Geometric Portraits

Poly 3! 

Hey everybody I'm back with another blog post, this time about geometric portraits ( A.K.A low poly

portraits! ) For our low poly portraits our faces have to have expression, and in class we were thinking are facial expressions universal? Honestly I some are universal and others not so much. Like the smile, you can always tell someone is happy when their eyes squint, their dimples appear, and their smiling from ear to ear. Same with common emotions like sad, tears rolling down the face, eyes red and their breathing heavily, mad eyes wide open, teeth gritting and eyebrows close together. Yet more complex emotions like confusion, embarrassed, and annoyed are not as universal as the common emotions because there are many different ways to express them. One country may identify disgust different from how other countries identify it because on their own experiences. So in conclusion I think common expressions are universal but complex emotions are not.

Ok at the beginning I mentioned the low poly portraits but never explained them. If you look at the pictures in this post you can see what low poly portraits actually look like. ( I made these ones! ) Your probably wondering how can I make them? I'll show you. First off: Take a picture of your face, make sure your face fills most of the camera space. Next: Upload it to photoshop, Make another layer called background and paint it white. Then use the line tool and outline only the left side of your face. Since you took your picture symetrical we can just use the left side of the face for the right side aswell. After Outlining your face it's time to fill your face with triangles! To help, click view > show > then click grid. Make sure when you are making your triangles they start on a line from the grid and end on a line from the grid. After you finish your triangles click on the first one, hold shift, go to the last line, right click and press "merge layers" ( This will make all your lines into one huge layer. )  When your done with that now you'll color your triangles! Click on your portrait layer and press command J to copy it. Rename your copy "Low Poly." Use the Polygon Lasso tool by Outlining your trianlge ( Clicking at each point ) and click filter, blur, then average. Then repeat the process until all of your triangles are colored. ( Yet instead of clicking filter, blur, average. Just do command F. ) Next use the Polygon Lasso tool to outline your face ( Just how we did in the beggining.) Then Click command J and name it "Right" for this is going to be the right side of your face. Just use the move tool and flip the picture, make sure it goes to your ear and there's no space between your two halves. After, double click on your outline and use a color overlay to turn it white. After that you're done!

Poly 1

There are many differences between Poly 1 and Poly 2. For example in Poly 1 we had to make an outline and then fill out the triangles the same way I told you how in the previous paragraph. In Poly 1 we also made our picture symmetrical so we could take half of our face and use it for the other side. With Poly 2 we didn't use an outline and we colored the triangles a different way. Instead of using Command F we used the eyedropper, selected the color and clicked Alt + Delete. We also kept the background and colored it.

See you guys next week! 🎸😝 Rock on! ➠ 🅚🅰🅘🅛🅔

Poly 2

Easy way

VERBAL LANDSCAPES

Nature is always impacting my life, in fact nature is having an impact on my life right now.
We breathe nature, eat nature and I'm starting to sound like a hippie. I live on a tropical island ( Kaua'i ) so unlike the big city areas everywhere's like a jungle. I like to go to the beach, watching the sun simmer against the waves. Nature definitely gives me a lot of inspiration, maybe if it's for a drawing, or maybe a song. Nature can also effect my mood. Looking at the glimmering sunrise or set as colors drift across the sky  gives me a feel of hope, creativity, and calms me. When thunder roars I get somewhat scared because it's super loud and comes out of literally nowhere... Going in the ocean and feeling the waves push me makes me feel relaxed and easy-going, and when I jump off a cliff as I go into the water it feels like all my troubles are slipping away. When I go on a hike ( like sleeping giant or hanakapiai ) feeling the mud seep between my shoes, running to the top, gives me a sense of strength. When I get to the top a sense of relief, astonishment, and "woah" because seeing houses turning into tiny ants really makes you think about how small everything actually is, and how in scale to the universe our planet is as small as a piece of sand. Mind blowing, I know. As you can tell nature mainly calms and soothes me, it's a really beautiful and breath-taking thing.

