its.karen

I'm just as lost as everybody else.#BCTblog2017

[karenfrombct-blog]

A Much Needed Upgrade

It’s quite evident in my previous blogs that I am absolutely lost when it comes to blogging. I don’t even know what I am supposed to talk about anymore. Is the blog meant to be purely reflective or can we just write an account of what happened with our work? Am I being too casual and informal? It’s like I’ve basically forgotten everything that I learnt in the Better Blogging workshop with Anna. So back to my mate Google for the goods...’How to write an academic blog’. 

WHAT DOES A ‘GOOD’ POST LOOK LIKE?

A good post is personal, reflective and substantive. I want to make sure that my blog posts meet this criteria and Steve Wheeler(2010) presents some helpful tips on what a good blog post should include:

A good “snappy” title

Good content

Controversial content

Images to illustrate your views and inform your readers

Hyperlinks that take readers deeper into the topic or discussion

Humor, word play, or even satire to strengthen your post and entertain your readers

It seems simple enough but even the simplest tasks can be overwhelming and take a while to perfect. 

WHAT DOES A ‘GOOD’ POST SOUND LIKE? (CONTENT)

This is the bit that really screws me over in blogging. How to structure my writing. I got the whole “What? So What? Now What?” thing but it seems that it hasn’t actually seeped into my brain yet. I needed to find a different way of looking at it. I find things easier to remember when they’re in a formula of some sort so when I found this reflective writing strategy (D.I.E.P) it jumped right out at me. 

D - Describe what happened

I  - Interpret the event

E - Evaluate the effectiveness/what you learnt

P - Plan for the future/how this learning will be applied

WHAT HAVE I EVEN BEEN BLOGGING?

Well, basically nothing really for the past two weeks since we’ve got back from the break. I’ve said many times before that writing is not my strong suit so I guess I have just been trying to avoid blogging altogether. It’s not the best excuse but it’s all I’ve got. Looking over my post from this semester (it ain’t much at all), I see that a lot of what I write is purely a recount of what I’ve done. Not much reflection or planning for future works e.g. what to do next?. This is something that I strongly feel I need to work on to better my blog post content. I also believe that I need to post more frequently because I am definitely lacking. Hopefully this time round I’ll be able to absorb this information and keep it from floating away so that I can develop my blogging skills and produce a more informative and reflective blog.

Resources:

http://www.steve-wheeler.co.uk/2010/05/what-makes-good-blogpost.html

 https://learn.solent.ac.uk/mod/book/tool/print/index.php?id=2732

 https://www.salesforce.com/ca/blog/2015/10/anatomy-of-a-blog-post.html

[karenfrombct-blog]

Group Proposal thingy-ma-Jigg

The Proposal: 

Our proposal is to evaluate the effectiveness of screen-based interactive multimedia artwork as a method of communication of emotional content.

Through iterative processes we will build a multi-sensory interactive work to stimulate the senses to evoke emotional response within the participant(s).]

The criteria of engagement, enjoyment, retention of experience and level of distraction will be evaluated using various qualitative means.

The Vision

Our group is looking to create some sort of interactive audio-visual wall art installation that would create/influence emotions....something like that. We wanted to have an interactive project to appeal to our potential audience. 

Our Team

The requirement set from the lecturer in forming groups was to find people that had a similar concept for movement as yourself but when our team was formed, none of our ideas were in sync. There were no connections to  be made. We were basically the ones who were left over after everyone had formed their groups of five, hence our group name, The Rejects (don’t worry James, we’re going to change it). Everyone’s train of thoughts and ideas had them following along different tracks and so we had no way of getting our ideas to meet up.....or so we thought. 

After listening to each others ideas and following the advice of James - which was to dig even deeper and find the similarities - we discovered that there were actual links that we could make. There was a common interest within this group to explore movement in audio and visual aspects. Each person also brought with them their own individual spice which I think puts our team at an advantage as we are more diverse in ideas as well as skills.

