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For the next New Media project, we are making a marketing campaign for the sustainable toilet paper and paper towel company Cloud Paper. My team and I had three concepts for the campaign that we presented in the class, and of all the three concepts, we stuck with doing the game based campaign that saves endangered animals from extinction. For now, we have this called as The Cloud Paper Game.

Time stamps for the hours I’ve worked on the project outside of class:

1. Week One: ~1.5 hours
2. Week Two: ~2.5 hours
3. Week Three: ~1.1 hours
4. Week Four: ~1.5 hours

For the first time ever, I finally got to meet my teammates in person (still practiced social distancing)! We were able to shoot our blender project at Cal Anderson park during a nice, warm day so we weren’t too worried about the weather affecting our shoot. We did get some weird stares from people because of our props!

While we got most of the shots we wanted for the video, we had to do some changes in the story or setting due to the location we were in. However, it did work out in the end and once we got all the shots we wanted edited, we finally finished our project!

(video link coming soon…)

For the next few weeks, my group and I will be doing the Beehive Blender Challenge where we shoot a video that shows our randomly selected elements such as the character, the prop, and the dialogue. My group and I got Optimus Prime as the character, a lighter as the prop, and “Do you smell that?” as the dialogue. Right off the bat, this already feels so interesting to work on!

As for the story of our video, we’ve chosen to have Optimus Prime be the main character and have him fall in love with an old appliance. They’ll be going on dates where we’ll have the prop and the dialogue be present. I’ve worked a bit on the treatment of the video so we can identify how we want our video to come out.

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Treatment

1. Define the Goals and Set Parameters. What is the core message you are trying to convey in your video. Who do you want to watch the video? Whats the desired outcome youd like to create (volunteering, purchases, political change, or a good laugh?) Whats your budget and how long will the video run.

The main message that we want to convey in our video is that love can be unconventional or unexpected. The concept of a “robot” falling in love with an appliance seems so strange to us and so we want our audience to have a bit of a good laugh watching our video. This video shouldn’t be too complicated in terms of storytelling so it should be about 1 to 2 minutes long and will be low budget (no more than $10 for props).

1. Whats the Concept? You’ll want to be able to quickly summarize the theme and objective for the video. Describe to others the core message and frame its delivery method.

The main theme of our video is falling in love unconventionally. With this, we’re incorporating some elements of romance and comedy through the dialogues, the music, and the effects. 

1. Whats the Approach? Nows the time to lay out the specifics. This is generally a narrative summary of the journey the audience is going to take. In a way, it might resemble a book report you wrote in school. A clear summary that reveals all of the important details which will be presented to the viewer. Describe specifics that will elicit response by the audience including music choice, shooting style, and editing approach. Describe the emotions you will solicit along the journey and how the audience will feel at the videos end.

The summary of our video is that Optimus Prime, a “robot” and our main character, sees an appliance at a hardware store window and immediately falls in love. He starts to imagine scenarios of him and the appliance meeting for the first time, knowing each other, holding hands, and going on ice cream and dinner dates. Although, it ends with Optimus Prime realizing it was only a daydream. 

During the daydream montage, we’ll be using a cheesy love song as the background music and some effects that will make the scenes look and feel romantic. The settings will be mainly shot at a park, an ice cream store, and a hardware store. As for the shot sizes, we’ll do some wide and medium shots for the general scenes and then close-ups to set the romantic scenes. 

The video will end with Optimus Prime realizing he was only daydreaming and he’s back to reality so the romantic effects and music will not be used anymore.

For me, the decision of taking a Digital Arts class as an elective class during my Business school years was what changed my life and what inspired me to pursue graphic design as a career. Most of the elective classes that I took were mostly Business related and so when I got the opportunity to do something different, I thought that maybe I should try doing art again. This class taught me how to do basic Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, something I was never good at and felt too intimidated to use. After learning the basics, I realized how much fun I had as well as how creative I could be, so I tried using these skills in my Business classes. I got to do some logo designs and posters for some projects in my other classes and I would get compliments for my creativity. But when I felt that I lost my passion in pursuing my Business degree, I wanted to take the skills I learned in Digital Arts and maybe try enrolling for the Graphics Design program at Seattle Central College. I’d say this was the best decision I’ve ever done.

Last week, our speaker Kay Hofmeester talked about Augmented Reality (AR). Augmented Reality has been one of the emerging technologies today that produces an interactive experience of a real-world environment where objects in the real world are being enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information. It can affect how you learn, shop, work, or connect. And now, lots of different tech companies are developing their own AR such as Google, Facebook, and Apple.

So, what specific use of AR do I want to see in the future?

