It’s crazy that next week is the last week of class. I’ve really enjoyed the creativity and tools i’ve learned to use in this class. This week was pretty essay in terms of prepping for the final project.
The fearless femmes and I agreed to meet on Sunday afternoon to brainstorm how we wanted to film the episodes for Real Housewives of Cyberpunk. We brainstormed ideas and agreed to meet and film scenes on Wednesday. During our meeting we also established who would do bumpers, edits, and commercials for our show.
We filmed about 4 – 5 scenes on Wednesday which is great progress. We still have a lot to still film but, we’v planned out our scripts and agreed to meet again Monday afternoon to finish the scenes. This ill give us plenty of time to edit and focus on filming bumpers and commercials for the show throughout the week.
Overall I think it was a very successful week. I really enjoyed watching other classmates trailers and i’m very excited to see how everyone’s turns out. I love working with the Fearles sFemmes! We work together really well and have so much fun while working. It’s really easy to bounce ideas off each other and we end up with a great final result.
See you guys next week with the final and finished project!
This week Rusul and I outlined our project and what we want to focus on leading up to recording our podcast series. Rusul took the liberty of creating a subdomain to host our podcast series, as a platform for our audience to gather and listen to the three episode special of CyberTalks. I worked on scripts, completing one and starting another, with goals of having all three done by early next week so we can record shortly after that. After the recording session, we plan to spend the rest of the time editing our episodes, using the same platform we used on the radio show, both having familiarity with it. I’m excited to record! And glad that Rusul and I have coordinated so well to make a solid plan of how we’re going about finishing up this class strong. Stay Tuned!
We are making great progress so far! I would say we are close to halfway done right now with filming our content. Over the weekend we are fine tuning all of our bumpers and commercials & on Monday we will be finishing up with filming the rest of the content portion of the film.
For the remainder of next week, we will all be pitching in on editing and piecing this film together. I’m very excited to see the final product.
But here’s what I’ll say here: I’ve been watching all the YouTube videos on cat animating that I can find (admittedly, not as many as a girl could hope for). I’m in the beginning stages of animating, it’s not perfect but I’ve been working on my drawing skills this semester. And I’m about halfway through with a script/plans for the pictures. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of substantive things to say about it that I didn’t already discuss yesterday. So that’s the week 13 update!
I’ve fully planned out how I want my interactive multimedia narrative to play out and I’m starting to put all the pieces together!
I’m using Prezi to create a click-through choose your own adventure-like software as with the planet topic function on Prezi, you can click them to take you exactly the way you want to go; it felt like a simple yet effective way to accomplish what I’m trying to do.
As mentioned previously, I want to do an interactive narrative that is constructed by the player as they make choices throughout to see how the way they conduct their “life” will be impacted by the ever-growing power of AI in this dystopian world. I was heavily influenced by surrealist/horror game lore like Cube Escape, Samsara Room, and even the FNAF lore to a degree. There are multiple endings depending on what choices you choose. There will be mix of text, images, audio, and design throughout to really immerse yourself in the experience and to keep you on your toes as this is meant to illicit feelings of unease and confusion, much like how it feels to know how the powers of AI can expand and make us unsure of the future ahead.
This week, Carson and I divided the work for our podcast show. I created a website for our show using UMW Sites, while Carson focused on writing the scripts. Most of our time was spent handling the logistics and preparing to record and edit our episodes so we can upload them soon.
During Week 13, significant progress was made on the final project, Echo Protocol. With no other coursework the focus was entirely on brainstorming and refining the story’s direction. The project revolves around a futuristic narrative set in the year 2149 where Kai, a memory technician uncovers a mysterious unauthorized signal in a world governed by the omnipresent ECHO AI system.
I explored various creative elements in Canvas experimenting with layout, visual elements, and interactive components to determine what best complemented the story’s tone. The visual aesthetic included glitch effects, AI alert screens, and scenes like a digital mirror, cyberpunk skyline, and a void of white, symbolizing the unraveling of reality.
The narrative begins when Kai receives the signal, triggering a choice: trace the source or report it to the authorities. These decisions lead to changing paths involving subnets, neural code rewiring, and questioning the nature of identity and control under the ECHO system.
