Month: March 2023

For the last project in the AR Module we were put into groups and tasked with creating a set of panels on Eyejack that would interact with our environment. This software was very easy to use and made me feel like I could approach more AR related stuff in the future.

Our group decided to do panels that highlighted the nightlife in the area. It seemed really simple because there are so many in the area! For the bars and clubs in the area we made three panels that would give people information displayed on the outside of the club to get people to know more about the spot. The first panel would name the spot and provide a rating of where we were at, I chose the Raygun Lounge. The second panel (left) would be the drink specials of that day. The third panel (right) would be events that the bar hosts.

Here are the panels:

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It was fun to experiment a few different ways of laying it out. Altogether we decided on a few different design approaches we wanted to keep consistent, Mark made a great template on figma for us to add our content to, and then we exported our panels from there as pngs! I think the transparent background was a nice touch because it kind of draws you into the realism of the panels and helps you feel more involved.

Here is the video of our panels in real life with eyejack

Overall this went smoothly and well. Everyone communicated when they were able to get things done and we all finished a bit earlier in the week. It was all about being decisive on that first day we got assigned the project and each of us knew how to proceed from there. This gave me time to slap the videos together into one! I want to try more little panels like this!

What is it that you want to do?
Why?
Where do you want to go?
What would you want to say?

I’m a believer in creativity… I believe that everyone of us has an artist within. I think art and creation are some of the most important concepts that have given me purpose. I believe there is an art to everything that we say and everything that we do. I hold the truth that in order to progress and to explore, we need people who create. I also think there is as much importance to the technical side of life. We need science and tech to create complex tools to fuel innovation and discovery. Science/tech, art/creation are often seen as two separate worlds.

What I want to do is bridge that gap between it all with design. I want to bring those with technical skills a visual language to translate their ideas and affect their way of approaching problem solving. That could mean web design + branding/marketing for an engineering company who needs to reestablish their presence. I want to inspire artists and aide them on presenting their work. Web design and experiential design could play a hand in this approach. I am somewhat still in the generalist mindset that I want to pursue multiple avenues of design and get experience wherever they will let me. I won’t know if I like it until I give it a genuine try. The obstacle now is rounding out and focusing on these skills while in school. This is my opportunity to grow and gain those opportunities.

Why? Because I care. I care about creating an easier life for myself and others. Easier life for me means working really hard right now and earning a career that I respect/am eager to progress in. Easier life for others means they have a design problem or they have an ugly mess and I come in and turn it into a learning opportunity while transforming it into a spotless culmination of our ideas.

I want to go into the rest of my life bringing meaning to our work while letting people know I’m that DUDE. I’m THAT dude. I want to be able to confidently tell myself that with my chest. Then people repeat it back to me when I’m out performing. I want to have that oomph. That’s all I want. I’ll get there.

This is a love letter to the AR app My Hungry Caterpillar.

Dear My Hungry Caterpillar,

You are going to be a delight for my future kids (or an app that’s like it)… Might not have kids for a while… But your app is really fun and gets kids thinking about games in a new way.

Augmented reality games like this, I believe, will be the bridge between the ipad kids and the next generation of critical learners. This experience has you grow a caterpillar from start to butterfly. You are placed in each others worlds to adventure, play, and most importantly learn lessons about how to care for nature. These skills can be applied to raising and caring for a pet, and teaches responsibility to younger audiences.

I tried the game out for all of about 30 minutes and learned that this game is pretty cute and gives you an expansive experience.

One thing I thought the app did well was track the environment. The caterpillar was able to sense when things became available to it. Such as bringing out the toys and the bubble machine. Even though I brought out all the toys at once it knew only to interact with the most recent toy that I activated. The bubble machine was fun to play with and when I touched the apples from the tree and made them fall it knew to go eat.

I also thought this app taught a good lesson about caring for nature, skills which could easily translate to taking care of other things around you like pets, your siblings, your mom’s flower garden, etc. With a trackable progress of the caterpillar getting bigger the better you treat it, you give the user a sense of improvement and care.

It wasn’t a perfect app though. I wish there were more sounds! One thing I know would get users more engaged is a wider sound design. There weren’t many sounds that gave us queues on what we were doing was right. They kind of just place you in there and it’s somewhat of a soundless visual experience. Users would feel see and hear the environment, creating a more augmented and holistic experience. I would be more convinced that I am operating in the app’s world if I had more sounds to draw me in.

Another thing I would change would be to add more text or graphic queues that mark progress. From beginning to end of my experience there weren’t many text queues that told me I was doing the right thing. Maybe a level system or some sort of queue that says “great job, the caterpillar is growing, keep feeding and see what happens”. Something to draw me in and show me I’m using the app right. They kind of just place you in the environment with the caterpillar and let you do your thing. I think you can hammer home the learning aspects with more progress graphics and texts that pop up as you complete your journey.

Overall this is a cute app with fun implications on learning and caring for your world. I think the idea of this app is something I could see my kids using and would love to guide them through an experience like this in the future.

Here is a clip from my experience (excuse the crowded living room)

After getting to know the people in my cohort, I’ve had many thoughts about where I could see my fellow classmates working. I feel like each of us are finding our strengths, and the way we create connects with each other totally differently. I think a really fun video idea/bonding exercise would be to get each cohort in a room (design, visual media, etc) and to have a few people volunteer to share those thoughts on where we think each other are headed. The specific prompt question could be pertinent to each cohort… For design students we may ask each volunteer to identify what kind of designer they believe suits each student best, and telling them “why” to their face! For visual media students we may ask each volunteer to identify the type of media role they see each of their peers fitting into. We would film with as many people that are willing.

