Final Video

For my final video I wanted to make a cartoon about my relationship with art

The idea is pretty cheesey, but I feel like when I put myself into a project I feel like it sucks the life out of me.

The result is usually that i have something that was less than what i expected, but i'm still proud of it and it's still my work.

just like how the mosquito is made up of all my insides
Not what i had in mind, but it's technically still me in there :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL9NX0CsDNM

if it gives you any idea of how i planned for the cartoon to come out, check out all these pieces of characters i drew!

in the original idea, the mosquito was going to slowly drain away at my body, looking more like me the more it grew in size.

but because it was a frame by frame animation and due to time constraints and other projects, it became difficult to draw six frames of inbetween for each thing that happens in the animation.

RAUL CUERO’s interview

https://youtu.be/ZugtaO85T_Y

Raul's story of overcoming his troubled past and the prejudices he faced makes his story pretty inspiring.

He was born into a rough situation and grew up in a poor town with few opportunities for education or advancement and success.

He promised himself he'd keep getting better and improving himself until he gained a PhD, and made multiple scientific discoveries and is currently trying to find a way to use the minerals in the soil on mars to negate the effects of radioactivity.

if you don't find that inspiring, there is something wrong with you.

sometimes in life there are limits, and you find yourself stuck in problem situations that no one has ever figured out.

if you ever find yourself in these situations, it's your responsibility to try and find a way to solve the problem by MAKING a new solution

the idea i take away from this man is that you can't stop thinking and trying new things
because if you do stop, you never move forward.

Musical Genres

goth/punk

When i think of goth music, I usually think of The Cure.
The main singer of the Cure, Robert Smith, basically invented the look and the attitude of goth culture as we know it today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOyITVkQpEI

and when I think about punk music, I think of the first punk band I ever heard of and the guys that started the movement of punk rock: The Ramones!

the ramones are so cool, they all had leather jackets, long hair, white shoes, and torn up jeans.
To this day I've never met anyone who can sing the strange, almost incomprehensible yet somehow rhythmic and energetic lyrics always hit me right in the heart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTdbn5t3xH4

but I also want to talk about one of my favorite albums that successfully mashes up the two genres and makes something that really rocks!
I often compare this album to the Beatles' Sgt Pepper, because the band dressed up in silly costumes and pretended to be personas, rather than their real life people names.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egG7fiE89IU




The Nineties

During the nineties, I was a child. So many of the songs and music styles from this era of music are very nostalgic to me. It was an era where bands like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins were on the cusp of a musical revolution, and the genre of grunge was born. It was a strange mish-mash of all sorts of musical styles, and bridged the gap between rock, punk, and metal.

the bands wore a lot of flannel shirts and torn up jeans, and they were really cool.

But when Kurt Cobain, writer and vocalist of the band Nirvana, killed himself, the grunge movement screeched to a halt.

Because of this, different music started to get more air time on the air ways, and the Alternative Genre of music was born. This genre was extremely hard to define, as it's mainly an overreaching word for styles of bands that are often described as "rock because it's not anything else"

One of my favorite bands from this time is called Cake, and they're amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGcLp5vSZqw

Oddly enough, the some of the songs I remember the best from this era are the one hit wonder songs that really captured the alternative genre. Here's my favorite, Barely Breathing by Duncan Sheik

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-oh-tP6RvA



Girl Power

I like feminism. Honestly, I think the ideas of feminism are misinterpreted by almost everyone who is radical about it or complains about it.

The idea of feminism is very simple, it's that women and men should have the same opportunities.

that's really all there is to it.

that being said, girl power was a style of music that is made to empower women, and some songs and bands are good, while others are silly and strange.

my favorite song is actually called girl power by the people who did the song for the power rangers movie: Shampoo

it's very silly, check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_S5aMe9atw


Disco

Disco was a strange time for music, after the 60's psychedelic drugs, hippies, and the british invasion changed the way music and culture were created. I wasn't alive during this time, but having watch Austin Powers, I think I have some authority on the subject of the 70's music.

The culture was different, the music was funky and dance centric, and mirrored the free ideals of the time.

