Character Development

Hello there! I am back with another G.T. project. For now, we are working on using the Puppet Warp tool in PhotoShop. This tool is great and it's something you can get really creative with, but I'll explain that more later. A big part of this project is knowing who we are and being able to define ourselves. I am and always have been a clumsy, kind of soft spoken person. Those two traits combined can lead to very awkward situations, and as most people know, awkwardness isn't exactly the best thing to have.

While animating myself in PhotoShop, I plan to exaggerate my arms and legs. I want to do just a little dance with my arms and legs that make the .GIF humorous. The best way of doing this would be with the puppet warp tool. If I use that, then it'll be easy to make my arms and legs look like they are moving. I'd have to set all of the points on my body, then move the points on the part of my body that I want to look like is moving. It sounds confusing when I talk about it, but the process is really simple. (By the way, I know my picture in the .GIF look like a mugshot. Please don't judge.)

Like I said, I know I made the process sound complicated, but it's actually very simple. The first step is to get pictures of yourself or whatever you want to animate. The best way to do this is to take the pictures against a solid background so it's easier to cut yourself out later. After taking the photos, you then open them in PhotoShop and use the Quick Selection Tool to cut yourself out of the photo so that the Puppet Warp tool works later. After cutting yourself out as best as possible, click "Refine Edge" to edit the edges to look like what you wish. Now that you have your character, the next step is to go to File > Puppet Warp. Use the tool to pin point on the parts of your body that you would like to change. When I did it, I put point on my body every time. I put them on my forehead, 2 sides of my neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles. When you have your points, you can move them to warp your character. Press enter to finish and you character is done. Do the same as you would in regular animation, just with the Puppet Warp in between. I really recommend trying this tool if you can. It's great and it's something you can get really creative with.

.MOV Film Festival

Hello there! Today there is yet another G.T. project! This time, we are making groups in our class and making videos to enter in the 2016 MOV. Film Festival. My teammates are Emma McGinnis, and Daileen Barton. The themes for the film festival can either be "Tell Me A Story" or "Make Me Laugh". We decided to do "Make Me Laugh" because we, for some reason, think we're funny. We decided to make a movie trailer that a is a spoof of the horror movie Oculus. Before filming anything, my team and I have to plan everything like plot, characters, and keywords. Our key words for our film are horror, spoof, and comedy. We wanted these keywords to connect with the audience and draw them in. We feel that they will connect with the audience, because they will se comedy and know what they're in for.

During the pre-filming time, one of my team's focuses were to find a message that we want to send to the audience. We wanted to add humor to a situation that originally wasn't very humorous. We also wanted to point out things that could have solved the situation a lot faster and easier. We decided to add humor in places that are supposed to be serious. I, personally, love movie trailers and am excited to film this and hopefully make some people laugh. So, our main goal is to pretty much make people enjoy themselves and have good laugh or two.

Throughout the planning/filming/editing process of this project our team may have gone through a couple bumps on the road, but our biggest challenge that we had to face was probably filming. We didn't exactly plan very well the first time we filmed. We didn't get everything that we needed and we're going to have to plan another time to film the rest of our video. We also could have found a better place to film, because my room isn't exactly the roomiest place to be filming. Although these were serious challenges in our filming process, we were able to work with what we had in the end, and hopefully the result is a good, funny movie trailer.

Tiny Spherical Worlds

New project! Our latest projects in G.T. are called polar & spherical panoramas. Part of the process is to take individual pictures which are kind of overlapping from left to right. Then, in PhotoShop, you would have to put them together. You might be wondering: What's the point of taking multiple images when I could just take picture? Here's why. After taking your pictures and putting them into PhotoShop, you have to bend them in all the different ways in order to get a correct, good-looking final result. You most likely would never be able to do that with just a single picture.

During the making of this project we had to make two different types of images. A polar panorama and a spherical
panorama. The process is pretty similar, but the outcome is very different. In a polar panorama, the bottom of the horizon line (usually land part) is in the middle and resembles a planet. While a spherical panorama looks more like the complete opposite. Where the top of the horizon line (usually the sky) is in the middle and the land is around the edges.


While making these "tiny worlds" my biggest concern is making them look as convincing and realistic as possible. After making your panorama look like a tiny world, there will always be a line where the panorama begins and ends. After that your goals would be getting rid of that line by using tools like the stamp and smudge tool. It also helps to rotate the image when you are finished. Then, if your line doesn't look very convincing, moving it to the bottom or side doesn't make it the center of attention and it's not as noticeable.

Hockney Style Joiners

School Photomontage of my Friend, Emma

Our latest project in G.T. is photomontages, similar to the the well known ones by David Hockney. He has his own techniques that make his photos great, but I also have my own techniques. My photomontages are pretty different from Hockney's. His photomontages have a certain style that make a lot of them look like paintings, where mine look more realistic. He definitely takes more pictures than me. When he puts them together, it does make his photos look bigger.

