Delay

Other projects are starting to delay my time for my animation, but not to worry! I plan to get my entire schedule in check this week! Only time will tell.

--VMS

Animation

After a slow start my animation's detail and concept is finally starting toick up speed. Once I feel I am fully prepared I will begin working on my animation in flash, and hopefully by the end of the month I will have all of the key frames finished.

--VMS

Tuesday is Almost Here

On Tuesday I will announce my story idea to my professor and peers. After a lot of thought on what I want my animation to be about, I have decided that I would much rather go with my own idea rather than another's story.

The story by Edgar Allen Poe, while interesting and timeless, doesn't speak about me and my improvement over the years as my own story. In my story there is a reason for everything. From the most obvious points to the smallest details, everything will have a place.

"There are no accidents."

Some say that everything happens for a reason, and in my animation, that is the truth.

-- VMS

Problems in Digital Media Update

For my final project in Digital media I have changed form the Aperture Science Live action film to a genre that is aimed more towards my strength and my career, animation.

I am planning on prepareing at least two animations for judgement in my class, so if one is rejected, I still have the other to build upon. The first idea is an animation with a story that I create on my own. What I plan to do I will still keep a mystery because I don't want to spoil too much of the story online before it's even approved.

But not to worry! I have a feeling that whatever I create will be my greatest animation to date.

More updates are to come soon and on Tuesday evening I hope to have my animation idea posted here. Till then I hope you all have plesant evening.

-- VMS

Aperture Science Project Proposal

Aperture Science: Cave Johnson

View more presentations from V-Max-S.

I also had a video to be played while I said this text:

Apeture

Intro
Gentelmen, welcome to Apreture Science.


What
Pavers for the future, we are making new technologies our competetors have not yet even dreamed of. Here at Apreture Science we don't take the great, we take the best, and expect nothing less out of our science.


How
Through the sweat and blood of our loyal lab bodies, and mostly from my pocket, we have been able to construct the perfect testing chambers and products. From panels, to portal devices we have cracked theories of quantum space and have done it in record time.


Truth
Now I'm not going to lie the progression has been tough and more stressful than my doctors say a normal human should handle, but what do they know? We are making new innovations to benefit most everyone, especially, you, the investors.


Sell
Now we get to the real meat and why you are all here. Now is the time to invest in a wondrous piece of history in the making. Your part in the movement for Apreture Science will allow for the company's growth and success, with the added bonus of the eventual growth of your own wallets. And come on who wouldn't love the chance to brag and say, "hey I helped to change the world by doing nothing but donate a few million bucks." So what do you say? Let's just get those signing pens out and make the checks out to cash.

And I had this video prepared, please click on the LINK! RIGHT HERE! ALL OF THIS TEXT GOES TO THE MOVIE TO VIEW IN QUICKTIME!

Aperture Science logos, music, clips and characters are Copyright Valve Inc.

Thank you

--VMS

Art 350// Presentations and Animating Light

Bill Talent

A man who was able to create programs for a device that had not even been released yet, Bill Talent exceeded my expectations as an Apple application designer. I expected Talent to be a young man, at the very least in his late 20’s but I was very surprised when I found out that he was actually quite elderly. Nothing wrong with it, it was just my own prejudices slapping me in the face. For one man to create iPad applications for USA Today, River Murdock, and CNN is a feat in its own right. However for Talent it was not enough. To ease his customers, and fill his pockets with a little more cash, he also allowing his own offices to support the services on his own networks. This allowed the major companies to go on with their issues so any users of the iPad version with issues would address Talent’s offices instead. Very smart and he kept his customers happy, a win, win situation. Talent said that designers have to always understand the expectations and the wants of the customers in order to create a product that is the best of its class. The detail that he goes for his digital applications is indeed great. The way people could read what they want is digital, but it handles like paper, i.e. digital paper that one must still flip by hand. Talent states that the smallest details are given to the designs to allow for more comfort when one is moving from paper to digital, and that is especially true for the older crowds. Throughout his entire presentation I saw a confidence that I rarely see in most of the presenters that I have gone to. I find it especially commendable considering that he is a man one would consider out of place in the technological industry for obvious reasons. However Talent goes above and beyond to show no matter whom you are or how old, you always have something to teach to someone, and something to prove that you can do.

