Assignment week #11 pt.2

For our final project, I got three topics: story-telling, collage and video editing.

I happened to see a video by artist Steve Cutts on Instagram a couple weeks ago. He created a video shows a world where technology dominates everybody's daily life, that no one cares about the happenings around them anymore. What I found the most interesting is that at the beginning of this video, a girl doesn't like her date and she just swipes left onto a roll of other guys, like how we often do on our phone, till she sees the one she likes. I think there's lots of implications in this scenario, and a whole new story based on this girl and her date could be developed.

I want to create a short stop motion animation with collage to articulate a new story base off this scene. The script I came up with is: a girl wakes up with a blank face and body, she goes onto her phone and starts to pick her look for the date she's about to go to that night. So she starts her "swiping" on the phone to choose from different options for her face, makeup, her body type, the clothes and accessories. I want to incorporate some funny elements into that process and emphasis how "swiping" dominates her life on every single aspect. Then the ending of this story will echo with the date night scene from my inspiration video in a different perspective.

Assignment Week #11 pt.1

Below is a group of aliens I created on Tinkercad. I basically used this 3D design tool as a 3D photoshop and designed several illustrated creatures with it. I discovered different shape options in the category of "characters" and "shape generators", and that's where I started to get into it. The first creature I designed was the "poop" shaped bunny-chicken in the middle. I simply mixed and matched different options of shapes and eventually made a body with three rings. The tool was fairly easy to use though I had a little trouble aligning some shapes at the beginning. The chicken foot on the shape category inspired me to create an actual character.  I added more details and features after to complete the first design. From there I just kept going and explore with various shape combinations. One character eventually turned into a group of characters. In the end, I decided to make an UFO and add a little narrative to complete the story.

I also imported the file to Photoshop and wanted to see what it'd look like, but Photoshop can't really read the file well.

Assignment Week #10 pt.2

I commented on several projects that really impressed me through out the semester so far and I found that it's usually the projects with creative ideas, fun elements and personal touches that left a deep impression in my mind, which echoed with my reading notes a couple weeks ago: it's the concept and creative mind behinds a piece of work that places a significance in viewers' mind.  Moreover, new medium forms certainly offered us more creative ways to execute our ideas. We got to tell the stories and see the stories through a different lens, and I feel lucky to experiment with so many new mediums that expanded my visual vocabulary and my horizon in art making. Being able to recognize the importance of developing technology in the world of art is extremely essential specially for educators, and I'll always keep an open mind for learning and experiment.

The other thing I found interesting was how we see the artistic strength of each classmate through different assignments. Different group of classmates seem to create great work with a couple particular medium which reflected their background as artists, designers, programmers or educators.

Below I only shared a few of my comments on other classmates' work. More comments can be found on their blog.

My comment: I really love this stop motion animation you created. It looks super fun and whimsical, and it also feels very "you." I think it is very important to create art work that's reflective of your own artistic aesthetic and point of view. There also seems to be a playful story in your animation that left viewers to imagine and wonder. My only suggestion is probably adding some light background music to make this animation even more dynamic and completed.

My comment: I really like this project you created. It looks fun and humorous on all aspects from the idea, the story and the shooting. You're able to tell a story within a short amount of time and it perfectly echoed with the holiday theme that week. The background music is also on point. My only suggestion may be playing around a little more with the part where the pumpkin falls from the table, so a dramatic angle or shoot can be captured for an even more fluid storytelling.

My comment: I love the gif and video you created for this assignment. I grew up watching Harry Potter series(unfortunately not reading because I somehow didn't get into it) and it brought back my childhood memories. I can see that you had fun creating this project and it's exciting to see a work that's incorporated with some personal interests. The music in the video also fits the scenario very well. I don't really have a suggestion on the finished piece but I'd love to see more gifs about Harry Potter from you to continue the story you started here.

My comment: Hey Darien, I think the finished work for this assignment is brilliant! It sounds easy, playful and very well composed. I love how you take advantage of all the natural ambiences around you to make the beat, and I could imagine this being used in real production, such as animation, music videos or a dance performance.