I think this would be such a fun idea because it is an opportunity to tell each other through discussion what we think they’re good at. Maybe I’m just projecting but I feel like a lot of us feel like they don’t quite know which direction we will take with design… This exercise could be a bonding exercise but also an idea generating activity. Like maybe a student will tell another student that they see them working for Nike as a creative director someday… First off, it’s a confidence boost. This student may start to see more possibilities for themself after hearing from each other that they see them doing something big! This also reassures each other that we believe in and encourage each other rather than feeling in competition. I think CUT has a lot of popular videos based around interpersonal connection, wholesome content, as well as somewhat “baity” content… I think our idea from SCCA would be interpersonal, wholesome and maybe even make students emotional. Crying always gets views to be honest. Aside from the attraction of real waterworks, seeing such a wholesome activity done between students would attract more students and show SCCA in a sweet light. I would suggest this program to anyone wanting to work hard in the creative field, and this could be a great selling point because you get a sense of what people are up to and the types of support we provide to students between other students. This idea would portray our program as a really friendly and nurturing program, which is what I have found it to be.

I think we are stressed and there is a plethora of things always to be doing. We are making progress without really getting to acknowledge it as much because we have already moved onto the next thing. Making a video like this would have so much versatility, meaning and could be used for years beyond its creation to inspire future students and to provide a benchmark of nostalgia for current students.

This week I spent about 30 min in the Crazy Golf tournament. I was really curious to see how they might pull off a game of some sort in the Metaverse. The expectations were above the reality.

It didn’t seem like they were actually playing the game, I just saw people standing around! There was a cool little course built and the chat was somewhat active, so I knew people were excited about the game, but I couldn’t get any actual sight of the golf being played, I don’t know if they are sent to a third party game to compete on a real score, but overall this event was a little confusing.

What worked was gathering people, it was fun to know that people all over the world were tuning in to this corner of the internet. I’m still kind of amazed at how the metaverse is super cloud based and can run this “second life” type world just from a URL… Still wild to me as it was when I hopped into the designrockstar link with Michael for last week’s session.

What didn’t work was what the actual event was… Like yes you can build elaborate courses and sporting events but can you actually play things yet? I didn’t see much of it… other than standing metaverse people. So I think that would be the next step, bringing more interactivity to the metaverse. I already think it is interesting to have this sims world, but let’s slowly start making interactive activities that can be broadcasted.

The reason I see this whole idea moving forward is because it is cutting edge, and gives people an opportunity to make money. I think this can be a very powerful advertising tool if enough people are to jump on board (more accessibility) and if it becomes a tiny bit more interesting. I think that of enough people were to tune in then you can easily create some cool scenes for people to explore and enjoy what you are wanting to present.

Adding features like interactivity and such will bring a more whole experience because people will have a scope of activities to partake in rather than just viewing peoples’ setups. At the moment it’s more accessible than say Animal Crossing where you kind of do the same thing (with much less things to do together than AC) but brings it to a place “ANYONE” with internet may go to. I suppose I’d address that part as well… I don’t think just anyone can go to these yet.

I noticed while running through the event that my computer got hot for the first time… It was working hard. I also noticed in last week’s presentation that a lot of people had to quit out because their computer froze or it also got hot. I must first say my computer never breathed as hard and got as warm as when I was in the metaverse these past two visits. So you definitely need a certain computer to run these sessions online. For that reason it is not as accessible.

Overall, this was a fun experience still. Kind of feel like I’m rummaging through the future of tech in it’s somewhat early stages. Just as people are worried about what AI might do, I’m less worried but still concerned about how this will effect the weakest stakeholders, the people who can’t explore the metaverse… I’m worried that a lot of development and money is being poured into something that won’t make the best difference at the moment. Could I see myself using this in the future? It’s got a way’s to go… Is it a fun entertaining tool? Yes, but it’s still got a ways to go. I’m curious to see what people bring to this world that can make a difference for the people who can’t go to these events… Like how can we do community fundraising or networking or more events around making that initial connection online and bringing people to our physical world to do something different. I don’t think the metaverse has it quite figured out yet, as we are still in the development and playing stages of this technology.

I was inspired by my partner who is about to graduate law school at Seattle University to make this small congratulations animation. I appreciate her because she is always progressing and impressing, inspiring me to do the same. I decided to make this particular animation because when I asked her one day if she was proud of herself for making it so close to graduation (because she should be)… She simply replied, “I’ll be more excited when I passed the bar” and that was the most her answer that could have been in that moment. But also it makes complete sense since she has to go straight to studying after graduation and her work won’t feel complete until then. I made the text and stick figure in illustrator and just imported them in as PNGs, then I used the existing assets in Aero to make the rest!

I had to reference the tutorial you showed us in order to remember the correct steps in choosing the animation, but overall this is a pretty intuitive program with cool potential! I’m interested in creating entire scenes, I am a little unimpressed with all the white space I left in the document. But if I learn how to make bigger scenes with a background I think I could be more engaged with Adobe Aero.

Working with 3D objects makes me feel cooler than I actually am… But anyways, the video was too big to embed on this post, so please refer to the slack for that!

Here are some assets.