Final Week - Comm Lab Final

For my final project I created a demonstrational video for the Drain Scoop (a patented ice scoop with slits to drain water) and incorporated a Flash animation into the video for the finale. Everything was done from scratch and I will explain the process for each step.

The Flash Animation



The background image of the scoop w/ splashing water was an original photograph that I took and photoshopped into a clean, light-blue action shot reminiscent of an Evian Water ad campaign. I then imported this image into Flash and added a motion tween with fade to the text and logo that you see there. The water drop effect that's in there consists of a couple of rings that are 99% transparent and grow outwards from the center of the background. When the animation was complete I exported it as an avi movie file to later implement it into the actual video.

The Video

I recorded the video in my photo studio and imported it into Adobe Premiere. I created clips of what I liked and put them together. Then I altered the colors, adding a nice blue hue. With the colors set I then rendered the file and opened it up in Adobe After Effects, which is what I used to insert the light streak effect that you see passing through the scoop's slits. Once this was rendered, I saved it as an avi file. I then opened up the very user-friendly Windows Movie Maker and imported the video avi and the flash animation avi and added it to the timeline. I also put in the text blocks describing the scoop which were actually image files that I created in Photoshop using the text tool. After adding blur transitions and an appropriate soundtrack (mp3) I saved the file as web-friendly, compressed 358 kb/s wmv file.

See it for yourself:

http://www.drainscoop.com/movies/drainscoopvideos.wmv

Week #10 - Animation Idea

For my animation project I would like to animate the design and functionality of a patented product called the Drain Scoop. The Drain Scoop is an ice scoop with slits to drain excess water from melting ice. http://www.drainscoop.com/store/

The animation would require me to draw a simple, 3D representation of the ice scoop. The scoop will be a single color (gray) with possible shading if that's not too tricky. The ice scoop would then scoop up some ice and you would see the excess water dripping through the slits.

My reason for wanting to do this specific animation has a dual purpose. For one, my client and inventor of the Drain Scoop would really appreciate this animation for display on their website. And because this assignment would have immediate application, that would be an incentive to help me focus and do a better job so as to please my client. My second reason is that I want to learn how to create such an animation so that in the future, if I ever patent a product, I would be able to create a similar animation for it.

Follow this link for an example of something that I want to accomplish:

http://www.inventiondemos.com/spinalglide/spinalglidevideo.htm

Though the above animation is much more complex and beautifully rendered, it does an excellent job visually explaining how this new product works. My main goals is to have the user fully understand how the design & function of the Drain Scoop helps it drain water and makes the product unique amongst traditional ice scoops.

Week # 10 - Redesigned Parking Meter

Using a NYC parking meter is extremely frustrating as outlined in my previous journal entry. But what if the person trying to use the parking meter has some sort of visual or physical impairment? Even a mild impairment can severely compound the difficulty and frustration associated with parking meters in the City. For my object redesign excercise I will be reconditioning the parking meter design for motorists that have a disability in their upper limbs. Such motorists are daily drivers that require assistance from a turning knob to maneuver the steering wheel.

I will now restate the major problems I found with traditional parking meters:

Payment Method (Accepts Quarters Only) - Extremely difficult to find and consolidate quarters to feed and refeed the meter. It is also a demanding & skillful task to successfuly insert the quarter into the coin slot without dropping it. Impaired drivers may not have the finger control or dexterity to guide the unwilling dozen quarters into the slippery slot.

Alloted Time for Parking (1-2 hours) - The majority of parking meters in the City are for 1-hour parking, some blocks are equipped with rare 2-hour meters. One hour is not enough time for anyone and is a DOT recipe for parking tickets. 2-hour minimum parking time should be available for everyone, especially disabled drivers that cannot rush.

My solution is a pretty simple one that depends on implementing an already existing technology. We can refit existing parking meters with a wireless (RF or Infrared) payment device such as the popular "Speed Pass" widely used in gas stations. Instead of searching for and fumbling around with a dozen quarters, you can simply swipe your keychain over the parking meter and the sensor will activate the parking time on your meter.

The second part of the solution would be persuading the city to remove the 1-hour max parking restrictions on parking meters and set them all to at least 2-hours. Swiping this infrared parking pass once would give you 1-hour of parking, twice gives you 2-hours of parking time.

Not only would such a modification improve the city driving experience for disabled drivers, it would help alleviate the frustration of anyone planning on driving into the City.

