Final Project(s) Post;
Essentially I was looking to do something different that I hadn’t done before, with combining several skills I have collected over the class. It was intended to be a .gif, but with my luck GIMP will freak on me or will fail to process, so I will be doing it as a video file instead.

The Premise–>
Start with buying car ->look happy, go to gas station pay -> look sad, drive off -> meh face, back to station -> sad, light bulb, zoom in -> walk -> happy, late to work -> sad, back to car/gas etc-> sad, new light bulb->bike, buy bike-> meh, ride bike -> get happier over time -> see car pass, follow -> light bulb and show guy buying a new car (loop back)

The Process–>
White Board drawing base images, example, a smiley face, car, thought bubbles etc.
Take picture of each drawn thing.
Upload pictures.
Take the images and cut, paste, moved around so that I have enough images to create a stop motion project.
Import all of the images into WMM2.6
Add sound export.
Upload to the web.
Hurray done!

Final Product–>
Once it is complete and up, it will be here.

Thoughts on Final Product–>
I am surprisingly happy with how this turned out. There is a couple of things that I would take note of, one, use the magic wand selection tool and have a predetermined background. That way if there are any mistakes, you don’t have to play with the clone/heal tool. Took a good 2 hours of extra time. I am glad that I did most of the image work before I started in on making it into a full video. Another thing I wish I had done is learned to draw better. Re-creating things so that the circles for tires and faces etc got tiresome after the 3-4th time having to redraw things. White board was an awesome idea, because it allowed me to fix problems which I would have had to start the entire sheet/page over, or mess with selection tool, rotating and yet again that damned clone and healing tools. Yet again another 30 or so minutes went by just to say I did it. More walking animation, and figuring out a way to actually make it look like the person was biking would be the number 1 improvements in my opinion, but due to the median, I couldn’t trace the parts I wanted to keep the same, and I didn’t have a way to erase the smaller things or parts to allow for a full on animation. That was a decided sacrifice. I was at about 5 hours of work before doing animation/audio. Total time to complete from conception to creation 1.5 months, with about 10-12 hours or so going directly into it. Source material was literally drawn from scratch on a white board and used GIMP to modify certain things/mash-up the images to create movement etc. Audio was me, thanks WMM for allowing me to record my own voice and edit within the program.

Final Reflection Post;
Well, now that the course is done and over with, I would say the single most important anyone that takes this class can do is to either get ahead and if not able to do that, keep up. The class is a lot of fun and pushes you to think about things in a different ways. It also facilitated a handful of very interesting and enlightening ways to look at storytelling and look at the web is evolving. I am still a strong believer that the internet will be ‘corporized’ or attempted to be controlled by big business. (See SOPA, PIPA, and its counter part that did pass) I had never directly be a ‘victim’ of a hacker, until this semester, as were many others and dealing with/correcting problems associated with that were relatively easy and quick.

I selected a few pieces of work, and I might also place my final in my best of work. The Pokemon Card creation was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed doing it. Clearly came out looking really well, sad that I didn’t get it to look exactly like another pokemon card, but hey it is close considering I didn’t use a template. The door way being open, is one of my favorite images that I have taken so far, and the twisted idea of it being a threshold between light and dark, good and evil, or night and day; just makes my day when it comes to an image I took. With the video stuff I put in a lot of work, I did end up selecting a single film, sadly I only generated 3 total, with one being the final. Regardless of that, the Trailer Redo for Dead Island is by far my favorite video I made. The timing of the words mixed with the events, e.g. the drums with the axe, the far from the opera immediately after the zombie screams in his ear. I don’t think that the continuous video could have worked better in any situation musically without some major remixing and editing of the audio track.

Onward to the suggests phase of the final post. I personally wouldn’t necessarily change much. Some things such as doing remix projects once a month, versus at the end. Having them set up for each set of assignments that way the cards can work out really well. That being said, I feel like there needs to be some sort of sorting system or permi-link set up for just the product of each assignment, then again, it is being addressed already so I am confident that it won’t be a problem. I also had many chats with Professor Levine bouncing ideas off of him for the class and for my own projects and I really appreciate being able to do that, even though we weren’t able to do that for the first few weeks of class, due to him being 3/4s of the way across the country and chatting with the class via skype.

Another thing that I would say to the next batch or set of students that take this class, don’t over-do it, but be sure you make work you WANT to do, it is unimaginable how tough it is to be 1/2 way through a project and get caught on something that just frustrates you making you almost give up on the project. I threw away a lot of work, because I got frustrated and didn’t have my heart in it. That also being said, finish what you start, even if it isn’t up to your own personal expectations. I tried to generate a tutorial on that, but it is so funky, that I just dumbed it down to a simpler time management styled tutorial. Be sure you do extra work, you never know when you are going to have your computer lock up on you, or crash, in addition, be sure to save and save often with multiple versions. Corrupted files, broken files, Saving over something on accident, viruses and tons of other things happen, and you want to protect yourself the best you are able to do so.

In closing I enjoyed the class, I am happy with it turned out in general, but I would have liked to avoid certain issues that occurred, such as the week I missed all my classes and literally did nothing productive. My computer not locking up on me several times (For example my end the era post) and of course being hacked, but the amount of conversation and bouncing of ideas of John Dorman and Professor Levine was huge pluses. I don’t have much more to say. Until next time! Thanks for taking a peak.