http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/66.01.Brainwashed
Acknowledging the Lizard
This layer discuses that urge that people sometimes (or often) feel which tells them to avoid being embarrassed, seen messing up, or doing the wrong thing according to someone else standards. In this layer Seth Godin encourages people to let this feeling go. It is ok that we mess up a few times here and there, and it is not worth letting someone else bring you down for something that they feel you messed up on, whether that be an assignment or the way you are as a person. He reminds us that it is important to acknowledge this feeling, but never let it effect us from accomplishing our goals.
Learn
This layer is all about the importance to always be learning no matter what we do, now or in the future. Seth Explains that without this step, non of the other steps mean anything at all.
I feel that this layer speaks to me more than the others because I love to learn. I may not have the best studying habits but I honestly do love to learn. And I agree 100% that whatever we do in our futures is going to require us to constantly be learning. My current job that I have when ever I go back home is one that you could never know everything to. I am an employee at a small specialty seafood market and I do a lot of everything, cutting fish, taking orders, bringing in shippments, calling in orders for shipments, stocking, creating beautiful looking seafood tray's for customers, and putting up over sized Christmas trees that are literally two stories tall. I am pretty sure that I learn multiple new things everyday that I work there.
These two layers link exactly to what we do on this blog. Acknowledging the Lizard can be translated into acknowledging the fact that everything I post on this blog is viewable to anyone. People might look at this stuff and think its silly, but I've learned to say fuck it. First of all its required of me to pass the class so of coarse I need to just do it, and second it's really not that bad. Which brings me to my next point, I have already learned so many useful things from dealing with this pain in the ass blog. I did not look forward to doing the first audio blog assignment at all, I thought it was stupid and frustrating because I had to download new stuff to record myself on and sign up to a website so I could post audio. But I figured it all out and it feels pretty damn rewarding to know all of that stuff.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Blog Assignment 4b-song reflections
Audio reflection for Beth Carter
Audio reflection for Katie Everett
Audio reflection for Katie Everett
Blog Assignment 3b-audio reflections
Reflection of Dan Wainio's Soundscape
Reflection of Vic Sherrick's Soundscape
Reflection of Vic Sherrick's Soundscape
Blog Assignment 3a
Major Tom- Shiny Toy Guns
The original song of Major Tom sang by Peter Schilling was actually in German. It became an instant hit and an English version was made in 1983 by the same artist. Shiny Toy Guns recently covered the song. The lyrics between the original English version and the cover are exactly the same. I do not know about the German version but the song is a story based the fictional astronaut created by David Bowie in the song Space Oddity and then mentioned in two more of his songs, so I imagine that the lyrics stayed the same in translation. The intensity between the two songs varies a bit in my opinion. The original version is played softer but the newer version of the song appears to be much louder. Speed is also a slight but noticeable difference between the two with the recent version being a little faster which often seems the case when a band covers a song from a past decade. The timbre is probably the most noticeable difference between the two songs. Peter Schilling's version uses very basic instruments and has a very 80's sound. But the shiny toy guns version is very electronic using many sounds.
I find it a little bit harder to apply the binary terms to these two songs but I think I can do a good enough job using a few of them. First of all I pretty much just discussed the contrast and affinity between the two songs. The lyrics were similar, but the intensity, speed and timbre appeared different between the two songs. I think that I can also apply tension and release to the second song. In the Shiny Toy Guns version of the song, starting at about 3:00 into the song she starts singing the chorus over and over with the music getting more intense each time and at around 3:33 she releases the tension by yelling the last word of the line.
As for which song that I like more, I am going to have to say that I like the cover. This is not very typical for me, especially with a cover that is pretty similar in sound. I Just really like the electronic sound more than I do the common 80's sound.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Blog Assignment 1B
http://changethis.com/manifesto/show
Mitch Ditkoff’s 14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas is about 14 techniques that one can use to help them get past the barriers that block us from thinking of these intivative ideas. Each technique is different than the next, some seem very practical while others are rather abstract but if applied correctly, all of them can be very useful. The idea behind the entire list seems to be mostly to help people not to strain themselves when trying to come up with new ideas or be creative. They can apply to adults in the workplace, or students trying to write a paper or do a project.
The list included basic tips that many of us already do but do not realize how much they actually help us to come up with our breakthrough ideas. They discuss signs that one should pay attention to, immersing yourself in activities that have nothing to do with the project at hand, telling yourself that failure is ok because we learn a great deal from our mistakes. Some of the suggestions have the reader just take a step back from the task at hand like linking things that already exist to come up with a new breakthrough, making sure that we are actually aware of our question before we start looking for an answer, and even to fantasize in order to come up with ridiculous ideas and then realize that perhaps they are not so ridiculous after all.