Vaani - She kinda naturally just slipped into the position of being our leader as she is super organized and made sure the rest of us were participating. She’s pretty mean at art as well and wanted to explore the emotions felt by viewers through the observation of an art installation.

Shades - A walking encyclopedia with a whole bunch of random knowledge that she happily shares and always finds a way to link to our concept. Her interest was in motion tracking and finding ways to break surveillance.

Matt - Always interacting with the group and always sharing his thoughts and ideas, he’s also the member that acts out our project idea when we’re trying to explain it to people e.g James. His initial concept was about competition and the effect it has on people and their motivation.

Kelvin - Cool, calm, collected and a bomb as researcher. He originally wanted to focus on raising awareness on the importance of kinesthetic learning not only in children but also those with learning disadvantages.

Simon -  Social media King? Well he’s the mastermind behind our means of communication online i.e. Facebook, Google Docs. His interest was in visualizing sound waves in the form of sound or music.

A pretty diverse group if you ask me. Looking forward to working along them.

What do I have to offer?

Is expert Google-er a thing? Because I think the main thing I can offer this group is my love of reading. I could probably get carried away researching a whole bunch of random stuff about our topic and still be interested. I also am really interested in film (visual effects), I’m not even that amazing but there’s also room for learning. I don’t want to get ahead of myself but I’ve grown to really enjoy programming. Once again, I suck at it but I’m not completely useless and with my love of reading and researching, I can actually see myself helping out with the coding that will probably be needed. 

[karenfrombct-blog]

Movement

I’m glad I made it to class today because I kinda get what the heck we’re doing now. In the speed dating exercise, I managed to talk to about five people which although may not sound like many, was a huge step for me because I find social situations like these real uncomfortable and awkward. Anyyywhoooo......on to this movement thing. I came up with a few ideas of what aspects of this topic i wanted to explore.

Dance uses the body as an instrument. Body language can be exaggerated and abstracted in dance to project an infinite number of feelings, subtle moods, and emotions (Green, 2010). One aspect I wanted to explore is physical movement specifically dance and it’s relationship with ones mood/emotions. In dance there are two “sources” of emotion - the emotion felt and expressed by the individual performing and the emotions evoked in the audience by the performance. I want to explore how different body movements influence different mood/emotions. An example of dance influencing is Hawaiian dance. The graceful hand movements and swift movements of the hips generate a kind of calm, serene mood therefore influencing emotions felt by the audience. That’s one example and I’m pretty there are way more out there to discover but I do wonder whether this influence of emotion from motion can be beneficial. Can movement (dance) benefit those with mental health issues? I should probably do some research on this. 

Over the semester break I helped out at an early childhood care center where my aunt worked so I was working a lot with small children who were basically running around all the time. My aunt also dragged me to her early childhood care course to keep her company. I actually learnt a lot about how young children learn and develop. I didn’t think it’d be of any use to me until now when I was able to connect it to something I was actually studying. There was a specific time of the day at the care center called ‘Wiggle Time’ dedicated to getting the kids involved with creative movement. Now I know this basically sounds like I’m talking about dance again but they’re actually two different. Dance requires moving in sync with rhythm whereas creative movement is using body actions to communicate ie. communicate an image, idea or a feeling. Movement is actually one of the first forms of communication and creative movement plays a big role in the development of children from a young age. I found that this was another aspect of movement that I could explore. The benefits of creative movement in the development of a person. 

Through creative movement, children develop their sensory awareness as they engage all their senses when exploring different aspects of movement. They also develop socially as creative movement encourages an environment where they are able to interact with others and learn to explore movement together. Creative movement allows an individual to move at their own pace and ability which is very inclusive when working with children with special needs and those who are physically challenged. These are a few of the benefits of creative movement in the development of an individual, the list goes on. 

