On the 19th of December, we finished the months-long work for the winter exhibition. Once we left the school, the exhibition had come to a close, reflecting back on all the hard work put into our projects. This was themed after Star Wars and incorporated both Humanities and Maker. The grade 9s teamed up with the grade 8s to create an extraordinary experience for the viewers. We were challenged with creating a story using the hero’s journey and creating an artifact that connected to our part of the story. We set out as a class to make an interactive exhibition, explaining the hero’s journey by the knowledge we have gained through the hours spent on this topic.
There were two parts that went into this project, Humanities and Maker, where we would build our knowledge and devote our time to the work. In the beginning of the project we mainly did humanities and researched into the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey is a set of actions done by the protagonist that guide a story and make it interesting. Most large movies or books (Star Wars, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson) have the hero’s journey with a gist of creativity. This is the sole reason Star Wars is popular and has pretty much turned into a piece of culture/history.
Humanities:
Prior to the creation of the story, we learnt about the terms and techniques used to write an engaging piece of text using literary skills. Creating the story was far from the start and it was only after milestone 4 that we would even think about the story. The first four milestones prepared for the literacy skills needed for the story. Milestone 1 was an opinion on Star Wars and how it has become a commodity/a part of society. My answer was way different than what I would have said now, knowing the things we have learnt.
Milestone 2 was a literary analysis test from the short stories and the understanding of literary terms. We read many short stories to look into how terms like setting, mood, characters, plot and theme play a role in the creation of any text. These literacy skills were apparent all the way through the humanities part of the project.
For the creation of the story, we were divided into groups of 7 and a planet assigned to each group. My group had received the Death Star and my brain went rushing with ideas of what I wanted to create. However, you can’t create a story without a protagonist and a unique spin to the hero’s journey. We came to choose a general named Hurst Romodi that was only in the A New Hope for a few scenes but we extended his role to be important in the movie. Through the hero’s journey outline, we had planned out every part of the story. Our document was not detailed at all but with extensive communication and consulting we were all clear about our story. General Romodi is a high ranking military in charge of sending the go-ahead command for the Death Star laser. The story goes through his early life to his point of death, when it is blown up.
I was in charge of creating the 5th part: the supreme ordeal where he has to go through the thought of destroying Alderaan with his brother on it or lose his job that he worked so hard for. I couldn’t just start writing and hope for the best but I planned how I wanted to represent the thoughts of Romodi in the first person. I wanted to really express his thoughts and emotions in a meaningful way that the viewer can connect to. In the story, the spoken language is an important factor and brought it to life. Almost all stories need to use a plot diagram to make it fun to read and engaging. In short stories, every word counts so I wanted to make the intro as engaging and mysterious like something big was about to happen. Everything leading up making the protagonist more and more worried, until it dropped, he had just realized everything leading up was for one thing; the Death Star was going to explode Alderaan.
It is very rare to be at a final product from the beginning and revisions are necessary for any good project. My story was close to finished from the start so every iteration made it to be the best possible. Even though we had many opportunities for feedback it eventually came down to my feeling on the story and what I wanted for the story’s outcome. The feedback I was given was either was small details or were things that I thought made the story worse. I was my biggest critic in this situation and provided most of my feedback that I thought made the story better.
Maker:
The supreme ordeal was based in Hurst Romodi’s office and needing to make an artifact that relates to the project, I found the perfect opportunity to take creative risks. I chose to make a VR video of his office using 3Ds Max. The reason I had such an ambitious idea was partly that I love trying new software, taking risks and learning the unique tools. However, a big part I think I had this idea was because I had a conscious thought of a VR video from watching one earlier. I wanted to show a part of my story, walking into his office and making it like you looking through his eyes.
To guide our project we used the L.A.U.N.C.H. cycle with progressing steps at every letter. In this project, the launch phase wasn’t as important because of the short amount of time we had. It wasn’t forgotten though and was nice to have at the beginning of the project as I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do and how to do it. With the short time span between the then and the exhibition, I chose to take the creative risk.
I was using my computer that I had made a couple of years back to create my VR video. I installed 3Ds Max and another software called V-Ray to render the environment. With every new software, there is a massive learning curve and I needed to watch a lot of YouTube videos. I created a whole playlist on YouTube for research and step-by-step tutorials. I have no idea what I would have done without YouTube videos because no words can describe a video or image.
Now when it comes to the creation of the room I didn’t just start building walls and put in 3D models. Rather I started designing the room in Sketches Pro so I could spend less energy wasting time and more time to get stuff done. At the time it was a risk because it was wasting my time then but it paid off and helped make a better project. In my sketch, I had multiple layers to show different parts of the room. The first layer I created was the room structure and 3D models I needed. The second layer showed the camera movement and the third showed lights and where I wanted them.
Every Layer Together
Creating the room was a long and tiring journey for sure and explaining the entire project would be impossible. With YouTube tutorials I was able to first create walls using modifiers by first drawing a line, extruding it, edit Polly, and adding a shell to make thickness). I still had a few major necessary problems to make the VR video functional. The first problem I tackled was the rendering issue to make it from the camera’s perspective. The render what from a weird angle, far away and blurry. I had all the correct settings so I didn’t have a clue what was going on. I couldn’t find anything online for my problem so I decided to try a few things. I changed exposure, render settings and colour maps but changing one of the user interfaces to a different setting, finally made it render properly. To make a test video without the 3D models was really hard to figure out but now knowing how to do the rendering next time will be way easier. After rendering it, I used premiere pro to put the image sequence into the timeline, turn it into an mp4 file and then inject code into it to be VR on YouTube.
Importing 3D models from a website called TurboSquid was the next big problem I had. I was very ambitious for what I wanted to add and I was taking risks by adding a lot of props and trying to use technology to its full ability. The issue was that I didn’t know how to import a model without getting “ERROR.” While looking up online I found out another way to import a model which worked for most objects but I later found out everything was black & white. This wouldn’t work for the wood floor and I instead had to use a downloaded texture and put it on a square floor. I used a special setting that I found on YouTube and it worked perfectly.
Once I had everything I wanted and could have in the room with the time limit running out, I needed to render it. I was confident I would get it done just before the deadline as it said on the estimated time. However, truth be told that is not what happened. The time kept rising so I made the decision to render a super low quality render where it is hard to make out the things. I was able to show my low-quality product and what it would have looked like. I was planning to show people the video using a VR headset that you could fit your phone in.
I am very proud of how it turned out and how much I have learnt. Now knowing more, if I were to try it again it would take so much less time. I love trying new software and I thought it went well in the exhibition even though I didn’t have the time for the full render. If I were to do this again, I would definitely do less light or a VR photo instead as the render times are crazy.
Exhibition:
Planning for the exhibition was hectic and disorganized at points but it turned out to be relaxed when the doors were opened to the public. We teamed up with the grade 8s which had their own Blue Sky to present our projects in the library. Together we brainstormed ideas for our project layout, food choices and Death Star accessories. In Basecamp, we decided on our activities, costumes and who is bringing what. The library was a big space to fill so it was really hard to decorate because of its sheer size and many pieces of furniture that are unmovable. Our solution to use a bunch of curtains but the product wasn’t the best. We used lights for its main purpose (light) but also to look like the Death Star.
This was the close to another exhausting, long nights working, lots of glitches/problems and successful exhibition. I have learnt so much during this project both in Maker and Humanities. I am proud of my short story and my VR video. I am going to keep learning new software not because I want good grades but since I genuinely like to learn to do that stuff.
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