Music Video Finale

Finally, my last blog post of the year! For our last project of the year, we are creating music videos. My team is me and Makaio Gonsalves. The song we decided to make a music video for is Big Green Tractor by Jason Aldean. The real meaning of our song is about a couple going on a date with the guys "Big Green Tractor". Since this was pretty weird, we decided to make the story about two friends who don't know what to do so they go on the one friends tractor. Our story starts off with two guys bored and not knowing what to do. Then one friend gets an idea to go on his tractor. Throughout the story, they ride the tractor all over and have fun doing it. Our storyline matches with our lyrics because It's talking about two people going for a ride on a tractor. Throughout our music video, me and Makaio ride around the woods, pasture and other places which is talked about in our song, this also matches the lyrics of our song.

For our projects, we are supposed to create a music video that shows storyline as well as lyrics. The shots in our project are supposed to be quickly changing, interesting shots. My favorite fast-edit montage sequence in our music video is when the chorus begins. The chorus talks about riding the tractor in the woods and pasture. When the chorus begins the lip-sync quickly changes to a shot of me riding the tractor in the woods then switches to me riding in the pasture. I really liked the way this turned our because it matches the lyrics really well. I think that this sequence makes our music video more interesting and engaging to the audience.

Like last year, our last project is a music video. I feel that a music video can showcase our best work in many ways. The first reason why it can showcase our best work is because we got to choose our teams so we got to choose people that we work well with. The second reason why it showcases our best work is because throughout the year we learned many techniques and then in our last project we can kind of include everything we learned into one piece. And finally, the last reason why it showcases our best work is because it's very free, in this project we basically have a blank canvas where we can think of a storyline to match the lyrics of a song. Overall I think that this project is a really good end of the year project because it lets us create a fun piece of work to end the year with.

Big Green Tractor by Jason Aldean

She had a shiny little beamer with the rag top down

Sitting in the drive but she wouldn't get out

The dogs were all barking and wagging around

I just laughed and said ya’ll get in

She had on a new dress and she curled her hair

She was looking too good not to go somewhere

I said whatcha wanna do baby I don’t care

We can go to the show or we can stay right here and

I can take you for a ride on my big green tractor

We can go slow or make it go faster

Down through the woods out to the pasture

Long as I’m with you it don’t matter

Climb up in my lap and drive if you want to

Girl, you know you got me to hold on to

We can go to town but baby if you’d rather

I’ll take you for a ride on my big green tractor

I said we can fire it up and I can show you around

Sit up on the hill and watch the sun go down

When the fire flies are dancing and the moon comes out

We can turn on the lights and head back to the house or

We can take another ride on my big green tractor

We can go slow or make it go faster

Down through the woods out to the pasture

Long as I’m with you it really don’t matter

Climb up in my lap and drive if you want to

Girl, you know you got me to hold on to

We can go to town but baby if you’d rather

I’ll take you for a ride on my big green tractor

Animated Life Lessons

My teammates for our animation project were Hailee and Ashton. They were both pretty good teammates and were pretty productive. Hailee and Ashton both are pretty serious people when it came to completing our work. Hailee is the kind of person who likes to draw and takes her time on her work to make it good. Ashton is more of a hard worker and was good working under pressure when our deadline became closer. I am the kind of person who gets the job done quickly and makes sure everyone has their parts done and everything is taken care of.

Although our animation wasn't very humorous, we tried our best to include at least one somewhat humorous part into our animation. The funniest humorous part of our animation would probably be the fact that I sold the pumpkin for $10,000. I mean is pretty unrealistic which made it somewhat funny. The life lesson of our animation was that in order to be successful, we need to work hard. This lesson was showed by Hailee deciding to work hard one morning which resulted in her finding something which later saved the farm. This life lesson relates to our audience because everybody gets lazy and doesn't always want to work. It also relates because without working, we wouldn't be able to make money or really... live.

Considering we have never worked together, well ever, I think we did pretty good and were pretty productive during our work sessions. From the first day, we started working on our project my teammates and me worked pretty well together. Also during the work sessions, we all contributed and shared our opinions. The biggest challenge was deciding who would do what and how we could spread the work out evenly. Another challenge we faced was getting all our animations in photoshop to match the timing with our script in iMovie. The best team moment during production would have to be when we finally turned in our project and finally felt relieved after our long and difficult project. Overall I felt that we worked pretty good as a team other than our few challenges.

