Reverse Cinema - Ideas Day

The time came and all of us were there with even a new member which was a good bonus for us so the team was now me, Grant Nicholson, Sonny Zhu, Jack Yang and Paresh Dayal. So we came together with all our ideas and really started to focus on the word Drama more than anything else and what we came up with was good in our minds. A little comedy related in some sense but still something working on our designated genre for the most part. So allocated each other our separate tasks and I was sent home with the task to complete a storyboard, and that's what I'm doing now.

Reverse Cinema

I came early in the morning again to do the final touches on the video and admittedly it took longer than I thought. But once 10am hit fortunately for me it was decided by Kim that we were going to present individual videos on the projector seeing as each video would have to be pretty long to have to go around and see. This meant I had extra personal time to work on it and make it perfect for my sake anyways.

Well it was finally time for our last project of the semester. Glad that the semester was nearing it's end but worried that it was going to be something outrageous. And I guess I was right to think that way when I found out that we had to not only do a live re-edit of the Wizard of Oz but we had to carry it on in the genre we were designated to begin with. I guess I was just unfortunate to be stuck with something like this but the only thing I can do is deal with it I guess. But for the most part the ting I was glad about was that I didn't have to do it alone but with everyone else who was unfortunate to get Coming-Of-Age Drama as well. So with that my group was me, Grant Nicholson, Sonny Zhu and Jack Yang. Unfortunately Sonny couldn't make it that day so it was just me, Grant and Jack for the time being but we all decided that we should wait for everyone to be there before to do anything so for the time being the plan was to just think of what needed to be done at home and think about it well.

Fast Backwards

I came into uni early as usual, but this time with the purpose of editing up the video a bit more. Unfortunately I do everything on my windows desktop and windows laptop so truthfully, I didn't really have a choice. So I came in to do everything I could ready for presentation time. And fortunately, once 10am hit, I was actually ready so by orders of James I put my video on loop and full screen like the rest of the class as we all went around to see the videos we made. Once that was done, we then had to follow up on the earlier task by making a three - five minute re-edit of the famous wizard of oz. Not the new one, but the old one... Which was actually 22.28 gigabytes might I add. Then as a class, we sat and watched the movie up on the projector and after that was done, we were given genres through a lucky hat. And unlucky enough for me I was given the genre of Coming-Of-Age Drama, whatever that is. But with this in mind we got to work doing what we could with the scenes we had. And with me having no apple or mac to work on at home, I had to put in the extra time at school again to do what I could. I managed to do all the cuts so my plan was to head home and grab the audio I wanted, and needed and bring it in tomorrow to add in. Hopefully I get that done.

Fast Forward

This was our last day to hand in our project and to finish the touch ups on our serious fun project. A little rushed, and a little hastily, we however managed to hand it in regardless. We were then given yet an entirely new subject to work and this time we were focusing on the film industry. We made our way into the computer lab and it was explained to us what we had to do and what we would be doing. After everything was explained in detail we were then given the task to go home and to recreate a narrative exactly 30 seconds long from a set of provided television commercials. We were told to use Final Cut Pro to edit our video with the provided clips and audio. Our job was to come in with this completed piece and to present it tomorrow. This was my first time ever using any program to do with films and personally it felt a little overwhelming and exciting all at the same time.

Serious Fun Group Project - Presentation Week

Finally the pressure was really getting to us being the final week for preparation we needed to really buckle down and fortunately for us we came back from the weekend with something to show for it. We all came back with work done in each of our respective assigned areas. We had new ideas added, new research done, more interaction workings added and more programming done. We all came back together with all our achievements and packed it in day bay day as the weeks end drew closer and closer.
We had finally decided to scrap the idea of an alien dog despite the fact that the dog promoted curiosity through its new and ambigious form compared to that of the typical dog and replaced it with the character of a cube. Something simple that brought across our idea well and something we could interact with as problems came about with trying to get head tracking to work with processing. We had the gear and the wii remote ready but it was impossible the work as we soon found our the more we tried. So moving onto the idea of the cube we worked hard until we had decided to scrap processing altogether and focus on max/msp jitter as ours was a video focused artwork. We worked through it to make it work to our liking with a little issue here and there regarding understanding how to add additional else if functions to max/msp jitter but we still did it none the less.
In order to make our project also look more professional when presentation time came I went about to create a speech however when the time came we never used it during the presentation and made it an impromptu speech to explain what we did and what it was simply. We came out of the presentation believing we did a good job and we stood a good chance as we did the task we set out before us and it had meaning, it was an artwork and it had a character that wasn't overloaded with features but you could still look at it and call it just that... A character. So all that's left now is to just do the final touches and make sure we're all ready on hand in day, I suppose that's why I'm here.

And here's a quick view of how our interaction works and what it is:

Programmign for Creativity - Done!

