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. 

Scratch Game Design

Recently, in our GT class, we have been working on coding. We made a simple chase game and mine is a polar bear chasing a penguin. User experience did effect how I made my game. For example, the way my sprites looks. The polar bear was originally just a happy little bear but then I made him look a little more intimidating by adding eyebrows. Another thing I changed was the timer. I added in a timer because the game is very simple and a little boring. I thought by adding in a timer it would make the game a little more exciting. In my platform game, I decided to make the duck appear at the bottom of the screen after touching the dot so ti wasn't so easy to win. The duck itself didn't change its looks at all. Maybe if I changed it's costume when it fell that would make it a little more interesting.

My chase game is about a penguin that saw a polar bear ad started to run. Its as simple as that. I made the background change maybe around 5 times. In my platform game, a duck is flying from cloud to cloud trying to get to the purple dot in the sky.  Both my games are pretty simple but their unique. My platform game has many levels and only changes the background about 3 times. By many levels, I mean the levels just keep going until the timer hits zero. If you get past 3-5 levels, you win! My penguin changes it's costume from normal to wide-eyed. As I said before, my duck doesn't change it's costume but the penguin does.

My best code that I was most proud of was probably the way my penguin moves. It moves very smoothly which I'm proud of. Although, I may have just copied the code from Ashley's screen so it wasn't very difficult. But another thing I'm proud of, is my duck because it jumps, and lands on platforms and ground rather than falling through it. Im very proud of that. It took me a while to work out how it works but in the end I got it. The most difficult bug to work out was the jumping as well. I mean the duck fell through the floor. Another bug was trying to get the duck to say "Next Level!" when it touched the dot. For some reason it wouldn't but it would change the background but in the end I fixed it.