Week #9 - Accessiblity

If a picture is worth a thousand words then a parking meter is worth a thousand dollars. My frustration with parking meters came up once before in an earlier assignment and continues to gripe me everytime I drive into the city (which is every other day). NYC parking is a nightmare to begin with. NYC parking rules are meant to confuse you and extract money from your pockets. NYC parking signs are logically backwards because they tell you when you "Can't Park" or when you "Can't Stand". How about telling me when I "Can Park". And sometimes you have up to 4 of these parking signs stacked on top of each other telling you all these different hours of the day and night that you "Can't Park" and you are left there looking like an illiterate because you can't figure out when you finally "Can". And if you mess up you're toast. Best case scenario for messing up is that you have a $115 ticket on your windshield. If you don't get your car out of there within a certain amount of time you will find not one, but two parking tickets for the same violation. Two parking tickets then constitutes the right to tow your car away. If you want your car back, then you are going to have to pay about $500 for the cost of those two tickets and the cost of towing. Oh, one more thing that I forgot to mention about parking in NYC is that NYC drivers will stab you in the eye over a parking spot. Ok Greg, so what am I supposed to do, not drive into the city at all? No, I am not saying that. NYC parking is a system, and once you get familiarized with that system it's still pretty bad, but it's manageable. Hey, I've been doing it for the past 8 years. For starters, don't even think about driving in to the City during the day or you'll end up driving around for hours looking for a place to legally squeeze your big SUV ass into. What about parking garages? They advertise $8.95 up to 1/2 hour. What the heck does that mean anyway? If I think it means what I think it means then that's a useless rip-off. But not to worry, after 6pm you're pretty much safe to find a decent parking spot because that's when most of the local streets open up to curbside parking. Some of those red-colored "No Standing" signs are also usually good to park under, but only after 7pm. But be forwarned, you do not want to arrive into the city too late. After 8pm things get kind of tricky and you might find that these freshly available spots have been all filled up by other parking-savvy drivers. Once that happens it's back to a game of "circle around the block" or "double park and wait for someone to leave", whichever one works for you. But wait! There's one more option for the desperate driver, it's the great NYC parking meter. Wow, what a great invention! This is the worst thing in America. Simply put, parking meters are evil. Did you know it's illegal to feed someone else's meter? Why? "What's the significance? I - don't - knowwwwwwwwww!" - (Pee-wee Herman).

Why is the parking meter frustrating?

The parking meter is frustrating because it is a wicked instrument of evil that is very picky. It is picky because it can only be activated by quarters. Generally, I don't have 6 quarters in my pocket at all times just in case I need to pay for 1-hour's worth of parking. So I have to get change from reluctant business owners who swear they don't have any. If they don't have any quarters then how do they conduct business? Next time some guy in a store tells me they don't have any quarters I'm going to ask if I can check. A block with parking meters makes quarters a rare and magical commodity. Another annoyance is that most parking meters are only for 1-hour. Why? Why do I have to say, "Excuse me, I'll be right back. I gotta feed the meter"? I'll tell you why. It's not a conspiracy, it' just another aspect of the NYC parking system. The NYC DOT knows that most appointments take a little longer than an hour. And if you are even one second late you will have to pay for it. Traffic cops will wait for your meter to expire and as soon as it blinks red, their pen will hit the paper and when that happens my friends, it's too late for conversation and your left with nothing but lintballs in your pockets. The final grievance I have with parking meters is that they malfunction and steal those precious, magical quarters. One more than one occasion I have dumped 75 cents into a parking meter only to realize that my parking time was not increasing past the 10 minute mark. Did I ever get my money back? Noooooooooo!

The abilities required to operate the parking meter are Motor/Physical because one needs to use their hands and mechanically grasp a quarter between their thumb & index finger, aim it into and push it inside a thin slot, all while trying hard not to drop it down & between the subway grating. The Visual aspect is almost not worth mentioning because it is so obviously dependent on your vision. You have to find an available parking spot with a meter and be able to read how much time is left on it. The meter also blinks either green or red to indicate whether or not there is time left on the meter. This blinking indicator is not for your convenience, it's just a redflag for the traffic cops. The Cognitive aspect of this technology is being able to look at how much time you have left on your meter and add that to the current time on your watch in order to figure out the final time of day that you have to get back to your car to refeed the evil, quarter sucking beast.

Week #8 - Video Composition (Final)

Dog in the City
by Sol, Won, Terrence & Me

"Greg, where is that bastard!"

