11.2 Final Project Initial Idea: "Nature Walk" Series

My final project dice, as depicted above, rolled "digital photography," "environment," and "found materials," and this immediately gave me the idea to do a photo series of "nature walks." These walks would largely consist of me taking my digital camera and going out into different areas (i.e. parks, forests, specific boroughs, notable landmarks/places in NYC, etc.) to find preexisting objects, things, or materials that can be arranged into artful compositions which speak to the nature of the places I visit. To me, this was the most fun and efficient way to stay true to the the dice because I will be letting the dice dictate my project in the most technical and literal way imaginable: I will be in various environments, taking digital photos of things and materials that I find and place together. 

Possible nature walks might include:

-Central Park (Manhattan)

-Inwood Hill Park (Manhattan)

-Prospect Park (Brooklyn)

-Forest Park (Queens)

-River Park (Bronx)

-Hunter Island at Pelham Bay Park (Bronx)

-Greenbelt Park (Staten Island)

11.1 Tinkercad Experience

Due to the fact that my first experience with any 3D modeling software was using Maya at my ZERO VFX internship in undergrad, I was already somewhat familiar with this type of program, and I found Tinkercad to be a much less intensive version of what I'd already been working with. In spite of this, "less intensive" is not necessarily a bad thing because the ease of access that Tinkercad affords is extremely enjoyable when compared to the high skill ceiling of Maya. When I originally started working with Maya, I had to undergo about a week of tutorials to even become comfortable with simplistic actions in the software (i.e. placing, transforming, and arranging shapes). Conversely, with Tinkercad, I was off to the races in about 10 minutes and I became engrossed in the creative experience far sooner. Additionally, I think Tinkercad offers an interface that is more lively and playful when compared to its more professional counterparts; rather than featuring exclusively muted or gray shapes in a manner akin to Maya, Tinkercad's shapes are colorful, fun and almost toy-like, effectively giving the entire interface a more playful aura. When working with Maya, I couldn't help but feel that I was doing work, but Tinkercad felt like I was actually playing and exploring--and this makes the software ideal for both working artists and the art classroom alike. One other small thing that I noticed was that that there is an immense difference between working with Tinkercad on a desktop computer, and performing the same actions on a laptop. When I went home to tweak my project, I found the loss of a conventional mouse to be a huge barrier in terms of accessibility. Everything from moving the shapes, to even moving the grid itself became far more difficult, however, this is merely a minor inconvenience and can be fairly easy to work around if home-based artists have the foresight to find or purchase a USB mouse. 

10.2 Peer Homework Feedback

The blogs I commented on were:

• Danielle (Laser-Cutting)
• Annie (Scratch Game)
• Ren (Stop-Motion Animation)
• Madison (Impact25 Project)
• Jackie (Digital Landscape Painting)
• Wanqiu (Stop-Motion Animation)
• Grace (Scanography)

10.1 "Toon Cube" Creative Process

For our laser-cutting project, Grace and I decided to come together to create something inspired by the universal theme of "character design." While Grace chose to explore characters that she had already created for her scanography project, I thought it might be interesting to explore a series of cartoon characters and assemble them into an cool cube. The following pictures and video depict my process from drawing, to cutting, to assembling:

9.2 The Scratch Experience

I found the Scratch experience to be extremely fun and relaxing, primarily because it has been a very long time since I've worked with a medium that I'm completely unfamiliar with. Most of the digital forms that we've worked with throughout the semester I've at least encountered or explored at some point, however creative coding is entirely new to me and I found it refreshing to be able to experiment without really knowing what the medium is capable of. A lot of my experimentation involved using the preset sprites and inputs to simply see what could be created, and in this alone, I already see how someone who is more experienced with the Scratch interface could use it to create wonderfully imaginative and interactive works. There's a plethora of awesome options for creatives to take advantage of: drawing/customization tools for the creation or modification of your own sprites, import tools to bring in existing images as sprites, an array of coding blocks with seemingly endless command options, and perhaps the most fascinating, a create-your-own block option where those who are familiar with coding can make their own input commands using the pre-established interface. For the art classroom, potential educators could use Scratch to:

1. Introduce students to simple animation concepts and interactive art creation through, code-guided drawing lessons: I feel as though Scratch's tools are extremely accessible (if time and patience is applied) and can provide a valuable middle-ground for students who have no experience with animation and interactive art. Softwares such as Adobe Animate and Maya have somewhat of a high-learning curve, even for students who are proficient in drawing, and it can be a bit daunting to jump into these because they are heavily reliant on the users having an existing knowledge base. Scratch, however, is not at all reliant on preexisting knowledge, and because of this, I believe it could be very effective to teach students through it. Students might quickly find thrill in drawing their own sprites and getting them to shift and transform via movement or appearance blocks that are triggered by event commands. As students become more proficient with these techniques, I could even see the potential for students to be able to create moving digital drawings, collages, or landscapes that also operate via these event commands. 
2. Explore game design with students from an artistic lens: Game design and development are often overlooked in the arts because the final product is heavily-reliant on computing and coding, however Scratch's user-friendly interface works to alleviate this issue and could potentially make game creation a more approachable endeavor for artists and creatives. Game design, when explored within an arts classroom, could take a variety of different forms. On one hand, students might try their hand at creating their own flash games, and Scratch conveniently facilitates this by offering tutorials that instruct in the creation of numerous game types from the ground up. On the other hand, students might take a more immersive approach and try creating interactive game applications that work in conjunction with the other forms of art that they are already creating. I envision this potential pathway taking the form of "interactive exhibits," wherein Scratch is used to code fun game-based interfaces that accompany works of art, in a manner similar to many tech-savvy museums that are already moving in this direction (e.g. The Cleveland Museum of Art from Post 1.3). Much like Scratch itself, the potential possibilities for this sort of creation are endless.

9.1 Wizards vs. Dragon Animated Comic