Megan Scalf's hero and villain's were named The Good and The Ugly. There was a contrast in the hue between the two characters. The Good consisted of brighter hues on his outfit such as the orange shirt and as well as the background of the photo which is light blue. The hues on the character The Ugly consisted of darker blues and shades of gray and black. The photos also used a form of subtext, if you will, by the use of the scruff/beard on The Ugly. During the presentation the scruff on the character was supposed to represent that hes dirty, not well kept, and the antagonist. I explain this using the term subtext because costume (facial hair in this case) is a form of subtext in visuals. It represents a characteristic that may otherwise not show in the text.
To see Megan Scalf's Hero/Villain drawings and animation click here.
Vic Sherrick's heros are a team similar to the idea of Batman and Robin. The heros are the characters Wiz and Oz. Both of the colors on the characters are primary colors and again bright hues like Megans to appeal to the younger audience. In his animation he manipulated the movements by utilizing weight in the part of the animation at about 19 seconds, where Wiz's red top hat hits the ground and squash and stretches back to its original form. He also utilized text in his animation. They used words like "Poof!" to textually represent the sound effects in the animation.
To see Vic Sherrick's Hero Duo drawing and animation click here.
Joshua Strizak's villain posted on his blog is called the Firebomb. The drawing of his character consisted of darker and lighter saturations of the same hue of blue. He used this shading to show shadow from the character's body onto other parts of the character's body (for example left side of character's head.) I found the color choices of a blue body vs. the fire coming from his body (red and orange) to be interesting. Villians with the power of fire seem to usually be red rather than blue but i definitely did not think this took away from his character at all. If anything the contrast in colors helped represent that his character is maybe cold hearted and the fire being bright reds and orange contrasted with the blue helps the fire to stand out in the photo. This immediately draws attention to the fire and his name Firebomb. In his animation he used parallel movement lines (arms and legs strait and 'moving in the wind') that indicated that his character was flying forwards. I do wish he used more lines when the character was flying to add to the effect but over all thought it was a good animation and character drawing.
To see Joshua Strizak's character and animation click here.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Blog 8a: Audio response to This American Life
Click to listen to the "First Act" of This American Life
My Audio Critique:
The Super Power I would most like to have would be to be able to read minds. A superhero that possesses the power to read minds is Professior Charles Xavier of the X-Men mutants.
TIDBIT:
Pisces Characteristics
My Audio Critique:
The Super Power I would most like to have would be to be able to read minds. A superhero that possesses the power to read minds is Professior Charles Xavier of the X-Men mutants.
TIDBIT:
Pisces Characteristics
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Blog 7: My Group's Video Joke Project/Review
#1: Le Bar- Film Noir
#2: What's Your Number?- Buddy Movie
(couldn't find the video on the youtube search so heres the link to youtube for this video)
What's Your Number?
Joke we chose:
JOKE #6
"A very shy guy goes into a bar and sees a beautiful woman sitting at the bar. After an hour of gathering up his courage, he finally goes over to her and asks, tentatively, "Um, would you mind if I chatted with you for a while?" She responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, "NO! I won't sleep with you tonight!" Everyone in the bar is now staring at them. Naturally, the guy is hopelessly and completely embarrassed and he slinks back to his table. After a few minutes, the woman walks over to him and apologizes. She smiles at him and says, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. You see, I'm a graduate student in psychology, and I'm studying how people respond to embarrassing situations." To which he responds, at the top of his lungs, "What do you mean $200?!" "
Video Joke Review:
For my groups video joke project we chose to film the scripts Le Bar written by Erin Riordan and What's Your Number? written by Nathan Hoover. The first video we filmed was Le Bar which was shot and directed as a Film Noir type of film. We really wanted to make sure we were creating a sense of affinity between the genre we were going for and other elements, such as the way the film was shot and the music we used. We used this same technique in What's Your Number? which was shot in the genre of a buddy movie. We wanted to keep it light with a slap-stick type of humor so the choice of music had to be upbeat and fun loving as did the voice over. It was important to us to stay true to our genre in this project because we felt it added drama and humor to the film.
We did a great deal of contrasting the shape of our male character with the shape of his surroundings to make him seem uncomfortable. It was important to make the viewer feel that our male character felt out of place because in both scripts, he does. We got a bit deeper into this by really utilizing shape in both Le Bar and What's Your Number? In both films we had our male character in more of a circular shape (using the hat to add to the effect in Le bar and not using the hat in What's Your Number? to reduce the weakness of the male slightly) and our female with defined shoulders and strait posture to give her a more squared shape. The circular shape of the male allowed him to look intimidated by our square shaped female character which is exactly what we wanted to portray in both films.
We also manipulated rhythm in both films. In both of our video jokes we had a variety of shots including an establishing shot in both films, followed by several close up, medium, and a few wide shots throughout the films. In Le Bar we attempted to utilize the close up and medium shots more often to give a more dramatic Film Noir-esque flair. The rhythm between the close ups from the female to the male character and vice-versa allowed our voice overs to make more impact and also created powerful virtual lines in the scenes.
Speaking of lines, we made a point to not only use virtual lines in our films but also use the actual lines in the space to help frame our characters. For example, in What's Your Number there are lines from the bar as well as the pool table that frame our female character and lines from the table that help to frame our male character. In the scene where are female character falls there is a direct line from the pool table and floor pointing strait at her and receding backwards towards the background characters who are laughing at her fall in the scene. This helps bring more attention to the female character's current embarrassing situation and adds humorous impact to the scene.