Jeremy Stern

When one thinks of a place, they think of something familiar. A favorite spot at your local diner. A room in your home that is safe and comforting. In the arms of a loved one, feeling as though nothing can harm you. That’s what I think of when I think of place. Space is another item entirely. Space is something that I do not know. Unexplored territory that has the potential of becoming a place if I give it the chance. Jeremy Stern and his piece “Following” was that exact definition between place and space. It was not until I listened to his presentation that I finally understood that the black on the walls was also part of the exhibition; previously I thought it was separate. The black on the walls marked free space on the walls that had not been used by anything, while the white spaces on the walls represented the holes and marks left by previous exhibitions. A sort of timeline that guided one through the history of the gallery. The gallery was a place for many, used to house their artwork and to expose the many talented artists throughout the history of the building. The second part of the exhibition was a series of sounds from Reno that Stern recorded on his own and used Eyecon to play it when people stepped into the right section that triggered it. Using an old Reno map, Stern took his recordings throughout Reno and mapped them out with Eyecon. So not only did one walk through the gallery’s history, but also through Reno itself. With the help of Clint, Stern adjusted the Eyecon program to sound louder as there was less movement. So my previous complaint of not being able to hear other items other than cars could have easily been solved had I just stood still. It opened my mind to remember to give art pieces another look before I make further judgments. A lovely explanation that opened my eyes and allowed me to have a deeper meaning to a previous piece that I had not.

Leo Villareal — Animating Light

Stepping into the exhibition I thought that I was going to be bombarded with blinding strobe lights and illuminating annoyances that one would only enjoy when at a rave. Instead I was welcomed with a wonderfully soft glow. With so many different colors and shapes throughout the exhibition that I felt as though I was walking in a dream. While a few were flashing, it was easy enough for me to ignore those and look at the other pieces within the gallery. As I have yet to play with any Arduino circuit boards, and failing to even light anything up with a traditional bread board, I could not even fathom the difficulty that Villareal went through setting up the entire gallery. From the possibility of short wires, to the chance that a bulb might burn out, the dedication it must have taken to make sure that everything was perfect is probably far greater that anything I have yet to experience. So to Villareal I give my congratulations on even achieving such a feat. Everyone watching was looking at the lights as a moth does to the flame. I myself was guilty of just standing there as the lights danced for my eyes to see. However, while the larger the light the more people there were, I found myself really intrigued with the piece “Big Bang.” As a lover of orbital space I was blown away when I saw what resembled, to me, a galaxy in motion. There is something that I found just so hypnotic about the piece that I found myself staring at it for a good ten minutes before my eyes began to hurt from the exposure. I would not call Leo Villarela’s “Animating Light” animated in the way that one might think of when they see a cartoon. The lights were more alive than anything and made me question if one day we will not see machines talk with them. All in all a wonderful exhibition that made me wish I could install it in my own home.

--VMS

//Art 343 Shadowcourse

Originally I was going to paint designs on the small shapes and the like, but as I was placing the finished pieces together on the stage the sun was shining in my room and it created wonderful shadows that gave the stage even more designs. From then I decided that I wanted to use the shapes of the polygons that I created to make the stage, not the paints that I was going to use. To give the stage that extra kick, and to give even more shadows, I used a texture spray-paint to give the whole piece more dimension. The pieces were arranged in a spiral from the "starting point" to the hole, calling a bit to the whole space theme. For me, space is not only beautiful; it also presents emptiness to me. A planet is not empty, but a planet may be something to someone. When out in space there is nothing, not even sound.

--VMS

//Art 350 Zodiac Horror

After the disaster with the spiders, I decided to go with a more Eyecon approach to my final project. For this project I took 16 sound clips from some of the most iconic horror films and I placed them in accordance to the Zodiac, inspired by the Zodiac Killer. There are 16 trigger areas in Eyecon, 12 for the Zodiac, and 4 for the Zodiac Killer's symbol. Each area also contains the opposite zodiac clips, making every area have 4-5 sound clips, some which repeat. All of the clips appear randomly and continue where they leave off. I set up the entire project in an elevator, and I used red tissue paper to give the entire area an eerie red glow. The local art gallery was kind enough to lend me a small box so I could hide my laptop and sound equipment within the elevator, and it gave a more mysterious quality which I loved.

