I’ve been doing a lot of research on what I am going to use and how I am going to start this project. I am a bit skeptical since I don’t have too much knowledge with coding especially with new languages. Not sure if I am using C++ or C# yet, but I will be using Maya, Unity and possibly Blender as well. I have found some helpful resources through text books, websites, and friends with experience in these fields. I am looking forward to a challenge and definitely won’t have any time for breaks.
I am going to be creating 3d models in Maya of the first couple of pages of my life, starting from when I was a kid to around my age now. Each page will be a different age to show what it was like growing up as an artist, especially in my family of business people.
I will be learning Blender since I don’t have access to 3ds max without a PC. This will help create the detailed 3d objects so my projections through AR will be strong and crisp. Not sure how to start writing the scripts for Unity, but I will start off with all the models from scratch along with a storyboard.
I’ve been researching the Unity manual to figure out how I can get Virtual Reality working for my prototype. It’s mostly trying to figure out how I can get it working with Windows Mixed Reality for my own testing purposes, and with the Oculus Quest, for final use in the showcase. It would, of course, be ideal to have it work with different types of headsets. It seems like getting it to work with Windows Mixed Reality will be more difficult, and it may be hard to switch back and forth between Windows Mixed Reality and Oculus Quest in between testing. The default seems to be Oculus, which is good since I’d want to use that in the end anyway. I don’t know many people with experience in Unity, but I do know a few friends who are good at coding. I’m definitely going to need their help throughout this process. As for working in Maya, I’m still fairly new to that as well, and thankfully I have many friends with a lot of experience in Maya and can help me with nearly anything when I get to that portion of the project.
I’ve researched much more about the exact effects of domestic violence (DV), or also known as intimate partner violence (IPV), based on scientific research. It seems that emotional or psychological abuse can be more damaging to a person’s mental health and cause more emotional distress than other forms of abuse. It’s hard to tell for sure, but it seems to influence long-term depression. They were 2.06 times as likely to experience minor depression, and others were 1.75 times as likely to experience severe depression compared to women who experience no abuse. It seems like over time, after about 5 years, is when there seems to be less severe depression over those who recently left an abusive relationship. So emotional abuse can really have long-term negative effects on someone and their mental health. It affects so much externally as well, such as credit issues (78%), more money problems (74%), and even some struggle with employment. There was a broad range of 25-50% of women experiencing issues with finding housing. Emotional abuse can really turn someone’s life upside down since it can be such a traumatic event for someone.
I haven’t been able to learn much this week, again something that you probably did not want to hear, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything. I pretty much conducted the same research methods did last week because its all the same in terms of consistency. I read more of Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” and he gets more into detail about how comic books as a whole can be interpreted as another language. Pannels don’t necessarily have to be orchestrated in a simple format as being included in a box, but rather they are orchestrated in many different shapes and sizes. This was a revelation form my past experiences making comic books as a kid where I would not just use the simple box form but as I continued to make some more, I decided to reshape the panels in different sizes.
Another thing I discovered was a forum page where users of the unity engine specifically tied to the application I’m planning on using have voiced their concerns and questions. I was able to make an account and soon I will be engaging in the community as a way of acquiring some help with my project. This will be incredibly useful seeing as how most of the people in the forum have used the application before and have had experience with its interface and many features it has.
That has been pretty much the extent of this week’s research. So far what i had gathered will help in the coming weeks
My second week of research was a little more tightly packed with other class assignments so I wasn’t able to research as much as I would’ve liked to. However, I did do a bit more research into both more mythology and into the more technical aspects of my project.
I decided for this week I would like to focus a lot more on Japanese mythology. There are a lot of different gods and demons in Japanese mythology. However unlike Greek mythology, a lot of the demons are not individual characters, rather they’re more akin to different species or races of monsters. However, through my research I did come across different stories of different heroes fighting villains. What interested me was a lot of these stories came from kabuki theatre plays which has a distinct costume and art style that I might want to incorporate into my redesigns of each character. In particular, there’s the story of Kintaro/Kintoki and his journey to kill the Oni(demon) king Shuten Douji. There was also an interesting story regarding the gods Amaterasu, the sun goddess and her brother Susano-o, the god of storms. After killing one of her attendants, Amaterasu falls into a depression and prevents the sun from shining. Susano-o was exiled from heaven and only allowed back in after slaying the multi-headed serpent Yamata-no-Orochi. He ends up killing him and forging a sword with his spine or back. There is also another story with the toad sage Jiraiya and his rivalry with his former pupil Orochimaru, the snake sage. I thought this dynamic was pretty interesting considering that snakes eat toads, making Jiraiya a sort of underdog hero. In fact, there seems to be a big theme of serpents being villains in these mythologies. I’m guessing it is because snakes are often poisonous and dangerous, leading to a natural aversion to them.
I haven’t done too much research on Norse mythology, I plan on doing more during my free time. However, I do like the rivalry between the well-known gods Thor and Loki. Norse mythology is pretty fascinating in that a lot of these characters, including villains make reoccurring appearances, particularly Loki. While he can be considered evil, especially as he is the main leader in the prophetic war of Ragnarok against the gods, he is a trickster god, who often causes less harmful mischief just to mess with people. I hope to read a bit more on this mythology further in the week.
