10 - Freak Factor

For this blog, we read the article "Freak Factor: Discovering Uniqueness by Flaunting Weakness" by David Rendall from the website www.ChangeThis.com. The main theme throughout the article is that people should use their weaknesses to their advantage to figure out what they are good at and figure out what makes them different from everyone else around them. We were then asked to respond to three of the nine listed suggestions and the three I chose are listed below.

4. Forget It: Don't Try To Fix Your Weaknesses
In this suggestion, Rendall suggests that you shouldn't try to fix weaknesses in order to try to grow as a person. He gives four reasons that I agree with to support his point. The two I agree with the most go hand in hang. They state that fixing weaknesses is a slow process and it distracts from activities where we could make more progress. Personally I have seen this happen many times. One example of this in my life is a friend's study habits. He always insisted on using notecards to study but didn't learn well from them. Instead of trying to find a new way to study he kept insisting on trying to make notecards work and ended up wasting even more time than he would have if that effort had been put to trying to find a new way to study.

5. Foundation: Build On Your Strengths
This suggestion sort of goes with the one I mentioned above. In it, Rendall states that "strengths are patterns of passion and proficiency." Your strengths usually come from the things that you love doing and you tend to do well at. I can personally relate to this suggestion too because I have experienced it in my own life. I have always liked listening to things more than I enjoy looking at them. Especially if that thing is a book and reading it is an assignment for a class. It was because of this that I discovered audiobooks and have used them when available to listen to while I read along. I get an entirely different outlook on the book when I hear it in tandem with seeing the words on the page. Rendall says that "you have the greatest potential in your areas of strength" and I couldn't agree more.

6. Focus: You Can't Do Both
This suggestion seems sort of like a summary of both of the two I have talked about above, but I feel that there are added points to this suggestion that make it worth mentioning also. I feel that the support given for this point is very valuable and everyone should take the time to consider it. Rendall says that we have limited resources, and focusing on strengthening both strengths and weaknesses at the same time actually limits progress instead of expediting it. By trying to make both better at the same time, it keeps you from getting really good at any one thing and instead can make you mediocre at a lot of things. Also, since strengths and weaknesses can correspond to eachother, fixing something that is a weakness can actually hurt the strength that it is linked to.

I feel that the combination of these three points are is the most important lesson that Rendall makes in the article. The lesson shows that you won't get better if you try to do everything at once. Instead you need to focus on the things you are good at, get better at them, and use that to your advantage, making you an even more effective person.

In my own journey learning more about the creative process, I have learned a lot about the strengths and weaknesses that I myself have. I have figured out that I am more deadline driven if I am working in a team instead of individually, my ideas usually aren't the best but collaboration with others can allow them to expand and grow, and that being open to change allows you to become more flexible and end up with a better product 99% of the time. I feel like the articles on ChangeThis.com have been very helpful in adding a different view to some aspects of the creative process and they all offer good advice as to things that students can do to try to better their creative careers.

9b - Collapsus

Here's a link to a very cool media experience (for lack of a better term) called "Collapsus: The Energy Risk Conspiracy"

It is sort of a interactive media piece/game that is very unique in its approach to its presentation. Check out my vlog below talking about my experience with it:

9a - Gaming reflection

This blog is a reflection to the game presentation that our group gave yesterday in lab.

I feel like our game presentation went pretty well as a whole. Overall in my group I feel like there could have been better communication and if we had taken a better approach to the entire project maybe we could have ended up with a better final product. However, with all that aside, I feel like we came up with a game that would have done pretty well if created in the real world.

Our game is like many other first person shooter games and the mechanics and rules we designed were based mainly on the games Call of Duty and Halo. It is because of this familiar setup of a game in which a player goes through a game with a specific objectives such as killing the opposing team in the game with the overall goal of reaching the end and defeating the entire opposing force that we think our game would do well on the market.
I don't think we did as good as we could have with regards to selling the game. We presented many of the main points and told people that they would enjoy it but i don't think that we gave any hard hitting reasons as to why people should buy our game more than others.

I think that our mechanics were the easiest to explain because we related them to other games that are similar with the expectation that if you are someone who would think about buying our game, you've probably already played these other similar games.

The goals of the game were probably harder to communicate specifically because a lot of the game is based on the story in the single player mode. Therefore we can give a basic "you have to kill the opponent" goal and people get it, but if we give some of the more specific goals involving parts of the story people might not understand what we are talking about until they actually play the game themselves.

8b - Other Heros

Jay Deal's Hero/Villain/Sidekick

Jay's Group did a good job using contrasting colors between the hero/sidekick and the villain to show the differences between the good and bad.
Their hero and sidekick share a red and blue color palate. The hero is blue with red accents and the sidekick is red with blue. This allows the two characters to look similar while at the same time looking different enough to be distinguishable from one another. The blue and the red are brighter colors and it allows them to stand out a little bit in the dark.
The villain on the other hand is uses very cool colors and looks less bright than the other two. He is mainly purple and grey and because which also sets him apart. However, he also uses blue and red to show that he is in the same group as the hero and sidekick but he is still different enough that you can tell he is on the other team.


Chris Faust's Group

Chris's Group had some of the more creative characters that I saw in our lab. His character, Slasher, looks like a skateboarder with a red outfit, a white hockey mask, and a sword. The dark red color contrasts the warmer green, yellow, and orange of the hero, Guy Rollaris. You can tell that Guy is related to Slasher because he also skates, but he roller blades which makes him different from Slasher. The two of them have similar movements but you can tell that there is a distinct difference between the two that indicates a difference in motives between the characters.

Mike Giles's Group

The third group I will be critiquing is Mike's group. The hero and villain in this group showed obvious differences between the two of them. They were both fruits which I found to be a very creative way to approach the project. The hero (a banana) is very bright yellow with a blue/purple cape. His stance makes him look strong and powerful and his facial features make him look like he has a very square face even though his entire body is a banana. The villain (a watermelon) on the other hand, is very rounded because of the nature of him being a slice of watermelon. His cape is black which contrasts from the hero and his stance makes him look more sly and like he is up to no good. The two heros do a good job having many similar characteristics (both being fruits) while at the same time having many contrasting features (colors, cape color, shapes, stance) that allow them to be seen as part of the same group but completely different characters.

8a -Hero Life

This blog post is based on the "First Act" of This American Life

If i could pick a superhero to have the same powers as I would pick

And heres why:

Characters and Animation

These are the characters and animations from the Hero/Villain assignment in class. My partner for this assignment was Colin Mercer

To view Colin's Villain and animation check out his blog here.

7a - Video Reflection and Video Links

Our Joke videos can be watched here:

Joke 1

Joke 2

Our videos had a great deal of contrast and affinity between the two. Since they were both based on the same joke, the videos had very similar characteristics in the storyline and the same characters used in both videos. They were different in that we used two completely different takes on the same joke and because of that the videos each have their own individual feel.
In video one, we used virtual lines when the mom and son are interacting because they are never really looking at each other in the same shot but instead are cut to when they are looking over at the other.
The second video does a good job of using lines to break up the background and frame the characters in the video more. It also utilizes movement to show the depth of the space we shot in when Johnny walks from the battle ground up closer to the camera when he goes to his "room." Also, while he is in his room, the viewer has to think actively (rather than didacticly) while Johnny tries to decide what his next move will be.