Creative Technology session 9

We all borrowed Dlsr cameras.

The task was to capture footage from united and work together.

I instantly started thinking of narrative and made a fun moustache, I was trying to motivate everybody and create a positive group feel. Whether it worked or not I don’t know but I did learn people are more likely to engage in a little crazy if you put your self out there first.

I made the choice to go to the crazy stairwell and ‘haunted’ lift as I thought it would make for interesting camera angles. It did. We used the camera to capture different angles of the same shot, setting the camera up in different places. This was challenging as we didn’t really know what we were doing!

I’ve learnt that you can create different degrees of tension and scope in the same small space just by using different camera angles.

We worked together and created interesting chase scenes, we came to the conclusionI that there were differing opinions on how to compose the various scenes. We communicated our ideas and explored some different shots, but most importantly I’m proud we all made the compromise necessary to work as a group.

Our group just went for it, gathering footage, and we were possibly in the way of people using the lift and stairwell.

Luckily people are very understanding and respectful of our creative enterprise, one delivery guy was quite keen to be in the video. Another lady did tell us off, and asked if we had authorisation. I explained that we did and we would only be disturbing her for another 5 mins. I also thanked her after the shoot for her patience…She didn’t care! I now understand that you can’t let a singular attitude put you off otherwise you’d never do anything.

I’ve learned about myself that I like using cameras to obtain footage and can’t help thinking of narrative. I’m becoming increasingly interested in in film production

 

February 3, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: eport-Creative Techs Leave a comment

Creative Technologies Session 5

Scavenging adventure

Our first class with Janet today.

In the morning we took time to introduce ourselves and look quickly at each other’s backgrounds, Janet shared a power point of some of her work. I learned of some cool new ways of applying technology when working within a creative space. I liked how she used a picture collage to cover a whole wall and transform the space into something else. I didn’t want to share my background at first because I was pissed off for some reason (I can’t remember why) but looking back I do think it’s a really professional and positive way to start with a new bunch of people.

Now we had gotten to know each other a bit, we were informed that we were going on a little adventure! We would be going on a scavenge hunt around Point Chevalier to find newspaper and get supplies for the paper mache task in the afternoon. Janet said as students it’s good practice to ask for free things as students and it randomises the choice of materials you acquire. I thought that a good notion as it could make projects challenging to work with limited resources.

I didn’t struggle at all with approaching people asking for free things as I’ve done my fair share of this kind of thing in the past. For e.g boot fairs, clearing out festivals, selling second hand camping goods, asking businesses for wooden pallets, and generally looking out for junk to upcycle… just to name a few! I had my eye on a shopping trolley, I thought it would be great to paper mache.

I always find it interesting to approach strangers. It made me remember how everybody is different and how approaching a stranger is like stepping into their world for a second. I realised I try to come across neutrally, with a happy but respectful manner. Not that I’m not like this in real life but it’s almost as if I create a friendly persona… Weird! Anyway, it worked and we got some free newspaper.

Clouds on the way over to the high street.

Even though we set off on a complete different task we ended up finding the seed to our whole paper project. There was a strange and unusual cloud constellation in the sky, I noticed it and mentioned it to Rosie. We talked about the light qualities and this led to us linking it to paper. I am learning more and more that inspiration is literally everywhere if you choose to see it.

This wasn’t the cloud but it shows similar light qualities to the one mentioned above…

February 3, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: eport-Creative Techs Leave a comment

Story world Week 6

Story board draft lay out for the story element in our video.

Link below for Google slide of story board:

http://bit.ly/1WWFBbi

Reworked Group Story board below:

Individual group story elements brought together and finalised in form of a story board. Drafting the homework story board for the video helped me piece together and contribute ideas. Without the practice we wouldn’t have gotten to this stage.

Jess found a flaw after looking through the final story board, we modified it again so that it fits and makes sense.

February 3, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: ePort- Story Leave a comment

Paper Project week 5

Building the Ucloud.

The centre piece of the project.

I was going to go to the barns and get some advice on how to build the cloud. I was thinking it would be something like a lantern with light wood and paper wire or glue.