Character Development

We recently began the 4th quarter and are working on creating animations in photoshop. For our animations, we will be using the puppet warp tool to move and change our body movements. We will be creating an individual animation then will be working in teams to create a story with all of our characters combined. 

For this project we are supposed to create an animation which shows our imperfections and traits. We are also supposed to show what kind of people we are. I am the type of person who can be lazy when I can be, but can work hard when I need to. I am also the kind of person who really likes listening to something whether it be music, the t.v or anything really, I just like listening to things. In our animation the traits I plan to show are hard working and reliability. Some relatable imperfections I have are that I can be totally normal and quiet or at times really talkative and obnoxious. Another imperfection I have is that if I think too hard when Im sleeping I think of something to look at on my computer and never can fall asleep.

In this animation I am working with two other teammates. We all need to have our characters in the animation and have to show traits we have, in the story. The trait I plan to exaggerate in our animation is reliable. I plan to show this by having my character be the person who people come to for advice. I also plan to show this by making my character a person who will do what is asked of them. Another trait I plan to show is hardworking. I plan to show this trait by having my character work hard and get things done. I also plan to show this by making myself someone who makes sure things happen. Overall, I think that this will be a fun and enjoyable project where I can show my traits in an interesting animation.

For the first part of our animation project, we began by creating a GIF. In this GIF, we needed to take an image of our bodies on the green screen and cut them out. We also needed to use the puppet warp tool to make our bodies move. We created these GIFs using photoshop in the animation feature. The first step of creating GIFS is cutting out the green screen image of our bodies. Second, we need to crop the image to 640 px, by 720 px. Next, we need to open up the animation in photoshop. Then, we create new frames and animate the character with the puppet warp tool. And lastly, you save the file for "web and devices" and size the finished .GIF. Personally, I like the way my .GIF came out because it's simple and also pretty funny too. I thought that that the puppet warp tool was pretty cool after I got the hang of it. I Also liked doing it because it was the second one I created it in this class, one this year, and one last year.

.MOV Film Festival

Visual Plan & 3 Behind Scenes

Recently we began working on films for the Kaua'i movie festival. This project needed to be either an animation, movie trailer or sitcom. I really like projects like this because their fun and I learn a lot of new skills. My teammates for this project are Meah Jensen and Makaio Gonsalves.

For our project, we decided to create a movie trailer. Like all movies, and movie trailers, there are often some sort of message trying to be shared. And these messages or learning experiences should Include some keywords to explain it. Some of our keywords are encouragement, embarrassed, and shy. These keywords really connect with our audience because everybody has encouraged others to do something. Also, we've all needed some encourage sometime in our lives. Embarrassed and shy also can relate to our audience because whether or not we want to admit it, we all have felt unsure or not good enough to do something. In our film, the character begins as an embarrassed and shy but throughout the story, he becomes more determined and less shy to do what he loves.

The message in our Movie is that we all need encouragement and help from our peers in order for us to get through life. We thought this was an important message because all of us personally have experienced some sort of encouragement throughout our lives and We have all witnessed how important it  is. The message of our story is supposed to show how the basketball player (me) grows throughout the story and is motivated to share his talents and to face his fears. We thought that this would be a good way to share the message because we are all pretty interested in sports. Also, we all know how frustrating it is when were not exactly good at something and how great encouragement can be.

So obviously every individual or team project, there is almost always some kind of issues that come along with the work. Whether it be not meeting due dates, or not working well together, problems always seem to come up while working on any type of project for our class. For our current, movie trailer project I would have to say that the most difficult challenge would have to be, in the post-filming editing stages. For example, when we're editing the sequencing and scenes, we often don't feel that it's the way we want it. Also when were deciding how we want the audio to be because sometimes we don't have the same opinion or idea in our minds, but as we talk to each other and share our ideas we often will find some way to resolve the issue.

Tiny Spherical Worlds

Hello so we recently completed our photomontages inspired by David Hockney and we were introduced to a new art called polar and spherical imagery. I am pretty excited about this project because I always thought they were pretty cool and have always wanted to try to create one in photoshop.

Alright, so composition images are basically multiple photos in one. For example, if add a park bench in the middle of the ocean. These can be created through editing software such as photoshop. Another example of composite imagery is cloning, this is when you take one base image then images of yourself or something in multiple places then you erase  the background from each image and stack the images on one another. An example of this would be if you were playing a board game then edited photos to make it look like you were playing against yourself. Composite imagery is used to create images that are confusing or cool looking. Personally, I like how composite images look because they look interesting to me and other people who see them.


