Geometric Portraits

Our new project in GT is to create low poly portraits. Because we are using portraits, we are focusing on facial expressions as well. Facial expressions are universal. They are learned all over the world in the same way. Using facial expressions is a way for people to communicate rather than actually talking and using words. People use facial expressions to show their emotions which make it easy for others to understand how they are feeling. It may sound odd when I say its a way for people to communicate, but it is in a way. For example, if two people are mad at each other, they probably won't want to talk. They might just use an angry glare or expression to communicate to the other that they don't want to talk. 

To create our low poly portraits, we first took a photo of ourselves or our subject. For our first portrait, we took a symmetrical photo of ourselves and opened it in PhotoShop. The we sized the image to fit the requirements. We placed a grid onto the image and drew a red line with the size of 5 pixels straight down the middle of our portraits. We decided to only use the left side of our faces since it was a symmetrical image of ourselves. From there, we traced around the left side of our faces and created an outline of all our facial features, using the 5 pixel red line. The lines had to touch the grid in some way. Then, we filled our faces with triangles. Next, we used the polygonal lasso tool to select a triangle. We then blurred it. We had to outline, select, and trace, every triangle we created. After finally finishing this part of the project, we used the polygonal lasso tool to select our half of our faces that we blurred. Then we copied that and created a new layer. With that layer, we stretched it to the other half of our face so it was symmetrical. Then we made our outlines white, turned on the white background, and turned it in. We also create 2 more low poly portraits, however we take a little bit of a different approach for those. In the second one, we started by using the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to create triangles and blur them without an outline.

With the first low poly portrait, we used our own faces and the process was very different from the second one. In the first poly portrait, we outline half of our face using the Line Tool in PhotoShop. After doing so, we blurred each triangle on that half of the face. In the second one however, we did not use the Line Tool to outline triangles first. We also did not just do half of the face. We started by using the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to create triangles and blur them. We did not use an outline first. We also used a picture that we took of someone rather than ourselves. By adjusting the original image, we created a unique background. In the second image, because we did not use an outline, I found that there were more noticeable gaps without it. Another thing that is different in the second one is that we added in the whole person rather than just hair and face. There are a lot of differences between the two but both and still Low Poly portraits, just created in two different ways.

Verbal Landscapes

SacramedD_Retime from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Nature seems to impact everyone's life in some way. Whether its only for a moment or everyday, all day. We all are affected by nature in some way. I rarely go outside but still, it affects me. Nature allows us to live so of course it impacts us. But, looking at a beautiful view from the top of a mountain or just looking at the ocean also affects us. Who wouldn't want to catch the sun right before it sets. Seeing an orange and pink sky is something that would probably change how we feel while seeing it. Hiking a mountain for an hour is worth it when you reach the top. Seeing the beautiful view just makes you feel like you've accomplished something.

Time-lapses are created by taking a wide angle video and speeding it up in an editing program. What we have to do is take a few videos thats at least 5 minutes long then import it into our computer and edit them. One of my time-lapses is a sun set on the west side. What I did was leave my camera on the beach for maybe 20 minutes as the sun set. I made sure it was a wide angle so you could easily see the sun set and the clouds around it move. Then what I did was import it to my computer and into an editing program. Then I used the retime feature to speed it up so the video was only a few seconds. As for a slow-mo, its kind of the opposite. What I did for one of them was a rock falling into a river. So I got close to the water and took a video that was around 4 seconds long of a rock falling into the river. What I did next was import it into my computer and slow it down in an editing program. That way the video would be around, maybe 8 seconds. When I watched back the video, you can see the water splash all around the rock as it hits the water.

I think the hardest part about this project was going all around the island to get our time-lapses and slow-mo's. It was difficult to find the time to do it. However, it was very fun. For one of my time-lapses, I went to the top of a mountain with two of my friends and it was a lot of fun. Tiring, but fun. It was also the first time I went to the top of that mountain. For another one of my time-lapses, I went to the west side with Shaday and Ashley. We all got a really nice sunset and we also got to swim. We did this right after hiking that mountain too so swimming was very well earned in my opinion. I did fall during the hike and got a few cuts which made it difficult to swim in salty ocean water. Overall, getting all the footage was difficult but really fun.