The final aspect of movement I wanted to look at was how movement influences mood/emotions in film, specifically through camera movement. In film, camera movement emphasizes the emotion intended for that scene. For example, in scenes where a handheld camera is used, the shot is a lot more shaky which suggests uneasiness or danger which would probably influence the audiences mood/emotions as well. A slow camera dolly can create tension and also allows the audience to become more intimate with the character. This aspect is another example of emotion from motion like in dance. I will probably explore more into this topic to see what kind of brief I could come up with to express this aspect. 

[karenfrombct-blog]

From what I understand, we’re supposed to be submitting our work for Integrative Practice tomorrow in class and honestly I’m still quite lost. I wasn’t quite sure what the lecturers were looking for because I couldn’t find a rubric of some sort on Blackboard to follow. Maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places? I don’t know but I took to looking through the Tumblr blogs of my peers. Thank goodness for Tumblr. I spent a good hour or so looking through each blog and seeing if I could possibly figure out what the lecturers were looking for. Every persons blog was real different and I found most of them pretty interesting. Looking through everyone’s blogs was quite helpful - I kinda have a grasp on the project now so I guess that’s one good thing that came out of stalking (lol sorry).

I have this old seashell that I took from the beach when my uncle took me on my first ever fishing trip. It’s just a regular old shell, it doesn’t look like anything special when you look at it but it holds a lot of meaning to me as that trip turned out to be our last together. This shell became an embodiment of the memories I have with my uncle. Side note: I suck at fishing which is probably why he never took me again. I wish I knew for certain what kind of shellfish this came from but the most accurate answer I could give is probably guessing from comparing it to pictures on Google Images so I think it’s some kind of scallop shell. 

THERE SHE IS

[karenfrombct-blog]

It’s been a while

Wow, it’s the end of week 4 of semester 2 and I’ve only just found the time to post on Tumblr. Not the best effort I’ll admit but definitely gonna get back on track with this blogging thing. As well as missing out on like four weeks worth of blogging material, I’ve also missed out on a bunch of class time so not the greatest start to the semester. I have a whole lot of catching up to do so I better get on to making some sort of To Do List...

Things To Do:

Interrogate Object

Catch up on Physical Computing tasks

Figure out what the heck is happening in Studio II

Find out what else I’ve missed out on (Look through other blogs maybe?)

Looking forward to not being behind in class and actually knowing what’s happening. 

[karenfrombct-blog]

Studio 1 - The Final Post

Across the Finish line

Yeap, it was a long awaited conclusion but I’ve finally made it past the finish line. It wasn’t a smooth journey - life decided to throw a bunch of rocks at my face - but I guess I made it here eventually. I didn’t get to present this at Open Studio but I imagine that my setup would’ve looked a little something like this:

My Concept:

When we were given the brief, I knew that I wanted to re-visit the sound projects because I felt that I could’ve improved so much more with them. I saw that a common theme throughout my sound projects was the Pacific. I kept linking everything back to my culture which I thought would be a great first final project theme. I decided to focus on the conflict of cultural identity in New Zealand born Samoans. I gave an explanation of this idea in a previous blog before the semester ended. This conflict of cultural identity actually relates to anyone who was born/raised outside of their motherland. 

The Soundscape:

My original soundscape project had a nature theme to it but it didn’t really have a story or some sort of like hook to it. I wanted to make sure that my soundscape told a story. It may not be an obvious read but in the end I found that my soundscape was able to tell my story. There are three parts to my soundscape: 

The first part is filled with island sounds. From the sound of waves crashing together, to a flock of seabirds flying overhead. This first part depicts the island life and the island sound. It also has a group of people chanting an old Samoan rhyme so that I could have the Samoan language in the scape. 

The second part of the soundscape is a collection of sounds heard in the city. This part shows the noisy nature of living in Auckland. It’s always busy. Everyone is always in a rush. There is always a hustle and bustle kind of feel in the city which is a clear contrast to the calm breezy environment of Samoa.

