Let’s switch it up
So the other platforms we’ve talked about cant really be used on the go like in the car or on a train but this one is different. It is a handheld small device that looks like this.
And you may be thinking, “bUt I dOnT wAnT iT tO bE sMaLl”
Well random hopefully human I do not know the switch can be placed into a docking station that can be plugged into to your TV (with an HDMI cable) and have it appear on there. Here is a video of me showing you how to do it.
Now that you know it is able to be big-screen I’m going to tell you about some of the games I recommend.
Here I will list 5 different games I suggest to any Nintendo player
VR a Whole New World
So you’ve decided you don’t want a console, why not huh? Got something against consoles? No, I get it, you want something more- you want to be IN the video game – well I have the perfect platform for you.
VR!
So if you don’t know what VR is, it stands for virtual reality: meaning a 3 dimensional world that you can access by putting on a headset. Using this headset, hand controllers and a designated game zone that you can draw the edges of yourself (called the guardian on Oculus which stops you bashing into anything) you can interact physically with other people across globe in games and experiences.
In this blog post I will be showing you the process of me designing and drawing a representation of a VR world.
The Outline
First up I had to get the basic outline of a headset which looks roughly like this.
I used a brush tool and a circle outline tool to create the eye holes. I then used the stretch tool and circle to to create the outer lines which I then shaded. I then used the sizing tool to improve the size of the eye wholes. Below is my progress.
PICTURE DETAIL
Next, I drew freehand, using a variety colours, to create an unusual looking mountain.
Following this, I decided to add more detail of a bolder flying towards you, fortunately its a VR world as in the real world this would kill you! I also added an alien. This alien is inspired by one of the characters in a show Rick and Morty. In addition there is a darkened sun because this world is full of pollution which is produced by by the aliens in order for them to breath the air.
COLOUR BACKGROUND
Finally, I used the colour fill tool to add background colour.
I hope you like my drawing.
Now you know the wonders of VR make your choice!
From going to Warfare in an Alien world to playing a game of poker with your friends, VR has it all.
See ya chumps!
Oh by the way my Friend Amy has a great blog click here to check it out….
Just for a little extra credit from my teachers ( I know you’re there, I see you, just kidding, I don’t see you) I wrote a Haiku about VR
Xbox vs PlayStation : a War to go Down in History
So you might be thinking…
”Well this amazing and handsome and intelligent young man on the internet has told me about different gaming platforms but I want to get a console, hmm which one do you recommend?”
Well Internet person, that’s a personal choice, so I could say ‘I don’t know’, but that wouldn’t be very helpful now would it! There are two consoles that you could look at. These are..
Xbox
So, Xbox is what I prefer as I like the controller layout more. An Xbox controller looks like this
At first you might think its weird how the sticks aren’t parallel to each other like this,
however, it feels better than it looks as it fits comfortably in your hand. But if you don’t think that would be good for you then..
PlayStation
PlayStation has a very different controller layout, although it might not look like that at first. Also holding a PlayStation controller is very different and in my opinion less comfortable.
This is a PlayStation controller and believe it or not the thing above the dots is pressable!
You might notice that the buttons are different than the Xbox and there are more. There are symbols now rather than letters! So if you chose one of these 2 controllers over the other be aware the buttons are different – don’t refer to the B button to a PlayStation player, they will look at you oddly!.
Pros and Cons
Xbox
Pros
- Longer battery life
- simpler layout
- exclusive Xbox games
Cons
- Uses batteries(can be fixed with rechargeable batteries)
- headphone jack on controller can break if you pull out headphones often
PlayStation
Pros
- easier to access games for beginners
- PlayStation exclusive games
- rechargeable batteries
Cons
- shorter battery life
- slightly more complex in terms of speaking with friends as no Live Gold chat avaiable
Ok so that’s about it.
Do you have a preference?
Tell me in the comments and make sure to follow to get notified when I make another post. (At least I think that’s how that works)
Ok byyyyyyeeeeee.
What To pick…What To Pick?
Are you thinking about getting into gaming?
Then do it! or don’t, I don’t know, do whatever you want ….I’m not your mum. Or am I?