That was the quote that echoed between each take. It was also the subplot of our group's video because I couldn't make it to the shooting. Anyway, I felt Terrence & Won did a superb job handling the video camera. And I was very pleased with Sol's editing skills in Final Cut Pro. What did I do? I provided the musical score and observed Sol & Won during the 2 days of editing. The final composition did a pretty good job of emulating a day in the life of a dog, from the dog's point of view. The camera angles & movements, which were jittery and spontaneous, were convincingly dog-like. Of course there were some things that couldn't have been done better, but considering our narrow time frame I think the finished product rocks.

Here is the link to our video:
(Link Coming Soon)

Week #7 - Storyboard for Video Project

In our group huddle we were searching for an idea that could be expressed through non-traditional camera angles/perspectives. This meaning the camera would be set up to show the world from a point of view other than the straight on eye-level position we are accustomed to. We decided on retelling the story of Prince Charming where the prince was transformed into a dog. Hence, here is the storyboard that is primarily depicting the first-person views of the dogly prince on his crusade to break the spell.

Week #6 - Audio Composition (Final)

K and I completed our audio composition and of course, things always come out differently than originally planned. We couldn't interview a domestic fire victim so we scoured the net for something similar to integrate. We found something even better. It was an interview with school officials talking about a fire that just burned down the school (nobody got hurt so it's ok to make a song about it). Anyway, the guy interviewed says the word "Fire wall" and we just loop it for 2 minutes amongst a funky backbeat and fire engine sounds and burning wood. For extra measure we threw in some audio clips suitable in firey situations. At the end the music fades out and the crackling of burning logs fades in for a 10 second finale.

To compose we used Garage Band on the Mac and Sony Sound Forge on the PC. The assignment called for a 2 min composition and we rolled out with 2:01 just to do a little extra and simultaneously minimize file size. If you're into school fires, firewall technology, burning logs, The Warriors or The Crow movies, then just click the link below and listen in:

http://www.greg-b.com/itp/commlab/greg-kaki-commlab.mp3

Don't smoke in bed. Stop, drop and roll. Remember kids, only you can prevent forest fires.

Week #5 - Audio Composition

For this week's assignment my tagteam partner is Kaki and our objective is to collaborate and produce an audio composition. We are going to formulate an original song with a backbeat track in the style of anything from 80's synthpop to old-school hip hop and infuse emotional sounds from human/animal subjects which we are going to record. So as an example, I could record my girlfriend pretending to cry and stylishly modify that sound and integrate it into the track. One thing I am not sure of is what emotions we are going to specifically focus on and how many distinct ones we want to include. I guess that will be up in the air until we finish editing the composition. When the final piece is finished I hope it to be an an entertaining exercise and somewhat successful in conveying the inherent emotion(s).
Our soundtrack will be compiled from multiple sources such as digital drum machines, computer sound effects and guitar, if I still know how to plug it in. This instrumental track must be simplistic so as not to overshadow the primary emotional track, but at the same time it's gotta be catchy. Our emotional track will be recorded by a recording device that can focus in on the sound we want and blur out unwanted background radiation. My guess is use a unidrectional mic with a portable recording device, such as the Marantz.

Week #4 - Photoshopped Storyboard

My partner Raudia and I had to create a fictional storyboard and use Photoshop to infuse artificial elements into the images. Raudia conceived the entire concept, photographed the scenes and scanned in our cartoon character duo. My part was finessing the scenes with some amateurish Photoshop magic. Here's a brief rundown of what was altered/added.

Scene 1 - The Oracle Appears

Fake "Photography Finger" added to top-left corner. Grass is also obviously fake, was drawn in using the brush tool. Drop shadow added to the toons in all scenes.

Scene 2 - Show Us The Way

Turf and Gutch are artificially out of focus. Plasma TV with discreet wiring tube and remote control added.

Scene 3 - Free Ride

Motion Blur added to outside windows.

Scene 4 - Warped Out Of My Mind

Twirl distortion effects, pixelation added and green colorization added to our B&W characters.

Scene 5 - Message In A Bottle

Lens flare, coconuts and message in a bottle were added.

Scene 6 - I Want To Go Home

Scene was originally a bright day shot at the beach. Image was darkened, moon and fire were added as well as orange lighting effects for the faces of our cartoons.

Here's the link to it:

http://www.greg-b.com/itp/commlab/index.htm