In class, we did a critique of everyones video and chose whether our videos were a 4, 3, 2, or a 1. 20 people seem to have given me a 4 and 7 gave me a 3. Luckily, I didn't get any 2's or 1's. I think I would have to agree with this. I mean I didn't think I would do this well in the first place so seeing this kind of surprised me. I did wake up at 5am in the morning for this project and go all the way to the west side for this. I seem to do a lot because a GT. I'm glad all that tiring work payed off because I got a quite a few 4's. I retook a lot of these videos which took my multiple days to get the actual ones I wanted. I'm just hoping I get an A for this class. 

Poetic Personal Statement

Its a new school year and our last year of GT. Its sad, and we'll all miss it but because its our last year, we will defiantly make it the best. The first project of GT is to create a poetic personal statement. I think poetry is a way of expressing your feelings and emotions through meaningful words. Poetry can be used to inspire or motivate others. It can also be used to tell a story. Poetry can be personal because it can describe someones feelings. It could be something the writer feels and is meaningful to them. It can also be personal to the reader if they feel the same way the writer does or if the poetry reminds them of something or someone close to them. It is a creative way to express feeling through words.

An awkward and strange person
Easily stressed making situations worsen
Trying my best to succeed
Staying focused is what I need
When I'm with friends, I enjoy myself
Other times, I grab a book from the bookshelf
I see myself in my own way
Which is how I make it through day after day


In my poetic personal statement, I decided to use a rhyme every line. I seem to doubt myself a lot so writing this poem was rather difficult. I thought rhyming would help me come up with more things to say. For example, when I used the word person, it helped my think of the next line because I thought of worsen, which rhymes, of course. When I wrote the poem, I had no idea what I was writing about. When I used rhymes, it seemed to help me a lot with coming up with ideas. Still, I don't really know what the topic specifically was in my poem, but in general it's about me I guess.

Music Video Finale

P3T5 Don't Stop Believin' from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

The song my team and I choose was "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. My teammates are Kyla, Jhoanna, and Ashley. In the story Kyla meets Ashley (She plays a boy) and the two become very close. Kyla leaves her home hoping to follow her dreams. Along the way she meets Ashley. He has also left his home to follow his dreams that are similar to Kyla's. They meet and instantly become best friends. At one point they both reach for the handle of a door. Their hands touch and their friendship becomes a little more. This is a like a prequel to Kyla's music video last year. Last year her music video was about her and Ashley together.  The reason we wanted it to about a boy and a girl was because the first lyrics are "Just a small town girl" and later "Just a city boy" The song is, in a way, about a boy and girl meeting. The boy and girl are following their dreams together and they should never stop believing. I think that is what the song is a little about. That is why we chose to do our story similar to that.

My favorite fast-edit montage is when Ashley and Kyla spend time together. We cut from shot to shot of Ashley and Kyla hanging out on the beach. We cut from them sitting on wall to a lip sync and then back to the beach. The two were walking away from a camera and then sitting on a log at the beach. This represents them going after their dreams together. I liked this fast-edit montage because it says a lot about the story. Its not the best but I think you can tell what some of the story is about by watching that montage. Again, its not the best montage but its my favorite.

This music video showcases our best work because we tried to film as often as possible. We also made multiple photoshop documents to include in the music video. Another thing we did was film several lip syncs. This way we could use them as backup if we need it or we could use it to switch the shot multiple times. I actually think we could do just a little better by adding more story to it. The reason it was difficult to film the story was because Raiden was always busy. Thats why we decided to replace Raiden with Ashley. Ashley plays a boy in our story. However, we did try our best to work with the footage we had. We created 2 Photoshop documents overall. One as the intro screen, and the last being the bloopers screen. I worked on the intro screen. I added a gradient of teal fading to white as the background. I cut out the four of us in the image from a screenshot I got from our green screen lip sync. I also used effects on the text, for example, stroke and bevel and emboss.


