Animated Life Lessons

It's almost the end of the year and for our second to last project (before the music videos) we are now currently doing another GT staple: animations! For this particular project though, we couldn't use an simple animation program, like Stykz. We instead have to use ourselves as marionettes in Photoshop using puppet warp, a feature in Photoshop which allows us to do so. But because we were using ourselves in the animation we had to exaggerate our own self perceived flaws and my teammates (Kasiah and Kaz) and I really struggled on this particular step. We eventually came up with clumsy, defensive, fiery and loud and we based off our animated characters flaws on these terms.

In our animation we kind of try to emphasize the flaws that we came up with and the animation kind of turned into a comical and childish squabble. The best comparison I can come with is a pair of little kids insulting each other over something really small and dumb, like a toy or the matter of which color is the best! (for me it's totally green) .   In the animation we use really child-ish insults and since Kaz and I are arguing over the matter of OverStory and Isaac Galaxy (spin-offs of Under Tale and Steven Universe) we use kindergarten level insults like Galaxy-head and Story-face. (pretty scalding burns eh?)

One of the prominent requirements of this project was the composition of our team, which needed to be with people whom we never worked with before. Working with Kaz and Kasiah was pretty interesting considering we never worked together and our productivity was fairly good! Although I'd say that we struggled a lot on the format of the animation that was our only option: PUPPET WARP! There was a lot of inherent problems with the application, but the one thing that grated on me the most was how puppet warp made you look extremely limp and fake, but I learned to maneuver around that with a LOT of mistakes in the span of a lot of frustrating days! But it was all worth it, because everything we did was needed for the best part of the whole project: COMPLETION! Gotta admit though, the second chance that our teacher gave us to improve on our animation was much better than the one that was really RUSHED! Check out the ugly before and polished after below...

Character Development

Finished Product

In our class we are now currently working on making funny animations or .GIF(S) and as we type we are now making funny animations using our own bodies. To do this we kind of had to identify flaws within ourselves to kind of over exaggerate them and show them in a amusing little animation. An example of a flaw I find in myself is overall clumsiness and awkwardness, but only if it's a certain situation. If everyone is expecting something from me and they are all watching, odds are that I'm gonna do or say something wrong. I've also been told that in different instances I have funny reactions to things. For example, if someone were to surprise me unexpectedly I'd probably screech and make some weird face, while saying some random cobbled together words that don't make sense.

But in the animation version of me, I'll try to specifically focus on the clumsiness and awkwardness with some funny and random reactions dotted in between of them. My only regret with this whole animation project is the fact that there can be no sound, as the .GIF format does not allow audio, (I think) I also found that the animation technique that we are currently using (Photoshop Puppet Warp) totally baffles me, making the most simple animations really problematic. Whenever I animate or try to change the posture of my character all of the frames/layers I previously made change! But hey, try, try, try again right?

In order to first make our .GIF character we first had to that a picture that captured our body as a whole including limbs, joints and everything else. We then had to take our bodies like this in different angles, like from the side, front and back. WE then had to cut them out using the quick selection tool in Photoshop and to use puppet warp, which enables us to make our body digital marionettes with different pins and pulleys. Then we kind of do a stop-motion technique to animate that character, moving a limb or joint slightly and making a frame/layer out of and putting it together makes (viola!) a ANIMATION is born!

MOV Film Festival

In class we're now doing a GT staple, a tradition of a sort: MOVIE TRAILERS! Our basic goal is to either "Tell Me A Story" or to "Make You LAUGH" and our team decided to make you LAUGH! We're making a sitcom about two completely CLUELESS people and tossing them to the native Hawaiian islands. There they meet a friend and they try to learn the Hawaiian culture in a couple of days. Our keywords are Fitting In , Exaggeration and Learning. In film making, creating keywords are an essential part because they are words that basically summarize our story and a guideline to our whole story.

