Week 8B

I don't know how to access the class roster, and nobody follows my blog because I suck, and I'm pretty sure the TA doesn't even follow me, so instead of going down the list in the roster to find people to review, I'm going to review the characters of people in class that I have worked with.

Gavin/Somebody Else - Lighting is important in the Crooked Cop character.  The shadows cast from his hat and underneath of his eyes give him an ominous, threatening feeling.  Symbolism is used here to represent that the Crooked Cop is sinister, and is clearly the villain in this duo.  The mood on the Crooked Cop is very dark and very intimidating, as he is the villain and must be portrayed as a harsh character.  All of this is exactly opposite from the other Charlie Chaplin like character, who has very bright lighting, very little shadows, and a very upbeat mood to him, symbolizing a fun character who is clearly good.

Jarrett/Haley - Nerd Boy and the Sorority Girl super villain were very interesting concepts, I enjoyed them a lot.  I especially enjoyed the animation, for it's creativity and my extreme distaste for Pencil.  The movements between the two characters are pretty much parallel, since both characters are essentially built the exact same way.  The only difference between the two is that Nerd Boy can fly somehow, which Sorority Girl cannot, since she is just a normal person.  The weight between the two characters is very much the same, again, because they are simplistic drawings and aren't supposed to represent anything to extreme or fascinating, just a normal guy and girl.

Jesse - Jesse's partner's hero wasn't posted on his blog.  The Illuminator is a character that controls light as his super power, with a pretty decent Pencil animation accompanying it.    Lighting is again important to this character, as it plays a major role in the character's story.  The lighting is symbolic of the character's powers, as he is able to control light and use it to fight evil.  The Illuminator can create his own mood through lighting, again, because he is able to control it, making it day or night, light or dark, giving off a sense of good or evil or threatening or inviting.

Week 10A

Freak Factor

This .pdf is just like all of the other .pdfs that we read for these stupid blogs responding to stupid .pdfs.  It points out that our faults are just areas of potential and can lead to self-improvement and all that stuff.  Yeah.  That's really obvious that the things that we aren't good at have can be improved and have potential.  Really, all of these .pdfs that we read are exactly the same, and I don't really believe or take into account anything that they say, I just go through life living like I didn't just read a list of 20 things that I can use to improve my life.

But let's say that I was interested in these things, here are three that I would feel strongly about.

Topic number 2, What's My Problem, deals with making a list of all of your personal flaws, and adapting those to your real life so that you can be truly successful.  He goes on about how making a list of your flaws can bring to light your true strengths.  I disagree with this, why should we go out of our way to point out our own flaws?  That seems very negative about ourselves.  That's how depression starts.  And we shouldn't dance around our own flaws and just avoid them like they're not there.  That contradicts the whole self-improvement thing.  If anything we should be doing the things that we are flawed at, and work on improving them and becoming more well-rounded people.

Related to that is topic number 4, Forget It: Don’t Try To Fix Your Weaknesses.  Again, I disagree with the argument made in this topic.  We should not only understand that we have limitations, but we should push these limitations as far as they will go, not work around them.  If everybody in the world in history didn't push their limitations and didn't challenge themselves, what kind of world would we be living in today?  What kind of technologies would we have?  How would the medical field look?  What about society, would we all be free as we are today?  Our world was built by great people pushing their limitations in order to create something better than there already is.  Stopping at your limitations doesn't lead to innovation.

Topic number 8 says that being normal is the incorrect way of being, and that people should try to be unique and individuals.  I agree with this to a degree.  It is very good to be unique and stand out from a crowd.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.  But I don't think that people should go out of their way to be extremely weird, or else it gets obnoxious and nobody wants to be around a person.  Also, being normal is also beneficial.  Social skills and surviving in the world are built around this so called idea of normal, so in order to be truly successful in this world, one should find the healthy balance between normal and unique.

Regarding the creative process, I feel as if I am a very creative person, and I have multiple talents that hopefully will help me have a creative career field in the future.  I feel as if I'm more creative than others, and a lot of the stuff that we learn about I just "get", it's not difficult or foreign to me at all.  However, one of my greatest faults is managing my time, obviously since I get these blogs in minutes before they are due.  Another fault that I have is that I don't know how to end projects or whatever, and they just go unfinished forever.  But these things are small and can be worked on.  I'm just a terrific creative person.

