Bump Mapping

I just figured out how to do the bump-mapping. Not really that exciting and it's something I should have learnt ages ago... But now I've taught myself and it just makes the rust look so much more realistic. WOO

Textures

Problems with my model, it was easy enough to create the polygons (lets face it, it's pretty basic) but now I'm starting to texture it and it isn't quite working... For the main body I used a sphere which I stretched to make into a capsule-ish shape. But now, trying to get the texture onto it and that just stretches too... Not quite what I want :/

Update. I replaced the sphere with a cylinder and used soft-select to bulge the ends. Easy enough solution.

Make A Claim And Substantiate It

With the recent globalisation and synchronisation of our modern consumer world, people often become much less aware of their actions in a world where one design feature often means the same thing in any context, such as the use of a door where a doorknob would afford twisting and a flat door would afford pushing. In this project, I shall look into the development of the objects which we use every day in our modern world from the viewpoint of “affordances” and how users are able to recognise how an object is used as a result of repetitive application of design solutions.

I will argue that this acceptance for reuse of the same techniques in our everyday lifestyle is causing the pubic to spiral into a life devoid of any real, thoughtful interaction with their surroundings. Imagine the turmoil which would occur if anyone were to come across a door with a doorknob which had to be pushed upward instead of the normal twisting motion. We are no longer truly experiencing and learning through trial and error, rather being told that there is only one way to do things.

I shall evaluate this theme with consideration for the theme of design and the social – what designers can learn from sociologists and anthropologists. With reference to “The Design of Everyday Things,” written by cognitive scientist Donald Norman, I shall demonstrate the simplicity of design in our lives and relate it back to an anthropological view into the inner workings of our day-to-day mindset using also “The Evolution of Useful Things” by Henry Petroski, an engineer who researches success and failure in design. I believe that only through a sociological study can we truly understand the depths of influence which everyday design has had on modern society.

Figure 1 Diversity of fork designs. (Petroski, H. 1992)

When it comes to the design of commonplace objects, we often don’t realise the fact that things were never always the same way as they are now. Over the course of time, different people and different societies have dealt with different problems and different solutions, where many of these problems have arisen from the “solutions” of a previous generation. Henry Petroski sums it up when he postulates an alternative to the idea that “form follows function” where he says that, instead, “form follows failure”. He accompanies this idea with reference to the development of the fork. There have been many different iterations of the fork with different shapes, quantity of tines, grip sizes and lengths. So why now do we often only see the standard length, four-tine fork everywhere we go? Is this the ultimate final product? Or have we just accepted the design which was most popular at the time of modern globalisation, making more people resistant to changing something so widespread. How would we react to being given one of the less common forks displayed in the example?

Another example which we use every day in the modern world is the computer keyboard. This was developed during the creation of the typewriter and the common “QWERTY” layout was invented by Christopher Scholes. He designed the layout in such a way that the most common two letter combinations were on the opposite sides of the keyboard, purposefully hindering the writer from being able to formulate text too quickly for fear of the typewriter jamming. This may have been relevant at the time of the typewriter, but why has it survived to be still in use in our modern times, even though there is no longer any problem with people being able to type as fast as possible on a normal computer. This is a theme which is covered in "The Evolution of Useful Things" as Donald Norman goes over the psychology behind failure and success of an object. The idea is that society, now that it has become more globalised, is less able to bring about change because of its lack of willingness, thus the hardest task for a designer is implementing change onto an object which is already commonplace for an audience which is resistant to change, even if it may be for the better.

References:

Norman, D. (1998). The Design of Everyday Things. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Petroski, H. (2010). The Evolution of Useful Things. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Character Behaviour

In my minds eye I can see how I imagine the character is going to move about and act. Little touches details are what I consider to be the most important for making a film really good. I'm thinking things like during th period that the character is depressed, it will give slight jumps like the toy it is based off of (like if it was crying and hiccoughing) Things like that are what makes it for the viewer.