The third part is a clash between the two soundscapes. City and Island living. This represents the clash of cultural identities. It shows how messy and ugly this clash can look like. Eventually the sounds of the island and the sounds of the city seem to play in sync together. They almost play some sort of tune together. There is harmony. This represents the final part of my spoken piece which talks about how we can get the best out of these two cultural identities by treating it as one. 

https://soundcloud.com/user-193059914/conflict-of

The Changes:

To further improve my soundscape, I decided that I wanted to have a visual aspect to it. Something the viewer could look at and remember this project by. At first I made a mashed up video of Samoan culture and New Zealand culture and then added the soundscape as the soundtrack. When I reviewed it, I felt it to be real bland. It was like I had already seen it before (and not just because I’m the one who edited it). I showed the video to a bunch of my sisters students (she’s a mentor for business students) and found that no one really got the message behind the video. That was such a fail.

After the review I got from the students, I chose to add a verbal element to it - a spoken word piece. Fast forward to after i had added the spoken word piece to the video, I got the students to watch my video again. The same thing happened. They weren’t getting the message intended for the video. I realized that they were too focused on the “pretty pictures” to even concentrate on the words and sounds they were hearing. This is probably when I decided to scrap the whole visual aspect of it and go for a more minimalist approach - a kinetic typography video. I’d never attempted one before but I was keen on taking up a new skill. Lynda.com became one of my favorite sites because I spent hours on there trying to decipher what the heck After Effects was. And I’m glad to say that I eventually got there in the end. 

Reflection:

I hope that this project doesn’t make me seem like a crazy Samoan girl who has a lot to say and is out to get anyone who puts a label on me. No, that is not my intention. I merely wanted to expose people to an issue that I feel strongly about and to also not go around putting labels on people. Everyone has a story to tell and if we go around putting labels on others then we are basically trying to dictate someone else life story. I am glad to say that I am officially done with this project, although I could do a whole lot better in terms of time management. It’s been a mean ride #CTEC501, I enjoyed the journey.

Anyyyywhoooo.....Here it is :)

https://vimeo.com/231364711

[karenfrombct-blog]

Studio 1 - Final Project

Using Adobe After Effects

With less than a day left to whip up a new video, I turned to my best friend Google for some tips on how to use Adobe After Effects. I know I could have just found another source online that probably would’ve been easier and less work (I wouldn’t have to download anything) - but I’ve seen the works generated from After Effects and they were quite intriguing. 

What look am I going for?

I think I’m going to go for a minimalist style for the video. I want contrasting colors to represent the conflict of cultural identity in this piece. Bold text will stand out to the viewer allowing for an easy read but also showing the emphasis and importance of the topic. I don’t want there to be too many words on-screen at a time because this can influence my audience to lose interest in my project.

[karenfrombct-blog]

Studio 1 - Final Project (changes)

So I watched the finished video for the first time and felt that the visuals in the film kind of made it seem “too busy” and it was taking away from the purpose behind the project. Although the footage was interesting and did relate to culture, a lot of it didn’t relate to what was being said in the spoken word piece at that moment. I wanted the focus of the video to be the sound so I’ve decided to change the whole video to a kinetic typography film. I believe that this way the spoken piece will sink more in to the audience and the emotion and significance of the cause behind this project will be more defined. With only a day left to work on this project, I trust that I’ve made the right decision to change my film at the last minute because I want to be sure that my project communicates the issue of the clash of cultural identity across to the viewer. 

[karenfrombct-blog]

Studio 1 - Final Project

So, I think we all know that I pretty much suck at keeping a blog. I’ve been working on my final project on and off for the past couple of weeks and I’ve made heaps of progress.Who knew that making a 3 minute video was going to be so much work - I’m kidding.