The Bee Gees have always been my favorite Disco band, and my favorite song of theirs is called "More Than a Woman"
When I was a kid, I always thought the lyrics were "Small Headed Woman" but now I realize it's not...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtxBUp6hBaI



Dubstep

I've never been a big fan or electronic, house, or dubstep music. For the most part the idea of using things like autotune to make a person's voice sound nice when it really doesn't and the person sounds horrible in real life is dishonest.

a pop star using autotune when they can't sing is the same as a professional athlete using steroids.

that being said, there are exceptions.
T-Pain is ok to use autotune, because it's his gimmick and it was an original idea when he started doing it.

and talk box, the effect daft punk uses, is more selective and is more effective when the people using it actually know how to sing.

Anyhoo! the newest band I listen to and really love is called AWOL Nation, and they sound really good.
the vocalist doesn't use use hardly any voice effects, and he has a scream voice that really gets me pumped whenever i hear it :)

this is one of my favorite of their songs, it's called fat face. go check out this whole album, it's called RUN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd8pC5kjMTI

XEROX Project

For my Xerox project, I looked into an art style that's always interested me, it's called Futurism!

With the advent of photography becoming more present and advanced, the idea of art being used for the representation of the real world started becoming less practical.

Because of this, artists started thinking about how they could use their art to represent ideas and images that couldn't be represented by photography.

At the time there were no film cameras, and an artist named Giacomo Balla wanted to
represent motion in his pieces, and he created this now famous painting of a woman walking down the street with her dog!

  Isn't it great? So for my project, using black and white copies of my body parts, I obviously thought of this painting and this time of artI decided to make a similar piece based on the ideas of motion being represented by still images.so I scanned multiples of all of my limbs and face turning gradually, which was very awkward to do in front of people in the lab because I had to keep sticking my head into the scanner and finding ways to prop up the scanner's lid with various props, like my shoe!but I took the 40 or so copies, cut them up and glued them to strips of mat board, connecting them with a gold pin that made my strips of body parts rotate around the center of the piece.this allowed for the final product moveable, and the strips of body parts easy to arrange in a gradual order that made me look like i was waking up!Here are some pictures of how it turned out:    

performance art

For my performance art piece, I decided to do a social experiment!
I've noticed that people nowadays are constantly checking their phone, always have their headphones in, and always seeking distractions from real life by having digital media on around them constantly.

I feel like this kind of thing leads to overstimulation, and it makes it harder for people to just sit quietly in a room and just be still. I mean, who does that anymore?

So i decided to take over the school's computer lab, where I work, and run a different popular internet video on loop for all 20 or so computers, and film the reaction of the students there to witness it!

I also dressed in a silver body suit and stared at them silently from the corner of the room, where I would normally sit to wait and help people with their projects.
This was important for the experiment to make the people walking in feel like they had no one they could ask about the circumstances they had wandered into!

Also, it was a strange thing to have on and i thought it would make them feel even more strange :)

Check out the link bellow to see how people reacted to the sensory overload!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoeJCNIMgKg&feature=youtu.be

grid project

my first idea was to make a piece with post it notes or cds
but i either ran out of space of materials in both cases.

So! my next idea was to attempt to emulate the sprite style of one of my favorite games, Mother.

I started with a pencil sketch of a wolf wearing a red flannel shirt, then i brought it into photoshop and cleaned it up with my favorite brushes!

Then I attempted to decrease the size and pixelate the image and make it 30 x 30 pixels, but it didn't have the amount of detail i wanted it more detailed, so it ended up being a 134 x 168 grid

i added color and tried to pay attention to how the colors overlapped and little details like aligning the checks on his flannel with the checker pattern in the background.

 I considered printing it out right then, but then i got the idea to 3D print it pulled out to make it a little different than a picture on a piece of paper

SO! I took the colored image into illustrator and separated it into individual colors and individual planes for each pixel.

Then i imported the illustrator files to maya, a 3d software

due to importing complications, i had to extrude each pixel individually and each color the same thickness so they would fit together like a puzzle

the black outline would also act as a backing for the printed object, the holes being open to place the colors inside, since the printer can only print one colored objects.

unfortunately, the printing software couldn't decipher and export the black object for the backing because it had over 1000 pixels, so it could do anything but show me an error message...