--VMS

//Art 343 Mushroom

This mushroom was quite a lot more difficult to deal with than the mask. The multiple curves almost made me go mental from the difficulty curve, but nevertheless it turned out really well in the end.

--VMS

//Art 343 Jeremy Stern, Kevin Hand, Joseph Delappe

Following

Having a bit of knowledge about Eyecon and its workings I had a small idea of what I was walking into when I went to see Jeremy Stern's piece Following. A recreation of sorts of the areas around us, Stern drowve all over and recorded his travels, not with commentary, but with the natural sounds that he encountered. In that way they created the commentary of what was where. To me "natural sounds" does not mean only the sounds of nature or something of that matter. Natural sounds are the sounds of everything around us at all times, whether they be birds chirping or machines roaring. As I walked around the gallery space I was first drawn to the paint on the wall, which I'm sure was for another piece, but it was the first thing to have caught my eye. The wall was painted black, with some of the white exposed in the back making wonderous patterns that reminded me of the night sky. While I believe that the walls were for another piece entirely they added to the overall atmosphere of Following. It made we wish that Following had a more night and day feel to it. What I mean to say is that I wish that somehow there could have been a projection of some sorts to show what time of day Stern recorded his findings. It would have brought a much larger sense of time and place because it would have shown that what we were experiencing did not just take place in a few hours, but in a few days. Four main speakers played the sounds and cameras attached to Eyecon recorded our movements. I tried walking back and fourth from one area to another and even running a few times to get different sounds. What I found a lot of times was that the sounds were all very similar, but that might not have been Stern's fault at all, he was just recording what he experienced. Another step that I wish he could have taken was to have many more speakers just blasting the sounds that he recorded, because I noticed myself struggling to try and hear the sounds, as they were not very loud. All in all a good piece, but it needed some major adjustments to make it grand, at least for me.

Kevin Hand

When I heard that an animator would be coming for a presentation to visit our university I was more than thrilled to go and attend his presentation in the ASUN Theater. Especially when I heard that it was an animator from the Adult Swim program Superjail. Myself being an aspiring animator I was expecting to hear the processes that they go through from storyboarding to the actual animations themselves. When Hand began his presentation he began to discuss how he arose to the poison of an animator today. He presented a few previous projects that highlighted the peak points of his amateur career, from 3D modeling for crime scenes to modeling ships that have been raised from the deep and even futuristic machines that have not even been put into creation yet. However, while all fascinating and a helpful reference to how one rises to the field of a professional, the highlight of his presentation that I was looking for was the information about his animation. Yet when he finally got to the subject of talking about animation, help only spent a minimal time explaining any, if any, information at all or even showing videos of what he worked on. All of the videos that he showed were from YouTube, which to me showed a bit of unprofessionalism. I would have better enjoyed the videos if he brought them himself. Instead the Internet at the university was having a few kinks that day, so the videos became laggy, from their already slow-loading time. The videos were also very blurry and were hard to see, especially projected on a wall as it was. Another problem he had was that he tried to use Skype to chat with one of the higher-ups on Adult Swim, which would have been amazing had the Internet been online. It was also apparent that Hand had no idea what he was doing when he tried to access the network to chat, something I would have expected he would have sorted out before his presentation. All in all Hand was a disappointed and shallow presentation, full of bugs and technical difficulties that could have been avoided or worked around had he have been prepared.

