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.