I was getting worried about the time frames and work load. I wanted to get things moving as the barns weren’t open until the following Monday, so I thought about alternative materials…Bang! It occurred to me that I could just use wire for the frame. Everything I needed was right in front of me, I felt foolish for not seeing it sooner.

I found it hard to keep the wire from warping, I solved this problem by strengthening parts with tape. In the end I found that it didn’t matter too much as the paper also strengthens the wire.

I totally underestimated the time it took to make the cloud and was surprised that it took 2 teams of two 3 days to finish it. I didn’t realise something like this would be quite so repetitive (and a bit boring) to make.

I’m happy with the result all the same.

Clouds clouds clouds…

Experimenting with blue fairy lights: As soon as I saw this, I felt good about the project and that we can produce something of value. It gave me confidence.

Time frame & goals:

We made a time and goal plan for the week ahead. This helped me focus on what we needed to accomplish.

Weekend work:

Testing out Lighting and effects with U cloud being near completion :

 

 

 

 

February 3, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: ePort-Project Leave a comment

Professional Practice Week 5.

Pro practice within the group work–dealing with group.

It has been a hard week and the enthusiasm has dipped a bit with some members of the group. I found tackling the issue head on and approaching a conflict with complete honesty and transparency is the best way. I think I ruffled some feathers but I also know now there is no resentment building and that we can all carry on as professionals. I’ve learned that being upfront with a problem is better than ignoring conflict even if I did feel  uncomfortable.

Drawing Time management constraints

We did a time constraint exercise, I learnt about the value of a quick sketch. Stripping back the information to meet time constraints and focusing on the bare essentials to convey the basic idea or image. I thought it was easier to work with constraints as opposed to no constraints. It was interesting because the first image I drew with lots of time was definitely a castle, and the image I drew with less time was definitely a castle too. This really registered a strong point with me about using simplicity from the outset as opposed to simplifying something thats complicated especially when time is a factor.

Talking about time constraints reminded me of the project instillation upstairs and I would have liked to use my time cracking on with the paper project. Whilst it was great in the beginning drawing quick sketches I feel we spent too much time on it. In the end we had produced some characters that resembled kids drawings with basic expression attributes. I found the use of props an easy way to convey the occupation of the character, for example a burning house for the fire man and a cat along side the vet.

Presentation.

“Who is our audience”… this made me think more in depth about how we can engage our audience when presenting our project. After Andrew Stanton’s ted talk my mind was filled with information. I wrote down lots of tips and focus points to consider when building a presentation such as: Why should the audience care about our presentation, making them care, working the room, being relatable, being descriptive, avoiding cliches etc.

Gosh! I had an information over load today and started to stress about everything. For the first time I felt like was sinking, I felt grumpy and had a brain meltdown. I feel like I can’t  communicate ideas because the others in the group are not engaging deeply with what we’re learning. I’ve also learned that I need to apply information to a task to be able to store it in my brain, all the information combined with pressure of completing summer school just put me over the edge today.

 

February 3, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: ePort-prof.Practices Leave a comment

Story Worlds Week5

Mindfulness exercise:

I have resisted participating in the mindfulness exercise because of the breathing.

I put some relaxing music on my headphones instead and that helps me focus. I don’t know if it was the fact that I couldn’t hear anything, but as the others got on with the exercise (or not) I got the visual scene that the room was very relaxed and I enjoyed that.

Lunch time activity:

I don’t know what we’re meant to learn from this but I took from the first exercise                 ( pretending your telepathic) that it really got me to think about peoples characters. In some cases it was fun, for example when the lady was texting her friend because she was late, my girl friend and I came up with lots of silly dialogue back and forth. We created a type of fictional role play lol! And in another case it was sad, I could imagine how a guy was thinking about his crushing mortgage and how he will keep making payments.

I was surprised at my vivid imagination but also how the projection of the story can be enforced by visual cues. For example the man was waring black trousers and a grey shirt making him look unremarkable. His attire could suggest he worked at a bank, somehow making my imagined story of what they are thinking real!!

