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I think there’s a lesson for me here- this project did not go as expected. I started with an idea I was excited about: rendering the dining room chair, which is my usual landing place for my things as I walk in the door, with a black “portal” (made out of black paper) stuck between two of the chair legs. The idea was to drop my keys, bag, etc, onto the chair, where of course they would disappear because the chair wasn’t really there. Then, in the video, I would prepare to leave my house again and begin looking for my keys et al, upon which I would discover the portal and start pulling random things out of it- last of which being the things I was looking for. But no matter how many times I tried (many, many times), I could not make it look like I was actually reaching into the chair “portal”. It kept looking like I was reaching around the chair, which entirely defeated the point. It felt like I was trying to get a bill passed in Congress. First I ditched the super-long scarf I had planned to unroll and extrapolate. Then I had to get rid of the silly figurines I’d collected from around the house. Then the cactus. Then I gave up on pulling things out of the portal entirely, and settled on dropping things on the chair, where they would disappear. It took another ten or so tries to get that video looking close to what I wanted. My right pointer finger is actually sore from putting my Vans back on so many times. Then, when I finally had something I was satisfied with, I didn’t have the option to save the video for some reason, and I accidentally closed the window before I realized they weren’t automatically saving- so I had to remake it one more time and immediately send it to Dropbox so I wouldn’t lose it. I’m actually happy with how the final video turned out, so maybe there’s a lesson here as well. Not sure what that is yet, but it’s only week four.

ps- I added a drop-box link in addition to uploading the video from my computer, I’m having nothing but technical difficulties this week and leaving nothing to chance.

Our AR module assignment this week was to write a UX review of an AR or VR experience. I chose a game called Ghosts ‘n Guns AR. While I’m not necessarily sorry that the resultant project ended up being as simple as it was, I kind of wish I’d chosen something a little more dynamic. It’s a simple game and there ultimately wasn’t too much to say about it, but it was fun to play! I read UX reviews of this game and other AR games to get an idea of what concepts to take into consideration when reviewing a game like this (Zombies, Run! and Jurassic World Alive)- but really, at the end of the day, Ghosts ‘n Guns could not be a simpler game. It’s a first-person shooter, played in your physical space. It was my first experience with any AR game (I almost fell off the bed the first time I opened it up). I wasn’t allowed to play video games growing up, which is one of the great tragedies of my life. In my early adult years I developed a love of playing arcade games like Time Crisis and Big Buck Hunter in bars, so the nostalgia factor or the highly pixelated characters weren’t entirely lost on me. Of course I’m joking about the lack of gaming in our house being a great tragedy, but these days I do often feel that I missed out on this foundational American childhood experience- and also that I’m in danger of being left behind. I’m sort of an involuntary luddite. Even playing Mario Kart is humbling; my husband’s parents beat me every time we play. So maybe this was actually the perfect choice for me: a safe, easy initiation.

Spill Tab was my assigned artist for this project. I hadn’t heard of her before but I really enjoyed her music. She’s got a poppy, late-90’s/early 00’s vibe that I found really catchy. I watched a bunch of her music videos, and loved the one for Anybody Else. Like her music and style in general, it’s cute, funny, brightly colored, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s one scene while she’s fully clothed in a bathtub while an anonymous hand paints her face, and for some reason there are oranges floating in the water. I loved the image of the brightly colored fruit bobbing around, so I decided to make that my poster. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, though I definitely ran into some issues. I’m still learning how to use Illustrator, and if my skills were better, I would’ve made the oranges a little more realistic. I’m going to rent an iPad and try out Procreate soon. Another issue I sometimes have is organization, and that shows up pretty quickly when I start working with layers. My oranges and text were in multiple layers, and it made it a little challenging to get things organized. Additionally, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the image to crop in line with the actual frame. I am not sure what I did wrong. But there’s better way to learn than to make things really annoying for yourself.

Our assignment was to make an interactive card or greeting of our choice using Adobe Aero, which is still in beta testing. I chose to make a graduation card, with a (mostly) space theme. It was actually a pretty straightforward program to use, which surprised me, though at this point all of the images and effects I used were preset, so there wasn’t too much to do. I did run into a lot of issues with the “proximity” trigger- in theory, as I’m moving around the room with Aero open on my phone, my proximity to points should trigger actions, like things to appear. I had to change all the proximity triggers to tap triggers because they just wouldn’t work. Also, my t-rex wouldn’t roar, and despite my best efforts, he won’t stand on the ground- which was a bummer. I also had a funny moment where I’d imported some text and didn’t realize how small it would be. I couldn’t find it until I zoomed all the way down to the armadillo’s feet. Despite the glitches, I had a lot of fun playing around with this program.

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