Fear Factor Response

The fear project that I responded to strongly is of the one with the digital painting of mountains and a river.  While it is a little different than mine, in a way I find it the same in that I believe my fear is also is brought about by thinking or talking about my future.  This project was I believe about him not knowing or sure what his future holds and that scares him. I think I responded strongly to it because of the painting because I want to be an environment artists for games.  Plus it was one of the projects where you could get the sense of what the person was feeling.  That is a great thing that I think I should try and do at times when I am feeling my fear/anxiety to try and put it into my creative work and see what comes out.

Semester Take Away

3 things I can take away from this class:

1. Understanding that it is okay to use my creativity to create things for myself and not necessarily for other people

This I think is the biggest take away because so often in this industry you have to have a portfolio with work that is geared towards the job/studio you want to work at.  While it may be your own personal work, it still is being made for another person.


2. Creating things to work through fears or problems within your own life.

Being able to see or hear something that you did creatively that represents something in your life is definitely been helpful. So this is something that I most definitely will try and continue doing.


3. Taking time to step away from your work and just play/do whatever you want that you find fun.

It's very important to be able to just leave any type of work behind for even just a few hours to be able to take your mind off it.  I found too that it helps bring out more creativity after you complete a play session.


Overall this class has been great. I do not thing I could describe what this class really was nor do I want to. I like the idea of it being hard to describe which makes it that much better. I definitely think this class will help my on my endeavors through creative projects of mine.

Altered Book of the Self

Opinion of combining technology and the human body:

I quite like the idea of combining technology and the human body.  I know that I have loved watching/looking at concepts for wearable devices that could project a holographic image of a smartphone onto our skin.  Or being able to wear contacts/eyeglasses that seamlessly add VR to our world and where we could record video without the need of anything in our hands. 

Opinion of combining a Media Arts and Science project with your own body:

For me there really isn't too much use of combining MAS projects with my own body.  Or at least that I have come across yet.  Virtual Reality is starting to become a much bigger thing in the industry which will be able to combine the way you move with the in game characters, etc. 


Altered Book:

I procrastinated a lot on this assignment. Should I have done that, probably not, but we all make mistakes!  On to the actual book.  For this assignment I really did not know exactly what I wanted to do with the book for at least half the semester.  And now that it is the week before it is due I had to fully commit to an idea that I had brewing for the assignment.

The book was called Digital Storytelling and I absolutely despised it.  So in order to change it into something positive I decided to do something environment wise.........since I am an 3D environment artist.  What I did was cut out layers of an environment as I got further into the book. 

How I changed the book:

First what I did was cut maybe the first 50-100 pages into what looks like a ground. And as I continued on cutting the book apart I grabbed more and more pages each time.  So, then the next layer that I cut off was boulders/rocks.  Continuing on I then cut out some grass blades and then a couple of trees.  Finally, the very last layer was of two buildings.  I however did not cut out any windows in order to make them look more like buildings as that would take a bit of time and I don't have the enough time to do it because of my procrastination. 

To add in the assignments throughout the semester I printed out tiny versions of them and tied them with thread to the book. 

How this book changed me:

The only way this book has changed me is by continuing to reassure me that being an environment artist is exactly what i want to do. Which is good because before taking this class I always had little times of doubt on whether being I really wanted to do this. And I'm very happy to say I really really do. 

Class Take Away 14

Another interesting day of fear project presentations. As I was hoping we would have them all finished, but we did not.  No matter there was a couple interesting ones that we brought about some pretty big discussions. One was the fear of being alone. The piece of work that was done to fit the fear was a black dot shape in the center with white space then more black outline that.  It most definitely embodied exactly what the fear was.  However, what represented a fear to the student, represented a sense of joy/happiness to me. There are a lot of times when I relish in the times I am alone.  I work better creatively and more when I am alone.  I still crave being around some people though.  Another one was about the fear of death.  The video that represented this fear was creepy, but it really showed what happens at the time of death and as the body decays instead of what we see at funerals.  I think most people fear death, but if you realize,, like the student did, to make the time you have left in the land of the living as amazing as possible.