My comment: Hey there! I wanted to comment on your 2D laser cutting project. I think the idea was very neat and the design of this candle holder looks beautiful. It's exciting to see people apply the concept in school projects that's related with what we can practically use in real life! It looks like you're putting lots of effort and I can't wait to see the final product in person! Keep up the good work!

Assignment Week #10 2D laser cutting

For this week's assignment, I teamed up with Madison and Danielle to create a mini series of standalone "paper dolls." We took this assignment as an opportunity of experiment, and put in lots of effort in order to make things work. 

Madison first came up with the idea of making paper dolls. After some more discussion with Danielle, they decided to have their own images engraved on the dolls. They explained the basic process of 2D laser cutting to make up the demonstration I missed due to my absence. Three photographs of us were taken before they were edited in photoshop. The reason we started the editing on Photoshop was because all three of us shared very limited experience on Illustrator, so we thought we might as well start with something we're familiar with, and import the files into Illustrator later on. Madison and Danielle managed to turn our photographs monochrome and they also added filters to make the image look more graphic and less realistic. An outline around each body form was created by me with pen tool in photoshop. Problems occurred as we proceed to the next step: we realized that Illustrator was not able to keep the outline I drew. We had to go back to trace the outline agin in Illustrator in order to create an outline that's vector. 

We were lucky to have the support from the staff at thing space and Myers Media Art Studio through out the process,  who helped us to correct the digital formatting as well as the measurements. The laser cutting process was fairly quick and convenient, and Kristina from Thing Space offered insight during the laser cutting process and she also suggested a jewelry saw for us to create the slots for our pieces to connect together.

Overall it is a fun experiment as 2D laser cutting is something I've heard about but never had a chance to work with. The process of digitizing and formatting was not easy but it was manageable. I'd love to experiment more with it if I get a chance to work with it again in the future.

Assignment Week #9

I think Scratch would be good for students who are interested in applying creative skills in DIY technology. The web-based tool lets aspiring "makers" to use coded bars that are placed in an interlocking command  to create their own projects, which offers a relatively convenient access for students and educators.

Scratch would help teachers to encourage students to apply programing skills as well as several learning skills with project execution. Lots of students love storytelling, and creating a story on Scratch would have students write, design and animate their own stories. The process would require lots of exploration and experiment in order to make good decisions for an ideal outcome. The characters need to be coded correctly and logically to converse and make visual movements within a story. Creative and logical thinking are involved through out the process that would help students to practice their learning skills in many aspects.

Scratch could also be used for students to create their own games.  It could be a fun assignment to work on for students who are interested in new technology and the digital world. Visual and educational components could be incorporated in a wide variety of settings, such as reaching a higher score by solving easy mathematic or academic problems, or touching some learning goals with the gameplay. Students can also work in groups to complete one game and the process would inspire students to work collaboratively.

Though Scratch might be a good way to introduce programming to all student levels, it seems to me that the tools is best used by educators who have at least a basic programming background. It teaches us how things work together, and how the basic code works in the end. However, I somehow could not engage in my first experience on Scratch as an art making process, and I kept feeling like I could have accomplished the same or even better outcome in a much more flexible way with other digital art forms. In my opinion, Scratch is not necessarily an art medium but more of a digital tool. It is a lot more about the use of programming logic than art making, which might be the reason that I wasn't as interested while working with it.

Assignment week #9 Scratch

Press Space to see the story about a very very popular fish's love life.

I had this idea in our class last week about a brief conversation between two fishes.

Below is what I made in the class:

 When I got home, I developed the idea and turned it into a new scenario. Experimenting with Scratch was difficult at the beginning as I was very confused with how some commands in the script work, even after watching a short tutorial. As I explored more and more within the program myself, I discovered quite some interesting tricks and started to play with motions and background sound.

One thing that bothered me while doing the assignment, was that I sometimes could not select one single coded bar or opt it out from the script and I had to disassemble the whole script I just put together to correct or delete that coded bar.  Aside from that, I edited the conversation between the sprites and had fun lining up their words by timing and sequence in order to make the story work. The original thought was to create a story only between two sprites but I added two more sprites as I worked on it, to add more dynamics to the story.  I adjusted the timing of the conversation to help the story run more smoothly.

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