Blog Assignment 10-A

http://changethis.com/

I found this article to be extremely interesting, but I do have some arguments that I would raise against it.  The central argument that he makes in this article is that the current paradigm that exists within our education system is flawed.  He argues that the current system of education functions to teach our youth to excel in all subjects, and when they show a weakness in a specific area we tell them to work on fixing that weakness.  However, he claims that this is limiting our potential because all characteristics which differentiate us come with both a strength and corresponding weakness.  Therefore, he argues that we should instead train our youth to work at building their strengths, recognizing that weaknesses are normal and enable our strengths.  His argument centers on the belief that our desire to create well-rounded individuals is not only unattainable, but a flawed and misguided goal to begin with.  In all of his theories I absolutely agree with him, but in the ways that he suggests people apply his theories I do have some arguments.

The first point of his that I am going to discuss is the third point labeled Flawless: There’s Nothing Wrong with You.  In this section he makes several arguments about why our perceived flaws are actually indicators of strength and are not fixable.  I do agree that many of the characteristics he listed as strength often have the corresponding weaknesses that he lists, but I don’t believe that you can prove the combinations he lists as absolutely true because I believe many different forms of strengths and weaknesses exist in everyone.  For example, people who are creative can be organized, and someone who is passionate is not necessarily impatient.  He goes on to give examples, one of them being Todd Crandell in describing addiction.  I disagree with his claim that Todd’s addiction is a part of him that cannot change and that one can only change the focus of the addiction.  I personally know many people who have overcame addictions and no longer feel the need to consume experience in ferocious ways.

Next, I will discuss the fourth suggestion titled Forget It: Don’t Try To Fix Your Weaknesses.  This section makes the argument that we are unable to fix our weaknesses, that any time spent trying to fix them could be better spent developing our strengths, and that we should ultimately build our strengths and ignore our weaknesses.  This is where I fundamentally disagree with the author.  I believe that our minds have the ability to overcome our mental ailments and that the struggle to do so a fundamental human struggle.  He furthers his argument by the claim that working on our weaknesses is painful and that we do not enjoy doing it.  However, I would argue that those things which are hardest in life reap the most benefits, and that the very fact that it is a difficult thing to do makes it so important.  Even if we become perfectly efficient at something we will always be held back by our weaknesses, and if we never work at them we will ultimately be consumed by them.

The final section I will look at is the sixth suggestion Focus: You Can’t Do Both.  In this section he argues that you cannot simultaneously build your strengths and improve on your weaknesses.  The reasons he gives for this are that we all limitations, that focusing on weakness prevents us from focusing on strength, and that focusing on a weakness can actually diminish the corresponding strength.  I absolutely disagree with his argument.  I think the entire way that he is polarizing these two components of our being is flawed.  Strength and weakness shouldn’t be separated as two conflicting things which we must reconcile with, but rather our mental struggle toward happiness should be viewed as a constant, single process of bettering ourselves.  He is essentially advising that we turn our backs on the parts of our self that we don’t like because it’s “time consuming” and “difficult” and that we should focus on those things which will get us ahead in the business world.  I find this entire argument to neglect the basic human need to create a calm and centered mind, to seek inner peace.  Furthermore, I would argue that working on a weakness necessarily improves the corresponding strength, not the other way around.

In regards to creativity, I find my greatest strengths and weaknesses represent a single struggle toward a balanced process, not an exploitation of one of my skill sets.  I find that my greatest strengths are in developing a single idea which I will fall in love with and become very passionate about.  I find that I can manifest these very powerful ideas in my head.  However, I find that my weaknesses are all related to work ethic and the ability to do what I need to do.  This laziness has always prevented me from expanding my ideas and taking advantage of opportunities to further them.  Therefore, but working at my weaknesses of procrastination and laziness I will ultimately improve my ability to create powerful works more than I would have ever been able to do by ignoring my problems.  That is essentially how I argue against his theories.