Class Take Away 13

Second day for presenting our fear assignment.  Overall there were a lot of the same fears that were discussed last week or at least some variations to them.  However, out of the bunch today one really stood out to me more because it really fit in with what my fear was as well.  It is oddly calming when you see another person having the same worry or anxiety.  It makes you understand that you are not the only one out there that is feeling this way even though I at least tend to think that way about things a lot. Not to mention it really puts into perspective that there are people who are having a much harder time so you begin to think, why in the world am I even worrying so much about things.  

Also, there was something to learn about today's class.  Don't ever talk about morality decisions within video games with a class of almost 30 Media Arts and Science students.  We could go on for hours discussing it. Would be a really awesome class though!

Class Take Away 12

It was the first of the fear factor project presentations. Though I am not going to go into detail about any of them, but it was interesting to see how similar some other peoples fears are to mine. A lot of the fears presented seemed to be rooted in our creativity and not being able to fulfill what we want in our lives. Orange man's presentation was really interesting to listen to. As another person put it, it was pretty much a TED talk. Overall these presentations made for some really deep and interesting conversations that really gave new light to my own fears. As well as some ways to lessen the hold that my fear(s) have on me. 

Fear Factor

One of my biggest fears is when I have to either meet with someone to talk about my future such as classes or where I want to end up after I graduate. Not only that I also just don't like having any sort of meeting or appointment with anyone. I'm always afraid that something will go wrong or I will do something I shouldn't have or I'm not prepared for them.

This fear is most definitely is mostly an anxiety for me with a bit of worry as well. It's mostly an anxiety because I'm not necessarily afraid of it or really feel worried about it, but it just really stresses me out to the point where it is all that I am thinking about. Once the appointment is over though it such a sense of relief to the point where I question why I stress so much about it because it always ends up turning out well. But no matter what I still stress a lot about it the next time.

I notice that this fear presents itself quite a lot throughout my life.  Doing new things and meeting with people about my future are always gonna be needed in order for me to advance myself both as a person and as a worker in the industry. I think this fear mostly just keeps me from experiencing all that this world has to offer to me. This is such a creative industry too so experiencing different cultures/countries and the beauty of this world helps you to broaden your creative skills. This fear/anxiety is most definitely blocking my creativity to some degree. If I could just let go and not let this anxiety get the better of me, I believe I will in the long term have better creativity and a better experience with other people. 

Creating something that represented my fear has helped me fully see what this fear really is. And hopefully a beginning to really breaking away from this fear/anxiety so as to not hinder my creativity and help further my career.

Class Take Away 11

So far I am in the final stages of the fear assignment.  There are a few more questions I need to answer from the assignment and then move on to creating something that represents my fear.  I am still not exactly sure on what I will be creating, but I do have some ideas on what I could do. 

As for my altered book, I have not exactly been doing much with it so far.  I know exactly what I want to do, but I haven't been having enough time to be working on it without taking away from my other classes. The idea that I have should not be too hard to accomplish, but it will take a bit of time.  So, I am hoping to begin at least the first stages of the project within the next week. Then working little by little everyday up until the due date. Should be plenty of time to get what I want to get done. 

Class Take Away 10

It was quite interesting seeing all the different interpretations of the "Who am I and Why am I here" assignment.  I especially like the one where the student started examining the Who am I in terms of of whole universe. Going off that, it can make a person fearful about what the point of them having existed in all of it.  However, I don't think that should be an excuse for not doing you love to do and finding your true self to get the most out of your life. 

It seems like it was pretty evenly split between the people who took the assignment a little more in literal sense and the people who took it a little more in a spiritual/different sense. It makes me wonder if the people who did it more literal are the people who may be more likely to follow the rules of society more than the people who are looking at it in a spiritual/different way. All in all hearing all the different interpretations definitely will help me in thinking of whats really important in examining who i am and why i am here. 

Who Am I and Why Am I Here?

I'm at a loss with what to do with the blind drawing that we did in class for this assignment, so I'm just writing this blog post to examine exactly who I believe I am and why I am here in the Media Arts and Science program at IUPUI.

