Blue Sky Project

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Traveling Through History

Christmas break has come and gone so quickly. This means that yet another brilliant exhibition has also happened. This year, I believe, was the biggest turn out, most fun to present, most entertaining and inquiring to watch, and the hardest and most we have worked. In past exhibitions each grade in the PLP program has a different topic and each student creates their own inquiry “Blue Sky” project to relate to the topic and show they’re learning. This was still true for the grade 8’s and 9’s. For us as grade 11’s we had a slightly different task to pull off. Our project was to create an immersive experience that took you through the time of World War I, starting at pre war and ending in the Great Depression. We had to transform the gym into a whole new world, and wow can I say that that was quite a challenge.

Visitors of the exhibition would enter through a side room onto the gym in small groups to begin their immersive experience. First they would walk through the time of Pre War where they immigrated to Canada and signed up for the war, next they went into the trenches, after that they went through the time of conscription, next making their way to the post war to see the hardships people faced, and finally they ended their experience in the Great Depression. As people went through we interacted with them as if we were in that time period and they were immigrants and war soldiers. Everybody who went through seemed to really enjoy it and surprisingly from what I heard from my parents, everybody seemed to learn a lot.

My group was pre war. To even begin creating the immersive experience we had to delve deeper then what we learned in class so we could replicate exactly what it would have been like in that time period. Our task was to figure out the key events that led up to World War I. For example we chose to start it off with someone greeting the people, or in the immersive experience they were the immigrants, and explaining about Canada’s new open door policy. Then they made they’re way through the immigration office and were greeted by me! I was the immigration office lady and the year was 1913. Being a lady was also a key part to this considering more jobs were being offered to women at this time and in the year of 1912 women were able to finally work in offices and be receptionists. People would walk up to me and I would treat them as immigrants as they signed their immigration papers. Everybody really enjoyed this part surprisingly. Also most adults were happy to see that their age was 35 on the immigration papers which I found quite funny. Also might I add that I created both the immigration card and registration card myself from scratch.

After seeing me the people would make their way through to watch a rally held by Borden. Then they would make their way to the final stop of pre war, the registration office. Again it was me sitting their as the officer who made them sign their papers. Then they made their way over to the trenches and through the rest of the experience. 

We only had two hours to transform the entire gym into a whole new place which was quite stressful and a lot of work. They’re were some technical difficulties as well as worrying about not being done in time. Fortunately everybody ended up getting it together and we were the hit of the exhibition. Although everybody who went through the gym would complain about how cold it was since the door was open. I even hid slippers under one of my desks so I wouldn’t be too cold.

Overall I definitely enjoyed this exhibition more then any other we have done. Since people were constantly coming through it gave us more of an opportunity to really show our learning and what we are capable of creating. Compared to other exhibitions where people just kind of walk around and look at your projects and the odd person asks a question, this really made me feel proud of the work I had made. I think I can say everybody else felt this way as well. Although it was a lot of work and late nights to finish it, it payed off. Next time if we ever do this type of project again a small break in the middle would be nice because everybody in the gym was freezing and most people were losing their voices. Also a lot of people were hungry since we didn’t have time to eat because we were s focused on getting everything set up and ready to go.

This type of learning and style of projects has definitely been one of my favourites. I feel I learned more and can say I still remember facts off the top of my head. I even know about what the other groups were about. It was something different, but I feel it was one of the most engaging projects not only for us as creators, but for the people who walked through and got to experience our learning.

If you want to check out my other group members perspective and experience on the exhibition click the link to their blog posts, you can find them here. Gabi, Tom, Jackson, Stanfield.

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Blue Sky: Round Two

Last year I remember how proud I was of my blue sky project and how hard I had worked on it. This year I didn’t spend as much time focusing on this project as I was also focusing on three other projects at the same time as this one. Although I did work really hard on this project it definitely was a last minute idea being that I only came up with the idea for my project two weeks before the exhibition where as most people had there ideas a month in advance.