Snooki

OH man! I liked this exercise.

I learned how to create a character. I’ve wondered about this in the past.

The “Telepathic” exercise was good because I felt it warmed me up for this task. I learned about the different elements that are helpful to consider when building a character with some depth. For example, what are the characters goals, flaws, voice, what are its 5 scenes picking up? Even imagining yourself as the character for a moment!! I’ve realised by writing this paragraph that we are purposely building character. Character building is definitely something I’ll be using in my future design career.

Snooki is a prickly character. He has 3 goals:

* Get coffee from humans

* Open the portal to Coldron

* Get the pigeon (lol).

He has a space pod Tardis the size of a computer mouse wedged into a big brick wall covered in graffiti. He can’t pass an empty tin can without collecting it for parts and he spends a lot of his time catching the pigeons that S**t on his wall, he also turns them into bio fuel for his space pack. At night he listens to his extensive space fuzz galactica record collection and works on opening the time continuum and creating a portal back to Coldron! I would liken his voice to that of a Mr. Bean, he mumbles a lot and mutters ‘They’ll never know’ frequently interspersed by loud bouts of sneezing.

A bit of fun…

Spiral brain concentrating writing car memory exercise:

I really learned to focus on the little details with this exercise, it made me think of the smell, feel, and atmosphere of my memory. I didn’t like parts of the memory as it evoked some bad memories/feeling… for example the smell of petrol in the car.

I was surprised how focused I became throughout the exercise especially when we drew the spiral. I feel the more we work with story the more grasp and under standing I have. I am becoming more confident with the use of Story and find myself applying it to all sorts of things … for example “Imaging a rubbish bin being a grumpy character whinging about the rubbish people disposing in it,” or how we can apply it to our 90 sec. video, perhaps even creating my own comic.

February 3, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: ePort- Story Leave a comment

Project Week 4.

We Constructed a To-Do list.

Get supplies:

Rosie and I raced around New Lynn from 11 til 1230 trying to get reasonably priced lighting, after not having much luck we returned with some blue cellophane. I had to go  home and get my lamps so we could use them as a temporary solution. Aletia said she’ll also source more lights. I thought to myself that it wasn’t the ideal start to the installation and that we (I) should have been better organised. On the upside, we had lights, and started the test installation.

I learned to be patient when things don’t always go to plan.

Tests installation:

We thought installing the clouds would be easy. It wasn’t!

I’m glad we started when we did! We looked at different ways of creating clouds and how to attach them to the wall, to my surprise this wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I hadn’t even thought about the wieght of the paper which pulls down on tape, it also never occurred to me that baking paper has a non stick quality to it i.e. masking tape doesn’t stick to it. We had to rethink fixings… I strengthened the heavy paper with masking tape and used wire to hook onto a wall hook. “Ha! Take that heavy paper!!”

We also explored how paper looks with light shining through it and explored a couple of options with plain paper and different thicknesses, cellophane and paper, and paper with coloured tissue stuck to it.

We got some good results and some not so good results…

I used hooks in the skirting and fabricated duck tape patches and thread wire loops through to hang on the hooks. We wanted them to be hidden so the cloud would look more natural. Looking at this one cloud like piece of paper that needed work kind of disheartened the gang as this was the result of our days work (and it’s got a rip) 😦

The next day…

I suggested to the group that we need to create volume i.e big cloud shapes.  maybe with  a wooden frame. That way if we use the cellophane it could also be elevated and kept a safe distance away from the lights which could potentially melt the cellophane.

 

Narrative:

I had an interesting talk with Geraldine about the narrative, we discussed the possibility of the installation being a prototype for a much bigger project.

I thought this was a really interesting way to approach the presentation and 90 sec video, I realised that it could be a real prototype. I started thinking of ways to get it out there to the world but came to the conclusion that would have to wait for a later date…

Anyway we now have two solid ideas for the video.

• Manual upload to the cloud with polaroid and a story.
• Pitching the cloud as a prototype for a bigger installation.

 

February 2, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: ePort-Project Leave a comment

Professional Practice Week 4.