Blog Assignment 9-B

http://www.collapsus.com/

The Collapsus experiment was definitely different from anything else I have seen before.  It took me a while before I understood what was even going on, but when I did I found the concept very interesting.  Still I didn’t really like it for several reasons.  The main reason is that I found the experience to be way too hectic.  All of the fast flash animation combined with the intense music and moving screens on both sides was too much to handle.  The movement of narratives really didn’t make sense to me and I felt that they should have focused one either the story or the factual information and not tried to combine them.  I found it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction, and even when I knew something was true I felt that the fictional context that they were placing it in was biased to their opinions.  This is normal with traditional art forms but when you’re using real life statistics and facts to do this I feel like it is manipulative.  Also I found the voice acting and narration to be very unconvincing and the whole world that they created to just be sensational but not enjoyable.  I have never really had trans-media experience before this class, and I found that it really doesn’t appeal to me.  I am definitely fonder of traditional media forms, although I do multitask with different media which could be seen as somewhat similar to the environment Collapsus is trying to create.  I think the idea of trans-media is very interesting and I can see why people are exploring it as an option, but personally I do not think I could ever see that catching on as the new phase in media development.  I think that just because we have the ability to combine several different forms of media doesn’t mean that it is a good idea to do so.  While moving through different forms of media can be entertaining, traditional forms of media exist so that we can take in an artists work as they want it.  With this type of media I feel like the one thing it will ultimately accomplish is reducing our attention spans so that we don’t take the time to appreciate traditional media any longer.  I think that perhaps someone could design something that uses similar trans-media concepts but works much better, but even still I believe that traditional media forms will always be preferred.

Blog Assignment 9-A

Our presentation of our game design went well but we definitely did not elaborate enough on a couple of the key concepts.  While we presented a very good description of the rules of the game play and the environment we were trying to create, I felt that we didn’t discuss the ways in which the actual mechanics would operate.  Because the technology we described doesn’t actually exist, we were only able to describe it in comparison to other gaming platforms.  This was a problem for us because there aren’t any technologies that operate in the same way.  The drawings that we made give a good mental image of how it would work, but our description left many questions unanswered.  Do you have to run in place?  What about handicapped people?  I think that we should have focused more on how the game controllers would work since it is such a unique part of our game.  Something that would of helped our presentation would have been if we elaborated on different options of game play for players who are handicapped in physically unable.  Something else that I felt we didn’t explain well enough were the actual objectives of the game.  While we established that the story involved a U.S. Army troop coming to America to fight Korean forces there, I felt that we didn’t discuss exactly what our “mission’ was.  We said that our objective was to reach Washington D.C., but I feel like that implies that we are the one division of the army sent to save the capital and that doesn’t seem realistic to me.  I think that something that could have really helped improve our presentation would be if we had explained how the individual levels would drive the narrative in the game and what the objectives would be.  I found the most difficult concept to discuss with others was the objectives.  This was due to the fact that our game only existed in theory, and so working out the details of how the individual levels will work within the story was too difficult to foresee.  Therefore trying to establish what the objectives in the game will be with others was especially hard.  The assignment was too broad for us to work out such details.

Blog Assignment 8-A

www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/178/superpowers

For this blog assignment I tried several times to create an audio post explaining my choice for the superhero.  While I had it in the correct format each time, the blogger website wouldn’t load the files.  The super power that I decided on is the ability to cure the fears and weaknesses in a person’s mind with the touch of my hands.  This power is seen in an episode of the TV show Tales From The Darkside called “Distant Signals.”  The picture I’ve posted is of Mr. Smith, an alien from a distant planet who has been sent to earth to complete a detective show that was cancelled in the 1960s.  I am very drawn to this character because he is able to cure the actor in the episode of his alcoholism as well as his anxieties about acting for the first time in twenty years.  He does this by simply placing his hands on his head.  If I could have one super power it would not be to have any physical abilities like strength or flying, but rather the ability to create inner peace in the minds of anyone I wanted.  Not only would I have total happiness in my own mind, but I could bless all those I love with true inner peace.  While it is exciting to think of super powers that would give us glamorous abilities, I believe that the greatest happiness would come from an ability to center the human mind and physically cure mental ailments.