With our story it symbolizes the struggle of trying to fit in in a completely new setting and how we all stumble and fall at one point. Of course we try to lace some comedy into this, but the overall message is there. We all try to convey that having a good and dependable friend in a new setting is an enormously helpful thing to have. A guide or a guardian angel of sorts really. It also captures the interest of being and learning about a totally new mindset, as told when our characters learn about the Hawaiian culture and its inner workings. (mainly pidgin in our sitcom though)

Our biggest challenge on this project was finding the time to film and making our deadlines on time.
The places we had to go were really hard to drive to and the conditions weren't the best with lots of background noise and some other problems. We also got in our own way with difficulties to filming and making time for it. Because of these obstacles meeting the different deadlines for different things became a challenge and significantly lowered our grade. But in the end, we came together and we made something we deemed unique and excellent.

Tiny Spherical Worlds

Hi again! Currently we are doing some polar/spherical panoramas in order to make some cool "worlds" from different pictures. But how do you make it? Well, do you know about the pano app on the Iphone camera? In this project we have to do the same manually, snapping different pictures that overlap side to side. It has to be multiple images because one pictures can't really capture a horizontal landscape, so it has to be composite, so that it has the ability to.

The difference between polar and spherical panoramas is actually very distinct. A polar panorama most closely resembles a planet since all of it is contributed to it. A spherical panorama is a lot more different than the polar panorama. The spherical panorama has everything distorted in the middle, kind of like looking through a concave lenses. Because of this effect, everything on the edges is attracted to the center.

The problem with the tiny planets is that there is usually a line in the center of where the two sides of the panorama meet, giving away the illusion! We usually have to stamp and smudge over these lines. To stamp we have to copy the surrounding background color to take the definition off the line. The smudge tool takes out any stamp that left its mark too deep. The portraits also include shadows coming from where the sun is, giving the illusion of a tiny world with its own sun.

2016 Aspirations

FRUIT!

Hello, it's a new year with new opportunities and like all of you guys I have my own "2016 Aspirations" as the title implies. I have many goals for the coming year I hope to accomplish and I really hope the goals and resolutions I've dedicated myself too last longer than the flavor of a piece of gum lasts! XD One of the goals I have planned is one the milestones that come with being a teen, and that's DRIVING! I've always wanted to be behind the wheel for once and finally the time is almost here! I hope to rule behind the wheel and practice well for the incoming test. I also want to expand my book collection for more reading, same goes for my somewhat lacking movie collection, I'll have to work on that! I also hope to get higher grades on school and at the same time learn how to balance fun and leisure time with school. Lots do to, so little time huh?

A WINDOW!

A little something we had to take a picture of!

But I would say my most important goal is one I haven't mentioned in the paragraph below, I mean the paragraph above was just small goals! I think that the goal of keeping your loved ones close to you is very important, and inviting more people to that inner circle of yours equally important. My dad once said that friends make school enjoyable and I completely agree with the statement! I love meeting new people and I love the friends that I have. I can't wait to meet new people this year!

In order to meet new people I usually try and see if we have the same interests, or if they might have hobbies that interest me. Then we hang out and start talking about random things, but one of the most important things I try to find in a friend is their type of humor. I usually try to avoid overly sarcastic or dark humor, but I really like immature and childish humor and it usually clicks between us. Then we just started hanging out a lot more, and BAM! I have a new friend!

Scratch Game Design

Gravity Engine

We started yet another project for GT were we have to make a chase game on scratch and it came out really great! But one of the things in my head was, "How is this game going to be enjoyable or grossing for people who play it?" I decided to make it as grossing as possible by making the cat's movements small and the ladybug's movements really random making it as hard as possible. Sure, t may be hard and stuff, but just look at Flappy Bird! It's a huge pain, but you just keep on playing and playing! So I try to model my game on that specific principle.

The best part of my game in my opinion is the painstaking button mashing that you have to do in order to be adept at this game! (as I mentioned in the paragraph above) I also like how I figured out how to switch backdrops when the player won the game In my opinion these features were pretty much all that made my project pride-worthy by my standards and I can't really see this game without these two things.

