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The Audio Walk + Raw Audio in a zip
One must be wack to understand the wacky. Logical beings, beware.
Changing the Audio walk game
Our team started with a psychological thriller experience where the listener listens to a voice mail left by a friend being chased by a crazy Axe-wielding murderer. We chucked the idea into the bin because the concept was overdone by these rich b*st*rds called “Hollywood”. We went for a gaming route next, where a voice orders the listener around in a SAW puppet like way. The idea didn’t last long, because being bossed around by the voice of a complete stranger to walk for 5 minutes isn’t the most exciting thing to do, nor the most engaging. The listener must have a desire or a goal to listen to our project and walk through our route, not because he/she has to listen to a friend ramble on about being followed by a creepy person, or turn left then turn right then clap hands three times because the stupid voice in the earphones said so.
The more we thought about it, the more it made sense to make the listener EXPERIENCE emotions, not listen to them; to have a MOTIVE, not listen to someone else’s. So what if the voice in the earphones was the listener’s THOUGHTS? F*ckin’ smart! The idea of having the listener BE the voice came out of one of our mouths, and we harpooned that big boy and hauled it in to be served on a silver platter in no time. And since I am one of the members of this group, expect the project to be heavily spiced with humor. Below is how our workload was shared.
Script: Jason Law (with Ryan Chang & Sadquain Nishaan)
Voice: Ryan Chang ft. Jason Law & Sadquain Nishaan
Sound mixing: Sadquain Nishaan (with Jason Law & Ryan Chang)
Let me say this straight off the bat. As the leader of this awesome sound project group, I divided the workload into specific parts. Jason would handle the script, I would be the voice, and Saad would be the Audacity man. Things did not go as planned. The three of us gathered our ideas to form the script, We used three voices in our recordings, and we had three people to download audio, create BGM, and string all the narration together all at the same time. Separating our workload into parts wasn’t the best idea, since fantabulousness cannot be achieved when our ideas are divided. Working together at all times seems to be the optimal choice.
Our plan for the project still remains mostly the same. We toned down the gaming parts and added more humor. We’re still gonna make the listener believe that he/she has to hand in “Sam’s” homework in time. The listener will start near the 52 and 54 GO bus station, and end in the ACE Computer Commons. It is confirmed that there will be a jungle scene, a cliff scene, and a cave scene in between, so man up. Man the f*ck up. Most of our BG SFX wasn’t recorded by us. We took raw mp3s off the net and blended them in the Audacity machine, because we know that bats+echoes+dripping water=cave, and Jason+Saad+Ryan=ballerness.
Audio Walk Idea
Our Audio Walk tour will be portrayed from the perspective of a student’s mind in which the listeners will play the hectic student who’s trying to hand in his friends HW in time. To achieve this, we’ll have to make the listeners understand that the voice that they’re listening to is actually his/her own thoughts.The student will be set on a journey set in his own fantasy/reality with a gaming theme. Cliffs, batcaves, and jungles are part of the quest to hand in the HW. Some background sound effects will taken from the web such as the jungle, and bat sounds, however many of the effects such as echos, crowds, rocks falling, leaves and other numerous sounds will be mixed and created on our own.
Shinji Mikami
And here’s my presentation for good measure.
Zephyr
Here’s my package zip of Zephyr, including rendered images, the poster, the psd file, and of course the sketchup file. It took me this long to upload to my blog because I just found out how to with Filezilla -_-
It’s here! My 3D object is finally here, and I’m so glad it’s over! It took a week just to create the model, two nights to design the textures and colors, a couple of hours to position the individual parts, and a freaking day to do the poster. My object was injected with more love, toil, and time than the Michelangelo’s David! Oh, and in case you’re wondering, most of the images here were rendered by this sweet little program called indigo renderer. I’m gonna explain my thoughts behind my object ,but first, a little introduction.
For the assignment, I had to relate the object to embodiment, so I dived deep into my brain to see what 3d objects meant to me. I’ve always thought of creating 3D objects as something fun and entertaining. Sure, it can be used to plan buildings and other objects before they are created, but from my perspective, 3D objects are mostly used for entertainment purposes, most notably the movie and gaming industries. As a young kid, I was fascinated by creatures and critters in movies, games and anime, and not to mention a few monsters from mythology; so it’s not so much a surprise that I occasionally draw absurd creatures in my sketchbook (I don’t do as much science fiction :P). One of the sketches looked like it could be fun, or in this case, “entertain”. Meet Zephyr, the Amazing Monkey Puppet!
Zephyr is a circus puppet that moves without strings, but he was a lot things before that. He was an alien, a hunting pet, a robot, a circus animal, and finally a circus puppet! He’s able to do a wide range of tricks, including a few impossible ones (like bending at absurd angles)! Zephyr is part of a travelling circus that functions through forces unknown. Magical, demonic, or extraterrestrial forces? You decide! I tried to make him look slightly dangerous, but harmless at the same time by giving him sharp spikes teeth and claws, and the blank stare and bright colors to balance it out. Hope you guys enjoy!
This is what I’m working on for the project (Dun dun dun)
This is a creature I drew in my sketchbook sometime last month, and I thought it’d be fun to see him in 3D. I’ll reveal it’s backstory when I present my work, that is, if I have something to present in time.
My website!
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~dude0719/Totalnonsense.html
Everything you need to know is in the “About the site” page. Hopefully.
Best viewed in Chrome!
Small Change FTW!
Seriously, if it wasn’t for this blog asignment, I’d be playing Starcraft 2 right now. I never was a guy for comparison assignments, and certainly not comparing 2 articles that are 14 pages long each! After some intense reading on both articles, I have decided that Malcolm Gladwell’s “Small Change” is stronger than Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody.”
I read “Here Comes Everybody” first. I was pretty impressed with Shirky’s ability to reason with the readers; starting with a story, stating points, and relating those points back to the story. The end also provided us with the question, “What happens next?”, overloading my already jammed up brain. I was feeling pretty good at the end of it, and was convinced that the power of the Internet was good, so I proceeded with the other article. It all started out the same, story, points, and points relating to the story. I noticed a change halfway down the article when Maxwell started including other stories and points, which impressed me slightly. But the real blow was when Maxwell briefed “Here Comes Everybody” and proved his own points by comparing both articles in the last few paragraphs! My brain was instantly wiped clean of Shirky’s ideas, to be completely occupied by Maxwell’s.
Shirky stated that people can get their voices heard over the Internet in a fairly short amount of time. without an organization, people are still able to do things a single person cannot. However, Maxwell stated that people with different ideas have a hard time gaining help, because they will just get steamrolled by the mainstream. People don’t want to help a person hell bent on destroying the planet for whatever reasons he has, right? And because everybody can participate in whatever problem anybody has, even the littlest of problems can be blown out of proportion. I mean come on, why should a few million people freak out over a missing cellphone? Lastly, the Internet is made up of weak ties. Everybody is loosely tied to someone else, whatever the reason may be. Because of this, people can gain a shitload of help instantly. The problem is, the people gathered from the Internet aren’t as committed to a single cause compared to friends and family. You aren’t gonna sacrifice your life for someone who shared his/her doughnut with you at Tim Hortons yesterday now, would you?
I believe that in the near future, people will change accordingly to the Internet. Everything is discussed, everything has participants, and everything is connected. A revolution is coming, one that involves huge social networks, such as Facebook and/or Twitter. But sadly for us, the revolution would be a lot weaker compared to previous ones. Would it accomplish anything, if at all? We shall see; but for now, I have bigger matters on my mind. After all, nothing’s scarier than a Zerg rush.
