Second Life

 

Second Life

 

I really like my fantasy character for second life. At first I was incredibly confused on how to buy outfits and ended up spending a lot of my money on one outfit. After a while though, I started to get the hang of it and I was able to find things that were a lot cheaper. At first my fantasy person was just a vampire. Again I was struggling with figuring out this whole outfit system, but I later found what is now my fantasy outfit. I love peacock feathers. I think that they are absolutely beautiful. I got the idea from my living room actually. The theme of my living room is peacock so I had the idea to find a really cool peacock outfit. I surprisingly found this one at a fairly cheep price, and so I was stoked to find it. I had been having issues with finding ones that were demos only and when I'd put the outfit on I would have a box above my head or the outfit would say demo all over it. It was really frustrating. In the end I was able to find this one; I really like it because it is large and extravagant. The blue hair added something really cool to the look as well. I've always wanted to do my hair a crazy color like this so it was exciting to have my avatar be able to have blue hair. It was fun messing around with Second Life. I'm not going to lie, I still don't completely understand it, and I'm not 100% sure I will use it any other time. It was interesting getting to interact with everyone through it and have our last show in the virtual world; the last class was a pretty fun day. 



Project #6 3D Modeling

This project was really fun to experiment with, yet it was very difficult to perfect. As I continued to play with what I decided to do; I feel as if I got a little bit better every time I worked with SketchUp. The hardest part for me was actually coming up with what I wanted to model. The idea of the project to model something that was important to you; therefore, I decided to model something that I used almost everyday... my makeup! Now, the reason I choice to display my mascara alone is not because it is the most important thing to me; it is because it is the thing I am most proud of in terms of constructing it in SketchUp. I know that sounds silly but my mascara was the hardest thing for me to make. It may look like a simple object, but the mascara brush was honestly the most difficult thing I created. I went through a large trial and error process when trying to make, and I am incredibly happy with how it came out. I never in a million years would have thought I was going to get it that spot on. As far as the rest of if goes, I feel like I found images of all shapes and forms and it really helped me learn how to use the actual program. The part that I am least happy with is the realistic look in terms of color and texture. I waited to do that last, and unfortunately as I was coming to do that part I found out that my Photoshop had expired. Because of this I was unable to truly create what I could have, but I really do think that I did a good job of finding things that match within SketchUp. This was another area where I learned a lot. I found out that you change the color and manipulate the way you view something in ways that I never thought I could do. All in all I am happy with what I came up with, but I look forward to continuing on working with SketchUp and seeing how I can improve on it more and more.

Movie Questions

1. The part of the movie that most interested me was the part where all those people who all played World of Warcraft talked about how they were better friends with the other gamers than they were with their friends that were right around them. My question would be, what kind of connection can you actually form, other than just a common interest, with people that you can not physically see or hang out with? Can you truly create a friendship through the internet or a game?

2. It was interesting to see how China had began to teach their students internet safety rather than lead them blindly into this new world of technology. Would you say that this is  hindering he students performance as far as academics go because it is introducing them to what is typically considered as a distraction for our students these days? Or is it an important lesson for them to learn so that they are more prepared for the real world situations we face in the day and age?

The Wonders of Downtown

This video is  a play off of Luke Fowler's 3 minute wonder videos. In his video, Fowler focuses on each individuals apartment. He does a lot of close ups on articles within these people's apartment. I thought it would be really interesting to do a spin on these videos by not filming an apartment, but down town Reno instead. My video is the exploration of down town. Basically, what I did was went down town and if I found something to be interesting or something that I felt really depicted what Reno was, I filmed it. I wanted to keep the same idea of coming in really close on things that I found. There is no real order within the video, but my idea was to lump together the videos that represented different parts of down town Reno. There are sections of the river, Virginia Street, and even the Pioneer Center. This project was a really great learning experience for me. I had a lot of fun coming with the idea and doing the actually filming. The most frustrating part, as I am sure you all experienced, was doing the actually editing. Rendering was a nightmare and I ended up working on it for 9 and a half hours straight. Overall I am really happy with my video, and this is something that I would definitely love to do again.

Critical Response Questions

1. The reading talks about John Cage and his start of what was called Happenings. Basically, this is where random people in the streets perform or art events arise. Would the side shows and artist on the streets of San Francisco be consider part of a Happening? Is this term still used to this day?

2. My next question kind of goes with what we have talked previously about in class. As much as filming and video art has highly influenced art as a whole, and as popular as it was when it was first created; is there any chance that it is losing it's importance? As we talked about in class, going to a gallery and physically having to look at a painting and come up with your own idea about it takes a lot more effort than just pressing play on a movie or film. Is there a possibility that video art is being pushed back behind all other forms of art?

Stop Motion Frame Animation

This stop motion really creates the idea that I had for this specific picture. In my triptych montage this was the picture that represented how stress can consume your life and can surround you. What I did was made the butterflies, which I suppose you could say represents stress, surround the screaming head. The other thing I was able to do was make the screaming head disappear and appear over and over. I think that this shows the consumption aspect of my triptych image. I learned a lot during this process. I used tweening with the butterflies and the screaming head. With the words "Is Your Life Where You want it to Be" I duplicated the layer over and over and over.. while at the same time changing the positioning and size. This was the most difficult part, but this is where I was able to learn the most technique.

Critical Response Questions

1. In Section XV it talks about how films have become one of the largest art forms to actually mobilize the masses, and how it grabs ones attention by creating something exciting for the viewers to watch. While this all very true, it also discusses how films can sometimes require no attention at all and viewers can be often times absent minded. My question would be, why is that films create such an impact on peoples thoughts even though of all forms of art, it takes the least amount of attention from the viewer?

2. One of the biggest topics talked about in this article was the concept of reproduction. There is reproduction of all things: paintings, drawings, photos, films, and even movies. Now a days there are spoofs that can sometimes be considered a reproduction. At what point have we made quantity more important than quality? and At what point is reproduction illegal?