IMM Senior Thesis – Fall 2018

When working on my first prototype (creating 3D models) I focused on creating an aesthetic style that would come of as cartoonish and retro without being archaic. This resulted in smooth models with minimal complex geometry to muddy their silhouette. The end goal was to make a variety of objects that adhered to this style and I believe I accomplished my goal. The next step with these models would be to finish the rest and do some touch ups. I need to fill a room with a bunch of different models, so that will be something I’ll primarily work on over the winter break.

My first prototype for my visual music project was meant to show how I envisioned some of the base ideas for my final. Because of my limited knowledge in After Effects, I was not able to do anything spectacular or note worthy. I played a chromatic scale (notes ascending by half step, and descending by half step) with colored rectangles mapped to where I thought the notes might appear. After looking it over enough of times, I knew there were a lot of problems with it and the feedback I got complemented my thoughts.

My first criticism is that the colors should be: low = dark and high = light. I even tried to do this with the octaves of certain notes. For example, C4 was red and C5 was a lighter shade of red. However, I did not consider that the other notes in the scale would need to follow this rule as well. My original color scheme was the following:

C – red

C# – red orange

D – orange

D# – yellow orange

E – yellow

F – lime green

F# – green

G – green blue

G# – blue

A – indigo

A# – purple

B – pink

While it made most sense to work with a rainbow at first, it does not agree with my idea. For example, blue and purple are darker than yellow, even though they occur higher in the scale. In future iterations, I’m going to fix the color scheme so that the colors correspond with low and high notes.

Another criticism I received was the usage of the canvas. The way it is mapped currently, all notes would only occur on a rectangle and nowhere else in the entire canvas. Someone suggested that I use the height of the canvas for pitch and the width for time. Ideally, no shapes or colors would go backwards on the canvas like the demo showed. The notes would move along the canvas as though it were a timeline.

I received an interesting suggestion for the accessibility to the project. This particular concern dealt with color blindness and how I might cater to that. Unfortunately, I am not well informed on color blindness and the spectrum of color blindness, but in the final project I can choose different shapes to represent the notes, rather than colors. I wouldn’t replace the colors entirely, I might just make it a separate option for people to choose. I imagine something similar to sites that allow the option to toggle for color blindness.

I went about my prototype plan in a bit of a different order. I discovered that in order to successfully plan the physical environment to display my animations, I would need to have a clear storyboard first. For my first prototype, I created a storyboard of the animation that would play on the devices. I would utilize the fact that there will be multiple screens by having the animation cross from one device to another to create the sense of an extended world beyond the screens. Naturally, this made it a bit difficult to storyboard accurately, but I hope I conveyed it successfully!

The physical aspect of the project will involve a mountain environment constructed from discarded trash I find around campus (cans, boxes, etc.).  There will be LED lights scattered across the environment that will be connected to a motion sensor. I’m thinking that could be the data visualization aspect of my project, like for example perhaps each light represents a species that has gone extinct in the past 50 years or something.

The storyboard starts with a deer grazing peacefully on the bottom-most screen.

I consulted with a couple of my classmates as well as Professor Ault and Raya, and got positive responses, mainly regarding the idea of mixing media and the storyboard. This was really beneficial in assuring that I’m on the right track after altering my idea. I’m still looking for critiques so if anyone has any feel free to let me know!

For my first Prototype I chose to take a famous movie scene and make my own edits. The clip that I chose to use was the scene from the original Jurassic Park movie. Fortunately enough I was able to find a clip from that movie without any background music. This was important for my editing because music and instrumentals play vital roles in the editing process. The reason why I chose this as my first Prototype is to test out different editing techniques that I have learned during my research. I have learned that editing may be the most important part of filmmaking. The editor has total control over how the film is supposed to be perceived and received by the audience. You can take raw footage and make it to completely different genres buy specific coloring techniques and music selections.

Ultimately I hoped to see if my editing techniques would be successful. Since I was able to find a clip without any background music I was able to have complete control over the edit of the film. The original clip was meant to be light, funny, and not too serious. My goal was to take the scene and completely change The genre and overall feel of this clip. I chose to give this scene a darker and more thriller like feel. In order to do this I darken the scene by playing with the saturation and exposure I also added more blues and greens to the color to try to make it feel more dark and eerie. I Also found a instrumental off YouTube that was made for horror and thriller movies. By adding those edits I was able to change the overall feel of the scene.