I also decided to look up a tutorial on motions graphics to try to gain a bit more information on the medium. I haven’t finished it but it has been pretty helpful and has been teaching me the basics. I also plan to watch more of this tutorial during this week.
Research plan update 2 is mostly just the same research as the first update where i am looking up more useful information for making my game. The first thing i researched was other movements and animations in games that i could recreate for my game. I also looked up some 3d models that i could use as reference for making my characters and that helped me to find a shape for all of them.
I thought it was best to make them look for like cartoons so that it is better to model them faster but still give them good looking details to show off all the things that i have learned.
I also picked up another book for game design to help me out and learn some more c# to make the game perform better. Such as character selection and menus and starting and stopping the game. I have also researched how i could use math to figure out some codes to make the game perform how i want it to perform.
I made the decision to use Python this week, due to its similarities to Java and C++ (versus LISP and Nyquist) and a large amount of applicable libraries. In particular, I found a library called Keras that was written to handle code for neural networks, making my job to program one much easier. As a introduction, I watched a two hour video that explained neural networks and showed basic applications of them with Keras. In addition to Keras, I came across a library called Music21 through an article on generating music with Keras. Music21 appears to make inputting MIDI scores into neural networks much easier.
I also thought a bit more on the data I plan to use. At the earlier prototyping stages, I figured it would be a good idea to write a bunch of short, simple songs myself, just to keep things more basic for scratching the surface of Keras. However, once I get past that stage, I will need some MIDI scores of well known songs so that I will have a clearer goal to test the output’s accuracy with. I have been thinking of albums I could use as test sets for this stage; preferably albums that have a consistent sound. Two albums that have come to mind are AC/DC’s Back in Black and Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory. A part of my mind wonders if I will need bigger test sets, since albums tend to have only around 10 to 15 songs, but I don’t think that will be a glaring issue.
One simple idea for testing the accuracy of songs generated by the program involves asking a simple question: “What band does this sound like?” I would have to ask other people this question instead of myself, since their answer would be unbiased. The biggest issue with this method is that it is a lot easier to make a neural network if the accuracy is given in a percentage, rather taking in one of two possible answers. Therefore, I think the best way to going about testing for accuracy is by using this question: “From a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being most accurate, how much does this sound like *band name*?”
Here’s a list of the links I referenced in this post:
This week I focused on researching strategies for running effective ads through the Facebook ads manager. It was hard to find any up to date academic sources on the subject. I watched videos on YouTube, but the most useful sources I found was talking to 2 people I met who run digital ads as a side business.
One person I interviewed has a digital marketing consulting company that he runs while in school. The other freelance manages ads for independent artists. They were both able to give me solid advice for running ad campaigns.
Make many variations of a single ad and test them. This means for each ad I make, I’ll create 5-10 different versions with slightly different messages or creative. then I’ll run them all with low budgets. This will give me data to see what is the most effective variation of the ad, and I can put a bigger budget into that.
Instagram stories are the most effective platform for my target market. Instagram stories engage the user because it fills the screen 100% and the user is guarenteed to view the content.
Targeting. Know your audience. Adjust the targeting if things aren’t working. Am I trying to reach people in a specific part of the world? Or do I want to target the cheapest markets for lower CPM.
Experience is the best way to learn. Doing research will only take you so far. In my last campaign I had CPC of $.40 in the United States. I want to try to lower it to .20 by testing the ads and having better targeting.
I’m running an ad campaign in November to get more experience before next semester. I will report the results of that campaign tip make sure I’m on the right track.
NASA’s version of virtual reality, which featured the first instance of a “data glove,” a mechanized glove that tracked hand and finger movements and implemented them into the virtual space. This can be compared to the controllers that come with VR sets like the Oculus Quest today.
During my research into Virtual Reality this week, I learned a lot about how educational the resource can be when utilized correctly. For some background into the field, Virtual Reality has actually existed since the 1950’s when Morton Heilig created this room called a Sensorama – basically a movie theatre that utilized all five senses. Later in the 60’s a professor at MIT would make the first VR helmet that we think of today, with the awesome name “The Sword of Damocles” (even though it was technically too heavy to wear on its own and had to be hung from the ceiling). The idea gained popularity and even groups like NASA began to experiment with virtual reality, although most were basic approximations because the technology of the 70’s, 80’s, and even 90’s (with the beautiful mess that is Nintendo’s Virtual Boy) was simply not there yet to recreate a true sense of “reality.”
By the mid 80’s and 90’s virtual reality had been picked up by smaller groups who all thought they could do it better, in particular video game companies who thought they could revolutionize how we game. Needless to say they were all terrible. My favorite particularly bad headset was Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, which used only blinding red LED lights in a sort of “virtual depth” experience theorized to cause migraines and lazy eyes in children. On top of all that it still used a controller and was stationary, so not exactly the virtual reality they were advertising it to be. I include this as a note to myself on what Not to do in my game – don’t make a game that’s physically hard to look at, don’t rush out a product, and don’t make something that no one wants.