Joseph Delappe

When going into Professor Joseph Delappe's presentation, I only had his Gandhi work to go on, and even then I knew very little about it. Truthfully I had no idea how one would make art out of video games that had no graphical value for its time. Today, especially after the introduction of Ico from Team Ico, many video games are trying to make themselves accepted as art. With their improved graphics and new ways to warp light and even create cartoony vector graphics for those more oriental style video games, such as Okami. However what Delappe did was not art directly on the video games themselves, but it was more like performance art, reenacting scenes from famous shows such as friends, and acting them out over the internet with microphones. For many years also have tablets now that allow us to draw on the computer as we would on paper, but one of the more impressive projects was when Delappe attached a pencil to a mouse and had the tracks of his mouse create pictures with it. A wonderful concept with interesting results. When he introduced the Gandhi work I was surprised about the massive scale to which the entire project took place. From actually walking the entire length of Gandhi's walk, to creating a towering replica of the man himself the effort put into the entire piece really put all the work into perspective for me. All in a pleasant presentation, though I wish there could have been more videos other process of many of his works, mostly pictures were shown.

--VMS

//Art 343 Pepakura Mask

My first try a Pepakura. I decided to create Noface's mask from Spirited Away. The curves were a bit difficult to do, but it was fun to see the end product. It's large enough for me to put over my face and its circular form gives a bit of strength.

--VMS

//350 Spiders and Sound

Having seen the arduino and kinect I have to say that I'm a little more than intimidated by them.  Their codes and ways confuse me to no end.  So in the end I have decided to go with Icon.  With the pepakura program I hope to make 20+ spiders in pepakura and spread them out within a room.  When a person enters the room, which will be dimly lit, then Icon will start to play a sound that is both grinding and unpleasant to the ears.  What I want people to get out of my project is pure fear, I hope that it will actually make someone so uncomfortable that they leave the room in terror.  P.S. this spider is not mine, but one I found on the internet, I hope to construct my own spider bodies in blender before transferring it to pepakura.

--VMS

Art 343// Golf Hole (Updated)

For our next project we have to create a golf hole using the program Pepakura. What I'm planning to create is a golf hole with giant flowers and grass stalks.  However, I want people to feel relaxed, and not too small, so the flowers will not be towering over everyone.  I want the plants to feel more overgrown than giant actually.

--VMS

Art 343// Blender Sculptures

We had to create two sculptures in Blender, one created from our own imagination, and the second from copied free 3D models off of the internet.

Because I'm still learning on how to bring texture into Blender the first sculpture looks a bit crappy.  I tried to create a sort of flower pen with butterfly wings.  The pen is to resemble my love for art and drawing, while the flower says my appreciation about nature and the world.  The butterfly wings symbolize my love for bugs, and the small heart is just something that I always place within my signature.  Without the texture the sculpture looks a lot better, but it was my first time applying color in Blender and I don't think it came out as bad as it could have.  I tried to make all the parts have similar coloring so it would look as a single object, but I wonder now what would it have looked like if I did place the color as each item is individually.

The second sculpture I am much more proud of.  It was made in Blender 2.5 and it really shows the advanced capabilities of the new software.  It is just able to withstand far more graphical abuse than the first one, and is able to have immense detail.  However to learn it will be like learning Blender all over again.  Anyway, this is my Arch de Chair.  One day while walking along the riverside I saw a few teenagers skateboarding on the grounds of a theater building.  It annoyed me how a building that is used for the love of thespianism could have been so disrespected.  I then remembered how when people see buildings some just see it as a place to sit, no matter what it's history value is or it's architectural beauty.  I then began to think what if these beautiful works of art were then constructed from everyday chairs that we have come so accustom to sitting on?  Would they get what I mean or would they just find it amusing?  The human is there to show the size of the sculpture.  During the process nothing about the original chair model was altered and it was all built up from the same model.  I made sure to stack the chairs in a way that is almost believable, yet of course in real life some adhesive would most definitely be needed to be applied.  I really appreciate Blender and my computer for taking the graphical abuse I gave it because by the end of the project both began to run really slow.

--VMS

Art 350// Makerbot Bug

After tinkering with the MakerBot and it's programs, with a big help from Clint from his awesome job at actually making the machine work, we were finally able to print a MakerBot bug.  Unfortunately the Bot went a little mental when it came to the bug's legs, so I had to make that in plaster clay.  Unfortunately I've learned that the type of clay is damaging to an oven and therefore I am unable to bake it.  So it seems that any and all bugs that I make from here on out will have to be made in pieces using Blender, and then printed individually using Bot and just superglue them together.  I really like how the first one turned out though, so now I can start on my final, a bug room.  However, to do that, this semester I will have to start playing with the Arduino, should be fun.

