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!