Month: January 2019

This week, I will bet talking about my media arts ISU. I’ll be talking about what I created, how I created it, and my goals for the project.

The art work I created was a short 2 minute animation. In the animation, it shows a girl walking to a cafe only to lose her wallet. She spends most of the animation looking for her wallet. Eventually, she finds her wallet, buy some coffee, and the animation ends. The title of the animation is “The Missing Wallet”. I chose the name because that is the main focus of the plot. Some obvious elements in the animation is movement and colour. H

I created my art using photoshop and iMovie. In photoshop, I started by creating the girl. From there, I used frame animation to make minor changes. Using frame animations, I achieved blinking, arm movement, hair movement, and the illusion of walking. After creating a scene in photoshop, I moved exported the clips to iMovie. Once I had all my clips in iMovie, I added sound and transitions to make the animation scenes flow.

Some my main goal of this project, was to create a 2 minute or more animation, do it in an anime art style, and make sure the animation flows. Thankfully, my artwork met all my goals. Initial stages, I was panicking slightly. I barely had the first scene done, I couldn’t see how long my animation was, and the scenes in photoshop looked choppy. However, once I put all the scenes together, I believe I have achieved most of my goals.   
W

Overall, I have learned many things from this project. I have learned how to use more tools in photoshop like the guidelines or how to mirror object. However, I have learned from many mistakes from messing up countless times. If I were to do a similar project, I believe I could do it much faster and possibly even better. In the end, the project is not what I imagined it to be, but it is close enough to satisfy me.

This week, I will be talking about the speaker I made as my final project in period 3. I’ll explain how I made the project and my overall thoughts on the piece.

First, we created a rough draft that will be the basic design for the speaker. For my rough draft, I drew a hexagon shaped speaker with a stand. Unfortunately, some ideas never followed through due to time restraints. Once we had our rough draft, we chose our wood. I ended up going with an assortment of different hardwood for the front, and pine for the middle and back. Unfortunately, I need to change my design because there weren’t enough pieces. After choosing the wood, I found two other classmates and started gluing our pieces.

While we waited for the glue to dry, another classmate and I began working on the back. Since we didn’t have enough hardwood, we used pine. With the squad piece of pine in hand, we then cut it in half for my classmate and I. On my own, I then used the table saw and miter saw to get the wood to the correct dimensions. I then spent a larger chunk of time at the planer, getting the back to a reasonable size.

After my back was fully cut to size, I began to cut the strips I would be using for the interior and middle. Since I had some leftover hardwood after squaring the piece, I used strips of hardwood the two most visible edges. Once again, my design changed at this point. The strips of the hardwood weren’t long enough, so my hexagon design turned into an octagon. At this point a break from the middle to cut the speaker holes in my front. Once I located the center of my holes, we moved to the drill press to make them. From this point I went to the router table beside it, to make the edges of the recently cut hole smooth. With a fully completed front, I turned my attention back to the middle. When I had my two strips of hardwood, I then moved to the band saw to cut the rest of the middle. The most challenging part when making the middle was definitely cutting some of the smaller pieces. After cutting the exterior of the middle, I began cutting the pieces for interior channels. First, I cut out the pieces that would allow my phone to rest in the speaker without falling through it. This process required three parts, being two rectangles and an L shaped piece. The reason for the excessive amount of material was the need for a small gap so the sound could reach the channels below it. From that point, I began working of the rest of the interior. To make sure I wouldn’t interfere with any of the holes, I traced them using the front as a reference.

Once I had the basic layout of my middle, I started the gluing process. This step obviously entails the use of clamps, the wooden strips, back, and glue. The reason I chose to clamp each piece individually, was the fear of having several interior pieces move, ruining the channels. However, the time restraint caught up with me, and I clamped everything together, back, middle, and front, even though pieces were still drying. Once the piece was strong enough not to fall apart, I took it to the miter saw and table saw to square it. After the piece was squared, I used the miter saw to cut the angles, creating the final shape of the speaker. When the final shape was finally cut, I moved back to the router table so I could have a nice edge all around my piece. I then began the long tedious process of sanding. After sanding with the 400 grit sandpaper, I applied the poly using a brush. After applying two coats of poly and sanding with the 900 and 100 grit sandpaper, I applied the wax using a paper towel. Finally, I used another piece of paper towel to buff the piece. At that point, the speaker was fully assembled.

Overall, I’m really proud of my speaker. I used all the skills I learned over the year and I felt this was a good summative. I think the speaker looks good and look forward to using it. In the end, the speaker was a good way to wrap up the semester. I hope to make something again in the near furture.

This week, I will be talking about Puyo Puyo Tetris. I will talk about the games features, gameplay, and how I feel about it. On the switch, there are two versions of Tetris. There is Puyo Pyuo and classic Tetris. I ended up getting Puyo Puyo because it was more modern and I feel like I’m getting a lot more out of it. Unlike classic Tetris, Puyo Puyo is a crossover between Puyo and Tetris. Honestly, I think most people bought the game for Tetris because that’s what I see on youtube. I won’t be explaining what Tetris is, because I think most people know about it. Puyo, on the other hand, is much more interesting. Instead of creating lines with tetraminos, you connect jelly in groups of four or more. The jellies appear in groups of two, fall like tetraminos, and if you play with other people, they can block your build. I think Puyo is interesting, but I wouldn’t play it in a serious game. For example, another player. There is also a story mode you can play. However, I don’t really care about the story, but each level has a goal to reach within a time limit. For example, one level could have you clear 30 Tetris lines in 2 minutes. Each level has a star rating ranging from 1 to 3. To get a star you need to fulfill extra objective or go above and beyond what the normal task was. Ironically in my game, all the Tetris levels are 3 stars while the Puyo ones are at one.