Now our project we have to write a poem about nature with visuals of timelapses and slow-mos.I suggest filming about what you say in your poem, ex: If your talking about the ocean and waves breaking, do a slow-mo of crashing waves.  Also when filming your timelapses should be wide shots and slow-mos should be close-ups. To create timelapses and slow-mos 1st you need a camera ( no duh..) To create a timelapse first go to your selected location. Then set up the camera with an enviromental tripod. ( AKA the ground or a bench ) If you want to do a timelapse of the sky use a slipper or a stick to tilt your camera up so the shot is 1/3s ground and the rest sky. Press record and let the camera film for 5 minutes or more, the longer you film the faster your timelapse will be. After your done import the clip into your editing software. ( iMovie, Final cut...) Place the clip in the timeline and find the option that says something like speed or retime editor. Click "Fast" and choose how fast you want your clip to be. Now your clip that was long and had clouds moving slow, is short and the clouds are moving faster. Time for slow-mos! First set up your close shot, using a environmental tripod. Press record and let your action happen. For example: A wave breaking onto the rocks. Film the wave coming closer, let it splash, and then wash away. After you've got some good shots go home and import the footage onto your editing software. Again, click on "Speed" or "Retime Editor" and this time choose slow instead of fast. Now your action that was really fast is now slow. If you need more help with making time-lapses and slow-mos links are at the bottom of the post!

During this project I've had good times and bad times. On Monday I was absent so I was somewhat behind in uploading my footage and recording my poem. The hardest part for me was deciding the song to play in the back ground because 1. It had to be royality free music, 2. The songs on the website weren't quite nature-y and wasn't exactly what I was looking for. It spent me days and night trying to find the right song that wasn't too annoying, to slow, or to crazy.  My favorite part would have to be filming because I got to go to the beach and enjoy my time.

See you guys next time! :p

Links

timelapse how-to

More on slow-mos

 For the critique 10 people gave me fours because they think that I exceeded the basics of what is expected to do. 12 people gave me threes because they thought I did what was expected and nothing more. 6 people gave me twos because they thought I did less than what was expected, ( Which I don't agree with) I agree with the people who gave me threes because I definitely did what was required. I also agree with the people who gave me fours because in some parts (Like the text and visuals) I really exceeded. Three people also nominated me for best overall video so thank you for that! :)

Poetic Personal Statement

Whoa, long time no see! I'm a 7th grader now (whaaaatt?!) time goes by really fast doesn't it? Poetry is kinda the new buzz in my classes, we are talking about it in english ( and listening to Hamilton! aka an awesome musical ) we are also focusing on poetry in G.T. as well. Poetry to me is a way to creatively express yourself, you can write about your own personal experiences, historical events, your dreams, basically anything can be written in poetry! Poetry is written in verses not paragraphs, and poetry has more of a free-flow. To me poetry is like a short novel. Basically writing motions, activities, events, and emotions into a rhythmic lines. Poetry is like a second language to me. Poetry is awesome because you can relate to it, write about different points of views, and fit many feeling into 4 small verses.

Everybody has goals, even if your not 100% sure about what they might be, you probably have an idea of something that you want to learn or do. Here's my poetic statement.

Learn to work through the hard things in life.

During you strong and weak moments, smile.

Learn to understand others even if it takes awhile.

To win a couple Oscars,

To travel the world and explore what everywhere has to offer,

 and to live a life of joy and excitement.

Basically it's about some of my goals in life and what I want to achieve.

For me it is pretty hard to write poetry with rhyme, if you're lucky there will be a word that fits with exactly what you want to say. Sometimes if I try to rhyme I lose the point of the poem. Or the idea kinda switches around. In my 2, 3, 4, and 5 line of poetry I used the A, B method of rhyming. The A rhymes are smile and awhile, and the B rhymes are Oscars and offer. While writing poetry using rhyme makes it flow more and easy to say. Rhythm in poetry is a key thing to have, it keeps the poem moving and just like rhyme, makes your writing easier to read. I didn't really used a lot of rhythm in my poem, but I did start some lines with the same word to try maintain a beat.

