Scratch Game Design

It's that time again! The time that I get to show you what I've been working on! These past couple weeks we have been working on coding our very own video game! We started with a simple chase game where we had one or more sprites chasing a sprite. Then we continued on to a Platform game where we had a sprite jumping on platforms towards the goal.

My game starts out on a hill one a clear sunny day, then you go to another point on the hill where it is a little cloudy. The next backdrop is a "drop" where you go down the hill into a desert, then it switches to the desert during the day etc. In my second game the backgrounds also switch, but the first time the background switches is when you touch the pink cloud.  The other thing both of my games have in common is that both of the main sprites, the girl and the reindeer, are trying to complete and objective. Though the objective is different they are pretty similar.  In the first game, the girl is trying to get away from the mice.  In the second game the reindeer is trying to get to the pink cloud.  I'm proud of both of my games, even though I know they are simple and have a couple bugs that I need to fix.

In my first game, the chase game, my best code was probably making the girl move smoother.  When I very first made the game the girl was moving weird and it looked very far from good. In my second game I think my best code was probably that I made the reindeer jump, though the code I used was simple I still think it was the most complicated. When you are making your character jump you need o make sure they don't float and you have to make sure your sprite doesn't jump too high or too low. I started with the block change y by _____ and in the blank space I put 10. It was too little so I increased it but then that was too much.  It was kind of difficult but I finally got the right number! So far with the two games that I have I am pretty proud of my work and the fact that I actually coded that and made that game. Even though I don't think I will ever go into coding I think it is pretty knowledge to know how to do.

Invention Commercial

Throughout the past couple weeks students in Kapa'a Middle School's Gifted and Talented program have been working very hard to invent, write and create a commercial.  You guessed it, it's that time again, the time I get to show you what I've been working on! My team was the same team as I had during my previous project "Composition Scavenger Hunt." My team consisted of Makena and Emma, we are all people who really enjoy having fun and laughing, so our goal was to make the class laugh at our commercial, the funnier it is the more memorable it is.  If it's memorable more people will want to buy our product.  We didn't want it to be too serious, so if you watch our commercial there's some jokes and funny things throughout the commercial.

We got most of our filming done on one rainy Saturday afternoon, and I think one of the best team moments were captured during that afternoon. At the beginning of our commercial there is a part where Emma falls and spills her drink everywhere, she then proceeds to have a funeral for the drink she "lost," in the middle of the funeral I jumped into the shot and yell "is this you?!" Makena proceeds to walk into the shot and is telling the audience that we need help. This shot too us about an hour to film.  The first thing we had to do was create a funeral looking thing. The was some flowers on the fence so we took them and placed them all over the water supply thing that's on the ground.  After we did this we gave Emma water to put on her face to appear as though she was crying.  By this time we were all laughing really hard.  By the time we were able to get a perfect shot of Emma it started raining, and we realized we needed me to jump in! We ran inside and waited for the rain to stop.  When the rain stopped we went back out and set-up again, to make a long story short, I fell a couple times, my head got cut off by the camera, Makena's ace was cut in half, I fell on the floor laughing, Emma laughed till she had real tears streaming down her face.  It was fun, and it was the best part of the commercial. I think it was the best part because we would watch the clip find something to make better and then we filmed it to make it better. We did this over and over again till we got the perfect shot.

After we finished all of our filming, it was time to move on to editing, we all helped with the editing, sitting around with earbuds in our ears. Emma was the person who was physically editing it, she was the one with the pen placing the clips in order. Even though Emma was the one moving the clips around and adding effects we all helped out. We would take a clip and we would all talk about where to put it, what effects should be on it, if we needed text layovers, sound effects, transitions, ect. When we had a final decision that met all the requirements and satisfied the entire team we would move on to the next clip. We all listened to the music and sound effects and chose which ones would  best fit the clip, the entire commercial and what point we were trying to get across. When we were filming, whoever wasn't in the shot was filming and who ever need to be in the shot at that time was doing what they needed to do. Overall I had a lot of fun filming and editing this project, we had a couple misunderstandings, like any team but we dealt with it in a positive way so the outcome of it was positive.   

Composition Scavenger Hunt

I think the most important composition technique is probably rule of thirds, I think it's the most important because you can use it for so many different things and it makes the picture a lot more interesting.  For example, you can use rule of thirds when your taking pictures of scenery, it draws the eye to what you want to be seen.  You can also use Rule of Thirds when you are doing an interview or taking pictures of a person.  The Rule of Thirds is much more interesting than a flat angle, when you are taking pictures of a subject directly in front of the subject(s) against a blank wall.

I think macro is one of the more difficult composition techniques to use because you have to get really close to the subject and make it so it's not blurry. I also think it's hard to find things to film using macro because typically when you are filming people or taking pictures you don't want to get extremely close to them.  Also, when your filming nature sometimes you want more than just a macro shot of a flower you want all the scenery, (mountains, valleys, trees, bushes, etc.)

My teammates for this project were Emma McGinnis and Makena Kahananui, we all worked very hard to finish this project in the short time we had.  We each took turns being the subject, talking about the technique and filming.  When we were editing Emma put all the videos together, one of use did the text lay overs and one of us did the music. Over all the three of us worked really well together and had a good time filming and editing this video.  Because we worked so well together, the next upcoming project will be with the three of us so be prepared to see some awesome work!