read or ignore. So, in my mind, this piece of paper was found by a researcher (from the 2010's) of the world war so I wanted the paper to look old and weathered and the writing a bit faded on the paper. The message is meant to be one of regret as well as fear, which I'm hoping comes across clearly enough as it.

Whether this letter was eventually sent to the intended is up to the player to interpret on their own...

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We also had to draw up a poster. I forgot to mention...We switched our briefs with Team Pancake and we had to do an Alien TV series and we decided to do FRIENDS!! It was funny. The original picture we were planning to use was the iconic one of them drinking from sundaes and milkshakes but we changed our minds and went with the other iconic picture of them sitting on a couch in front of a fountain instead. Whoop!

This is the final picture...

I will also upload my rough picture of Alien-Rachel later...

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HERE!!!

I also drew one version of Joey but Tea already got to him. XD

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Here's the feedback we got for the 3 things I designed:

O'Connor's Hand-o'matic:-

Jerwin says the item makes him think of Dr. Grordbort which is pretty great because their stuff is AMAZING. He also said it makes him think of something from Borderlands, so that's awesome, too!

P(eanut) B(utter) INC:-

Jerwin thinks it would be a good idea to have the songs playing on the radio as an extra layer of diegesis.
Elena thinks people might not know some of the song titles. I mentioned that I tried to play with songs from different generations so that it might at least seem familiar in some ways if not all.
Taylor likes the extra stats I put on the item!! <3
Tea thinks it would be a good idea to be paired with an electronic pet and that I can connect the USB port into it as an extra supporting character rather than just a decoration. The cons is that I will lose the "mace" as a ranged-weapon and there's a possibility the cable would be too short, UNLESS I CAN MAKE IT EXTENDABLE!!

It would also be good to include a visual scale of the weapon. I pointed out to a speaker in the theatrette but it would be a nice idea to draw a human silhouette holding the shield and mace, too.

Loveletter to sweetheart:-

Elena says the handwriting is quite hard to read. I don't blame her. I can't read my own handwriting sometimes. I tried to find a nice font to use but I thought the handwritten aspect might be more appealing on paper but I also wanted a dialogue box to pop up so the players can read it in a proper font rather than try to decipher the bad calligraphy...
Oscar likes the stock paper I used, which is good but I will also admit that I borrowed it from google images so I am not claiming it as my own.

Trans-disciplinary Thinking 01

Week 18 - Day 5

How does one perceive taste in terms of VISUALS and COLORS and SHAPES? I have no idea. Dane gave us an exercise AND FOOD to try and figure out how to see food using our senses; not just to eat it but to actually think about it - how we feel when it touches our taste buds. I got a cuttlefish cracker and it made me think of undulating waves...which is probably normal considering the subject but it also made me think of shifting colors, grace and chaos in-between. Does that make sense?

How do you animate something crispy? Do you use jerky lines? Probably. What about the manner in which a cuttlefish swims?

...

Here you go. XD

In hindsight, I don't think I did it right. The waves and the seaweed should've been more abstract; less obvious. But, oh wells. I'll try again for another session.

Cheers!!