Character Development

Define yourself. When you first think about this task it doesn't seem very hard but as you begin to write and to think it becomes harder and harder. As an eighth grader I am beginning to become my own person not as dependent on my mom's opinion or my best friend's opinion.  If I was to tell you a few things to describe myself I would probably say, optimistic, immature, and happy. I have many imperfections, many things that I strive to work on every single day of my life, some of my imperfections are silly, weird things, but others are bad things.  Some of the humorous or relatable imperfections that I have are that I'm extremely clumsy, I am not very smart sometimes, I have many blonde moments, and I am very loud. 

The character traits that I plan to exaggerate in my animation are, my clumsiness and my suspicion of everyone. I think that I can make a very funny and entertaining animation with these character traits. I could do this by using puppet warp to make my legs look unstable.  This will show the audience that this particular character is very clumsy and has unstable legs. I am suspicious of everyone, I think everyone is doing something wrong or they're going to do something bad to me, I don't really know where this fear comes from. I think I could make my character have this really exaggerated, and have her making up scenarios in her mind of what these people are going to do to her.

To make my GIF animated character I had to first have someone take a picture of me with my arms and legs separated from my body. I then had to upload my picture into my computer, and open it in Photoshop. Once I had it in Photoshop I used the Quick Selection tool to remove my body from the background.  I then saved my document and changed the name. I opened my new document (with the new name,)  and began to edit. When you are making your animation you have to copy your image every frame to puppet warp. It takes a really long time to make a couple frames me. Alothough this project was pretty hard I think my end product turned out pretty good.

.MOV Film Festival

A keyword is a word that has strong significance. In filmmaking keywords are words that connect with your audience and are meaningful to your audience. My keywords connect with my audience because they're things that have happened to all of us, we have all been embarrassed before, we have all judged someone we didn't know that well before, and we have all had consequences for our actions. We are hoping to entertain our audience, to make them laugh, that is why another one of our keywords is entertain.

Let's get to work

Production Plan

Our overall message is to not be rude or judgmental to your subs and that they can teach you just as much as your normal teacher can.  We want our audience to learn with the students, in our sitcom, the lessons that the substitute is teaching along with the lesson the students learn when their real teacher comes back.  We are hoping that the audience will be entertained but also learn this important lesson. It can apply not only to students but also adults, to teach them that we shouldn't judge people because we don't know anything about them and also because they can teach us important life lessons.

McDonald's got me like

Ugh math

Like all group projects our team faced many challenges, the first challenge we faced was trying to get a time we could all get together. With sports, family and other priorities its hard to find a day three people can all get together to get work done. With what limited time we had to film, it was really hard to get at least one day in the week, lucky for us most of our sitcom takes place at school so we were able to get most of our filming done at school and the few things needed at home we were able to get done. Overall this project was a lot of fun, Meagan, Tu and I work really well together and had a lot of fun creating this sitcom.

Tiny Spherical Worlds

When we are taking the pictures for our tiny spherical worlds, we need to take more then one image. One image is not enough to take because with one picture, you can't get the same effect as you can with multiple images.  Although many images is better than just one, if you don't take the pictures right, your image is going to end up a disaster. To take perfect pictures, make sure that the horizon line stays straight and that you overlap your images.

A polar pano is different from a spherical pano because, a polar pano appears as though it was take from above the earth.  A spherical pano on the other hand, kind of looks like a crystal ball sort of thing. The polar pano has the sky on the outside and the earth/ land in the center.  In my case the polar panos also have a black background.  The spherical pano has the sky on the inside/ center and the land on the outside.  The background of this one is white. In my opinion I prefer the polar panos, I think they look nicer overall but I really like the spherical ones too.

I think that the fact that I made the  line less obvious made my tiny worlds so convincing.  I also think that when I was editing them I didn't make them look SUPER unrealistic, just a little more surreal than what it normally looks like.  I think I also made them look a little more convincing by blending some of the colors together so that the colors match throughout.  Overall I really liked how my images turned out and I had a lot of fun with this project.

Hockney Style Joiners

David Hockney is an extremely influential artist from the twentieth century and a pop artist known for his photomontages. You guessed it! These past couple weeks in Kapa'a Middle Schools GT class, we have been working on photomontages. We started by taking a picture of a doorknob and creating a photomontage from that, then we took a picture of a friend and made a photomontage of them.  The final photomontage we have been doing is one that is supposed to send a message out to others. Though both the images are photomontages, mine are very different from David Hockney's.

In our world today, anyone with the access to a smartphone can post a photo within seconds, whether they want it to be of something fun they did, a beautiful view they saw, or even just a quote they want to share. With this instant ability to take a picture and share it with people all over the world there is bound to be both positive and negative messages in these images.  One way images send messages is the colors, certain colors can make you feel or view things a certain way.  For example, when I think of the color yellow I think of happiness and family because I had a  house that was the color yellow. Not only does the color make a difference, but also how vibrant the color is.  For example when I think of a soft pink, I think about love or valentine's day, but hot pink (which is more vibrant,) sends a different message.

I am the second oldest of five, all seven of us live in a small house, we don't often get one-on-one time with each other. Me and my little sister are two years apart and we are really close.  The only times we get to be together, just us, and talk about is when we walk our dog or just go one walks together.  I wanted to portray the time that I get to spend with her, so I took a picture of my street. When I first started making this photomontage I didn't really like how it was turning out, someone told me to align the side of the streets and when I finished doing that I ended up liking the finished project.

2016 Aspirations

2015 was full of laughter and tears, the memories and friends that I made in 2015 are unforgettable. I'm excited to make new memories and complete my new goals in this coming year.  My goal this year is to be less of a procrastinator and try harder at doing my homework and other projects right when I get them. I want to try and be a better person, I want to try and think more about other people's needs and feelings more than just my own. The people who know me know I can be a really big grudge holder, I am hoping that I can try and work on forgiving people. I want to try and get a 4.0 if not this semester than when I get to high school.

All of the goals that I want to accomplish are very important but to me the most important is to be less of a procrastinator and try harder to do my homework the day that I get it. I think this is the most important because I am going to High School at the end of this year and when you are a procrastinator you typically either forget about the project or assignment or it is not done to the best of your ability. All of my grades in High School are going to count on my record and colleges are going to look at them so I have to make sure everything is done on time and to the best of my abilities so that I can get an A.

The first step I need to take is to do my homework and projects the day I get them, if I do it right when I get it then I won't be stressing about it and there is no way I can forget and not do it.  The second thing that I can do is be less lazy when I'm doing my work.  I have to make sure that every thing is done to the best of my abilities and that I try as hard as I can. The third thing I have to do to ensure that I complete my goal is to start now. If I develop the habit now of doing my homework and projects right when it's assigned I will have the habit through the rest of middle school, high school and college. With the habit, it ensures that I do the work to the best of my abilities.

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.