#ctec501final

[rachelmcguigan-bct-blog]

Part 2 of development:

Some progress gifs I made throughout the animating process to test out movement, speed and look without the lag of Photoshop. (However, this does have a limited colour palette, making some strange effects). 

This and the colouring was one of the most time consuming parts of the process because I was constantly adjusting and had to do it frame by frame. In part, the lengthy process was due to my lack of experience with animation. I ended up having to cut some additional animations I wanted to happen because of the time limit but I feel that the animation I had the time to do show the main messages of an unsustainable fashion industry (first animation) and growth/rebirth (second animation).

[mybctexperience]

Final Project Part 13

Today was hand in day. We had to bring all the elements of our project together. I went off first thing to print the poster. Then we all had to wait for the 3D Labs to be open to get the box, and resin discs. Sam, Angelica, and Liam went over to get everything. After about an hour they hadn’t returned so I went over myself to check if everything was going okay. Sam and Angelica told me that something had gone wrong with the resin’s curing process and they had to have each disc separately vacuum sealed for health and safety. Also, that the box wouldn’t open and close properly anymore so Liam had gone to see if he could sand it down a little. I went to go check on Liam, he was having difficulty with trying to sand the box without ruining the stain we had all worked so hard on. After having a short chat with the Technicians, they figured out a way that would fix our problem as best as possible, hopefully within our time constraints. They said that they thought we shouldn’t have actually stained the box in the first place, that the problem was how the wood had swollen with the stain, that natural wood looks the nicest, and our box had still looked pretty good even before we stained it. So, we had to sand away a lot of the stain, just to get the box to even work kind of like it used to. We also decided to give the box an old, distressed kind of look as an aesthetic, instead of freaking out to much about the stain.

Once we got back to the Studio we started putting everything together. Liam put up the poster, I put our red LED lights into the box and added all of our little labels, put the box on the table and added the statement in front of the box on the table, then Sam and Angelica arrived with the resins and little stands/pedestals for each of them, and put them in the box. Finally everything was all in one place.

Once everything was set, we only just had about 5 minutes to spare before we had to leave for the assessment to commence. I am pretty proud of what we’ve done. We ran into loads of issues along the way, but we’ve still made it through with a relatively working final product. I hope that we get a reasonable mark for our work.

[dinomightofficial]

Iterations

08/06/2017

Feedback however has been somewhat satisfactory. For a majority of the feedback so far about 75 percent of the people whom we have asked so far has understood the context of the film without any of us telling them a single word about the film. Which to be honest even surprised me as well considering not a single word is spoken in the film and considering that I have been working on this project for quite some time now and I am exposed to this content so frequently I have been over saturated in what I’m working on. It is as a result especially useful to get other people’s feedback when working on this project. We have asked about 10 people so far about our project and even for people whom we have explained our soundscape too before had mentioned that the film solidified the abstract and completely ‘un-obvious’ soundscape without any context. 

Tomorrow more feedback and iteration is to be completed. Today’s iteration consisted of some additional sound sections within our soundscape which solidifies the importance of the sound within our film by having intentional black sections of the film thus resulting in the audience having to concentrate on the audio for once rather than the visuals. This enhances and sets tone in what is to be focused on and as a result the audience relates the audio to the visuals as its importance goes hand in hand. Although for skim and quick feedback sessions only one viewing is done at a time but for possibly second time viewers perhaps they would pick and abstractly construct a meaning of the audio within themselves. Certain aspects of the sound however I am yet to witness of audiences noticing the intention of its arrangement and construction such as the example of when beats begin out of sync and results into being in sync thus showing conformity with society. Conformity represented in an audible format conveying the message that following along with society can act as sort of a lubrication for ease of living and in this case ease of hearing and acoustic harmony. 

Feedback so far is good and for the most part positive aside from a few people who did not understand the film. Personally I feel like these people simply just didn’t pay enough attention to the film. For the majority, most people understood it quite clearly and one feedback I thought was really interesting was from Yvonne whom she mentioned that the barbie dolls in the projection scene for her represented how she felt as a child. She noted that as a child she always wanted the Barbie dolls which costed ten dollars but instead could only afford the Cindy dolls which costed two dollars, the cool kids all had the Barbie dolls which was a sort of social strive. As a result of this, the ‘cool kids’ she talked about is a social structure that isn’t defined by anyone and may sometimes sound somewhat unfair in society. Nobody decides and apoints people to be the ‘cool kids’ and this sort of popularity goal as a kid in school is something people want to have which is in a way conformity through society and to feel comfortable by fitting in.