 Last week, I finished cutting, editing and getting the audio to play in sync with whatever visual was shown and I was going to submit it in but I felt that something was missing from my video. It just felt real empty. Like it was just noise and a bunch of pretty pictures on the screen - not exactly the kind of project I had envisioned. I revisited previous blogs and found that I had actually talked about maybe adding in a spoken element in the video. I decided to write a spoken word piece that informs the viewer of just what exactly my project is about.

I looked up different spoken word pieces online for inspiration and one really popular piece that stood out for me was “Brown Brother” by Joshua Iosefa. His piece spoke about the stereotypes of a Brown person and how we can overcome these labels and actually make a name for ourselves - 

"Are we not more than fathers at the T.A.B? Are we not capable of attaining a Bachelor's, a Master's or a PhD? Brown brother, look at me.”....."Brown brother, do not be afraid to be the first, the first to graduate, the first to climb, the first prime minister, or the first good wife -- brown brother, do not be afraid to be the change. Not in skin tone or colour, but a change in mindset. From one brown brother, to another."

This project was the the first time I’ve ever written a spoken word piece so I was nervous as to how it would turn out. I started by making two brainstorms. One focused on the labels placed on me by Samoans and the second was focused on labels given to me by New Zealanders. I looked online and found that I wasn’t the only who felt strongly about this topic of being caught between two cultural identities. I wasn’t the only one being labelled because of the color of my skin or because of the place where I was born and raised there were others as well who had spoken out. Melani Anae wrote a research paper, “Towards a NZ-born Samoan identity: some reflections on ‘labels’”, which I believed tied in well with what my project is about. She talks about identity conflict in those born outside of their motherland, more specifically Pacific Islanders.

Reading different articles and watching many spoken word videos gave me a lot to think about and a lot to write about. I thought that it would be an easy road getting to the end of this written piece but I found that you actually have to choose your words wisely. Which words will have more of an impact on your audience? How do we keep the listener engaged? How do I make sure that I am communicating my intended message? These were all things I had to think about while writing and I trust that asking myself these questions ensured a better piece. Hope everyone else thinks so as well.

[karenfrombct-blog]

Reflective Journal

Blogging. Yikes. Not my favourite thing in the world. Nope, not even close to it. Writing has never been and still isn’t a strong point for me and when I found out that a requirement for this course was to regularly post to a blog, I dreaded it. I guess that’s why I lacked the enthusiasm to post as often as my lecturers would have liked seeing as I only have a total of about 22 posts.

It’s hard to believe that this is only just the beginning of my BCT journey because it feels like we’ve been through a heck of a lot of work. As I was going back through all my blog posts, I saw how my blog writing and my creative thinking has progressed throughout this semester. I’m not saying that I have perfected the art of blogging but I do believe that I have made some improvements in my blog writing abilities.

My first few blogs were for the ‘Cards for Play’ project and to be quite honest, I had no idea what I was supposed to be blogging about or whether there was some kind of structure that I was supposed to follow. Take one of my earlier blogs for example, ‘Oh Snap!’, I found this post to be pretty weak as I lacked the ‘because’ aspect. Looking back at it now, I can recognize areas where I could have elaborated e.g. what did I mean by ‘Simple and interesting’?  I blogged about what I was doing for my project e.g. what ideas I had come up with and what steps I had already taken to create my cards. I even had this cringe worthy tagline at the end of every post ‘Watch this space…’ which I thought was a pretty cool cliff-hanger. Anna Jackson on the other hand, didn’t think it was a smart move when I showed her my blog so I scrapped that idea. I was pleased to see that I showed some kind of reflection in my ‘Cards for Play’ posts as I was constantly asking myself, “Now what?”. Answering the question meant that I was taking what I learnt from that experience and using it to think ahead and plan for my next step in the project. It really does pay off to go to the RED Friday sessions.

