Scratch Game Design

         Scratch, a website to make games with code, is a website our class has been working in for the past week. The game we have been making is called "Chase". The idea of the project is to make a character automatically controlled, chase another character controlled by you. User experience influenced my game in many ways. With people playing the game, they gave their opinion and the opinions they gave were helpful things to improve on, or at least something I could do better next time.

            In both of my games, each one has a special feature for it to stand out. In my 1st game,  "Chase", I made it so the larger the shark, the more points lost if they managed to touch you. In order to balance that, the larger the shark, the slower they were. I made this since everyone else's game seemed so basic. I wanted my game to stand out more than other peoples. In my second game, I made a special feature that included a bar moving up and down. If your character hit that bar, you would restart. I incorporated this for a challenging game that you actually want to try again if you lose.

       

 In my opinion, my best code was the coding of the actual sprite in my platformer game. There was many different colors I had to include that if the sprite touched, the game would restart. The movement of that sprite though isn't perfect, it rolls in a slightly odd direction. The most difficult bug fix though, was figuring out how to make it so the portal says a different message after each time. I finally fixed it, by using a slightly different portal sprite and that sprite makes it says a different message after you touch that specific one.

Invention Commercial

       The invention of the shovel was ground breaking. However, the invention of the broom truly swept the nation. However, we all know it was the invention of the wheel that got things rolling. Okay, enough bad puns. In our GT media class this week we had put the finishing touches on our Invention commercial plans, and viewed our entire classes commercials. Our team (Tim Blum,Kynan Ledee, and myself) had a main goal to accomplish for the end of the commercial. That goal was to make something that could people could actually use. We somewhat accomplished the goal, it IS something that people can use, but it's very simple. Our idea was to create a device that allows people to pour drinks without the worry to spill anything. What we did end up making was simply a hole in a bottle cap. It works, however it wasn't to the best of our abilities.

   
      Our teams best moment within production was a pretty awesome one if I do say so myself. We were trying to make something for the end of the video, and Kynan sang a song and the lyrics were "1-800 spill saver, do do dooo". It was very funny, and it was unfortunate we decided not to put it into the final cut. If we had decided to put it into production, our entertainment factor would of gone up, however another score could of potentially went down, and I feel that in commercials entertainment is not always the key for people to buy your product.

During post production, it was mostly me who had done the editing in my group. I had put all the clips together and voiceovers, however it was Kynan and Tim who helped me in putting things in certain places. In addition to that, I had difficulties exporting the movie, and it was them who helped me complete that task. Overall, I feel as if we did a very good job on this project. Of course, there is always room for improvement. The next project that we do, I intend on honing my skills even more.

Composition Scavenger Hunt

Last week, in our G.T media class we got into teams of 3 and started a project on composition techniques. It personally wasn't my favorite project, however I got through it. The most important composition technique I think our team filmed was rule of thirds (subject). Although I say this, it only pertains to our class. In our class, we have two periods in which we have to film a lot. So our class tends to use a lot of rule of thirds subject, and thats why I believe its the most important.

The most difficult composition technique for me to do is rule of thirds, subject. I also said this was the most vital however it is the hardest. So many rules apply to this technique, and so many are required to make it appear flawlessly. First of all, you need to align your subject in rule of thirds which isn't all too hard if you turn on the grid part of your camera. After doing so, you need a background that applies to whatever your story or what your doing is about. (Example, story about ocean might have a background of an aquarium or fish species behind it). Along with the background applying, you can't have a wall behind your interviewee. That's only the basics of rule of thirds though. Many more in-depth features are out there, and you can find some right here if it interests you.

     
My teammates were Kynan Ledee and Timothy Blum. All of us played an important rule in our video, but perhaps the most important was Tim's, because he filmed nearly all the shots and had ideas for some of them. Kynan was the subject of most of our subjects, and did the voiceovers. and I was the person with the ideas for shots (more so than Tim) and filmed the shots Tim did not. Over all, I feel as if our group was even in the amount of work we had done, and thats really important in group projects.

Cracking the Code

In our G.T media class this week, we have been learning basic coding. We also were presented with a question, is coding really required in life? Well, I don't think so. It all really depends on the career path you want to follow. For example, what if Lebron James had been into coding  but still wished to follow his career path as a NBA superstar. He couldn't of done both. Other people in the world probably are torn between the two. So, what I say about coding is simple. If you like it, go for it! If you don't want to learn it and have your career path planned out, I say go with your gut.

My first experience working with code was an interesting one. It was in sixth grade, when our class was working with chromebooks. It was on code.org and most of our class understood at least the very basics of coding. I believe it was the angry birds activity that we attempted to do. I personally enjoyed it, however some of my other classmates had hated it with a passion. Ever since then, I have forgotten about coding. Until now, and once again I enjoy it!