The song "Don't Stop Believing" is by Journey

The 2 minutes we used were...

"Just a small town girl
Livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train
Goin' anywhere
Just a city boy
Born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train
Goin' anywhere

A singer in a smokey room
The smell of wine and cheap perfume
For a smile they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers waiting
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching
In the night
Streetlight people
Livin' just to find emotion
Hidin' somewhere in the night

Workin' hard to get my fill
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin' anything to roll the dice
Just one more time
Some will win
Some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers waiting
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching
In the night"

Animated Life Lessons

P3T6 James Gains Confidence from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

In our GT class we have been working on an animation project in groups of three. My teammates are James and Tyler. James is pretty shy and quiet so in our animation we exaggerate those traits of his. Tyler is a good teammate but he does admit that he can be a little discouraging and a little mean sometimes. So, in our animation we exaggerate those traits. He is a bit of a bully in our animation but remember, we are exaggerating his traits, so he's really not that mean. Lastly, there's me. So I can be supportive sometimes, and kind, sometimes crazy to friends.Therefore, in our animation, I am the friendly one that is very supportive. It sounds a little like I'm building up my ego and bragging but I promise I'm not. That's just how I am in the animation. I'm not saying I'm the kindest person on earth, because I promise you I'm not.

Our animation is about James entering a track race at school. Me, being his supportive friend, encourages James to enter. Soon enough, he agrees but then Tyler comes along and says "Haha James, you'll never win that race!" This makes James have second thoughts about entering. Now, our story isn't that humorous. However, we did try to add a little humor by having me scream at James in the background. It originally wasn't intended as humor but now it is because its the closest thing we have to "funny" in our animation. The message we are trying to share with the audience is, you shouldn't listen to negativity. Negativity can easily bring you down and we don't want that to happen. In our animation, James listens to the negativity which does't lead to good things but eventually he realizes that words are words and he shouldn't let them bring him down.

For this project, we had to work with people we have never worked with before. I loved working with my team. I made new friends and I thought working with them was a lot a fun. James and I sit next to each other in class but we have never talked until this project came along. Now, a lot of my seventh grade friends complained to me about their team because they were just not getting along. From hearing that I felt so lucky and felt like I got an amazing team, which I did. James and Tyler never really fought about anything and I never fought with them either. I think we got along pretty well. Our team didn't really do well with productivity. When the animation was originally due we only had 4 scenes done and we were freaking out. Luckily we got an extension though. I think from a scale from 1 to 10 our productively level was about seven. Even if we weren't friends in the beginning, eventually we became friends and laughed a lot.

I think our biggest challenge was finishing the scenes. This was actually a bigger challenge for me than them, I think. The reason I say that, was because we were so close to finishing the last scene on my computer but I was sick that day. I was in class but I felt like I was gonna throw up unfortunately. I didn't want to talk, I didn't want to move, I didn't want to work. So, I got out of the way and made James do the work. I was worried because I couldn't help or do anything. In the end, he did well but he did not finish. Anyway, as I said before, I loved working on this project. One of my favorite team moments was when we were going to practice the script. I had the stopwatch up on my computer and the script up on another computer. I had the first line so I pressed start and started reading, I actually tried to read it with expression. I read about two lines until Tyler and James stopped me. Turns out I was reading for no reason because I didn't actually press the start button. It was a little embarrassing but funny at the same time.

Character Development

If I were to describe myself in one word, it would either be weird or awkward. I'm not exactly a normal everyday person. I tend to loose my balance a lot. Im not that clumsy, but at the same time I am. Whenever I see a friend, or my brother, I like to stare at them in a weird way. Sometimes I do weird things like lip sync. Another really weird thing about me is that I cross my legs while standing. I'm not sure why but it's just a weird habit. Before I go to sleep I always listen to music. I always smile, or at least I try to. When I'm excited or happy because I accomplish something I always say "Yes!" Another weird thing I do is say "Merrrrrr." Although, that's only around my  close friends.