On the bottom is my text layer, sketch layer, then my finished product, enjoy! :P
 

New year, New post.

Hi guys! I'm back, and now in 7th grade! In our school each grade is color coded and the 7th grade color is black so i'm dying whenever I go outside... but the seventh grade area is nice and shaded, so i'm happy. Summer was really fun this year, a lot happened like starting bandwagon ( It's really fun you should check it out )  and remember in the beginning of the summer I was in a film camp? ( The post before this ) Well me and Gillian's  video 10 things to do instead of being on your phone is going to air on hiki no! I don't know the exact details of when it's going to air because we need to improve the video and work on it to make it better than it ever was. Anyways I'm excited to be in G.T again this year and it's gonna be different helping out all the 6th graders. See you guys in my next blog post! :p 

Summer media camp 2016!

 Summer is here! My summer so far has been great, I went to queens bath, hanalei, salt pond, mini golfing , (with Mele) and many other places. So currently i'm participating in PBS hawaii/ hiki no film camp at Cheifess middle school (CKMS) In this class we created blogs which we posted our videos and pictures. Go check it out, one of the videos are pretty funny... 

Summer Camp Blog!

G.T Music Video Finale!

 

Aloha, Bonjour, Ciao, Salut, Kon'nichiwa, and Hi. Can you believe this is the last blog post of the year! Bye 6th grade then hello 7th grade! Time flies by faster and faster every year right? We also have our last project that is a music video! Since this is our last project of the year, we will be combining everything we learned from G.T and putting into our music video. ( For example: in the beginning were gonna have a cover made with Photoshop.) Finally you probably have been wondering... what song our we doing? Well, me Katy and Alexis are doing Thriller by Micheal Jackson! Our story for our music video is somewhat like the original music video. So there is this girl ( Me ) walking alone in the woods  ( on Friday the 13th! ) She hears creepy noises, and next something comes out of nowhere and scares her, then she gets taken away. Of course then theirs a whole zombie flash mob and plenty of lip-syncs. I'm not gonna go into full detail because I don't wanna spoil the whole thing. Our story matches our lyrics because you see what you hear. For example: Night creatures crawl and the dead start to walk in their masquerade, You see zombies walking everywhere attacking people. It was really fun getting everyone to get in a flash mob, but it was kinda hard 'cause I had to teach them all the moves and help one-by-one. Then we had another member, Christina join our group because the original group didn't work so well. It was somewhat of a challenge to fit her in the video since we already filmed everything, but in the end it worked out.

Usually while watching a music video, the shots change quickly. The same for our music video. Our visuals change very quickly to make sure the viewers stay focused on our video and are always paying attention. We are not fully done editing, but so far my favorite fast edit "montage" is the part where Katy puts her hand over my mouth and then it awkwardly repeats. It's pretty funny to me. Another well-edited fast montage is when we our doing our thriller dance, the hardest part was getting the moves to match exactly with the lyrics. (But I'm pretty good at doing that so we were fine) There's also the part where all the zombie heads turn around with the beat. (We got that idea from the original Thriller video.) We also added different effects to the beat to, So far editing has gone well, we still have to get our cover picture in and finish the ending. Yesterday (Wednesday 5/17/16) our group was having a lot of trouble with the green screen during recess, we were freaking out. Overall I think our editing will be done well and I hope you think so too. 

Like I've said before, the music video is our last production of the year so we will be adding everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) we've learned this past year. First off we used photoshop to create our cover image. It said the title in a cool font, a picture of Christina, Katy, Alexis and I. We made the background a creepy forest-setting so it matches our theme. ( Scary-ish ) We filmed a lot of extra scenes so we for sure had something. My dad filmed a lot of the shots that were on the sleeping giant trail because most of our scenes had all of us in it at the same time. He did some camera movement which was great, and he knew how to do the shots we told him to do which made filming easier. We all did some editing, the girls helped picked which shot we should do next, what filter we should use, and if we should do a picture-in-picture edit. Alexis helped with some of the green screen, Katy did the part of the end and added transitions. I did most of the editing because I can edit super-duper fast and efficiently. This video showcased our best work because we had great expression in the clips, our scenes always have changing shots with filters,  slow-mo or fast effect, cool transitions, awesome title page, and fun dance moves! I really loved our music video, and I'm proud to be ending our last 6th grade G.T project on a high note.