When it came to the sound projects, I guess I had a little bit more of a grasp on blogging which gave me a little confidence boost. I think this was probably quite evident as I blogged a whole lot more for this section than the previous. I know that the quality of the posts are somewhat more important than the actual quantity of posts so not only did I have to blog more often, I had to have meaning to my posts and not just blog a whole lot of nonsense. Looking through the #soundproject blogs, it’s obvious that I was more confident in making the instrument than I was with the soundscape and group performance seeing as I blogged more about it.

 For the soundscape project I only posted once [Sound Project #1]. This is one of the more disappointing of my blog posts because I don’t even bother to go in to detail about what I did for the project. It seems to me that this was a rushed post. Not much thought or effort was put in to it really. It would have been great to see the thinking that went on behind the scenes for this project e.g. what sounds I collected, what problems I encountered. In an attempt too make up for the lack of blog content for the soundscape, I tried to squish it all in to one post, the reflection post. A feeble attempt in my opinion because all I did was talk about the struggle of trying to get to know the program I was using. There was no talk of why I chose certain sounds or what I did in order to get those sounds. A regretful attempt but I guess it’s just a learning curve.

Overall, going over my past and present blog posts I can definitely see where I can make improvements. I really need to keep up with the pace of the course and maybe bump up the frequency of my blogging. I also need to remember to keep asking myself Why? because it’s helpful to look back over past posts and see the reasoning behind the decisions I made as it allows me to determine whether I can build on those ideas or maybe change them. For someone who does not have the slightest interest in writing or blogging whatsoever, I think I made a pretty good attempt at it. I’m even starting to enjoy this a little. Bring on the rest of the course.

[karenfrombct-blog]

Final Project Progress

Well, I spent the past week collecting and using Audacity to mix my sounds (yup still haven’t gotten the hang of Ableton). I guess I’m pretty much done with the sound aspect of my final project so all that’s left to do is work some video magic. I’m kinda contemplating whether I should have like a voice over for the film or whether I should maybe just use text to explain what the message behind my video is. 

Oh and speaking of the message of my video I’ve finally decided on what I want to do. I want to portray the struggles of being a Kiwi-born Samoan and having to keep up with two identities, Samoan and Kiwi-born Samoan. And I don’t just mean the struggle of having to decide who to support when the All Blacks play against the Manu Samoa this coming Friday.

We Samoans are constantly labelled, ‘FOBs’, ‘Fresh’ or ‘Coconuts’, even the Samoans who were born and raised in New Zealand find themselves being labelled and considered outsiders. It doesn’t matter where you’re born, the labels are based on your heritage, your roots, your culture. I don’t really have a problem with anyone putting labels on me but when the labels come with negative connotations that is when I have a problem with it. I guess what I’m trying to say is that not everyone has a positive perception of Samoans so sometimes I feel like we have to try extra hard to exceed that stereotypical view. 

However, although we Kiwi-born Samoans might identify ourselves as being Samoa mao’i (true Samoans), the fact that we are born outside of our motherland somehow makes the Samoans in Samoa feel the need to also give us a label of being ‘Plastic’. In other words, we are not the real deal. We’re considered to be a completely different “breed” of Samoan despite having Samoan blood running through our veins. This label comes with the implication that we don’t understand the Fa’asamoa (the Samoan way). It is assumed that Kiwi-born Samoans do not know the customs, traditions and language which is looked down upon. Even when we’re in our own motherland we are considered outsiders. There’s no escaping the labels.

I think it’s pretty clear that this topic is something that I am very passionate about. Honestly, I just want to portray myself as a Samoan girl without having labels being thrown at me and that is kind of what I’m trying to say in this project. I want to be able to show my identity as a Kiwi as well as a Samoan.

[karenfrombct-blog]

Getting Footage

So for my video I know that I wanted to have footage of some traditional Samoan dancing and footage of the Samoan Culture even though I still wasn’t quite sure about what my video was going to be about. Last week was actually Samoan Language week so it was the perfect opportunity to shoot some footage and take some photos but by the time I got a camera, there weren’t really many celebrations going on. Then I found a poster on Facebook that was advertising a concert to celebrate Samoa’s 55th anniversary for Independence. There was going to be dancing and singing, Samoan performances all night. This was a perfect opportunity so I messaged the organisers for permission to take photos and videos and got the all clear.