The barbie doll scene was originally intended to portray the clothing the barbie dolls wear and as a result forecasting the sort of desire to be fashionable and fit in which the ‘cool kids’. But I would have never considered the applications of how much it would have costed and what it may have been like to want one of those when and in a way naturally want to conform. 

[qzkevin]

My game and thank you all

-The fake

 To be honest, I love games.

This is one of the most important reason that make me decide to make a game for the final project. In some night, I always have a nightmare that everything think I am doing wrong thing. I will fail.

In this week, I stay in my house and focus on my small RPG game. It is boring and hard. I ask my mum and sister for test the game and I get lots of useful feedback. I also suggest a lot about what Clint and Ricardo said to me.

In my rest time, I always ask myself again and again...

“What am I trying to do? What I want people think when they playing my game?”

I don’t know, I feel lost.

Some of my friends said I shouldn’t making a game because it is hard.

I know.

Last night, when I am making some map for the game. I suddenly get a answer.

“No matter my game is bad or not. What I want to do is use game to talk about a short story. I want there are some people feel interesting my game, no matter they are interest story or other things.”

In the journey of making the game. I delete my game and restart more than 10+ times just because I think I am making shit.

Whenever I restart my process, I always feel I become much great on it.

But after a few days, I delete it again.

In my game, one of the most important thing I want you guys focus is the different between that two world. A clean and beautiful fake dream world and a dirty polluted world. I want use this idea let people start think about how pollution damage our living space.

I really want to say thanks to a guy that always sit nearby Carol (Sorry I can't remember his name but he is a really friendly guy.) He is the first person that think I am making a cool project and said: “Look at Kevin! He is making a cool game!”

This sentence really make me happy and give me confidence to do the following job. Thank you.

- The real

Right now my game is finish 80%. I have to edit some background music and event. Hope we can finish it before the deadline. Good luck all.

[synergybct]

Exploring the Ethics of Transhumanism

I’ve written the essay I’m going to have posted up above the TV displaying my Unity application. In the essay I discuss the ethics and consequences of developing transhumanism. Here’s the conclusion that I reach in the essay.

“I believe cybernetic integration is the next logical step in the progression of modern medical science. Not only could these augmentations benefit those with physical disabilities which prevent them from achieving their full potential, but they could also potentially allow “normal” people to transcend their biological limitations and further benefit society as a whole. I don’t think we should consider the biology of Homo Sapiens as ‘fixed’ in the sense that it is biologically immutable, but instead consider the potential for our species to evolve further, to expand our reach into new horizons. 

At its core, transhumanism is an issue that involves a delicate balance between ethics and science; however after performing my own research and considering the potential futures in regards to the development of transhumanism, I argue that the potential benefit to society as a whole greatly outweighs the potential costs, and thus neurological, physical and mental enhancements and the general push to elevate the restrictions of human biology should be endorsed by society even if it involves the circumvention of some morals.”

You can read the whole essay here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hgb-WvsSsbR4lIvaaelftHsv-rlhKzZ_fak3kJzCmIQ/edit?usp=sharing

[ic3mprs]

Organizing (final proj.)

- Tomorrow should be my last day for shooting before I bring everything together and edit the final. I still need to find some stock footage of a city scenery. That’ll cut down the amount of filming I have to do.

- My soundscape is ready and I’ve got a version where there is no background music. The version I’ve submitted originally has background music to it. The song itself is good, I just don’t think it’ll fit in to what I wanna create. I can cut down and edit the song during the overall editing process. So I don’t have to worry about editing it now.

- I’ve encountered some problems while filming. I’ve realised its really hard to focus the camera during night time. So I’m worried that when I get the videos from the camera, they’re gonna be so out of focus and impossible to use. I’m trying to come up with a contingency plan if that’s going to be the case. So far, I’ve only come up with the idea of dowsing the footage with a shit tonne of effects and hope for the best. Of course I’m going to make it look natural, but blending the footage is my only idea so far.

The other problem is that I don’t have people to film. I’m still looking for some actors and actresses to be in my video. My friend said to hire some people. “Yeah, if I had enough money to pay all of them”. He means well.

- The clock is counting down to the due date and I’m surprised that I’m not panicking. Some people would be panicking right now, but me nah. I find that the key to succeeding is keeping a clear and focused mind. And don’t forget to relax, like a stress relief session.

[markyeoh]

Poster for our film which we plan to hang up for the open studio. Credit to Chris @beseatea for the work.