I would definitely agree that these points are valid. As I mentioned before, some of these are things that I already do without actually realizing how much they help me to accomplish my goals or come up with my ideas. The fifth one on the list says to fantasize, I think that this is my favorite suggestion because I do this all of the time. I will be working on a paper and all of a sudden find myself looking at the ceiling with my mind running wild and flooding with ideas that are sometimes useful. But this idea of fantasizing applies directly to my major where I am learning to develop video games. Everything I have learned in the last quarter related to my major has been to expand my mind and think of how to break down barriers so that there is room for new intuitive games and fantasy worlds that create enjoyable experiences for other players. Fantasizing about things that are not really happening is one of my favorite things to do and it helps me relax. I think that I would go crazy without doing it. It probably helps to explain the reason that I love video games so much, because it allows me to put visuals to and interact with many fantasy worlds that others have created.
Immerse is number two on the list and I am a very big fan of this. I think the idea of giving your employees time during work hours to immerse themselves in things that they find enjoying is brilliant. It keeps them happy while also keeping their mind occupied with hopefully productive hobbies. When I think about this I can’t help but bring up video games again and how immersion is one of the things that my teachers emphasis. Keeping the player immersed and limiting the amount of things that break that connection is key to making a good video game. The more I learn about the production process of videogames the more I find myself getting immersed in them for more than the entertainment aspect, but also because I am able to look at them in a different light and get inspiration form them.
Taking a break is the third method that I find very important. If it was only a list of the methods with no explanation, I don’t think this would be in my top three. But the description really put into perspective how important it is to take yourself away from the main task so that you can come back to it feeling refreshed. I always take breaks; I feel that when I focused to hard on something for too long, my production values go down fast. When I take breaks and do something to take my mind away for a bit I come back to my project feeling very refreshed and have new ideas to add.
The prompt that I decided to do is the fifth one under fantasy. It requires me to think of a challenge and fantasize about a solution. The challenge that I am currently working on is for my game development class where I am the lead engineer on a team that is creating a video game over the next six months. This is very new for the entire team and we know very little at this point, and it does not help that we have only been able to have two class periods because of the weather. As the lead engineer, I am in charge of the bulk of the programming. I love to fantasize about me sitting at the computer cranking out lines of code because I actually know how while the rest of my team is working on their own jobs, and when they help me get some of the programming done, I am able to help them with any questions they have. I feel that this image really motivates me do the extra reading that my professor gave me in order to get a head start and really understand programming and get a good footing for the future.
Blog Assignment 1A
http://www.youtube.com/watch
It is hard to really discuss the kind of creative person I am because it is hard for me to categorize creativity. I have always been a hands on learner and have been a relatively good writer. But at this point in my college career my efforts will have to switch to being computer savvy because I have recently started to study game design. I really enjoy it but it is very new to me. I have been playing and researching video games for a very long time and know the exact type of games I would like to make. I can honestly say that every game the company Bioware has made except for one is my type of game. Everything that they do is heavily based on interactive and in depth stories with game play that requires a lot of thinking and strategy. But as I have been learning since the beginning of last quarter, creating a game is not possible with anything less than an entire team of people. So I feel that it is safe to say that the entire Bioware team influences me.
What Bioware always does best is creating tension and release for the player in multiple forms. The easiest example to use in explaining this would be a boss fight at the end of a level or dungeon. In the game Dragon Age: Origins, Bioware focuses a lot on strategic combat that is very intense and often frustrating if you do not approach each situation in the right manner. To really test the player’s skills, they make the boss fights very extreme against opponents that are much larger than each of your characters. During them, your characters are constantly getting knocked down at which point they are useless until they get back up, and there health is drained at a rate that seems way to fast. Tense boss fights are an understatement in this game but the sense of accomplishment and release are well worth it when you have won.
In all of Biowares recent games, stories within the games have been taken to the next level. Their use of text and subtext to bring the character through the game is brilliant. Since their games are so heavily piled with dialogue conversations that the player actively has to involve themselves in in order to make it through the games. This makes plenty of room for situational irony and misdirection. Bioware tries to make their worlds as believable as possible so there are those in the game that will lie to you and try to deceive by telling you false things. Dramatic irony plays a very large role as well. There are cut scenes throughout Bioware’s games that show the conversations and intentions of the antagonist that none of the protagonists will know about until often the very end of the game.
In many video games but especially in Bioware games, the player must do a lot of listening, reading and navigating through heads up displays (HUDs) and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) if they truly want to experience everything that the game has to offer. Active and didactic transfer of information to the player is very carefully put into to each game. Most of the time the characters in the game will just tell you what you are supposed to do next in the game or the player might read a sign that has quests on it that explain everything the player needs to know, it usually is clearly labeled in a very didactic fashion. But there are also plenty of situations where the player must use logic and carefully put together clues and hints that are found or observed during in game conversations. This requires the player to actively seek out the answers using their own out of game logic, which is desired and preferred by many gamers like me.
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