This week was a planning and gathering stage for our group, we decided to stray away from another trailer and choose to make a music video with our course characters involved with it. We chose a song that would really fit the theme of tech noir. It is a Daft Punk Song! We again sent out course characters into the group chat so we could plan content for them when finding clips and sounds affects to match our characters throughout the music video. Initially we had the idea of making another trailer that was longer and more in details but strayed off the idea to try something new with music. I have a good feeling about this project because almost everyone has heard of Daft Punk so seeing their song with a different music video will be very cool. I am hoping that our course characters will blend nicely throughout. Overall this week was more laid-back than others because it was more of a gathering phase. This was a very good week.
Gearing up for finals, I am starting to feel the stress, but I am managing it well. This class is actually the least of my worries, as working in such a great group has made it that much easier. We have been making way on our short film, and I am very excited to see how it will turn out in the end.
Group Project
I go more in depth in my blog post about our progress so far, but we have been meeting a lot throughout the week through FaceTime in order to plan out the plot, script, as well as deciding who will do commercials or bumpers.
We then decided to start filming on Wednesday, where we met at Ball Hall in order to film some scenes. We rented a camera from the HCC, and used it in order to record, and it came with a microphone on top of it.
I also made an animated intro for the show, taking inspiration from classic “Bravo” reality-tv, but making it fit the cyberpunk, tech-noir theme.
Overall
Overall, can’t complain! It was really fun to film the scenes with my group! I am not much of an actor, but I feel like we all did good with staying in character and making it realistic. It will be a really busy week next week, but I am ready. See you for the final week of DS106!
A huge part of this class is talking about what you did and how you did it and why you did it and how it worked out. One thing I am more challenged by than talented at is communication. Part of the holistic liberal arts education that Mary Washington appeals to is why I came, and also, no employer is going to hire someone who says “I’m a hard worker and I am qualified for the job, but I cannot communicate for the life of me.” So as I work to explain my thought process more, bear with me. For my final project, I’m telling my character’s story. I want the story to shine through because D41SY is based on my own pet, who is very beloved to me. I also want the story to into three categories: I want it to matter, I want it to make sense, and I want it to make the viewer feel something. My bonus category would be that I want a really good rainy scene because I love the rain. I think one problem many story tellers run into is that they feel a personal connection to their character, they care about that character, and they don’t realize that other people don’t have that. I want there to be moments that show the importance of her character in the plot, and to feel happiness when she feels happiness, so that the audience will feel sadness when she does too. I want to design her to be aesthetically pleasing, because people are naturally attracted to things that look nice. I also think people will enjoy a good swish-y tail, maybe that becomes more rigid when she becomes a cyborg and then swish-y again when she is returned to her owner? She also needs a goal; I think saving the other animals and reuniting them. I want the story to have a happy ending. One issue: I don’t want to base a character on me, I’m not a writer, so I’m not going to say I know everything about the process. I do know that self-inserts are often difficult because everyone wants to be liked, so it’s harder to show nuance. I think I’m going to make D41SY’s owner a guy to create a stronger sense of separation in my head between myself, the owner, my cat, and D41SY. Any self inserts will be much more akin to Stan Lee from Marvel, preferably.
What have I done so far? I’m so glad you asked. First, I considered my strengths: When I was 12 I was really intro drawing Then I considered my weaknesses: When I was 12 I was really into drawing
Jokes aside, I know that I would be most proud of myself creating an animation, so that’s what I’ve set out to do. I have an iPad and an Apple Pencil, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to utilize that. I’ve downloaded an app called FlipStudio and started sketching. Of course, while not terrible, I perhaps overestimated my drawing skills
Although disappointing, knowing my weaknesses is an important part of the process. The eyes look like human eyes. No good way around it, the drawings are a little stiff and while there is artwork that is very simple that I find to be fantastic, my own is simple in all the wrong places. I looked into YouTube, because it has everything, and looked for how to animate cats and found this:
It’s not the art style I’m going for, but I was really impressed at how much good information this short video conveyed.
Back to the drawing board (get it, because I’m focusing on drawing again? Okay.)
One of the things I really clicked with was viewing the animal as multiple parts of a whole, rather than one part. Which I believe is conveyed well in the highlighted colors and parts of the cat that are highlighted.
Most importantly, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be a reflection of my effort in this course.
I hope anyone reading enjoyed my post, and I’ll be back tomorrow for a weekly summary!