During class I was able to receive some useful feedback on my prototype. Firstly many of my peers agreed that I was successful in changing this genre of the clip. They felt that the colors and music was helpful which was exactly what I changed so I knew that I was successful with those edits. One piece of advice that was given to me was to be careful with my exposure use. There were some scenes were it was too dark to make out what was in the actual clip. For example there was a shot of a helicopter flying over the ocean but it was hard to tell that it was flying over the ocean because the exposure was so low and it was too dark for that specific shot. Going forward I will be mindful to edit each shot accordingly and not make one overall edit to the clips, but I’ll be intentional with the exposure, colors, saturation, etc.

I presented my first prototype, the published Alexa skill “Seasoning Advice” so I could conduct some user testing and gauge their interest in my theme. Immediately, I noticed the amount of variation between different people when they interacted with my skill. Some would think it through and say the actual food they were cooking (ex. pasta) then categorized it as a region (ex. Italian), while others directly said the region. An error also popped up while reading back the spices. When the user hears the list of recommended spices, Alexa then prompts the user with a yes or no question, to either repeat the list or be taken back to the main menu. There was a case where someone responded with another region invocation instead, and Alexa ended up repeating the spice list for the previous request. These interactions gave me some insight as to how feasible this skill will be in real life scenarios. What if the user doesn’t know what region to categorize their food under? I should make this skill easier to navigate as well and create more safeguards to prevent the conversation from getting stuck in an endless loop.

This week, I had the chance to talk to my thesis advisor, Nivi. With her guidance, we were able to reestablish my original goals and vision for my spice rack. As designers, we must first and foremost understand the problem in order to create a meaningful solution. Therefore this week, I worked on getting back to the basics and shifted gears towards the hardware and functionality of the spice rack. Nivi gave me a bunch of valuable advice and taught me to look through a new perspective: how might my product fail? In most basic terms, my idea is a spice rack that shows you the spices you’re looking for. It will reveal spices and herbs by flavor, region, name, and favorite with an indicator that shows each location on the spice rack. Any additional features with the latest gadgets and gizmos will be great secondary goals to challenge myself with. I must be clear with my vision to prevent myself from being distracted with what goes on top.

For this Prototype I played around in Unity. Being unfamiliar with the engine, I decided to make a small demo to showcase a mastery over the basic skills. While the project was a success, I had problems exporting it to a separate device. From this prototype, although a little bumpy, I did gain basic skills in unity that could help in my final project. However, this also showed I might want to take alternative routes to the final project and consider other ways of representation such as storytelling. Overall, this provided me with a good starting point for the background of my thesis project.

For my first prototype last week, I drew up a “blue print” for the setup of my thesis project. I showed the screen – and what would be on the screen, the motion sensor, and the user’s hands.

I feel this will help me to better visualize my outcome and will be a good map for when I physically set up the project.

I know it’s not much of a prototype, but it’s always necessary to plan and sketch when working on a project. Plus, this is a digital fabrication type of project, which requires much coding, setting up equipment, etc. So, it would be difficult to do a whole lot within one prototype. However, for my second prototype this week, I have an actual program set up for my project (I will get more into detail about that in my next post).

What you ultimately did learn and how that impacted your plans of your project.

I obviously wasn’t able to attend the event, but Kelly (thank you Kelly) was able to display my prototype in class, which was then given feedback. The feedback/questions I received was very positive stating that I had a good start and a good plan.

The following were some students’ responses:

-What will define a “local musician”? (if they’re from the area or touring in the area)

-How far will this go in terms of accessibility? Just the Ewing area or global?

-What will be the “local” radius and can the user change it?

-How will this be GPS enabled?

-research “meteor” as another development tool

What I learned/need to figure out based on this experience is that I need to specify in my “about” page specifically what a local/diy musician really is. Maybe I should do a “define diy” part. I need to think of a name… My brother and I have been thinking a lot about this. Also, will I use GPS somehow… I need to look into this.

I was recommended using “meteor” to develop my app. I need to look into this and compare pricing/how easy it is to use. I think I’m on the right track with my project as long as I have my next prototype for next week!