I feel like one of the main reasons why this project was not one of my proudest piece of work was because the idea I had for the project was just hard to work with and was too simple with no depth or challenge to it. This could have been fixed if I had come up with ideas for the project earlier instead of later. My idea for the project was to create a Swiss Army knife phone case but using tools that would be useful to teens in the Swiss Army knife instead. This idea I was actually happy with but realized when I started making it that it was way too complicated for the amount of time I had given myself to work on it. This meant that I had to alter the idea slightly to turn it into something a bit more simple and easier to create.

My final product ended up being a wallet phone case but inside of the wallet were allotted slots which held helpful tools that teens would use on their daily basis. It wasn’t at all what I expected it to be but I worked hard in making it and it came out pretty well. Although I do believe that there was a lot of room for improvement. If I had the chance to go back in time and fix any project this year I would choose to improve my blue sky.image

I would make it so that I could’ve made my original idea for the product. Also I would’ve worked harder on making the movie instead of just putting my time lapses and some photos of the process together with some music. It was acceptable but it wasn’t something that I would say I am most proud of. Although the exhibition night is a different story.

On the night of the exhibition our group really worked hard in transforming our space to fit our theme of PNE exhibition hall, or what we called The Hall of Bazar. We all came together to get everything in place and looking great. Also I presented my product well to people who came by to look at it. That part of the Blue Sky project I was proud of, the actual product I made, not as much.

Overall I think that I worked hard on this project but it didn’t turn out the way I had hoped it would. It needed a lot of improvement and I wish I would’ve worked harder on this or started a few weeks earlier then the final product could’ve been what I had hoped for.

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“Do or do not there is no try”

I had never watched any of the Star Wars movies until we started creating this project. Shocking I know. I always imagined they were just some silly movie series and I never really understood what all the hype was about them. I just want to say that I am now a Star Wars nerd. I even got a Star Wars mug for Christmas! image
I am in love with the movies and working on this project really helped me in finding a better understanding of them.

Yoda is the arguably the wisest character in the whole Star Wars franchise. I instantly was in awe when I first saw Yoda in the prequels so I decided to make him the focus of my project.

When I first created the idea of recreating Yoda as a mask form I thought it would be fairly easy. Little did I know that replicating something as intricate as Yoda is very challenging. Forming the base shape for his head was simple, but recreating the details of his face onto the head was a challenge for me. I was very discouraged when I first started making him because honestly, he looked quite ugly. image

Then once I started painting him and added a few more features on he looked a bit possessed. I walked into my kitchen one morning where my Yoda head was sitting and I completely forgot he was there. Let’s just say I was wide awake after seeing Yoda. I thought some little alien was in my kitchen and it scared me way more then it should have.  image

In my opinion painting the head was definitely the easiest part of it all. The final product I think came out much better then I expected.

 

My Process:
1. Started with a ballon and attached two pieces of paper to the sides to represent the ears

2. Layered the ballon twice with paper mache and let dry for a day

3. Glued on the nose, mouth, and forehead that we’re all made out of clay

4. Painted everything different shades of green

5. Created the eyes using clay, glued them on, and painted the outside of them

6. Attached clay around the outside of his ears to add depth to them and painted them again

7. Went back and added some more clay and drew lines on it to add a wrinkle effect then painted them

8. Painted the design of Yoda’s eyes

9. Added hair around his ears and the top of his head

10. Finally I placed him on a little stand where I made a coat out of cloth

 

When it comes to creating driving questions I always have a struggle. It doesn’t help that this is my least favourite part of the project. But it is necessary to have a good project. My driving question is, what is necessary for a mask maker to be successful in the movie making industry? After doing lots of research and creating a keynote which I presented at the exhibition night, I learned exactly a mask maker, makeup designer can be successful in the movie making industry. You can see my keynote here.