My best line of code in my opinion was how I made the ladybug move in totally random spots on the stage, but it wasn't me who made the code. It was off the internet by another scratcher who is ten trillion time better than I am! There wasn't any huge problems with my code, but there was the trouble of making my game end, or making the fame end when the time limit was reached but with some help from my friends I overcame this roadblock! (which by the way took 2 days to overcome)

Invention Commercial

P1T10_Invention from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo. My team's goal for the invention commercial was to make a product that would appeal to people in school and we thought of Super Soles. We thought of the yearly struggle of getting new shoes every school year and the hard decision of choosing your own special style of shoe, so we thought of attachable soles to stick on to your shoe, replacing the worn out sole but keeping the Swag-tastic shoe design!
But we decided to go further and we eliminated the buying of shoes as a whole! We also made different soles for different places like a Mountain Grip, a Running Sole and a No Slip Grip for slippery surfaces! So you could go anywhere you like and just slap the right sole on your shoe and you're ready to go! Stylish and safe....

The best team moment we had while doing our project was working on the soles themselves! We went to our teammates house and cut up different shoes and their soles to provide for our project and we had a great time doing so! It was the fastest we've ever filmed anything because for this project we worked together pretty seamlessly with no squabbles. We had cut up 3 shoes in the process while making some awesome shots for another project for another class so overall it was a good work day!Even if those work moments were punctuated with long moments of hardcore procrastination.

This project was a team effort and everyone did some little important part of the project. Raghav did the filming and Kalani helped write the plan. I wrote most of the plan and I did a little bit of the editing with Raghav. I'm really proud of my friends and the way this project turned out! Teamwoooooooooooooooooork!

Composition Scavenger Hunt

The one composition technique that I have think is the most important is "rule of thirds (subject)" which is when your subject and the landscape in the back of him/her is divided among imaginary lines resembling a tic-tac-toe grid. These lines can be used as guidelines to place different things on the points, like the object that you want your viewers to see or natural landforms to frame your picture etc. In GT it's a really key thing our teacher has drilled into us and when done perfectly it becomes really pleasing to the eye making a higher grade for us. Rule-of-thirds is so effective it's used in many other forms of media, like news interviews and movies making it one of the most well-known techniques in media. Rule of thirds can be hard to get right though, so be careful!

The one composition technique I have trouble with is contrast and content. Balancing the colors to make the eye attract to only one thing is hard because of the many colors out there. Finding a place ideal for using contrast and content is hard too, especially in an organic background and subject. Although, it's hard for me, I've seen the results of contrast and content when done correctly and the results are beautiful! I hope I can learn this soon!

For this project I partnered up with my very good friends Raghav Kumar and Kalani Young. Both have the same sense of humor s me and are generally really fun to hang out with. We've also done some really good GT pieces when we work together right! Raghav did most of the filming and Kalani helped him! When I wasn't modeling for the composition techniques I filmed some techniques of my own as well! It's was a team effort of course though...!

Cracking the Code

I think that teaching coding in schools is really important because of the transition of paper and pen work to over-the-computer work in the world. Things outside of school have grown more advanced and in order to keep up with the evolution of the world we have to teach our youth the next best thing: coding and computers. Many of the jobs today, no matter how old-fashioned they claim to be, have some degree of technology involved in the job description which makes technology a must for any job and it appalls be that the stats say that only 1 out of 10 kids know coding! It we are gonna grow as people our younger generations have to be ready to step up to take the older generation's place. How exactly are we going to do that if the children of the next generation doesn't know how to work a computer?

My first experience with coding was somewhere in the 6th grade with my computer teacher Ms. Fujimoto. We had to do Lesson 1 in code.org (like in GT) and I kind of crashed and burned at it. I mean, at first it was easy and all that but as it got progressively harder that's when the crashing and burning started. NO matter how hard I tried  I couldn't really make any sense of it and I really couldn't move past the halfway point. But I'm MUCH better now!