Blog Assignment 8-B

Mark and Ryan's 
http://markadelserger.blogspot.com/

The primary element that Mark and Ryan’s drawing use to contrast one another is movement.  Mark’s drawing of his villain, Abe, uses lines to create upward movement.  The lines extending out of his feet act as a way of indicating that he is being propelled upward.  The downward triangles created by his head and waist provided parallel downward motion from the center of his body while the horizontal lines of his arms contrast this motion.  Ryan’s drawing of Awesome Hero, in contrast, establishes downward diagonal motion.  The lines of the sidewalk behind the character provide a strong foundation for the movement of this image.  Parallel lines are created with the skateboard and the bent leg of the character, while the upward lines of his body, leg, and the pole he is carrying contrast the downward movement and provide weight to the image.  Weight is also created by the slight bend in the leg that is supporting the character on the skateboard.  These two contrasting movements in the image are further established by the horizontal lines of his belt and the shoe on the skateboard and the downward line created by the other shoe.  Contrast is not only established by the opposing movements of the images, but the two characters create virtual lines with their eye-lines that look in opposite directions.  When looking at these two images together, the contrasting direction of the eyesight of the two characters can also create affinity by establishing that they are looking at one another.  A sense of affinity is also created by the fact that the overall shape of the two images creates the same diagonal line, even though the villain drawing creates movement in the opposite direction.  Finally, affinity is created by the similar use of dulled colors in the two images to highlight their specific characteristics as super heroes.

No assignment posted for Tony Hermane




Ashton Rutledge's
http://rutledgemedia.blogspot.com/2011/03/character-nexus.html

           Color is definitely the element most heavily implemented in Ashton’s assignment.  The color scheme of the villain, Nexus, is primarily grays and other muted colors.  The grays of the character’s armor utilize varying levels of both brightness and saturation, which creates the effect of a reflection on the armor.  These muted colors allow for the bright red and blue of the character’s eyes to pop out much more in the picture.  This is important for the drawing of Nexus because the eyes explain much about the character.  The red hue of the one eye contrasts with the blue hue of the other eye, which functions to show the two-sided nature of the character.  While the red symbolizes the mechanical parts of the character, the natural blue eye shows his human side.  Color is equally important for the presentation of The Janitor.  This character’s color scheme is of slightly muted green with a highlight of yellow.  These colors complement the red and blue that highlights the drawing of Nexus.  The muted colors are important in establishing The Janitor as a character, whose background is that he is a school principal who secretly fights crime as a janitor.  Contrast is established in this way between the character’s dynamic story and his bland appearance.  Contrast within the drawing of Nexus is found between the red and blue eyes.

Blog Assignment Week 7

      These two videos take two different approaches to the same joke by utilizing different visual elements.  One defining difference in the two videos is the use of space.  In “Mommy Knows Best,” majority of the images consist of very flat space, providing a sense of claustrophobia with the boy in his mother’s world.  Toward the end of the video, the images suddenly utilize very deep space as the actions become more dynamic.  In “The Bitch in the Kitchen,” the majority of the images contain much more deep space separating the mother and the son from each other.  The son is in a colorful playroom while the mother exists on a completely separate plane in the kitchen.  When the boy is sent to the basement, the images are suddenly composed with flat space to contrast with the “free” space he has upstairs.  A visual element that is similar between the two videos is a similar motif involving line.  This motif is of the knife in “Mommy Knows Best” and the ladle in “The Bitch in the Kitchen.”  In both of these the tool that the mother is using acts as a stark line to break the flow of movement in the scenes.  These tools symbolize the authoritative function of the mother and the means by which she attacks her son.

      The videos also differ in the degree of contrast and affinity between the sound and the images.  In “Mommy Knows Best,” the music is classic horror-movie music that creates affinity with the use of black and white to generate the atmosphere of an old horror movie.  In “The Bitch in the Kitchen,” the soundtrack is light rock music and contrasts with the general theme of the video which involves an abusive mother.  Even when the son is in the basement crying the music maintains a sense of lightheartedness.  The music indeed is a central element in how the two videos distinguish their different approaches to the joke.

Animation Assignment (Chad's)