Ours exhibition night was a huge success I believe for everyone. Each section of the library, our classroom, and the hallway were decorated as a different planet form Star Wars. My personal favourite was Hoth because when you walked in you felt like you were walking into the Arctic. It was even cold in there.

My planet I presented in was Dagobah, which is quite fitting for my project considering that is where Yoda’s home is. Talking about my mask to others was actually quite easy. It think that the blue sky project exhibition night last year really prepared me and made me more comfortable with these kind of presenting situations. There were some very good questions asked and I tried my best to answer them. Most of them were about how I made him though, which those were quite easy to answer. Overall I’d say that visitors and presenters really enjoyed the exhibition night.

Throughout the creation of this project I learned that creating a mask is way more difficult then it seems. The process one has to go through in order to create a new character is unbelievably challenging. I expected that recreating a mask would be easier then creating my own, but after making Yoda I learned that you need to be extra careful with the details. image

Overall doing this project really helped me to further develop my art and creative skills. Also it showed me a bunch of really great movies that I am now a little obsessed with. Surprisingly I actually didn’t procrastinate this project this time!

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Blue Sky Final

After lots of hard work, I finally completed my blue sky project. It took lots of hard work, revision, and brainstorming for my project to be fully finished. I creaimageted a short movie, a business pitch form, and put it all together on a poster board. Also I made some pretty delicious cupcakes, but unfortunately they didn’t make it to the exhibition. imageimage

On the night of the exhibition, I had my final project up and ready to present. I feel that I did well when it came to thinking up answers to some of the questions people were asking me on the spot. Although I had a few business people come by and ask me some pretty challenging questions that I just didn’t have the answers to. For next years exhibition I plan to be more prepared in advance to answer some challenging questions so I never leave a person wondering more.

When it came to time management, I was good during the first few days of the project, but then I got a little behind in it. Managing my time is definitely something I need to work on. Overall I believe that I put slot of effort into this project to make sure my final outcome was great. I am planning next years project to be even better.

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Creation of Cupcakes

My blue sky project is coming along well. Over the past week I have collected all of my data from a survey I did about what kind of cupcakes people like, I have interviewed business owners on how they started there business and the obstacles they had to pass to be where they are now. Also I have created a short video of making and tasting cupcakes in the style of a cooking contest.

I made this video because when people are first opening up a food business, they need others to test the food first to see if it is any good. This video shows myself and a few others doing exactly that. I created it in the style of a cooking contest.

While I was making the cupcakes and the movie, I had to change a few things along the way. My outcome was not what my original plan was. Since my time and resources were limited for this part, I had to adapt a few things to make it work. It didn’t help that I didn’t get the filming and baking finished until 12:00 Friday night.

My goal is to complete my project by the end of this week and have it done well. At the pace I am going I should have everything completed.

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Creating a Small Business

In class we are starting a project called the Blue Sky Project. Each person had to choose a big idea and driving question to research for our project, then we have to create something for our final product to show what we have learned. The options for what we could inquire for this project were endless.image

The process of finding the perfect idea for this project took some time. I had to do a lot of brainstorming to come up with this final idea. Also I had to go through some bad ideas first before I finally came up with my idea. For this project I have to decided to see how you could create a sustainable business. My driving questions for this project are, Is Deep Cove a good market to create a new business for selling cupcakes? How do I create a business using Deep Cove as a market place?

After finding my final idea, I created a timeline to help me know when I need to get each piece of work done. This timeline lists all of the steps I need to take in order to complete this project successfully.image

I will be getting people to take surveys on what kind of cupcakes they like. This will give me an idea of what products to out into this business. Also I will be finding aspects of Deep Cove that would make it a good place to sustain a business like this. Next I will be creating a business pitch to create of business like this. And finally tying it all together in a commercial for advertisement.

The process I will need to go through to create a final outcome and answer to my driving question will be challenging and will take a lot of effort, but I believe that the outcome will be successful.