On the side as planned and across the course of the serious fun project I found time everyday each in my own time to do a bit of programming. And in the end I managed to finish everything with the help of peers and the kind. I managed to finish every single exercise even including the four-letter word generator, Exercise 14 that had completely stumped me. Admittedly I feel pretty accomplished having done something where I initially had no idea as to what to do and how to do it to come out of it with a real understanding and knowledge of it instead. I handed it in before the deadline's time finished even and I left content with what I had done ready to continue on with the Serious Fun Project the next day.

Serious fun, Group Project - Development

Day by day this week was used for the purposes of development. After coming back from the weekends with fresh ideas we came together as a group early in the morning and discussed them with one another. We came upon the decision to move on from the skeleton and onto a new character completely and the character we came up with was an alien dog to follow the idea of creativity that we decided to focus on. Creativity is the emotion linked to the natural inquisitive behavior of humans circulating around exploration and understanding of the new and the unknown. And to promote this idea we also came up with a unique interaction. Head tracking, after researching this over the weekends we found websites containing this such feature where with the use of a wii remote the screen could be controlled and turned into a 3 dimensional environment. Like a curious child to a new toy, the child instinctively will pick up a new toy and look at it from all the sides to see all the perspectives and we wanted to do just this. With the wii remote and glasses we would fashion by attaching infra-red rays onto it we wanted to move the screen by moving the head and using the wii remote as a medium from laptop to remote into the screen. By doing this we could move the screen and look at the subject from the many perspectives and angles of our choosing. We liked the idea and spent everyday developing into this such idea.

However, across the week when we brought in our project ideas into the lecturer Kim, he introduced and opened our ideas to many facts. We in fact had spent majority of our time focused on the idea of a character before meaning. And we focused too much on the idea that a character had to be full of features to make it so but what he introduced was the fact that a character didn't have to be features to be a character and that we spent all that time only to lose the purpose of meaning behind making our character. So we sat down as a group and truly thought about it to decide to come back the next day after a full day of real thought. So as the next day came together we came with more understanding of meaning behind doing this project and artwork and a greater grip on the word character. We decided to move onto the idea of a cube as our character. Something without any features but to us a character none the less. And we kept to our idea of curiosity to promote it with the plain cube. A cube plain to sight with no real features to bring about the idea of curiosity where at first glance, we wanted the audience to think.. What's that? What's it doing there? And force the audience to make an effort to find out this new thing.. For the audience to use their curious minds.

Serious fun - Group Project

After much debate as to who should go into which group we finally managed to come up with a group to work together for to create an interactive artwork with a character. The team consisted of:
Me - Creative director
Daniel Lee - Programmer
Tyrone Tangata-Makiri - Interactive Designer
Jack Yang - Researcher / Ideas Man

We spent the initial week of the project brainstorming what we needed by coming in everyday and discussing the ideas we came up with every night. The first day of the projects was spent determining which character we wanted to use for our artwork and whether or not we wanted to use all four of our own characters. Looking back on our characters and after much debate we decided on doing the skeleton and then we moved on to the next day where we had to decide on what interaction we wanted to do and the meaning behind each interaction. This process took two days to come up with a good idea. And by the end of it we decided that before we finalized the idea we had to head home with the weekends to think about either a better idea or to better reinforce the idea with the character and meaning.

Serious Fun - Flip Book to Clay

We turned up in the morning as I had a stick figured flip book ready to present as it was the easiest thing for me to do being a stick figure and all.
But once the time came we didn't have to present it at all but we simply moved onto the next task at hand. Unfortunately I wasn't prepared as I didn't check the emails to find out that I needed clay for the day. So in a group with other people we went out to go buy ourselves some. So when we got back we started to make our characters and I offered my best attempt at it not having much sculpting talent personally. I managed to make my Kung-Fu Mouse character in the end however, tails, claws, whiskers and all. And without a camera on hand I resorted to my laptops webcam and managed to pull off a 2 second animation at 12 frames a second. I presented it without much comments coming through about it due to the simplicity of it in a bowing motion but we soon moved on to the afternoon lecture.


Our next job was to find two other members and create a ten second animation with all three characters so I came together with Daniel Lee and Jack Yang combining the Kung-Fu Mouse, Ninja eraser and Skeleton. We made what we needed from traffic lights to vehicles as we were doing a race animation and without a camera or anything on hand the decision was to come early in the morning and finish that up the next day.

Serious Fun - Characters

Today was the start of a new project and something that I was all too familiar with which meant that I would also have to leave behind and do the processing project on the side in my own personal time. Today started on drawings and illustrations, a favorite for me. Our first task in the morning was to create a eight drawings of characters. With some effort I made eight characters and had to come to a decision as to what I wanted to use by the day's end.
The characters I came up with were:
Cheese Protector:














Old Grumpy Turtle:













First Time Flyer:









Revenge Dad Bear:













Race-A-Roo:













The School Kid's pencil:













The Battle:













Stationery World:





Through the process of thought I manged to come down to a decision and it was my first idea. The Cheese Protecter Aka. Kung-Fu Mouse.
In the afternoon we were then given the task of using our chosen character and presenting it in a 12 frames per second, 24 paged minimum flip book. So knowing I could do it at home I headed home aiming to do just that, which Is what I'm doing right now.