I think I'm going to make me clumsier than I am in real life. I also might make myself a little weirder. I could do that by making my character do weird things such as standing in a weird spot or maybe standing in a weird way. I could make myself pat someones head. I guess and that would be considered weird in a lot of circumstances. If I try to make myself clumsy I could of course, trip at some points.

When we started this project, the first thing we did was take pictures in front of a green screen. The pictures were of ourselves of course. We got three pictures. One taken from behind us, one taken from in front of us, and one taken on the right side of us. Next, we opened up our images in Photoshop. We only used the front picture for the first project so that's the only one we opened up. Then, we had to cut out our person, our self. That way we couldn't see any of the green screen in the background. After that step, we had to crop our image to width 640, height 720, and resolution 300. Now we are finally at the animated part, or the warping part. We opened up the animation window and started to animate yourself to make it appear as though we are moving. Then we click Edit, Puppet Warp, and warp your body to make it look like its moving. I chose the odd motion I'm doing for my GIF because it reminds me of a really silly dance Shaday and I made up. I enjoyed this project, seeing everyone else's odd movement was very interesting.

.MOV Film Festial

P3T6 Jhoanna Discovers Personalities from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

A film festival is coming up soon so everyone in our class is making a film in attempt of being in it. We're working with teams of 2-4. I am working with Ashley, Kyla, and Jhoanna. We have to the choice to make a movie trailer, a sitcom, or an animation. We ended up with a drama soap opera. Not sure how but somehow we got there. Our soap opera is about Jhoanna being a new kid in the neighborhood and trying to make new friends. She has three little personality traits living in her mind who are going to be played by me, Ashley, and Kyla. Im playing her over dramatic side. Ashley's playing her clumsy side, and Kyla is playing her weird crazy wild fun side. Our keywords are personality, friends, yourself, and together. The reason we chose these words is because our purpose of the film is to show people that you should always be yourself and never act like your someone your not. Thats where yourself and personality comes in at least.

As I said before, our message we are trying to tell people is to be yourself and never act like your someone else. You should be proud of who you are and if people don't like you, then oh well because there are thousands of other people out there in the world.  Kyla, Ashley, and I play the personality traits of Jhoanna. Im over-dramatic, Ashley is clumsy, and Kyla is weird. The story can get pretty confusing, but if you know that the three of us are in Jhoanna's mind, it makes a little bit of sense. The reason we went with this was
 because our idea was to originally be a new student at school who is weird and has odd personality traits. Then we made a few changes and we got to where we are now. We decided to add in something about being yourself since it is about personality. That's when we added in making friends and trying to fit in. We think this would probably relate to our audience if they have ever been a new kid or if they have ever had a friend who's been a new kid.

The biggest problem we faced was trying to work with other people who are not in our group. The first day we filmed, we worked with 3 boys trying to get them to act in our film. In all honestly we all got so annoyed with them but in the end they pulled through and helped us. I was at Sophia's house with Shaday, Kyla, Jhoanna, and Ashley. Yes, Shaday and Sophia are not in our group but they still helped. We need some people to play as a group in our film, so, what we did was call over Sophia's brother, and two of his friends. It took us forever to get them to act for us. We originally wanted a girl to act in their little group but Shaday, the one girl, didn't want to play with a group of  boys. The 3 boys played together but then one of them just randomly left in the middle of filming so we ended up with only two boys. But after we got the people settled, the filming turned out pretty okay. They cooperating and even kind of told us how to film things. But, those things were just really small things that we forgot of course. So, overall our main problem was working with other people who weren't in our group. The second group we filmed with did a better job than the first. We got Raiden, Shaday, and Harry. Harry is not a GT student but he's a close friend of Kyla's that we asked to help us. They cooperated pretty well and I think we did good. Of course we did have those moments when they didn't cooperate but that happened a very few amount of times.

Tiny Spherical Worlds

Composite images are made to go beyond the capability of a camera. Taking multiple images and putting them together to make one composite image is something that you can not do with just one picture. With composite images you have to take time to edit them. You also have to take time to take multiple pictures. This is more of a creative way of showing an image. With composite images, I like how things look a little more surreal I guess.