If I could design any game I wanted than I would want to make a seemingly simple time-passer/waster but it's actually really challenging and addicting! If you don't get my drift than just then just think Flappy Bird, Crossy Road and aa. They're really frustrating, granted, but grossing all the same, making lots of money for the maker (namely me) and fun for the people you get the app! (I'd make it free of course) If I do become a professional at coding and all that, I wanna make a RPG exploring quest type of game like Skyrim or World of Warcraft!

My Humorous Monologue

GarciaL_Comedy from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.
During this project I have absorbed many things I think will be important in later classes of GT. I have also learned a lot about the science of humor and joke-making while working on this project, which I think will be important in socialization. Since we are working alone with filming and editing I have learned a lot more about the editing program we have (iMovie) and the cameras we use which is pretty valuable for the months of GT to come. I also learned the rudiments of humor during this project. We had to do some research about how to write a joke and I learned a little more about  people and what makes us laugh!

In all of our clips we had to use a technique we call PAD. It's the method of adding a good 3 seconds to the beginning and the end of each clip, effectively padding that clip. We do this do prevent abrupt beginnings and ending in every clip, making the whole project flow making a great watching experience for audiences.

The strengths of my monologue was the amount of slapstick humor in it. There was a lot of slapping, pushing and physical humor which was funny to me and a lot of other people, but that lead to my weakness in my monologue. According to science slapstick is for elementary age- immature kids and I showed slapstick to mature, middle-school kids. While a lot of people laughed the more mature people didn't even laugh one bit, which kinda made me feel awkward. If I had to change anything about the whole thing, it would be to up the maturity level a bit.

Comedy Writing

A sense of humor is a very important trait to someone's character because it's a reflection of someone's purely good side and better your sense of humor the adept you will be at socialization. Whenever I'm making  a new friend I always try to find what makes them laugh, and if they laugh at the same things I do, we'll most likely be great friends and I'm guessing this method worked for everyone at least once. Your sense of humor is a brief summary of you. If your humor is really dark, you're bound to be pretty dark too (not me by a long-shot) BUT if you're humor is immature then you're bound to be immature! (ME) So try to have a good sense of humor on everything and find people who have the same humor as you!

There are many things that can make or break your humorous narrative. First, in order for your narrative to make sense your words must be augmented with applicable b-roll and the b-roll must be of the highest quality. Next, you have to make your voice seem as causal as possible, like you're speaking to normal person. Your voice can't be monotone or too fake or you could lose the attention of your audience really quick, defeating the "humorous" in your humorous narrative. You also have to sync up to your audiences definition of "funny". Just because you find it funny , that doesn't insure that another person will also find it funny, so try to go for a broad and widely understood topic.  Just a tip though, try adding physical humor to your b-roll because it's a widely understood topic! Who hasn't laughed at someone farting by accident?! Finally, try to have fun in making your monologue! The hilarity of your monologue will seem more genuine if you're having fun , therefore having a better reaction from your audience!

FYI though, my monologue is about the myriad types of annoying friends and I think my audience will find it kinda amusing. I mean who wouldn't? Who hasn't had at least one type of friend that had that one irritating trait? Plus I only chose the types of friends that would get hilarious b-roll with some slapstick humor and it'll generally be relatable to everybody, therefore having a good reaction. Plus, it's gonna be shown to middle-schoolers who encounter annoying  friends all the time, so it should also be nostalgic in some way and at the same time it'll have them thinking about their own friends too!

Motivational Poster

Hello fellow readers! I'm finally done with the Personal Manifesto (see last blog post) and I think I nailed the requirements! What are the requirements you ask? Well according to my requirements for this blog post I'll have to tell you anyway so HA! NO escape! So anyway, we had to make a Photoshop document consisting of two layers, one of them called "Personal Quotes" which consists of quotes we got off of the internet that we feel that relates to us and a layer named "Manifesto" which has short phrases that describe our goals/aspirations of the future/present. We had to kern the text to make the text visually pleasing to the eye. We also had to add three different pictures we took beforehand that we felt symbolized who we are as a whole and a portrait of our faces. (see personal symbols on last blog post) We also had to add effects to the text to make it more prominent over the four pictures we chose as our symbols. 