Honestly I love gaming and it can be a great way to stay in touch with friends and even surprisingly boost your reaction speed and motor control.
CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER (Platform)
(It’s a super smash bros reference … but still you can’t game without first choosing what to game on)
So there are a few different gaming platforms that I recommend!
PC
PC is basically a either a laptop or a monitor plugged into BIG BOX that looks like this
‘
Sorry my desk is really messy!
CONSOLE
So its basically just a big box labelled Xbox or PlayStation that you plug into your tv and you can play games with a controller, see my next post for more…
SWITCH
Switch is a handheld games console made by Nintendo that you can also dock into a docking station which attaches to your TV via HDMI. Wait for blog 4 three in this series to explore this console more.
VR
Short for virtual reality, this headset allows you to immerse yourself in a 3 dimensional world to give you a full body experience.
MOBILE GAMING
This is gaming via apps on devices such as phones and iPads the main advantage is you can play whilst on the toilet!
ARCADE MACHINE GAMING
Old school and new in one – you can visit gaming arcades to play these or you can save up big bucks and buy one for your room!
Basically that’s pretty much most things you can game on – to explore these options further and find out more about what each platform in more detail visit my blog over the next few weeks.
Outsiders tableaux and worldview wow this is a really long title and I am definitely not making this unfunny and overused joke because I couldn’t think of a pun
Have you ever wanted to cry…..
Well I have the perfect movie for you! The Outsiders is a sad yet entertaining movie that can teach you a lot about worldview at least It taught me a lot about having a different perspective on life than from other people.
At the start of the project we had to express our own world view, this was my mine:
World view
I believe that gaming is a sport but its an e-sport I believe this because I am very in to gaming
I like to make friends who also play video games
Beliefs Geography
I think beliefs are very important in your worldview because if you believe something different to another person then you will have a different worldview than theirs but different beliefs can drastically change a person e.g religion.
Geography is very important because if you come from a different place than someone then you might have different thoughts about something or you might have a different culture to them.
Following on from our beliefs we worked to understand the different characters and thier motivations, this helped me to feel more attached to the characters and think about how they would see things.
See my slide show below to discover more.
Next up we had to recreate a trailer for the movie in new groups. This was fun. We filmed different scenes from the movie that show key elements of the story: I edited them into a trailer. If you want to watch it click below, I hope you enjoy the comedy subtitles I made.
Next we individually made movie posters for the well movie I guess, I took quite a bit of time making mine as I couldn’t find the colour change filter. I put a lot of effort into it though.
The left side is representing before they ran away as things are normal, well as far as normal goes for greasers. And the right side is after everything is going wrong.
However, we then made a group movie poster and I think it turned out much much better than my original one
In doing this I found out that making a movie poster is harder than it looks and it takes many different stages of design and critique and making every little detail perfect. It also made me think about important elements of the story and showing key characters.
Our final project element was to complete a tableau showing one section of the story that we would present on exhibition evening. My group looked at expressing the fountain where Jonny killed Bob. We had to demonstrate it as it would have been during the time it was set and also in modern day. We had to demonstrate Elena’s of world view.
We chose time because drive in movie theatres were only popular for such a short period of time.
We chose beliefs because Cherry changes Pony’s beliefs of what socs are like. She says “things are rough all over”, referencing how greasers have it tough and socs have it tough as well.
Overall the outsiders taught me that different people can view the world in different ways and have different ideas about the same thing or event, they can have different experiences based on their upbringing and ideas of the world.
I can’t drive! (Carr)
So I recently found out that a car and a Carr are different one of them let’s you do places and one of them a a very famous artist however I still don’t know much about either of the them but I did learn about the power of the pencil.
This an Apple Pencil it allows you to draw on an iPad or phone easier and is a very useful tool in digital art. I have spent the last project learning about how to use this valuable item well and i will explain to you now all the thing I made with it and a little app called sketches pro.
First of all we learned about all the tools in sketches there are quite a few that all have their own purpose.
The first task we were assigned to complete was to make our names in our own creative way i made my name have a pattern that looked like the earth because if I was not alive I would have no world I also spray painted it in rainbow colours because I tried it and it looked cool so yeah here it is.
