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.