Talking about the blind drawing, I think it's weird how even as we track our pen movements and our eye movements together the drawing comes out horrendous. 

Who am I? In the literal sense I'm Nathan Nodley, 21, in the Media Arts and Science program at IUPUI. I am not at all a fan of talking in public or even small talk. Small talk as in the occasional time someone you barely know or not at all begins talking to you about random stuff and you just have no idea why. I am a very introverted person as well. If I begin talking to someone about all kinds of things that have to do with me then you can most certainly believe that is a good thing. I tend to not do a lot with friends. For one, I don't hang out with anyone from my high school class anymore and two the new friends I have are in Indy and I live an hour a way so it's hard to find time to get together. Oh and Mexican is my #1 favorite food!!

Why am I here? Why am I in the media arts and science program? First off I really love playing games, but I am also very curious of how everything is made and put together. That's why I chose to go down the path to get into the game industry. It helps to that I very much enjoy thinking up environments/games and doing 3D modeling. I'm still not up to the skill level where I am fully confident in my modeling abilities, but I'm so close and should be there by the end of next semester. Also I really love the feeling of joy I get when I'm playing a really great game for the first time. I can only imagine how it feels for the people who worked on the game knowing there are a lot of people enjoying what was probably a very stressful time making the game. There were two moments where I knew this is what I wanted to do. First, when my favorite game of all time, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, came out it was absolutely the most beautiful game I had ever seen. The environments and vistas were amazing. Second, was when I watched Avatar in theaters.  Nothing could touch that movie in terms of photorealistic CGI.  I was at the time thinking holy crap I want to be able to do this. And I'm on my way to it and I could not be happier.

Class Take Away 9

MOVIE DAY!!!  This was an interesting movie that we watched in class today.  Off the Map for me really made me think about my future and things I could do to help me out.  Gibs in the movie first worked for the IRS, but ends up seeing the beauty of the way the family lived and the beauty of the  land they lived on.  I think for me I see it as something we all should do, just go out and enjoy the beauty of everything and leave all the stress behind us for a period of time. Open up your eyes to things we may not see in our everyday lives and unlock hidden creativity that you either didn't know you had or just digging farther into the creativity already there. It was only when he began to leave his old life behind that Gibs realized that he actually didn't think he found his mother after she hung herself like he originally had thought.  

I need to start experiencing amazing things in this world to give myself more reference for creating 3D worlds.  The more I've experienced the more choices I should have when working on projects and that in itself should lead to me gaining more experience for the industry which will help in finding a job. 

ClassTakeaway 8

Again this ended up being a very weird and fun class day. The thing that really stuck out the most in the class discussion was "identity".  We are all pretty much conditioned to think of identity as labels, such as our name or something like girlfriend/boyfriend and man/woman. As creative thinkers, we tend to see past those labels and begin to wake up and realize that identity is not just about labels. Labels, mostly bad ones, always end up hurting a person.  Either it breaks them down causing them mental pain or it physically hurts them if people tend to avoid a person because of a label. 

I do typically think of people with only the basic of labels like their name.  After that I usually look at the actions they do within society and tend to look at those types of things on whether to not be around certain people. I don't stick labels on them by their actions, I use my inner judgement/opinions on things that I don't really care for. 

Bliss

Five obstacles to creating my altered book:

1. Time:  Let's be honest this is probably the number one obstacle for anybody.  Balancing personal life, school class time, homework, and in my case playing video games is really tough and I always try to prioritize more important classes like my modeling classes first.  That usually leaves me with not a lot of time for other homework.

2. Creative block: A lot of times I can't think of creative things to do on random objects. In this case transforming a negative book into something positive is just not working to well for me.

3. No motivation: The class is great in helping me trying to think of creative things in different ways, so I'm glad I'm in the class. However, in all honesty I have trouble giving time to classes that don't have a huge use in me getting a job in the game industry.

4. Lack of resources: I want to do the altered book with only things that I have available at my house. And for the idea I have now I'm not sure I would be able to do that.