Video games. One of the biggest games that came out in 2016 was Pokemon Go, which had so many people go outside their homes, catch some Pokemon, and fight their opponents on the streets or the parks. It was one of the first mainstream video games that used AR on mobile as their console for the game and it was an instant hit. Although the game may not be as popular as it was in 2016, it became a potential for AR to become a new way for people to experience video games in a whole new level. And with this, I am hopeful that there would be more games similar to this in the future.

Why is it important?

Playing video games are fun! After watching a documentary about video games on Netflix, it blew my mind how much game developers have revolutionized a way for people to have fun and interact with each other through gaming consoles, arcades, and even created a new sport — e-sports. Video games can be an escape from reality to other people, especially when someone wants to unwind or let out their emotions. And so, stepping up the experience of playing video games through AR may enhance the experience, the storytelling, and a new way for other gamers to connect with their environment as well as others too.

What problem does it solve?

Wouldn’t it be fun if you can mix your reality with something that is completely imaginative and creative? How fun and crazy would it be if your favorite character can fight your worst enemy at your own backyard? Sometimes playing with the same console for years can be a bit boring, especially when new games are being produced every year. AR will create a whole new world of interactions where you can battle your friends maybe through your mobile phone or glasses, and you don’t have to worry about the hassle of setting up your TV with your Xbox or have limited perspective of your surroundings (2D and 3D). With AR, you can do so many things that pushes the boundaries of playing games.

Just imagine mixing your world with your favorite video games’ worlds! I would want to see Mario battle Bowser in my reality!

For this week’s assignment, I chose Adventure Time to be my pitch bible. When I was a younger teenager, I loved watching Adventure Time in Cartoon Network and admired so much the animation and the story. Some of my earlier art styles were inspired by this show!

More of this show’s pitch bible can be found here: https://2fvqxa3fxpfi2sm7tt1oe5ln-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/AdventureTimeSeriesBible.pdf

Most of the collaborations I’ve experienced so far has been from school group works, and since I’ve gone from Business school to Graphic Design, I’ve worked on different groups with different dynamics. From those group collaborations, the best approach for me has been the ‘Partner’ because we value having equal work and we all listen each other’s ideas instead of having one person have all the ideas and then the others only execute them or one does all the work and the others barely contribute. And so, I’ve been fortunate enough to have most of my group collaboration have that ‘Partner’ approach, however, there were still some that weren’t that approach and was pretty terrible.

One great experience I had was when my team and I did a project in International Business Law about intellectual properties. My team had divided the work equally and also had our ideas be heard. I felt that we were successful in our project because we had our professor praise our work so much that he wanted to use our work as an example in his other classes in a different school.

On the other hand, the worst collaboration I’ve experienced was when I had to be the one doing all the work and the other team members barely did anything. Thinking about this now, the perfect example of this was not from school but from my part time job. It was really frustrating that my other team member handed me a barely done work and I had to struggle doing all the work and make it successful. They did not communicate well with me yet they kept on complaining. I had to vocalize this to my supervisor because this was not acceptable. It was one of the worst day I ever had so far and I never want to experience that ever again.

I think the best way to be successful in any and every group collaborations would be is to communicate and listen despite having difference in personality or methods of work! I really like Joe’s advice about designers collaborating with developers which is something along the lines of “empathize but don’t expect to be empathized.”

Last week’s speaker, Paolo Tosolini, was for me the most exciting and amazing speaker in terms of what they do professionally. But what really impressed me the most was when he showed an app that had a 3D model of the human body/anatomy in your living room seen through your phone! I thought that was so cool and so useful for med students who are studying remotely!!

And that led me to think what else VR/AR could do to change the way we learn about in school. Now that students are all learning remotely, it’s been hard trying to replicate the physical things we do to learn in school, especially in science classes where we go to labs and do experiments or observations. With VR/AR, I feel like there could be a possibility of almost replicating that physical learning. Now that you can see what’s inside the human body using a 3D model on your phone, you’re almost doing the same thing as seeing the physical human body model in your Biology classroom!

All the possibilities you could do…..I just feel so amazed with how far we’ve gone in science and technology.

In Summer 2017 at SXSW, HBO had their marketing campaigns for their tv shows Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, and Veep. But to make their campaign more fun and engaging, they set up escape rooms that replicated the set of these tv shows. It drew a lot of fans of these different show in the area and instantly became a hit.

What I think the reason why this marketing campaign was so successful is because of the fan engagement and the thrill of escape rooms became a way for fans to make that possible. If you were a fan of these tv shows, you definitely would feel ecstatic seeing the set of the show and feel like you are a part of it. Also, you get to experience it with other fans of the show which makes it feel more welcoming. It was fun, exciting, thrilling, and memorable. And I think that’s what other companies should do to make their campaigns successful!

More details on what the people’s reactions to the escape room: https://www.techhive.com/article/3180166/hbo-brought-its-best-shows-to-life-at-sxsw-with-an-awesome-escape-room.html