As for gameplay, I find it alright. After playing a few rounds of marathon, I find this version of Tetris leans more towards perfect clears. It doesn’t really affect me in a big way, and I won’t be changing my play style to get more points. However, there is one thing that really bothers me and that’s the controls. The Switch by defaults uses the analog stick, which is terrible. What I mean is, the analog stick works fine, but it’s not meant for Tetris. At higher levels especially 14 and 15, it is really easy to miss drop with the analog stick. In the end, I usually use the arrow keys, instead of the analog stick. Unfortunately, this creates new problems. Most notably, the grip. If I want to play with the arrows keys, I need to hold my left hand lower than my right. Doing this makes holding (Tetris feature not actually holding) harder and playing uncomfortable.

Overall, I find the game really fun. I always liked Tetris and being able to play it on the Switch makes me very happy. The Puyo aspect of the game also intrigues me and I hope to play more of it. As I have stated before, the only thing that bothers me is the grip. Perhaps in the future I will invest in a more ergonomic controller. I guess it would be nice to play online, but I’m not paying for a subscription. In the end, I really enjoy Puyo Puyo Tetris and will continue to play it. 

This week, I will be talking about Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate. MHGU was one of two games I bought for the Nintendo Switch. MHGU is a single player RPG, so it’s very similar to games like Skyrim. When you first start the game, you create your character. The first thing I noticed was alright graphics. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. It looks similar to an upscaled SWTOR game in my opinion. In terms of story, this game has next to none of it. The best you get is a semi-tutorial. I say semi-tutorial because they don’t explain the crafting, Palicos, movement, fighting mechanics, etc. I didn’t even know how to sprint until I played around with the controls with a bit. However, I looked into this and apparently most MH games are like this with the exception of MHW. I’m kind of disappointed that there is no real story, but that wasn’t the main reason I bought the game.

Instead of a story, you get to take on quests. These quests can range from gathering materials to hunting giant monsters. From the monsters, you can collect rare material, which can be used for creating armors and weapons. I was actually overwhelmed by the weapon system at first. In the game, there are over 10 weapon classes, and each class has a wide range of weapons. Suffice to say, there are a lot of options in terms of weapon customization, something I enjoy. However, my favorite piece of equipment are the Palicos. Palicos are basically bipedal cats, that are very cute. If you didn’t know already, I’m a cat person. Overall, I really like this games selection of equipment.

So far, I haven’t played as much as I would have liked. In terms of how far I have progressed, I’m still in the beginning stages of the game. The quests are generally ranked by stars, ranging from 1 to 7. I’m still doing 2-star quests, so I haven’t fought any big monsters yet. However, from the youtube videos of people hunting, it looks very exciting.

In the end, I really like the game so far. MHGU has a lot of weapons, armor, and cats to choose from. In the future, I would like to reach the coveted G rank, which are special quests above the 7 stars. Maybe in the future, I will get MHW. They say the experience is very different but the core gameplay is the same. Overall, I want to continue playing MHGU and don’t regret the buy.

This week, I will talk about my new console, the Nintendo Switch. I will be talking about the games I bought with it, and why I bought the console in the first place.

First, I had several reasons for purchasing the Nintendo Switch. One of them is just getting a new console. Over the past couple of months, I contemplated getting a new console. The reason for this was that our old Xbox 360 doesn’t support the new games. Around the time of the introduction of the Xbox One, Microsoft and other companies stopped making games for the old console. The reason for this was probably to move on with the time, but now I couldn’t play any of the new games, which required new hardware.

I could have bought the Xbox One. However, the Switch also has some appealing features which I will explain. One, the Switch was portable. If you live with me for any amount of time, you will quickly realize I like to spend a lot of time on my room. Since the Switch is portable, I can bring it with me without needing to set up a tv, speakers, etc. Two, some of my other friends have the Switch. From what I can tell, most people in our school have PS4, then the Switch, and finally the Xbox One. Almost nobody has the Xbox One and none of my close friends have a PS4.

Secondly, I will talk about the games I bought for the switch and why. I bought 2 initial games. The first game was Moster Hunter Generations Ultimate, which I will refer to as MHGU from now on. MHGU was actually one of the many games I wanted to get. However, with how little money I had, I need to choose one. The main premise of the games is to hunt giant monsters, but I will go into deeper detail when this game gets its own blog. The second game I bought was Touhou Kobuto V. Will admit this game was kind of an impulse buy, but I don’t regret it. It also only costed $25, which when compared to the $80 of the popular games, isn’t much. Suffice to say, I don’t regret getting the console or the games. However, there is one game that Isn’t owned by me which I play quite often. The game in question being Puyo Puyo Tetris. Out of all the games, I probably spent the second most amount of time playing Tetris. However, I didn’t purchase it, daddy did. When I first decided to get this console, I decided I would pay for it with my own money. Then daddy offered to subsidize some amount of money for the console, but I refused. The reason for this Isn’t because I want to keep the console to myself, but instead have insurance. Unlike my phone or my laptop, I wanted full control over the Switch. Unfortunately, since Tetris was downloaded off the eStore, my control over the Switch has been compromised. In the future, I will most like give daddy the 45 something dollars to pay off the Tetris game.

Overall, I enjoy my new Switch. I don’t regret buying any of the games and look forward, to playing with my friends. I find it nice to own a device that I have full reign over without any pull from anyone else. In the end, I hope to get all the games I wanted, but that’s going to take some time.