The first thing we had to do was take the portrait of my face explaining who I was in one picture. Then, I had to find some quotes on the internet that related to us we had to incorporate the quotes to the actual manifesto. Then we had to make "short but sweet" phrases, as my teacher put it, that describes how we want to live our lives and while also explaining our goals and aspirations for our lives. Then we had to kern the text so that the quotes and phrases were visually pleasing and at the same time adding and arranging the pictures we chose as our symbols and my portrait as a background. But because of the pictures the words had to be changed so you could see the words better.  The changes of the words included a stroke of color we picked from a Triadic Color Scheme and a couple more adjustment layers. 

The project was acutally easy for me acutally and I think this project really shows just how much I've improved in Photoshop since 6th grade! But I guess if I had to choose one difficulty I'd choose the stupidity of Photoshop! When I was almost done with kerning I saved my progress and all of a sudden when I logged on my progress was ALL GONE! Because of this setback I had to rush the project so the grae would count for our mid-quarter grade. So because of this my quality grade definetly suffered. But other then that, s'all good! 

Personal Manifesto

This is a symbol showing how I'm still growing

Hello it's been a long summer and yet another GT project has come to challenge us! For our first project we have to make a manifesto publicly declaring what we want out of life. In this manifesto I'll have to include 5 personal quotes I live by, personal symbols that hints who I am and pictures that further explain that. You know what this talk of me wants me to talk about another topic: me! Here's some interesting stuff about me currently: just for the new readers. plus it's kind of a requirement   My favorite movie for now is Mad Max: Fury Road just because of the cool car designs and the cool "apocalypse" feel to the movie. I love fictional books but my personal favorite genres are sword and sorcery and space fantasy books. I'm a regular music listener and some people ask me, "Hey, do you have a favorite music genre?" and I usually reply in a "I don't know, don't have one.", as long as the song makes you feel something deep inside you and/or it makes you want to dance there is a very high chance I'll love it (but I do have to say that I'm more likely to love acoustic music). My favorite subjects in school  is Science and Language Arts because I am particularity skilled in those subjects. Because of my skill in Language Arts I have dreams of being an author.

Here is an example of what I'm gonna put in my manifesto, basically quotes and values that I live by- "Strangers are just friends you haven't met" "Live by your own standards" "Never let dreams be dreams" "You have to go with what feels right" "When you think of something great, write it down on paper" "When you see something beautiful, paint a picture" "Laugh even more than you already do" "Close your eyes and jump!" "Break every barrier" "Go to sleep knowing that you did everything you wanted that day" "Make everyday different" "Everyday should be a just a jewel in a vast treasure vault" Life is too short too be doing something other than fun" You have to go with what feels right" "Rock the boat a little" "Die happy and satisfied"

This explains how we are just a small part o a bigger mechanism

My manifesto should relate to everybody because it talks about how much everybody wants to be happy, and how everybody wants to be the best that they want to be.( "Laugh even more than you already do" "Break every barrier" "Never let dreams be dreams" etc)   My manifesto also talks about the struggle of the journey of being your best. Some of my quotes also highlight some of my hobbies like drawing and writing and it can also relate to amateur and professional photographers and artist. ("When you think of something great, write it down on paper" "When you see something beautiful, paint a picture") There are also some bits which explain some of my main traits like my impulsiveness which every person has to some degree. ("Close your eyes and jump!", "Rock the boat a little") There are also many messages of making the most of everyday which I know everybody wants to do! ("Die happy and satisfied", "Make everyday different" "Make everyday different" "Everyday should be a just a jewel in a vast treasure vault" etc)

This symbol explains how bright this tennis ball will always stay

Music Videos Rock!