Our latest project in GT is to create spherical panoramas and polar panoramas. These panoramas are may seem similar, which they are, but they are not exactly the same. They both make it seem like we live in a tiny world. In a polar panorama, it looks like a small planet surrounded by sky. In a spherical panorama, you see the sky in the center of the image and the land surrounding it. Its as if you were looking up to the sky as an ant. The spherical world really interests me. I love how it just shows a different point of view as if you're tiny looking up to the huge world that is actually pretty small.
If I were to spend hours and hours of my time to make these tiny spherical worlds, I think I could make it looks convincing. I mean, if I covered up the line perfectly and shaded and did a bunch of things to make it look realistic, then I think it would be convincing. When I added my little person to my worlds, I added a shadow of course. That was one of the requirements, I believe but thats one thing we all did to make the image look a little more realistic. Another thing we did was play around with the angle of my little person. I also put the person a position so it looks like they are standing on land and not floating on water or something. If it were a spherical, then I would probably put water on the bottom half of it and not the top so it doesn't look like theres water floating or something.

Hockney Style Joiners

The current project we are working on in GT is a photo montage. Before starting this project we looked at a few examples. These photomontage examples were created by David Hockney. A photographer who I believe created this style of photography. For our project, we had to take 20 to around 25 photos of one subject and put them together. At the moment we are still practicing, by that I mean we still haven't started our final photo montage. We have started one where we take multiple photos on one person. I took multiple pictures of Ashley. David Hockney's photo montages are defiantly different from mine in many ways. For example you can make out what the image's subject is.

Have you ever just been on a random website then from there you to the next website to the next and then at some point you end up looking at pictures of pugs or quotes or something? Well I have and I remember seeing many pictures that made me feel positive. However, there are a few images out there that aren't so positive. I'm sure you have come across them at least once in your life. Images can certainly send positive messages and negative ones. Seeing an image of a dog or something represented in a creative way always makes me feel positive. Seeing an image of something like a dog fight or a lonely dog out in the rain alone about to die might make me feel negative and think about all the poor dogs out in the world. I don't know. I'm just trying to think of examples. But anyway, what I'm trying to say is that images can make a negative or positive impact on people.

For my final project image, I hope a gives a positive message about friendship and other things like encouragement. In my image, there are three of my greatest friends. I hope that shows friendship. Also, my image is like a bunch of puzzle pieces put together. I hope it encourages people to not give on projects. This project can be a little difficult if you don't take the pictures correctly and it involves quite a bit of editing. While taking the pictures for my photomontage, my three subjects of the shot would not stop talking. That did not make editing easy for me because Shaday has about four heads. Although it was also my fault because I took the photos too far away.

I hope it can encourage someone to never give up on something even it is difficult.

2016 Aspirations

It is now a new year, 2016. This year I have made five aspirations that I would like to share. The first one is to take more photos. I really enjoy photography and I don't think I do it enough. So, this year I'll actually get out of the house more and take photos. The second one is to get better grades. By that I mean I want a 4.0 GPA. So, I have to work much harder in school to do that. The third aspiration is to hang out with my friends more I guess. In about a year or possibly a few years from now theres a possibility that I will we moving so spending more time with my friends when we still can would be fun. My 4th aspiration is to learn a different language. I know only how to speak english so this year I want to try something new and hopefully by the end of the year I will at least know how to say one sentence in a different language. 5th is to go to bed earlier. Simple as that.

The one aspiration I want to focus the most on is the second one. Which is to get a 4.0 GPA. I have gotten a 4.0 GPA before but I think Im starting to slip back to a couple A's and B's. I don't want that to happen though, I don't think anyone would. I reason I think my grades are important is because I just love seeing my hard work payed off by just seeing a couple of A's in a row. It just makes me so happy. Oh, and it will probably help me one day in the future.

To achieve my goal of a 4.0 GPA, I know I have to work way harder than I do now. I need to turn things in on time. I need to spend more time on my homework. I need to read way more. I also need to go to sleep earlier so I'm not so tired in school. That way I can probably focus better. Those are just a few examples of what I need to do to do to achieve my goal.