If I could design any game, it would be a game similar to clash of clans. The goal of the game would be to level up your character, and the higher your level is, the more freedom you get for the game. For example, let's say you start off and your a "Novice Ruler". As a novice, your "kingdom" will only be entitled to a few things, such as basic walls and people living in your village. You can level up by your resource producers that villagers operate. That's the basics of it, and if I could design a game I would design a game like that one.

My Humorous Monologue

In our G.T class, we have been working on a project. The project is a comedic monologue in which we need to memorize, and film b-roll over our audio. I've learned a lot about writing comedic ideas due to this project. Most of them include the basic idea of working off of what makes you laugh, but other ideas are more complex. One of the more complex ideas of writing comedic work is that you are not going to make people laugh at every joke. To be a comedian, you have to be able to accept the fact that sometimes people will not think you are funny.

Describe pad & why padding your clips is crucial. Pad, is a very important aspect in filmmaking. It ensures no footage gets cut off at the beginning and end of your clips. Pad is really just adding 3-5 seconds extra before actually filming so while importing, none of your clips will be cut off. I used pad often in my clips, with the exception of a few of the clips. Those few clips I needed to adjust because they were cut off.

My main weaknesses in this project were the lack of productivity I had. I could of finished alot more if I had been more productive. No, it's not my best project however it's my first project of the year. I hope to do better on our next project. My main strengths though, were my speaking. I spoke loudly and clearly in my monologue. I also think I had really creative ideas, however I couldn't apply them in the best way possible. I think this is a good first project though, and I really liked it!

Comedy Writing

As of late, I've been laughing a lot. It's a good thing really. Anyways, I wanted to explain how a sense of humor is a good trait to have. A sense of humor is a good trait to have because humor is really a life skill. If you have a good sense of humor, you can light up people when they are feeling down. A sense of humor also can relieve stress from not only you, but others as well. Even in my life, when people have cracked a good joke on a bad day, it made me feel somewhat better. So, having a sense of humor can be really vital, for many reasons.

5 tips for writing a humorous essay? Okay then! First tip, have a voice in how you read it. Don't talk in a mundane tone. Raise your voice, lower it, talk in an accent, whatever your story relates to, attempt to talk in a tone of voice that makes sense. Second tip, think of what makes you laugh. Build off of that, think of what makes you laugh and try to expand the joke to support multiple types of humor. If you don't understand what I'm saying, ask a friend what makes them laugh. Assuming what makes them laugh is different that what makes you laugh, try to incorporate humor in your joke that suits both you and your friend. Third tip, don't make the joke too wordy. Making the joke too long can make the audience lose you, or become bored. Don't be all too descriptive. Get to the point, get laughs. Fourth tip, is a fairly obvious tip but a good one. You can be inspired by other people, however don't steal from them. All comedians had to start their jokes from scratch and it's not Monopoly and you can get a free pass. The 5th and final tip is be yourself. If it's not you, then you are doing something wrong.

My comedic monologue includes a variety of high humor. Most of my jokes require some thinking, because you usually won't understand it right away. The rest of my jokes are puns. They are funny because of thinking required to understand them. Once you do understand them however, they can be quite enjoyable. I'm really proud of the work I have done on this project. I hope I can maintain that pride for the entirety of the year.

Motivational Poster

Wondering about the requirements for our new project in our GT class? Don't worry, we have a lot of those! To begin, our poster is required to have 3 images that symbolize you in a certain way. Along with those 3 images, we need a portrait of our face so all together we need 4 images. We also need 2 text layers, one named manifesto and the other named personal quotes. Those are our layer requirements. However, we still have design requirements. All of our text needs to be kerned to fill the entire page, having no holes or blank spaces. Another expectation is having a triadic color scheme (which needs one dominant and two harmonious colors). Finally, we need to have adjustment layers for images, and blending options for text layers. That's it! Although it may seem like a large amount of work, it's really not. All we need is persistence, and our class has plenty of that!

To start this project, we needed a list of personal quotes. We would later need them to fill in space. After having our personal quotes in line, we needed to write a manifesto. Writing the manifesto wasn't all too difficult, just some what time consuming. Then, we needed one portrait picture and three pictures that symbolize ourself. Finally, we get to start the photoshop process. We copy paste our manifesto and personal quotes into photoshop and begin to kern them. Kerning is a very difficult process in which you space out the text to make it look visually appealing. Once the kerning is completed, we add our 4 pictures into the photoshop document. Since the text layers and picture layers look so bland, our next task is to add a triadic color scheme. We also add adjustment layers for each text layer and each image layer. That's it! Despite all of the steps it took to complete, I really enjoyed doing this project.

The biggest challenge we faced during this project, in my opinion was kerning. Kerning requires a lot of time and if you mess it up, it can have bad results. Kerning all in all isn't too hard, just very time consuming. My final picture isn't perfect in it's kerning, but I believe it's to the best of my ability in the time I had to complete this project. In my next photoshop assignment, I plan on doing even better kerning, so my "amazing" photoshop skills will shine.