240

Collapsus

Reflection on the Hero/ Villain

     The first Hero and Villain I critique are from James.

     James’ blog: http://jameswatson14.blogspot.com/

     His Hero is pretty funny—Eric. It reminds me of the superman. The character’s body figure is strong and seems powerful, although his hat is kind of dark humorous, his overall look is proper for a Hero. The Saturation of both the Hero and Villain is fair because he doesn’t use very warm colors that have strong contrast. Hue for both characters is light, I don’t know if it is because they did it using pencil and highlighter. And brightness is high, maybe they left the cloth part blank so I see that white.

     The second Hero and Villain I critique are from Alex.

     Alex’s blog: http://alexscreativityblog.blogspot.com/

     However, he just posted his Villain but not Hero. I think his Hero’s animation is really creative. I especially love the fruit chewing part. The viewers can see the shadows very clearly by the way he’s using some simple spot lines on the Hero’s face. Facial expression is revealed by such impressive way, I like it very much. About the Villain’s animation, Symbolism is clear so viewers can easily tell this is the bad guy and he’s so big. Lighting also helped design the character’s mood, see villain’s face and reactions.

     The third Hero and Villain I’m going to critique are from Andrew.

     Andrew’s blog: http://awid7.blogspot.com/

    

     His characters is similar to Star Wars. But when he put the story background related to OU, things became funnier. Hero’s shadows is obvious. Light comes from top upon the head, created a symbolism for the character that let me feel he’s so strong. Brightness let me feel he’s a good guy. Whereas the villain is so different. Look at the second picture. The hue is usually dark colors. And he has black shadows on his face. Black shadows let me have a feeling that he’s dark and evil, which characters exactly belongs to this villain.

The superpower I wish I could have is Chrono Cross. The same as the character Hero in the TV series HERO. 

Reflections on the Gaming presentation

     We made the Gaming presentation last Friday. We planed to talk about several concepts however not all of them get covered.  First of all, we didn’t explained or showed much about what the scenes like in the game. We used a picture in the presentation but to my point of view I feel like I still cannot imagine the frame in the game. The picture is like this…

     Instead of using a picture, I think we should have use a trailer from other games. The scenes in the game would be like the game Assassins.

     By showing the video, we don’t even have to explain much about what would the scenes be look like. Gamers could see through the trailer and kind of get the right point that we’re trying to make.

     The second concept we are trying to make through but not did good enough is the Goals. I feel like my classmates were a little bit confused when I explaining the whole story. We actually talked about the story for most of the time. From my personal perspective, storyline is the key of RPG. When gamers are playing a character, the most attractive goal or say, motivation, is to find out what will happen next and carry on the plot. I am a gamer, and I’m a big fun of RPG. My experience tells me only those RPG with colorful and complex stories are able to attract me to buy. When playing the kind of game which is easy to figure out the ending, I’ll lose interest really quick, stop playing it and left the data halfway. So I made up a story like a fiction. The story is long and complicated. Protagonist has 7 lives, her goal is to find the 7 pieces of her soul and get back to her lover. I found out love is the key concept of every story. For example, the whole series of Silent Hill is about love and redemption; Father loves daughter; Husband loves wife; and the love between brothers and families. For here I finally chose to make up a love story. For our game, there is a big story for overall, and 7 pieces of individual stories talking about her 7 lives. Although we used 7 pictures to portray what her character in 7 lives, we explained not much so viewers looks confused.

     The concept which I consider is most difficult to discuss with others is Rules. Our rules are something like:

     •Basic human abilities apply a.k.a. you run into a tree you’ll fall down. You fall off a cliff, you die.  Can get injured or die in game if attacked, your pet (computer program) is there to assist in finding items and healing you. You gain money when winning a fight, and you lose money to buy weapons.

     •When you defeat the demons and get the seven items you can return to Hell. You can not get back without the items.

     Our ideas varies because four of us plays different kind of game. Rules in different kind of games are certainly not exactly the same. For example, When I play The Sword, the gamed designed to meet enemies just when gamers touch the monster icons. Whereas in game Tale of Heroes, gamers can meet enemies by random time. So there are some differences between games. Apparently, different types of games are designed to be different like puzzle games and RPG games are totally not the same kind.

     We really love this project, and we are enthusiastic about making stories.

Video Joke Criticism

Comparing the two videos. I’ll basically talk about the lines and movement.

LINES

     As you can see in the first video (Tea time out), there are actual lines everywhere like the edge of wall, table, sofa and floor. The quality of these actual lines contains both linear and curvilinear. For example, the sofa is curvilinear and wall is linear. Almost all the directions are included, the line of table is vertical, the line of floor is horizontal, and the eye contacts are diagonal. Same as the second video (Trouble in the kitchen), almost every object you can see in the frame is actual line, even tiny things like a soup also has curvilinear actual line.

     There are also virtual lines you could tell. For instance, eye contacts between Megan, Barbie and teapot construct a triangle; In the second video, when mother’s talking to the two relatives, there also appears a virtual line (triangle) too. When relatives exchanging a surprise look, that’s also a virtual line between the two. The quality for those virtual lines is mostly linear, and the direction is usually diagonal. However in the second video, viewers can tell that there includes much more virtual lines than in the first video.

MOVEMENT

     The movement type of the two is the same—complex moves. Camera stays still, it is basically object movement. We also developed a point of interest in both videos via rules of thirds, color and eyes. For example, in the first video, viewer’s eyes focus on Megan and Barbie’s talking head. Megan’s wearing a red color costume so that’s easy to attract viewer’s eye focus.

     And in the second video, our point of interest is the toy train played by the kid. The train moves a lot, and I think people are easily attracted by those moving objects. When other things keep still in the background, the moving object becomes the center of focus. In this video we actually use a lot of rules of thirds, which you can see through the relationship between camera positions and character movements. The movement speed in Tea Time Out is medium, but the second video is faster than this one.

     We are making the two video using Contract and Affinity as well as Objective and Subjective from the six binaries in week one.

CONTRAST and AFFINITY

     We are aiming to make two different types of video from the same joke. We changed the characters and representing in different genres. The first video is normal, we recorded it and did a voice over. The second we decided to represent in silent comedy—black and white scenes with funny music. I like the second video better. So there are definitely contrast and affinity.

OBJECTIVE and SUBJECTIVE

     I’ll say the first one is more subjective than the second one. In the first video, Megan is the only human character and other characters are all toys, she’s talking to them by her own. However in the second video, we added in some reactions between the two relatives and mom’s yelling at the kid. So personally I think the second one is more objective.