When Saturday night came, I was so pumped. I took the camera and took a seat in the crowd. There were these two other guys who had cameras and were already taking photos of like the crowd and also the Miss Samoa NZ pageant finalists. It was then when I realised, I had no idea what the heck I was doing with this Canon 70D Camera. I was so caught up in trying to find places and events to shoot footage that I didn’t even think to actually figure out how to use the camera, let alone shoot footage worthy for a university assignment. I was bummed but still determined to overcome this minor setback. 

The night ended with some okay footage, I didn’t have much because I didn’t realise that 16GB isn’t the greatest amount of space for storing videos. When I looked over the stuff I had shot that night, the pictures and videos weren’t actually that terrible. I guess I have the great quality camera to thank because it definitely wasn’t anything I was doing. 

So things that I’ve learnt this past weekend, know how to use the camera before going to shoot footage. This would ensure that I make the most out of my shots and angles and all that photography skill stuff. Also, it helps to take a spare SD card whenever I go to shoot as a backup. 

[karenfrombct-blog]

Final Project

For the fourth and final project I wanted to revisit the sound section more specifically the Soundscape. I wasn’t really satisfied with the work i produced so I thought that this would be a great opportunity to improve on my soundscape making skills. To take it a step further, I’ll be adding a visual aspect to it.

My original soundscape entry had like a nature theme to it so I will be sticking to that. Nature is a pretty broad area to cover though so I wanted to narrow my sound collections to like one part or scene of nature, the sea/ocean. The sound collection will be made up entirely of sounds from in and around the oceans eg. shells, seagulls, boats, waves. My aim is to create a sound that will take the listeners imagination to the seaside or even to the tropical island.

For the visual aspect of my project I wanted to actually have some kind of topic or theme to base my film on and since my soundscape is based around the sea, I wanted to make the film about my culture since we are known as Oceania or “People of the Sea”. I am one for representing culture and identity so I thought that this would be a great opportunity to incorporate this into my university life as well. I want my film to bring light to an issue in the Samoan community. I have an idea of the issue I want to tackle but I’m just not quite sure on how to word it or come up with like a topic statement. I guess that’s the first thing I need to do. 

[karenfrombct-blog]

Cards for Play - Final Post

Rock Paper Snap! 

EXTERNAL DESCRIPTION:

Project Title: Rock Paper Snap!

Reflective Statement: So the original plan was to make thermochroic cards that revealed a hidden image when touched but after finding that my peers had already come up with a similar idea, I skewed away from that plan because I wanted to have a card game that was different from everyone elses. I came up with the idea of ‘Rock Paper Snap!’ after playing a game of rock, paper, scissors to get out of doing a chore. I liked the idea of incorporating a classic hand game into a classic card game (Snap!) because well the idea was simple yet interesting. I did some research online and found that there wasn’t really a game like mine so I went with this idea.

I found that the game was actually quite boring and not as entertaining as I thought it would be because it lacked a certain “spark” to spice the game up but thanks to the feedback I got after the first playtest, I added in a duel card to hopefully give the game the “spark” it was missing. I also wanted to make sure that the instructions were easy to follow as my game is aimed at an audience from ages 6+. To ensure this, I used pictures to describe outcomes of the "duels" ie. who wins when certain cards are drawn from the deck. 

Coming up with the designs was actually kind of fun and it may have been my favourite part of the whole process. I wanted a design that was fun and attractive to a child so who better to judge my designs than a group of young children from a youth group program I was a part of. They opted for the chibi designs. I actually quite agreed with this choice because the pictures made it easier to identify the different cards. 