The wonderful display of the Virtual Boy acted like binoculars, where gazing into the eyepiece combined the separate images shown to the left and right eye to make a game with depth. By the time players could see the projected depth however, they were probably looking away to stop their eyes from watering due to the blinding red on black design. Who was asking for this?
Today the website Virtual Reality For Education collects articles about the multitude of ways Virtual Reality can stimulate our learning experiences, from teaching about natural disasters by putting the player in the middle of tornado touchdown to training public speaking skills by placing the player in an professional office setting (http://virtualrealityforeducation.com/). It can be used by medical students or professionals to study human anatomy hands on and to scale rather than reading about it in a textbook, or help autistic children learn in a ways catered to their specific needs. The versatility and usability of VR has bloomed in the last decade, but when it comes to its application as a game console the same can’t be said. While some like the Oculus Rift have been popular, they’re still not mainstream due to high prices and lack of a larger game library. Therefore, the application of virtual reality as an educational device is what my project should focus on to be the most successful it can be. While I’m still making a game, the cryptid museum will educate and thereby lean into what makes VR worth the time to implement. Further, by knowing the past of VR we can peer into its future – it’s obvious humans are entranced by virtual reality and its a concept we’ve returned to over the past seven decades. I don’t see it going out of interest any time soon, especially not as technology develops exponentially closer to our concept of “reality.” Maybe VR is not in its prime yet and its technology still needs a decade or two to refine itself, but smaller niche studies have tapped into its potential as a way to relearn reality. Hopefully the use of virtual reality in my cryptid museum can allow the player, even for just a minute or two, to relearn their reality.
This week I did an architectural study of Tokyo and some of its encompassing prefectures as I desire to base my project’s setting in this area. The areas I visited and photographed include Shibuya-ku, Harajuku, Shimo-Kitazawa, Akihabara, and Ikebukuro. Looking closer I found that city architecture (especially Tokyo’s) is extremely complicated. For example, I noticed that often there are certain shops that are located either below or in between other bigger shops that are easy to miss if you aren’t vigilant. There is also definitely a cultural difference between the main streets of Shibuya and the hidden side streets as each one can have a different feel and different architectural look. I feel that each side street had it’s own personality and audience which was something I was not expecting at all.
The way manga and Intellectual properties are marketed within Japan is astounding. You can find characters from various series and franchises on a variety of items and objects. From small stationery to T-shirts and merchandise to large trucks driving through cities, the methods of how these properties are marketed is vast. Some franchises like pokemon can transcend age gaps and market a massive variety of products. I visited every major pokemon center in Tokyo and found every last one to be extremely filled with people from all age groups buying merchandise such as pins, T-shirts, trading cards, and plushies. The best idea I got from this was possibly adding pins and art cards to my project list for next semester.
Harajuku in Shibuya was easily one of my favorite locations as it considered to be a center of fashion and youth which turned out to be true. You can find many shops that sell higher-end clothing along Omotesando Avenue, along with hypebeast and hypebeast-Esque brand shops along Takeshita Street. Along Takeshita Street, you can also see lots of youth in their trendiest and most unique outfits which was the highlight of the study for me. Shops here are usually multi-leveled and sell pieces for around 6,000 JPY to 25,000 JPY (around 55 USD – 240 USD respectively). While in Shibuya I also discovered “fruits” magazine, which takes a look at Harajuku street fashion. I hope to use this publication for a good chunk as aesthetic-related research.
I’ve been learning a bit more about the size of the video industry and what is currently happening with video in general. In designing the idea that I had for the LLC I found that I was missing statistics. This came when I was in my class for media entrepreneurship. In this class we have been learning about different types of businesses, how they operate, and where they get their funding. In learning about funding I realized that having investment opportunity is always a possibility down the line. Then I thought that If I were to try to get investments tomorrow, what statistics or data would I use to get someone’s interest? I decided that I would look to the current state of small businesses and the video industry. Because these are my two main topics I want to learn as much as I can about both. I learned that there are over 800,000 small businesses in New Jersey alone. In my reading I found that that there is a high percentage of small businesses who lack social media, and content. This coupled with what I have learned about video leads me to believe this is a viable business opportunity. From what I read this week I gathered that the video industry has been growing the past few years. I learned that spending on video ads has gone up tremendously and is projected to continue growing over the coming years. In general, video is becoming more popular, with some statistics stating that 45 percent of people watch more than an hour of videos on Facebook or YouTube every week. Also, one third of online activity is watching video. Next, 81 percent of businesses use video as a marketing tool. Lastly, one of the most important statistics I have found is that mobile video consumption rises by about 100 percent every year. This data says a few things about marketing, business ownership, and video. It shows a direct correlation between having video content, and the success of a business. It seems that businesses that aren’t using video to advertise and have no video content are not succeeding, and businesses that do produce video content and market video are succeeding. I would say that the reason for this is seen in the consumption of video. The stat mentioned above shows that people are watching more on their phones than they used to. The way we use our phones and social media has dramatically changed over the past few years with the introduction of “unlimited data” and more access to the internet. Now people can stream video on their phones seamlessly wherever they go. What all this means to me is that video is growing and now is a good time to get involved in it in one way or another.