For this project we will be creating two different types of images one will be polar panoramas and the other one will be spherical panoramas. These two types of images both look circular when completed but the insides look very different. These two types of images also both need to include the sky in order for them to look interesting. They both also need be outdoors in order for them look like a real world. The difference between them is that polar panoramas look like little tiny worlds kinda like how a photo of the earth would look like. Polar panoramas also need to have a sky all around them, while spherical panoramas don't need to.

The polar panoramas we have created are also known as tiny worlds. These tiny worlds are supposed to be surreal, I mean they are TINY worlds!. The process to create these worlds is pretty simple until it comes time to blend the photos together to look somewhat real. Since these photos are from a panorama, the two ends won't perfectly blend so there's always a line where the two ends meet. Some methods to remove this line include using the clone tool to repeat colors throughout the image. Another trick to do is to rotate the image so the viewers eyes don't go straight to the spot you blended so they don't notice it as much. And lastly, you can take the images a certain way so that it will be easier to blend them. You can do this by having not as much things in the foreground of the last images, for example, trees, bushes, and fences. You can do this by taking good images in your photo sessions.

Hockney Style Joiners

Hello so for the first semester of our school year we have been working on our video skills. And now that we started our second semester we started to work on photography and photo editing. Our first project is creating photo montages that are inspired by David Hockney. 

David Hockney is 78 years old and lives in the UK. He is very famous for his photomontages such as various ones he has created of his mother. Hockney's Photomontages are amazing works of art and show a lot of creativity. The difference between my photomontages is that his are kind of old and rustic looking, while mine are kind of bright and almost look fake because they have such a pop of color! I just feel that his aren't really very happy because they just look kind of dull and dark, In my opinion, this actually gives the photos a pretty cool look. My photomontages that I have created so far are pretty bright and colorful because personally I like that kind of pop look. Overall I really like the look of both his and my styles of photomontages.

Images can be shared through a variety of social media and other sites. Some of them may be very positive and others can be negative. Images can send positive messages if they are inspirational photos. They can also be positive if the photo is of something that makes people happy. Negative images could be of something that people either don't want to see or is inappropriate. Negative messages could also be images that targets  yourself or others as bad people. Overall, I think that we should really try out best to take photos that send a positive message to the people that will be viewing it.

For our class, three photomontages were required. One was a practice photomontage which we made from the doorknob photo we took, the next one was of one of our classmates, and the last one was a final where we were supposed to take at least 25 photos of something that we either enjoy doing or is special to us. For my final photomontage, I decided to take photos of a basketball court since I really enjoy playing basketball and basketball is special to me. The message I was trying to send was basically to try to get my audience to see that I like playing basketball and it means a lot to me. I was also trying to get the message that I go and play basketball every morning and that I'm trying my best to get better.

Scratch Game Design

Hello people so for the past few weeks we have been working in scratch coding games. We first started with a chase game where we needed to create a game where one sprite has to chase another. Then the second game we created was a plat former game where we needed to make a gravity engine to make a sprite get to an object and pass at least 2 levels.

User experience influenced how my game turned out a lot. I really liked the way scratch is set up for easy use and good instructions. One example is the side bar that has simple instructions to help the users code simple motions. Also Its very addictive because once you start you just want to make everything perfect. Like when you plan to make 3 levels and end up with nine. Or when you set a timer for half an hour and end up working on it for 3 hours. I also really like how scratch sets up their program so you can easily create, share, and embed your projects with ease.  At first I really disliked scratch because it made no sense to me, but now I know a lot about each block and what function it does. Therefore I really like scratches user experience I think its an amazing program.

Both of my games and many other peoples games have similar code and blocks. For example mostly everyone if not everyone has repeat forever or if blocks included in their games also "when green flag pressed" blocks. Its basically the same way with features everyones chase and platformer games should have all included a timer so the games ends somehow. Also everyones game should have included sprites which move around the screen. Some features that each game have that are different from each other is  that in the platformer game a way to jump with either a gravity engine or simple jumping. Therefore they both have very similar features and blocks.

I think that my best code so far would have to be my plat former game. This is for two reasons for 1 its the most complex of everything I have created. And the second reason Why its my best code is because it took me the most time, I pretty much worked on it for about 2 weeks in class then for about 3 hours straight at home. I had one very difficult bug fix to make and that was trying to get the "you win" sprite to show up at the end of the game. I fixed this by watching youtube videos and searching on scratch. Yet there still is a little problem still in my game, which I will try to work out. Overall I liked the way my plat former game turned out.