There are a lot of different types of emotions that can be attached to art. Most of the time, images can send out positive messages. It can show the viewer an obviously happy situation, or even a more complex situation with a subliminal message. But there can also be negative messages attached to images, which can be sent out in the same ways as positive messages. Then again, a message attached to an images can always be based on entirely how the viewer sees it.

Final Photomontage of an Orchid

While finding subjects for my final photomontage, I had to keep in mind what the viewers would think and what message I wanted to send out to them. While taking my pictures I was thinking about how there's just this one beautiful orchid as the focal point. And it got me to thinking about how much it can make people think. When people see a single flower in a photo, they can stare at it in awe. Just like one person can make a bigger impact. One person can make a bigger difference in the world. It may not be the clearest message, but it's there. 

2016 Aspirations

It's finally 2016! That means it's time for me to set some new goals to become a better me! Here are my top 5. One of my top 5 goals for 2016 is to get more involved with photography. When I first got my camera, I was really happy with it and used it a lot, but lately I haven't been taking as many pictures as I would like. I love photography and want to be more involved. My second goal is to try to be more confident. For the past few years, I haven't been very confident in myself and would like to change that. My third goal would be to procrastinate less on things like school work and chores. Procrastination gets me really stressed out when a due date comes up. My fourth goal is to stress out less. A lot of times a overthink things and it takes all the fun out of a lot of things. My last goal would be to obtain a healthier lifestyle. It's important to stay healthy and could help me later on in life so that's something that I would like to work on.

My most important goal to me would be obtaining a healthier lifestyle. Eating healthier and going out and exercising more would really help me a lot. It would really make a lot of stuff easier for me and even boost my confidence. I'm really looking forward living healthier and feeling a lot better about myself. It would also be really good for me to start living with a healthier mind too, not just my body.

Just saying that I want to live healthier is easy, but I have to try hard to take the steps to make sure that I really do succeed. I planned out practicing living healthier with my parents and we all agreed to do this together. I'm going to start planning out my meals and even find new meals that are healthy. I plan to go out and exercise more. I don't only want to start living a healthier life for just my body, but my mind too. I want to start being more optimistic and looking on the bright side of things. In the past, I have stressed out a lot over little things and it really isn't good for me. So it would really help me to work on relaxing every once in a while to sort things out. Hopefully I can succeed this aspiration and start living a healthier life.

Scratch Game Design

                        

One of the latest projects in G.T., as you know, is coding. And we had to make a chase game and platform game in a cool program called Scratch. This program is great for beginning programmers and coders. While making these games I had to keep in mind how the people playing my game would feel while playing it. If the game was glitchy and didn't work well, it probably wouldn't make people feel very good and they wouldn't like it . I had to make sure the games ran smoothly. While making the games, I made sure that the coding made the character move and jump smoothly. I made sure that the game worked so people could lose and win.

Best Code

The first game we had to make was a "chase" game. The player's character had to run away from another sprite or character for a certain amount of time or while doing something in order to win. I made my game so that the bananas ran away from the monkey... in space. It's a little random, but it's still a chase game. The second game I made was a platform game with two levels. The objective in the game is to get the orange ball to touch the green squares and if you touch the second green square, you win! If I were to chose I would have to say that the platform (second) game is my favorite. It still have a few things I need to fix, but it's still my favorite. But that's just my opinion. How about you play the games and find out which is your favorite? All you have to do is use the arrow keys to move.

There was a lot of code (for me) in each game, but my favorite would have the be the code I made for jumping in the platform game. It was one of the harder ones for me to find out, because trying to get the ball to move and jump smoothly took a while. When making the platform game I realized that the ball wouldn't go back to the same place when the player lost. It took me a while, but I eventually figured out that I had forgotten to make a couple lines of code. This has been a difficult but fun project so far and I can't wait to see what we get to do next in coding.

^ Freedom Game ^

Invention Commercial

My G.T. class and I have recently finished a project. In this project, the main goal was to invent a real invention and make a commercial about it. The commercial had to be serious. We were allowed to have humor in it, but nothing sarcastic. The invention had to be something that could really work and not something that obviously didn't work. While planning, filming, and editing all students had to keep in mind that this commercial should make the audience feel that they can't live without the product. During critiques, the class decided whether or not the commercial showed what the invention was, how it works, and how good or bad the entertainment factor is.

There were a lot of great team moments while planning filming and editing, but my favorite would have a moment during the editing. Editing was the easier part of the project. In the beginning of the commercial you can see that my teammate Emma McGinnis falls in slow motion. During editing we decided to put it in slow motion to add more drama. When we slowed it down we realized that the sounds get deeper and slow down too. When we first heard Emma make that sound, we laughed for 10 minutes straight, but we decided to keep it in as a hook so that the audience is immediately entertained.

After Emma, Tessa, and I finished filming all we had left to do was editing and turning it in. Since we put all of the footage onto Emma's computer, she did most of the editing while we helped on the side, but after we got all the basic things into place Tessa and I helped, gave tips, and adjusted somethings. I was actually surprised by how well the commercial turned out. I was also surprised when our commercial got second place for best commercial in class. My team and I are proud and happy with what we made.