We jumped around with the course material today (Story, Pro. Practice, and Project)

there was a lot of cross over material. There was a lot to take in and jumping around the different subjects really confused me!

Writing exercise: Total Recall (memory, space, place – awakening the five senses – evoking experience) 

 I didn’t think I struggled with memory, but doing this writing exercise really triggered my memory and enabled me to remember the little details. For instance I was sitting on a small plastic chair in my memory, when I explored with this total recall method I recalled hunching over the stool because I’m quite tall, my legs spread to make room for the tiny table in front of me, the smoke wafting over from the char grill, the balls of my feet hurting as we had enjoyed a long walk through the city ect.

 Even though I don’t struggle with imagination I do sometimes struggle with writing so this is an exercise I will definitely revisit.

Commercial Semiotics – Jake Pearce: http: http://www.slideshare.net/Semiotics01

 I thought the video on Brand Semiotics was really fascinating, especially the identifying of items as single semiotic units. I will be doing more research on this and learn more about its use as a product designer, I can’t wait to apply what I’ve learned to making products.

 We looked at Icebreakers as a brand and watched a good interview with the founder.

 He pointed out some interesting things about NZ on a global scale. I thought the talk about NZ being on the edge of the world, offering a unique perspective on the world and entrepreneurial skills was a great and positive way of using our remoteness to our advantage.

 I asked myself ‘How may i use this uniqueness’ and ‘How will I contribute to NZ as an entrepreneur?’

 We also Focus on project and the Paper videos:  “Who is your audience?”

 This provoked me to think about narrative within the project, for example maybe we make the paper project as a prototype and pitch it in the presentation as part of a bigger instillation.

February 2, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: ePort-prof.Practices Leave a comment

Creativity & Design Week5

Info-graph Time:

We spent the morning getting inspiration from the library and thinking of areas of design that have had an impact on society. I don’t know what it was about this task but I just found it really hard. Eventually I plugged into Food packaging and how the design impacts our decision to buy the product. (This offered more depth than the human over bight and the fork thing) haha!.

I spent an hour researching and planning out my info-graph. I didn’t have a clear idea of how to layout the page so I gathered info first.

Loosely planning out the symbols and images with basic sketches.

“why do I snatch and grab?”

Line work typography and fill.

 

It was challenging to make something with a clear meaning. I don’t think my Info-graph is interlay accurate but It’s fun to look at and a bit stupid at the same time. I think it does explain loosely how design influences us when purchasing an item for the shops. This task made me think and challenge myself to make something out of information that I was new to me. I’ve learned that next time I do something like this that I would do another draft to make the layout better.

January 30, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: ePort-Creativity/Design Leave a comment

Story world Week 3.

Hero’s Journey.

We looked at Character, Archetypes and Campbell’s Hero’s journey. Learning about the major archetypes was great, now I try to identify these when watching movies. I learned that identifying archetypes and character and the use of these tools is not only good for creating narrative but also a fundamental in Brand story.

The exercise we did to identify character traits from a movie of our choosing was great fun but soon when it came to identifying the hero’s journey within the film, became clear that the movie I chose (Pulp Fiction) was very complex. I will have to learn and research a lot more to understand somebody like Quentin Tarantino, I was surprised that the other students didn’t know of Pulp Fiction.

I asked the question “Why do modern movies seem to have the same formula or mostly predictable outcome vs old movies?”

One argument was for technology filling in the visual gaps whereas in the 70s you had to work harder to make up narrative. I think that is partly true, the need for visual stimulation has overtaken the need for audience participation, with older films narrative leaving your imagination to fill in the gaps left by a lack of technological effects.

I thought of Jaws as a great example here, despite the horror factor there is actually very little gore that takes place in film. The suspense the director creates fuels the audience and makes it easy for them to imagine the gory details.

 

We also looked at brand archetypes. I learned about brands having a story behind them. I have been curious about how we can attach narrative to a object or brand so this answered some questions but I’m eager to learn more about this as I plan to do product design next year.

January 23, 2016February 4, 2016 by kitkat5002 Categories: ePort- Story Leave a comment