5. Stress: With having not a lot of time to work on the altered book and even other homework creates so much stress for me.  I try to feed off of my stress to get things done, but sometimes I find myself spending an hour just thinking about homework and the stress of not getting it done before I even do anything.



Three "What Ifs" to overcome these obstacles:

1. What if I take a week or so where I prioritize the altered book/class more than I normally would.

2. What if as I do 3D modeling, where my creativity is flowing more, I think about the altered book to hopefully bring out some more creative ideas or how to do what I want in a more creative way.

3. What if take 10 minutes and just take deep breaths and really tell myself to do the homework, and try and push aside all the stress.

Flavor of Creativity

The food that I ate that I had never tried before was a pickle.  I've never tried one mostly because I never liked the smell of them.  So I never really knew if I liked them or not, but I always assumed I would hate them.  And I was right, I don't like them. For me I could get a taste of sour, salty, and bitter all in one.  Mostly the sourness was the dominant taste for it though for me. Pickles are slick and a tad slimy from the juice. So they are not something that is hard to chew or get down. They have a slight vinegar smell to them and also they not only taste sour but they smell it too a little bit. 

So, I decided to create a 3d model that looked sour as well as texturing with the colors chosen in our little class scavenger hunt. The model is literally the absolute worst in terms of polygons and flow.  Mostly you keep the polygons all 4 sided.  This model has 3 sided, 4 sided, and 5 sided. And they have no flow. It may not seem like it to others, but this model looks sour to me. It's just not very good. 

Class Takeaway 6

Hmm, so we were able to go outside on a little scavenger hunt.  We were suppose to walk around the IT building and pick a color that fit with the senses and what emotion we felt at that time. I say this every time, but I am always surprised at what happens in class. It's a good thing not knowing what will happen this time or the next time. It's a huge departure from the normal classes that we all take.  Saying that, I found the "scavenger hunt" exercise to be interesting. It made me pay attention to all my senses at once as well as being aware of an emotion each sense may invoke.  The best parts of the class is when we have to think about things in different ways and open ourselves up to new and crazy things.

"Bible" Dipping

Honestly I literally could not think of anything do to with the word "more".  So what I did was just find words that could be created with the letter "m o r e" and as well as that I wrote the word over and over into a diamond shaped pattern. I just could not think of anything so this is what I had to settle with. Taking a word and turning it into something creative is not something I usually find easy. 

Class Takeaway 5

Well, it has now been one of the most interesting and random class days I have every had out of every single class I had taken. There is no way to ever guess at what the class will entail until it's actually happening. We went from one student having to teach the class, but him flipping it on us to where we had to teach him something without the use of internet or doing any sort of report. We had a paper claw for a finger made.  A circular paper airplane the blew my mind. An acted out how to survive in a horror movie. One that decided to break his rule by not doing anything since he broke the rule of him teaching us. And more. 

Then we all were told that everyone is worthless and we are replaced by every 4 seconds by a new baby being born. Made for some really good laughs for the rest of the class. After that we went showing our rule breaking experiments which were really interesting to look at and see. 

All in all this was a really hard class to just have one takeaway this time since the whole class was pretty awesome.

Rule Breaking!!

You probably are thinking that the picture above makes absolutely no sense? Know why? Because the rule to reading words is to go from left to right and top to bottom. Read the picture again, but start by going right to left and going bottom to top. After that everything written will make sense. You still have to read the words from left to right though. There was not a particular reason why I chose to keep the words from left to right. I just wanted to experiment with writing sentences in the opposite way than what is normal to us. 

One way I think this experiment may help me in my creative endeavors into 3D environment art is that it may allow me to start thinking about 3D environments backwards. What I mean is to take the finished product then work backwards trying to work out the different parts such as textures, models, layout, etc. I think that could be a valuable thing to work on.

Class Takeaway 4: Talking About Our Altered Books

Really interesting class today to say the least! We the students got to decide the fate of what happens to those who forgot to bring their book to class. Not only do they have to alter their book, but they have to incorporate a deep dark secret into it. Whose secret is the question though. This was by far my favorite class of the year so far. Something new, different, and a little exciting gets thrown at us at least one time in the class. It throws all of us off guard, but after a few minutes we all start "seeing sideways" and thinking of some wacky stuff.  