Week 9A

I think that one of the problems with our gaming presentation, the Alien Trivia Game with mini-games thrown in the middle of the game, is that the game just didn't seem that fun.  I certainly don't think that I would ever play it, and can't envision too many people wanting to play something like this.
One of our faults is that our group decided to add some bullshit "use this game as a study tool" objective, instead of treating it like an actual game.  There's NOTHING fun about study tools, no matter how hard we try to make it fun.
The rules of the game, I feel, were pretty clear.  Answer the questions and move through levels, and survive stupid mini games at random points in the game.  The mechanics were pretty straightforward too, use your mouse to answer questions, and then the same controls for the mini games that has been used in the same games for decades now.  But I don't feel as if the goal was portrayed as well as it could have been.  To be honest, I couldn't even tell you what our main goal was.  Something about connecting with your classes to study better for the test, but then if you win the mini games you get to choose a new subject to answer questions about.  If you're using this game as a tool to study for a test, why would you want to change subjects after playing some half-assed mini game?  Don't you think that you would want to continue studying the one topic you were originally wanting to expand your knowledge on?
Overall, I think that our game was basically awful, and forget doing work on it, I think that the idea should be scrapped and completely started over.  Thank goodness we actually didn't have to make this game, that would have been a disaster...

Week 8A

Superhero Shit

Due to limited resources, I will write out a small essay instead of creating an audio response.  Sorry, don't dock too many points.

I would like to have the same super powers as Professor Xavier from the X-Men.  He's psychic and and read minds and control objects and communicate telepathically and all of that jazz.  I think that these would be cool powers, because they're not stupid flashy, like shooting fire or something, but are extremely powerful and could really ruin someone's day.  Also, I wouldn't be a weird color or have anything physically wrong with me, so I could still go about everyday life with these neato super powers.
If I had these powers, I don't think that I would use them to fight crime or anything.  Mostly because there's not a ton of crime that requires intense psychic powers to prevent.  And also fighting crime is too much work, and I'm not into that.  I would probably just fool around with these powers, just doing stupid things all day every day, probably for my own personal gain.  I mean, how cool would it be just to read people's minds?
Yeah, I'm drawn to Professor Xavier.  He's an extremely powerful superhero, and incredibly intelligent and seems to have everything together.  I wouldn't mind being like Professor Xavier at all, minus that whole wheelchair thing.  That probably sucks.

Week 7

Original Video - More videos at TinyPic

The Flirtation from Jesse Calhoun on Vimeo.

It's neat to think how one joke can be interpreted in two completely different ways. Sort of neat, I guess.

The affinity between the two is huge. Due to limited resources, locations, so on and so on, both videos have an extremely similar look to them, because there aren't too many different ways to add variety to shots in an enclosed elevator. The theme of one character being good and one being evil is shared in the two videos. However, there is contrast between the two videos as well. The Flirtation is told as a love story, with the twist at the end that completely changes the mood of the video, while Thursday the 13^th, through sound ques and other elements, feels like a horror film the entire way through.

Space was very important in both of the videos. Both stories are told in a very confined, flat space, giving a sense of closeness and unease to the situation. Outside of the elevator, the world is much more deep, for example, in the beginning of The Flirtation, where the man is walking through the hallway to the elevator.

Shape was important when dealing with the characters. In both videos, the man is a very square character, which gives off the feeling of being powerful and in control, while the female was more rounded, friendlier and inviting. It's funny how that worked out, because of the endings of both videos, the normal stigmas of character shapes is completely contradicted.

Rhythm is utilized as a story telling device, more so in The Flirtation. The entire story has a steady rhythm, back and forth between the two characters, nothing seemingly wrong. But the rhythm is interrupted towards the end with the twist ending that the man is on an elevator to hell.

Bonus Thing

Here is proof that I went to that convention thing.  It seemed a lot more like a high school science fair than a media showcase.  To prove that I didn't just take a picture up top of the entire event, I also took a picture of one of the art displays.  Today was a good day.

Week 5B

Unable to do the entire assignment to the full standards, just trying to pick up some points here.

In this scene of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, implied lines are masterfully used, as each character stares each other down.  Yes, the actual lines give everything shape and make every visual aspect of the scene distinctive from everything else, but the implied lines really tell the story in this scene.  Through the stare downs, intensity is built, and it's almost like we know exactly what is going through each character's head, just from the movement of their eye's and which direction they are looking. 
Space is also emphasized, showing us the great scope of the scenery around them.  By showing wide shots we get a sense of the space, a sense of the massive cemetery that the three characters are at, which not only shows the scope of the world around them, but the scope of the matters at hand.