Overall, I was very happy with the way both videos turned out and how well our group worked together. Each one of my group members in the project are talented and have many great ideas. I really enjoyed this project and thought we did our best to hit all the goals we set out for both films.
#2: What's Your Number?- Buddy Movie
(couldn't find the video on the youtube search so heres the link to youtube for this video)
What's Your Number?
Joke we chose:
JOKE #6
"A very shy guy goes into a bar and sees a beautiful woman sitting at the bar. After an hour of gathering up his courage, he finally goes over to her and asks, tentatively, "Um, would you mind if I chatted with you for a while?" She responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, "NO! I won't sleep with you tonight!" Everyone in the bar is now staring at them. Naturally, the guy is hopelessly and completely embarrassed and he slinks back to his table. After a few minutes, the woman walks over to him and apologizes. She smiles at him and says, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. You see, I'm a graduate student in psychology, and I'm studying how people respond to embarrassing situations." To which he responds, at the top of his lungs, "What do you mean $200?!" "
Video Joke Review:
For my groups video joke project we chose to film the scripts Le Bar written by Erin Riordan and What's Your Number? written by Nathan Hoover. The first video we filmed was Le Bar which was shot and directed as a Film Noir type of film. We really wanted to make sure we were creating a sense of affinity between the genre we were going for and other elements, such as the way the film was shot and the music we used. We used this same technique in What's Your Number? which was shot in the genre of a buddy movie. We wanted to keep it light with a slap-stick type of humor so the choice of music had to be upbeat and fun loving as did the voice over. It was important to us to stay true to our genre in this project because we felt it added drama and humor to the film.
We did a great deal of contrasting the shape of our male character with the shape of his surroundings to make him seem uncomfortable. It was important to make the viewer feel that our male character felt out of place because in both scripts, he does. We got a bit deeper into this by really utilizing shape in both Le Bar and What's Your Number? In both films we had our male character in more of a circular shape (using the hat to add to the effect in Le bar and not using the hat in What's Your Number? to reduce the weakness of the male slightly) and our female with defined shoulders and strait posture to give her a more squared shape. The circular shape of the male allowed him to look intimidated by our square shaped female character which is exactly what we wanted to portray in both films.
We also manipulated rhythm in both films. In both of our video jokes we had a variety of shots including an establishing shot in both films, followed by several close up, medium, and a few wide shots throughout the films. In Le Bar we attempted to utilize the close up and medium shots more often to give a more dramatic Film Noir-esque flair. The rhythm between the close ups from the female to the male character and vice-versa allowed our voice overs to make more impact and also created powerful virtual lines in the scenes.
Speaking of lines, we made a point to not only use virtual lines in our films but also use the actual lines in the space to help frame our characters. For example, in What's Your Number there are lines from the bar as well as the pool table that frame our female character and lines from the table that help to frame our male character. In the scene where are female character falls there is a direct line from the pool table and floor pointing strait at her and receding backwards towards the background characters who are laughing at her fall in the scene. This helps bring more attention to the female character's current embarrassing situation and adds humorous impact to the scene.
Overall, I was very happy with the way both videos turned out and how well our group worked together. Each one of my group members in the project are talented and have many great ideas. I really enjoyed this project and thought we did our best to hit all the goals we set out for both films.
Character Animation & Drawing
^ Character animation
^ my character: Dr. Dirt Nasty
link to meng's character drawing of Bubble Bath Man
link to meng's character drawing of Bubble Bath Man
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Video Game Critique
Super Mario 64 clip
Critique =
Critique =
The biggest point that we had trouble conveying was describing who our audience would be. We had a tough time defining this because our game has so many options and is so adaptable based on the person who chooses to play that the audience could virtually be any one. Another point I felt we had trouble conveying was that we were trying to sell our game to investors. I feel we kind of dropped the ball on that aspect of the project mainly because even though we could explain the games to ourselves, explaining it to others proved a bit confusing.
I think one of the flaws of our game was that we kept it way too open. Yes, it is fun to have many options but we made it so our game was virtually unlimited, which makes it a bit more difficult to explain things such as goals and objectives. The goals and objectives were by far the most difficult to explain. The goals in the game are basically to acquire more ‘gadgets/things’ to be able to do more in further levels. For example, if the game gave you the option to pick up an iPod that was not yours, if you took it you could use that to your advantage (sometimes disadvantage) in further levels. This was also confusing when discussing the goals and objectives because every choice you get is linked with chance, so although your objective may be to choose to take a certain gadget (in order to reach your goal of more ‘options’) you never know if taking or not taking the gadget is a good or bad choice until you find out the meaning or consequence of taking that gadget later in the game. The idea of this concept is extremely intriguing but a bit confusing to explain to an audience of investors without having an example of the game to show. We definitely could have overall, done a better job at explaining those aspects of our game and possibly given more of a visual to the audience by comparing our game to Sims for example.
Overall, I do believe that we were creative in our game creation and each added a lot of innovative ideas to the game. The rules were very clear. For example, avoid dying and the fact that there are restrictions built into the game (cannot run into the street when at a destination; virtual walls). Also, although the mechanics slide on the PowerPoint was underdeveloped by the requirements of the grade sheet, I do feel the idea was fully developed and explained properly by Max when he explained how you used the WASD keys to play the game ect. Each of us had no problem understanding the game ourselves but because the idea was so developed and complicated with several different options it made explaining it to an audience a bit more difficult that we would have liked. I had a really great time designing the game and really wish we could have conveyed our idea much clearer. I think if we could have done that, the game would have impressed the audience.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
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