this is what we used for our green screen

Hey over here! 
P.S bloopers were hilarious! Everyone in it was fine having those clips of them in there. 
Here's the links to my teammates blogs! I might post over the summer but don't count on it... See you guys in 7th grade!! o.o
VIMEO VIDEO COMING SOON!

• Katy
• Alexis
• Christina



"met rihana today" 

• Thriller lyrics

RESULTS

Animated Life Lessons

Welcome back guys! I know that its been three weeks, but we had to focus all on animating... Remember our animated GIFs? Well with that knowledge some teammates and I came together and created an animation! Whew let me tell you animation is hard! In each on of scenes our teammates character traits are showing. For instance Kyla is caring and supporting so she fixes the "problem" between me and Elijah. I'm forgiving and funny so later in our animation I say "Hey lets go play some soccer." (Which you'll understand if you watch it.) and Elijah is kind and understanding, we show that by telling him our side of the story and our point of view. Sometimes in scenes we exaggerate emotions and what peoples reactions could be, like I get mad at Elijah because he "hit" me with a soccer ball. The story exaggerates that by us getting in a mini fight and then storming off after. We exaggerate us getting along by having a fun game of soccer. Finally this animation exaggerates all of our emotions, feelings, and reactions that our characters have.

Every story has some taste of humor, here's ours. Our story isn't based around comedy and don't have any jokes or puns in it. Most of our humor comes from the visuals, because when working with puppet warp things get a little ridiculous. One time I just randomly made Elijah's' leg bend as if it were circle and it looked pretty funny. During class sometimes I catch myself messing around with puppet warp. It's just really entertaining to do ridiculous things with your characters. (And now that everyone is about done with their animating, we go around just laughing at puppet warp.) Anyways during our animation sometimes our bodies bend weirdly and its just impossible not to crack up. For Instance, in scene three I lift my arms up but it bends really funny, and one time Elijah kicks a soccer ball and It flies all funny due to shaky animation... :P but don't worry there is more to our animation than just funny visuals, there's also life lessons. Our main lesson is to imagine what it's like in their shoes, what is their point of view, how do they feel about it, I think you get the point. Sometimes we expect people to feel the same way we do about something, we wouldn't think they would have a different reaction. Yet when they do we misunderstand. Sometimes that can lead to fights and ignoring each other but then you need to forgive, forget, and move on! Another little life lesson is to always support your friends, and try to help each other up, not push them down.

Kyla and Elijah aren't complete strangers to me. In yearbook I did a commercial with Elijah, and sang with Kyla, but Mr. Sanderl said team up with people you've never worked with in G.T. so I thought why not?   I think I chose good teammates because I know them a little bit so I'm not afraid to talk to them, but their not my closest friends so we don't goof around. (Even though in yearbook I work with Mele on all my projects and we get them done...) We worked pretty good, got all of our scenes done with efficiency. Our biggest challenge was probably getting the last couple scenes in there before the deadline, but we didn't have any major problems. Another challenge was keeping photoshop organized and not messing up layers. After a while it gets kinda annoying by adding a new layer with each and every frame. Kyla, Elijah, and I had many good moments during our production time, we all had good ideas, and we all communicated well. I think our best production time was the final stretch a couple of days before the deadline, and we were all fixing, editing, and adding things to the video. Either one at a time or all at once our team would edit and add effects to our video. In the end I was glad that me and my team successfully finished our project, and we earned 1st place for the best animation! I'm proud of our animation and I hope you are to. This is Kaile, and I'll see you in two weeks!

Links!

~Kylas Blog!

~Elijahs Blog