--VMS

Praying Mantis

Goals:

Create a bug fully from one block in Blender. Finished

Decide on either one large bug or a bunch of smaller ones. A bunch

The bug that I created here was all from just one start block in blender. While I am proud of how it turned out, I was unable to fully complete the small details because it became too much for my computer to handle. Also, apparently it also has too many faces for it to even be colored in Blender, go figure. Nevertheless, I like how it turned out and hope to make more. In retrospect, it might of been easier if I started off with an easier bug, but I love praying mantises.

I based my mantis off of this photo.  Courtesy of Google search.

My mantis created in Blender, seen from the side.

It's back side.  The wings were among the hardest
objects to render using only a single block.

My mantis seen from underneath.

A bit of the details that I tried to render on its face.
I wasn't able to produce the jaws perfectly,
but I think that it's pretty close.

--VMS

Art 343// Digital Nation two Paragraphs

Digital_Nation Life on the Virtual Frontier is a documentary that looks further into the virtual worlds, and even tackles some possible problems with addiction. From the very start it shows how people, especially the younger generation, is attached to their electronics to the point where it is almost an obsession. Many claimed that they couldn’t live without their technology. South Kora in particular has recognized technology as a possible addiction and have even set up facilities to battle it. Where I stand, I agree that people are, in a way, addicted.
However I believe that the generation that I grew up with is probably the most fortunate of the technology boom. For example I grew up with technology and admittedly, as a child I did not like reading books. However now as an older gentleman I now miss the feel of books and have started to get into them even more than before. Everything should be taken into moderation, even what we feel like we need.

--VMS

(Trust me, if I could I would probably write a whole essay on this and it was hard to do just two paragraphs.)

Art 343// Second Life Machinima, End Me

A project that was created in a group, we decided to make a movie of a suicide victim from the documentary The Bridge.  Much of it was recreated in second life and then edited together with the original documentary.



--VMS

Art 343// Project Proposal Votes

My top six favorite performances to vote on for SL:

Old age (if I cannot vote for this because it is my own, then use the rest of the list excluding this one)

Awkward cross dressing

Chinese astrology

Fast food mascot

President avatars

Avatar TVs

Band (just in case I can't vote for myself)

--VMS

Art 350// Blender 2nd Progress Report

For the first half of the semester I have decided to create bugs in Blender to print out of the MakerBot.  The reason this one looks so strange is because of the fact that I was partially inspired by Portal to create a sort of robotic but, but looking at it now, I think I'll just create normal bugs.

I based the design off a water bug.

I'm quite proud of the back on this one.

--VMS

Art 350// Blender

I'll be experimenting with this semester and will hopefully create small figurines in the MakerBot we have in class.  My first creation was the bust of an old man and I'm quite proud of how it turned out.

--VMS

Art 343// Second Life Project Proposal

We had to create a small project proposal that would involve our entire class.  I chose to do an older version of myself, wondering how we would be treated in a world of perfection with our act of imperfection.  Everyone participating can act however they want with their older self and even have the appropriate accessories, i.e. canes, walkers, scooters, etc.

My older virtual self.

My top six favorite performances to vote on for SL:

Old age (if I cannot vote for this because it is my own, then use the rest of the list excluding this one)

Awkward cross dressing

Chinese astrology

Fast food mascot

President avatars

Avatar TVs

Band (just in case I can't vote for myself)

--VMS

Art 343// Second Life Self Avatar and Object

It took me a couple of tries, but I think I did a good job of putting myself into the virtual world.  For this project the clone stamp tool was my best friend.  I also added skin textures to my body for it to merge better, as well as my real texture for my green shirt.

My real life self.

My virtual self close up.

My virtual self, full-body shot.

We also had to create an object from our real lives in Second Life, and I chose my lamp in my room.

I made the lamp extremely tall for a more dramatic effect.

The light bulbs can actually light up when touched.

The lamp lit up at midnight.

--VMS