This project really got me thinking a lot about how you've got to cater to your audience if you want your game to be successful. I think from here I probably would need to perfect the chibi drawings on the front face of the cards to make them look more "legit". From here I think more tweaking could be done to the card game for example, maybe another few cards so that the game doesn't drag on too long.

Twitter Tagline: 

“Rock, Paper, Snap! A card rendition of a classic game for all ages. Will you be the next master of the Duel? Challenge a mate to find out..”

Rules of Play: 

The aim of the game is simple. Try and get rid of all the cards in your hand. This is a two player game and it is aimed towards children 6 years+.

How to play:

Shuffle the deck of cards thoroughly and deal the cards so that they are equally divided between you and your opponent.

Each player simultaneously draws a card from the deck. Whoever owns the losing card takes all the cards that have been drawn.

If both players draw the same card, the winner is whoever slaps their hand over the cards first (Snap!).

If one Duel card is drawn, the players determine the winner by playing Rock, Paper, Scissors (hand version). If two Duel cards are drawn, the winner is whoever slaps their hand over the cards.

Players continue to draw cards until there is a winner. The winner of the game is the first get rid of all the cards in their half of the deck.

[karenfrombct-blog]

Back design of Cards

I used Adobe InDesign to quickly sketch up different variations of the color scheme for the back design of the cards. As you can see, I went with the colors Red, Black and White because they are very dominant colors and they also happen compliment each other very well. I decided to go with the top right corner design because for me it was the most appealing and the colors stood out really well as compared to the other designs. 

The next step is to combine the front and back design to create my cards. I will probably do this online as it is more efficient. I also need to create a captivating hero image for the final blog post and come up with an interesting twitter tagline that would draw the attention of bored young minds.

[karenfrombct-blog]

Rules of Play

The aim of the game is simple. Try and get rid of all the cards in your hand. This is a two player game and it is aimed towards children 6 years+. 

How to play:

Shuffle the deck of cards thoroughly and deal the cards so that they are equally divided between you and your opponent.

Each player simultaneously draws a card from the deck. Whoever owns the losing card takes all the cards that have been drawn. 

If both players draw the same card, the winner is whoever slaps their hand over the cards first (Snap!). 

If one Duel card is drawn, the players determine the winner by playing Rock, Paper, Scissors (hand version). If two Duel cards are drawn, the winner is whoever slaps their hand over the cards. 

Players continue to draw cards until there is a winner. The winner of the game is the first get rid of all the cards in their half of the deck.

[karenfrombct-blog]

Playtest

I gave a rough copy of the cards to two willing players and also gave them a sheet of the instructions and let them figure out how the game was played. I sat and observed their game, taking notes as to how I could improve the game and also what parts of the game made it enjoyable. I also asked both players to give me some feedback and feed-forward based on their play experience.

My own notes: The design of having just words on the card definitely would not work because the player has to pause a second to read what the card is before reacting. One of the players had poor eyesight it became a disadvantage to them which was evident at the end of the game when they had been defeated. 

Player One Comments: “The concept was simple and the rules were easy to follow which is why we got started into the game so quickly. It was fun but I felt like the game dragged on for a while because the cards just kept going back and forth from me to him. Maybe you could try thinking of the number of cards you’re going to have in the deck because you gave us about 60 or so”

Player Two Comments: “I thought this game was cool. Easy rules. Idea was simple. It was easy to figure out how to play the game. The game did get to be a bit of a drag though and I thought the words on the cards were a bit hard to see. It made it harder for me to play because my eyes aren’t so great at seeing. I feel like there is something missing in your deck. Like maybe you should have a wild card of some sort. You just need something to spice your game up”

After watching the playtest and hearing the comments i got back from my players, I decided that I quite liked the idea of a wild card and so I was going to add that into my deck. I am also going to cut down the number of cards in my deck because 60 cards is definitely too many. I have a lot to work on and tweak for this game but I am well on track to finishing this project.