I also liked seeing that I am not the only one in the class that seems to hate their book to an unhealthy degree. It seems like the 50 what ifs from last week have helped a lot of us in getting an idea on what to alter our book into, but no one really seems to have gotten the full idea from the 50 what ifs. I believe that one of my what ifs is what I'm going to go off of. I want to cut the pages out and do a sort of paper mache environment sculpture out of it. That way it incorporates my love for 3D art and my passion for environment art. Incorporating stuff from class work will be the hardest part. I'm very excited to see what everyone else will come up with in their books.

50 What Ifs

The book that I will be altering is the Digital Storytelling book that we "had" to have, but never at all used. And it does not help that I absolutely loathed that class and personally seemed like a waste of time since I'm not even remotely interested in storytelling.  And, luckily the book was not the most expensive book and the bookstore would not buy back the book as they had enough at the time.  So the book has just been sitting in my room doing absolutely nothing for me. So hopefully I can alter this into something that reflects me and what I want to do which is 3D environment modeling/texturing for games. These 50 what ifs should help get me started. Even if some of them are gonna be pretty out there. You never know what will pop into your head from a weird idea.

1. What if I tore out the pages and created an environment sculpture?
2. What if I change the title of the book to reflect my career?
3. What if I cut the pages of the book into foliage/buildings etc.?
4. What if I cut a big design into the books pages?
5. What if I create a 3D design using the pages as textures?
6. What if I use the books words to create a story for my future goals?
7. What if I cut the book in half?
8. What if I replace the pictures in the book?
9. What if I sketch in the book?
10. What if I use the book for concept art?
11. What if I fully color the pages?
12. What if I chop the pages?
13. What if I create a 3D animation with the pages?
14. What if I toss the book in the air?
15. What if I kick the book?
16. What if I made a pop up book?
17. What if I cut the corners off the book?
18. What if I cut the pages into 3D polygons?
19. What if I twist the pages into shapes?
20. What if I connect pages for a bigger canvas?
21. What if I only use the front and back covers?
22. What if I throw it against the wall?
23. What if I totally destroy the book?
24. What if I add pages into it?
25. What if I make it into a game?
26. What if I scan the book and digitally remake the book?
27. What if I turn it inside out?
28. What if I spill food on it? :-(
29. What if I glue some pages together?
30. What if I burn the pages individually?
31. What if I use it as a plate?
32. What if I stomp on it?
33. What if I hit it with a baseball bat?
34. What if I do random cuts?
35. What if I make it a loose leaf book?
36. What if I make the book about 3d modeling?
37. What if I paint it with glow paint?
38. What if I tape it?
39. What if I tie string to the pages?
40. What if I take pictures of it?
41. What if I mix up the pages?
42. What if I use multiple books?
43. What if I put it under black light?
44. What if I take the spine off?
45. What if I attached objects to it?
46. What if I spill some water on it?
47. What if I take it outside?
48. What if I glue string into the book?
49. What if I smack it with a hammer?
50. What if I take it out of my backpack? :-)

Class Takeaway 3: Talking About Our Doodles

It was pretty interesting seeing all the various and completely different doodles from everybody. It is like an inside look into everybody's minds and how they work. Quite a bit of the people who presented their doodles had a sort of story with theirs. They had individual and totally different doodles/drawings on the page, but they all came out to be one big story in the end. 

One other thing that was interesting to see was other peoples reactions to either what I had done or to what others had done. Everyone had their own ideas about what each person's doodle was or some even agreed with the person's own idea about it. 

It was also interesting seeing just how many people did the assignment with either the TV on or listening to music. Over 3/4 of the class said that they always had something on in the background when doing work.  

Time To Doodle!!

So, we were told to doodle for 30 minutes while thinking of the last word we had said about another persons coloring from class.  My word was "lost".  And I'll say I was definitely lost while doodling.  That is not the only thing that came to my mind while I was doodling though.  Before I get into that, here is my doodle of lines going EVERYWHERE!!