Strange how a poster could help so much with our work. In working on the poster, we had to capture the entirety of the film in a single still image that would draw people in. By doing so we better understood the themes and ideas of our film and how we wanted to present them.

We both agreed that the silhouette shot of the main character by the window would be great for the poster. We decided to retake it for a hero image. In trying to get the silhouette, we accidentally intentionally had a light and dark contrast effect with the city in the light and the character in the dark. This puts the character in a foreboding sense of evil against the greater good.

To further the sense of foreboding, I wanted to play around with the “parity” and “disparity”. My original idea was to put the “dis” in front of the title but barely visible, implying that it’s lurking in the background. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough space to fit it in without putting the title off-center. Chris @beseatea had the great idea of putting “disparity” in full behind the title barely visible. This also has the effect of implying that there is disparity under the parity, which goes well with our film since in our future the world did not actually rid the world of e-waste but just stopped it from growing further.

We plan to get this printed out either A2 or A3 to go along with our display. This way people can still understand our presentation even though someone else is watching the film.

[samy-bct]

A mirrors Reflection

18/05/2017

Blogging, when first I heard that our work would be graded through our I was sceptical that are they joking as for me it was unorthodox and had no experience in blogging itself. I still in doubt as to how they going to mark them.

Being creative cannot be taught or obtained like a magical object or like a quest it’s just something you have and everyone can be creative in any way they want and to me, the one major aspect of being creative is the ability to say that it’s not impossible. Ideas are like wildfire that keep growing and is the foundation of creativity, but the ability to tame that wildfire and give it a flow can become tricky but not impossible.

“Creativity is a wild mind and a Disciplined eye.”

-Dorothy Parker”

The above quote applies to me personally as I have experienced it first hand, as I tend to have a lot of raw thoughts and which ran rampant in my mind without control and it takes time and the ability to know your skill level at the moment and the time available thus taking these two principles I focus my mind's eye on  focal point to calm my mind and produce a concept from my raw thoughts. 

Being critical and reflective on your is easy right , That’s  what people think but to do it can be a little challenging, the process of being critical can have a fine line between self-doubt and actually being analysing is easy as when I go about critically analysing my project what it is used to be mostly was self-doubt and thoughts such is my project good enough and is it even worth compared to what other people are doing, when I started to Write  and learn more about critical thinking I learnt that what I was doing was totally wrong.

critical thinking or analysing is not enough [on its own as what critically analysing the project and then come the big hit which is reflecting on your project and figuring what can be done differently can how it can be improved, for me reflecting is when I look back on my actions and think what could I have done to improve my project.

Taking these two topics in hand looking back at my past blogs I can make out which of my blogs have they been written with critical thinking and which blogs have been reflected upon. As I write my blog like I speak my blogs tend to have strayed away from its meaning and some of my blogs have been just descriptions of the what I did in a day but as my blogs increase in numbers. Throughout the blog posting timeline, the quality of my blogs increased as I gained more knowledge about blog writing and critical thinking I have been reflecting more than my initial blogs.

Sometimes I write just my raw thoughts and it takes some time to for me to go over them to sort them out, I realised that not just the contents of the blog that matters it is the way to write it to get your message across to the readers. Not all blogs written by the same person would be the same, they have the same writing style but the structure would differ some blog would be written as a journal and some would be written in a step by step format. My earlier blog in the Cards for Play project were step by step as at that time that particular format was the best way to get my message across but the in the Sound Project most of my blogs were in journal format as in that project there were steps but I was learning new things and writing about them.

You can't always think that the way you writing or what you write is the right way so looking at what other have written and read their blogs is a source of inspiration for me and often I would read the blogs of my study buddies to derive ideas whenever I am stuck on how to write things. It gets a little tough to put my mass of thoughts into words sometimes and I start thinking that what I am doing or what I am doing is not right or not good compared to the others. I think this is a major downfall of for me as I always put my ideas down and compare to others and tend to back down. Critically analysing some else's work is tough for me as I tend to think everyone is better at doing things than me.

These traits of mine can be seen in my blogs at some point, at that tends to make my blogs a little weak and but as I kept writing more and trying to use the methods of critical thinking and reflective thinking my most recent blogs are getting more effective at portraying its message and as to I always have been a fan of writing and running a live blog is a great way to practice. 

Looking back at my primary blogs were more descriptive than reflective and I tend to write my raw thoughts down and then try to go over them, such as my blog regarding my blogs on the card for play project and my blogs for my sound project I would re-write both my blogs now in more critical and reflective perspective .

Sometimes Even a mirror needs to look at its reflection.