We were discussing microphones in Communications Lab today, and I saw one that looked a lot like a microphone I’d seen on the TV show “How It’s Made”.
Thought I’d share the YouTube link.
Category: ITP
Where I post all my ITP related stuff.
Comm Lab: Stop Motion Animation
This week I worked with two other students, Noah Waxman and Macaulay Campbell, to create a short stop motion, animated film. When we added the sounds, it definitely became pretty ridiculous. We used a whiteboard to create our animations; it was a lot easier to work with than physical objects. Plus, our illustrator stole my is a graphic designer job, so it turned out well.
What Should We Do for Comm Lab?
Check out my cameo!
Update: This is a fun animation I found on YouTube, about the death of some bubble wrap.
ICM Week 5: Objects and Data Input
So, this week’s reading and assignment were pretty difficult. Dealing with text and data is not easy, and Chapter 18 in the Learning Processing book was really difficult to understand. I’ll probably read it again. Instead of really coming up with anything original, I turned in a very slightly modified version of one of the exercises from the book, which I got help from another student (Nik), yet again.
Anyway, here’s my sketch. It’s OK. The bubbles are floating off to the side, unless you put your mouse over them and then they fall to the bottom of the sketch to be redrawn somewhere above the top of the sketch.
Communications Lab – Sequential Images
This week I worked with another student to create story from a series of sequential images — see Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud.
The story we created starts in a zoo and ends in a cemetery, but I won’t go into the details because the story is (hopefully) self-explanatory.
For the production, we first thought we’d try to use Photoshop, but my partner didn’t have much experience with the program. She also didn’t have much experience with using the Mac OX, so those were challenges for us to overcome. After one day where we failed to make any real progress, I suggested that we use the highest level tool possible, like Office, since our final product was going to be 8.5″ x 11″ anyway.
That seemed to work. We did use Photoshop here and there, such as using the Clone Stamp and Cropping tools to touch up our images. But most of the time we used OpenOffice in presentation mode. Although the photo editing tools are pretty primitive, the benefit of using such a high level tool was that my partner was able to follow what I was doing even though I went through much of my activities very quickly.
Communications Lab: Week 5 — Response to “Understanding Comics”
Chapters 1 and 2 were interesting summarizations of psychological patterns, as well as introducing the idea of simple, yet complex, design.
In Chapter 3, I found interesting the discussion on the Visual Iconography of comics. That is, visual iconography is used by comics as its “vocabulary”. Closure, as used in the “gutters”, or spaces between panels, is its grammar.
I also thought the breakdown of the types of closure – i.e., subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, etc – and the analysis of the evolution of Japanese comics, as a reflection of the Japanese culture, was very interesting as well.
Chapter 4 was a discussion on the breakdown of the passage of time, which was compared to photographs and the way we typically experience time. My notes include: “Time in comics is different from photographs; we may see several moments in time arranged within the same panel. In photos, the action is all from a single moment….” and “[in comics] time breaks down into panel-to-panel closure[s].”
Chapters 5-8 discuss the impact of line, and mixing of words and pictures. Points I found interesting:
- Expressionism and synaesthetics are distortive by nature and can obscure their subjects.
- In a visual medium, the visual sense has the burden of taking in all the other senses.
- Words have become more simple, while art became representational & specific.
- New media have been misunderstood – first beginning as an imitation of the previous media
- People find art in all aspects of human life, outside of the basic human instincts.
- Most comics artists don’t use color, because it’s expensive and can take away from the meaning of the comic, or art, itself.
Points I found interesting in Chapter 9:
- All media of communication are a by-product of our inability to communicate to others what it’s like to be ourselves
- Each media converts thoughts into forms that can traverse the physical world and can be interpreted by another of our senses – taste, sound, sight, etc.
- Mastery of a medium is the degree (percentage) that the artistic vision can survive the journey from artist’s thought to perception by others
- Comics use cartoons to command viewer involvement and identification; and use realism to capture beauty and complexity of the visible world
- Embedded in all pictures are the seeds of expressionism and synaesthetics.
Phys Comp – Week 4: Stupid Pet Trick
We were assigned to create a “stupid pet trick” which combines a bunch of stuff we’ve learned in our previous few weeks. It doesn’t have to be logical, which is why it’s called stupid. Some of my classmates made really awesome stupid pets, that weren’t really stupid at all. Mine, I admit, is a little goofy.
For now, I’m going to call it, “The Pickup Artist Bear, for Sensitive Gals and Guys”. Here’s how it works:
Step 1 – The Pledge: The Bear finds someone he/she would like to pick up. Bear sings a sweet song to attract Gal/Guy.
To play the song, you press a button. I installed my button within the neck of the teddy bear.
The song plays while the button is pressed. When you let go of the button, the music stops. When you press again, the song starts off from where it left off.
When you get to the end of the song, the music starts again at the beginning.
Step 2 – The Turn: Guy/Gal is sufficiently impressed with sweet, sweet song. Bear continues the pickup by helping Guy/Gal build self-confidence by showing you how tender your caresses are – and in the process, shows off ability to be affectionate.
For this, you squeeze the Force Sensing Resistors on the breadboard. To do this, I’ve set up 2 analog inputs which take a variable level of force not equally set. So, the same level of force for the Green light will not necessarily work for the Yellow. If you light them both, the red light comes on and teddy bear’s heart lights up. It’s a little bit tricky to do actually, and you can adjust it to really annoy your friends.
Step 3 – The Prestige: The bear has now sufficiently won the heart of Gal/Guy, and now gets you to really show your affection. Bear asks Gal/Guy to spill secrets. Bear shows happiness.