Now you might be trying to think of what exactly I could possibly have been thinking about while doodling this jumbled mess of lines and colors.  First off, the more I doodled this the more I thought about how it really could represent a person being "lost" whether it being in their thoughts, stress, homework, etc.  The way I see it is that every line represents either a thought or worry and that when a person is "lost" then they really have no way of getting anything straight. All these thoughts, stress, homework is just floating around in their/your head and bleeding into other parts of thoughts that have nothing to do with each other.  People are more than likely going to have that being "lost" feeling at one point in their life.  And, everything is swirling in a mind vortex trying to process, should I do this? Should I do that? Is this right? Am I doing the right things in life? It can go on and on until you essentially straighten out those swirling lines.  

Coloring In A College Class!!

Coloring in college you say.............BLASPHEMY!! 

I will have to say it was really weird being told to actually color in a coloring book in class. Not only that, having to think of a word about someone else's coloring/picture was pretty cool. It makes you think pretty much on the fly opening up doors to potentially weird words coming up. Then came the part that messed with my head. TO COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES ON PURPOSE!! Who would think of such things? I had never once before purposefully colored outside the lines of a coloring book. However, after a minute I just picked a color and drew lines outside the picture. I honestly didn't care what came out of those lines. In the end I would say I was thrown out of my comfort zone by doing that. I am most definitely the type of person who would throw away a picture I was coloring if I went outside the lines. If it's the tiniest smudge where you can barely notice it I won't care, but if it is really noticeable I would quit. A lot of times though, I color/doodle to keep my mind awake so I normally don't care too much unless I purposefully want the picture perfect. 

What also stuck out in this lecture was that it was up to us to interpret what coloring outside the lines meant.  I took it quite literally, but others even created their own space to color in. I think having to do this will help me think that sometimes somethings just do not matter. Me wanting to keep inside the lines bleeds over to my 3D modeling work where I don't like having models that are lackluster even though those are the ones that will help me get better and better. So I just need to keep trying to color outside those lines and not be afraid of failing to help further both my creative skills as well as my 3D modeling skills.

A Shell-Less Egg? Yes It's Possible!!

I could do absolutely anything I wanted with the egg I was given in class. After going through a few ideas, I did not find that any of them were interesting.  I had recently seen that you could take the shell off of an egg and just leave the membrane intact with the insides. So I thought why not just try and do that. It is very simple.

Get an egg along with some sort of cup or container along with some vinegar. Place the egg(s) into the container(s) and pour enough vinegar into the cup to cover the egg. Do not worry if the egg floats as it should normally start turning the longer they are in vinegar. There will be a chemical reaction between the acetic acid in the vinegar and the calcium shell on the egg. After a few minutes, bubbles will cover the egg to let you know the reaction is taking place. Letting them soak for 24 hours is a good idea which should turn the shell into a powdery substance that you can rub off very carefully.  Then stick them back into vinegar and after another 24 hours the shell should be completely dissolved. The eggs will plump up as the membrane lets the water in the vinegar pass through in a process called osmosis. The end result is a squishy egg with just the membrane intact. 

A Class Without Rules.............Unless It Will Get You Arrested Or Expelled

I never thought I would be in a class that has no set rules, except a few stipulations, for any of the assignments given out. Honestly I never even thought there would ever be a class available like that. We have all been so conditioned to doing whatever the teacher/instructor wants it is almost as if we have become mindless drones doing the same things over and over and over and over. I'm annoyed that it has come to that and it really does need to change. However that is not to say I don't like structure and some direction.   

I knew this class would give us lots of freedom, but never figured it would be as much as we get. I love having the freedom to do what I want with a lot of my 3D projects, but at the same time I always seem to struggle getting started with projects if I don't have some structure/direction to push me the right way to finish it. And honestly I didn't know if I would like this class, but after going through the first day of class I believe it will help me break out of the rut of not getting a project started. I will never be able to allow my skills to skyrocket if I don't figure out ways to work without direction. By the end of this class I believe I will truly be able to "see sideways" and take some different approaches to my work and be a better environment artist.