Deadlines kindof snuck up on me a little bit

Developed Character

Planning Changes

Writing down thoughts right now, making plans to change up the character... I'm going to make the legs longer and spindly so that it works more like the wind up toy that it is based on. I think that the original legs made it look less realistic, as in : "Why is the character moving like that, I don't understand???". Another thing is that I need to get rid of the blatant eye for something more subtle and not fabricated out of thin air. One of the biggest mistakes which people seem to be making is that they are just giving their characters random parts for no justified reason or inspiration. Also I want to change the inside musical contraption to something more mechanic than cartoonish, just for the more realistic qualities.

Character Concept So Far

Here's a photo of my sketches.

And I'll type out the paragraph just to make sure you can read it.
This is the rambling of someone who stayed up late because he finally had a 1AM stroke of genius...

Creature running around frantically because it's lost and confused and depressed because it doesn't know what its purpose in life is. It's on a busy street walk trying to get peoples attention to help but they keep just walking past. Then someone bumps it and the button is accidentally pressed which causes him to open up and reveal a beautiful inside which starts to play music and the creature is overjoyed that it has found it has found its purpose, people are stopping and noticing it. The creature is jumping around excitedly everywhere but then it trips, falls and breaks. Music stops, creature is left as people don't care about it anymore. :(

Material, Movement, Meaning

These are the aspects I have chosen for my character.

Material - Metal
I realise it's vague, but the idea is that the creature will be ugly rusted metal on the outside and pristine chrome on the inside (you'll understand when I write down the story idea/ draw the actual character)

Movement - Wind up toy?
I want it the have a robotic movement, because it will be like a man made object trying to find it's purpose. Didn't want to just write robot though cause that's too vague.

Meaning - Music player

Any kind of music player really... The main point is that the character provides musical enjoyment to people.

Photo not really necessary.

Idea Making, Actually Really Hard!

Photo of the lists I've made for character aspect ideas.

World Of Drawing Tablets

Pre Production Assignment

Gotta say just to start off this project that I'm really psyched because it's mostly just drawing and I love just drawing and haven't done that for uni related things for a while so yeah I'm really really happy with this project and I was just in the lecture all like:

Identifying A Standpoint And Support

With the recent globalisation and synchronisation of our modern consumer world, people often become much less aware of their actions in a world where one design feature often means the same thing in any context. In this project, I shall look into the everyday design of our modern world from the viewpoint of “affordances” and how they are perceived by users.

I will argue that this acceptance for reuse of the same techniques for our everyday lifestyle is causing the pubic to spiral into a life devoid of any real, thoughtful interaction with their surroundings. We are no longer truly experiencing and learning through trial and error, rather being told that there is only one way to do things.

I shall evaluate this with consideration for the theme of design and the social – what designers can learn from sociologists and anthropologists. With reference to “The Design of Everyday Things,” written by cognitive scientist Donald Norman, I shall demonstrate the simplicity of design in our lives and relate it back to an anthropological view into the inner workings of our day-to-day mindset. I believe that only through a sociological study can we truly understand the depths of influence which everyday design has had on modern society.

Works Cited

Norman, D. (1998). The Design of Everyday Things. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Materiality Hand-ins

Is It Too Late To Change???

So... I found something the other night, it's a really cool script. I didn't really know what it was when I found it, don't even know HOW I found it... But what it does is that you take an object in maya and it breaks it into it's polygons and causes those polygons to break off and blow away. It's actually ridiculously simple, does all the work for you, but it also looks really intricate and impressive.

SO it haunted me all night and I kinda just came up with a new, still basically the same, composition. I just want to cut down my existing idea and then add in the particles concept. So the particles are at the start and the end, they come together to form the cog, which goes along and morphs into the snowflake, which then goes along to dissipate into its particles again.

Honestly it's not any more work than I already have to do, less actually I think... I just think that it will style down my animation to less of a jumble.

And I know a good way to justify it too! I looked at the art of one of the precedents Hannah Höch and I like how her art is formed of multiple pieces coming together to form the final overall work. That is how I justify my use of the PolyDebris script.