SO! in the end i had to settle for a large format printed version of the colored pixelated image

Opera Assignment - Barber of Seville

Marcus Berry
THE BARBER OF SEVILLE



For my assignment I recently watched classical opera for the first time in my life, and I loved it. The opera I watched was called “Barbiere Di Siviglia” which translates to English as, “the Barber of Seville” and I picked this show to watch because of the famous Bugs Bunny cartoon that borrows its music and setting from this play. At first, I was hesitant about watching any classical opera to be honest, it was spoken and sung in Italian and happened to be two and a half hours long. When I watched it, however, it proved to be rather entertaining and not completely dissimilar to the comedic style and story elements of a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon. But being very story driven, I had a bit of trouble trying to implement interesting ideas that would complement the natural progression and events of the opera.
    First, I’ll discuss what I liked about the opera’s story and the ideas that I thought were important to include in the making of a game. As I said before, I chose this opera because I am a fan of Bugs Bunny cartoons, and I found it very interesting how similar the comedic tones of these two mediums were. For instance, the opening of the play introduces us to our heroes right at the beginning. And, not unlike a Bugs Bunny cartoon, they are singing songs and dancing about so that the audience recognizes they are fun and likeable, all while the lyrics of the song are telling us about the character’s plights. Our first hero is a lord, desperately in love with a peasant girl he has never met in person. The lord sneaks out into the town at night and hires a dozen musicians and locals to shine candlelight with mirrors on his face in order to make his song to her more endearing. The next song is that of Figaro, the Barber of the small town called Seville. Because it is such a small town, most everyone knows Figaro as he cuts everyone’s hair. Figaro establishes himself as a clever man, with not much money, but many friends. Our villain is mostly a caricature, as he seems to have little depth and only cares about the one thing that keeps our main characters from being happy. He is a wealthy doctor who has a live-in woman that he intends to marry even though she has no love for him. The woman, of course, feels trapped by her situation and is unable to freely pursue the mystery man that sang to her. The story is much like a fairy tale in style, and the plot points are based on conversations and the reading of letters and the like. The comedy is well sprinkled throughout the play; the doctor has a comically pompous portrait of himself hanging above his fireplace, Figaro sneaks into his house disarming his servants casually by using a chloroform rag and a pepper shaker to cause a sneezing fit, the male servant of the doctor is a constant victim of slapstick humor and by the end of the play is covered in bandages, several obvious-to-the-audience disguises were used to trick the villains into letting the lovers spend time together, the doctor’s internal dialog is said aloud and directly to the audience, and my favorite part was when Figaro switches places with the leading lady during a dance sequence and the doctor accidentally kisses all the way up his arm. The humor and the music carry the audience through the plot, and I feel they are what needs to be represented in the telling of this story.
    That being said, it’s difficult to try and convert this classical opera into a modern day video game, because it has virtually no violence, combat, or high octane action sequences. My first thought was to make it a game about being a barber, cutting hair, washing it, and using favors and cunning dialog to gain favors and information from customers. But to be honest, Figaro hardly does any hair cutting during the play. So I came to the conclusion that the best adaptation of this story would be in the style of old point-and-click adventure games made for PC by the game company Sierra, who made the King’s Quest series, the Space Quest series, and many others. Games like this had the main character rely on their wits and collect items to use in clever ways to get out of difficult situations. The world of the game would exist as a number of static screens viewed mainly from one side, much like the stage of a play, that you explore and learn about the more you play. In the story, the characters often have to find ways to get around the villains without them noticing, to deliver letters to each other and by making connections and getting people to go along with their plans and disguises. For instance, the lord would have to find the captain of the guard and win his favor with a bribe to get a uniform to sneak into the house. Or, Figaro would go through his friends in the village to collect a chloroform and pepper to keep from getting caught by the doctor’s servants. These item collecting and exploration segments would be broken up by minigames, such as cutting someone’s hair in the right way as a favor to receive a specific item, or segments when the protagonist must sneak through the doctor’s house while actively hiding from the villains’ direct line of sight by hiding behind curtains and pillars. I can imagine that if the doctor catches you in his house, he holds up his keys and rattles them about to call for his servant. The game itself would of course use music from the opera whenever possible and wherever they appeared originally in the play. The main character would be Figaro, the Barber of Seville, but you would also switch between playing as the lord and the lady often, each having their own specific inventory making it all the more necessary to have the characters meet each other and trade items.
    In conclusion, I enjoyed my first opera greatly and I can honestly imagine a game like this existing. To be honest, I feel that the character of Figaro reminds me a lot of Bugs Bunny and the casual way he disposes of comical villains. The music and comedy were entertaining and I look forward to seeing more this genre has to offer.