So we have started a new project in GT as always but only this time it's actually all fun! We are making our own music video! (But not original song lyrics though) For our project we have to lip sync a song while making it as exciting and fun to watch as possible and it also has to have a story with it too. For this project our team consisting of Michael Gremse, Raghav Kumar (again) and Kaz Espina chose to do the song "When Can I See You Again" by Owl City (as I said in my previous blog post) and the idea was made by me and also did most of the production plan. I am also helping to make the album art that is also required. Raghav and Michael are the main camera guys and are also the people editing the raw footage and making the video. Kaz is now currently helping me with the album art on Photoshop.

There are a bunch of things I know the audience would like but I think the most appealing part of the whole music video isn't the music video at all! I'm talking about the bloopers!As soon as the camera stopped rolling one day we were filming at our school library Kaz and I started doing some random things because we were bored, but little did we know the camera was still rolling! The camera had caught us doing some weird stuffs and as soon as we found it was rolling though we started playing with the camera and doing random stuff purposely, making more funny bloopers. enjoy them! I know you will...

I think that Mr. Sandrel uses this project for two things: an opportunity for students to have fun before the school ends and to test what we have learned over the past school year. I think that the filming is testing our camera skills and the video itself is testing our editing skills with Final Cut and IMovie. As for the album poster that is digitally made I think it's to test our skills with Photoshop and what we have learned. With this whole music video, I think Mr. Sandrel can really test exactly what kind of information our brains were absorbing during the school year.

Our Animation Story

Our animations focus statement was "Celeste Seeks Friendship" because in the animation she tries to find a friend in the internet she can confide to about her personal and real life problems happening. She also tries to find a friend she can trust when her friends in real life shun her and in her particular perspective she feels betrayed. Our statement tells our story because in explains what Celeste's intention is in going to the internet and kind of moves the plot along. It also tells the overall lesson and theme, Internet friends are friends too.

Our audience will know the theme and the overall lesson of the story mainly because of the events that fold out as the story progresses the theme would become apparent. Since Celeste meets Loren from the Internet and learns to trust her the statement makes sense. Plus since Celeste learns to trust Loren her personal "mission" is complete therefore fulfilling the focus statement and the events leading to that moment support that statement. Celeste has to find Loren through the Fabulous Forest and the Magical Meadow emphasizing the "Finds" in "Celeste Finds Friendship". If the audience does not get it we could just point out the scenes making the theme obvious.

The best moment of my team was basically all the times that we worked efficiently and basically all the moments we worked together as a team. I think this was our best moment because I think we had the most fun and we worked much faster in that way. So I was supposed to write in this blog post the worst part in working with this team but really, there was supposed to be a bad? I thought the whole project and my team was no problem!

Animation Outtakes

 For our next assignment in GT we had to make a animation clip with some interesting tidbit (true or made up) about one of my teammates an sharing it to my peers. My teammates are Loren Weiner , Celeste Velarde and Raghav Kumar (haha again). Did you know that Raghav's family Indian but was born in Texas and he even owns and tend to a farm with his parents?  Did you know that Loren was from New York but moved to Kauai and one of her hobbies is some hardcore power reading? Did you also know that Celeste wants to be a singer and her favorite food is pizza? Well we decided on something completely made up (or not I don't know) and said that our animation is going to be about Celeste being ignored by her friends and finding an internet friend to console her and make her feel better.

Some of the animation types we will be using is Stop-Motion, PhotoShop, Flip Book, Whiteboard, and Stykz. I'll be doing Stop-Motion for 2 Scenes. Stop Motion is a kind of animation where you take a bunch of photos (or frames in animation lingo) and put then together. But with each frame something has changed slightly and with each little movement comes with a frame. So for the best quality stop-motion animation it's best to use little changes and to take a lot of frames. A .gif (gif or jiff whatever) is a a lossless format for image files which contains both moving and still images.

We will be doing a story about how Celeste gets ignored by her friends and she feels like there is something wrong with her. So she goes to the Internet to find an actual friend she can count on and to confide to. She meets Loren, who is a pretty dependable friend and Celeste confides in her, making her feel better. This is very important to know because this teaches you that you are never alone and there is a friend everywhere. Even in a place so big and vast like the world or the internet.