I think it’s great dont you. No really answer , wait your reading this after I made it well feel free to drop a comment on this post if you want compliment my amazing work.
next up we learned about what sketch notes were and found out they are very important as they can help people who are not the best at writing to still remember things they learn without having to stress about writing it all down. We made sketch notes about something’ our options were a tutorial (which I chose) a day in your life or about the Ted talk we watched in class. Here are my sketch notes.
This is one of the pieces of work I am less proud of as I think it looks a bit messy.
Next we went in to shading and well I found it you could a little difficult.
next up we drew perspective drawings. Perspective drawings are drawing that looks like It is real as you feel like you are looking down a corridor. So I took a picture.
I used the perspective techniques we were taught in class and drew this photo.
I am very proud of this as it looks slightly real and the opening door of the cupboard is amazing I think.
next up we created a business that we would then make a logo for that company. The company i made was called the doggy dinner and it was a restaurant that had dogs for you to pet and you could could bring your dog there and there would be a menu for dogs.
I used sketches pro to get this logo
the dog represents your dog or our dog the paws with cutlery represent your dog being able to eat too and the stake represents the food.
this was a very fun project as i enjoy art even though i am not the best at it.
ok i dont wanna write anymore so im gonna finish up
overall i think i did well in this project and had a good time and i think i have improved my drawing skills very much.
Okey byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Make not Take
Have you ever made a photo? Not taken one but made one? That’s what this latest project was about.
Our driving question for this project and to be explored in this blog was
‘How do we communicate through photographs?’
In this blog I will explain how we learned to use photo editor, Snapseed, and Pixelmator to improve the quality of photographs and their aesthetics. Using these apps you can take your image from a boring low resolution image of your cat to an award winning piece of art. So sit down, listen and learn!
In the first few sessions we learned about the different types of photographs we could take and learned about the rule of thirds. You can take panorama, bursts, and Live Photos. Here is an example of a pano.
The rule of thirds superimposes a 3×3 grid over your camera screen, which is used to help format where the focus of your picture should be. The focus should not be the middle. For a great photo you should place the main focus of your picture on one of the thirds to the side.
Here is an example of where I didn’t use the rule of thirds and then one where I did, can you spot the difference? Which do you think is better?
Not using the rule of thirds Using the rule of thirds
The next milestone was to create a photo that we had made already from the past so Sister Dearest explained how to use tic tac and we created this tic tac of me from the past being dumb and me also in the past but not as far back being dumb.
Just kidding we made this.
IMG_0778 click here to see the video
The next stage of our learning was looking at how we can create mood in a picture. The emotion I received was “amused.” This was quite tricky at first as I didn’t understand what amused meant. Was it funny or was it doing something fun? But Mother Dearest explained it, and I took this photo considering composition of the background and foreground elements.
Click This ^^^^^^
Next we created another collage that was about us and a way of showing who we are through a photo. I recently moved from England to Canada so my photo contains me jumping from England to Canada this was a big risk but I was willing to embrace the challenge and persist in the face of setbacks. I have included a lot of English thing and a lot of Canadian things. I also made the background pokemon because I love pokemon and they are epic.
This collage was also a part of the very same blog page that was mentioned before.
And finally we created gifs. These gifs were supposed to explain who we are as a person. Mine makes not much sense just like everything I do. And I know what you must be thinking: where are these absolutely amazing and awesome and creative and fascinating and creative collages and gifs? Well all will be revealed when you click this button.
Did you go.
Did you love it.
Amazing I know.
No, no hold your applause.
OK you can applaud.
I’m assuming you clapped very loudly
Thank you for reading my blog post. I hope you liked it and overall I had fun in this project and learned a lot I learned about editing taking and cleaning up photo to make it the best i can. This is me sighning off PEACE!
Scimatics Reflection
`At the beginning of this project we were given a driving question. How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design?
To start we gathered information about plate tectonics as this is what we would base our game theme on. We did this by reading textbooks and answering comprehension questions in class and for homework. Here is an example of what we studied.
Following on from gathering this information we approached our first milestone. The first milestone was to come up with a small game idea based on other games that included information on plate tectonics . My partner Kai and I looked at the game Uno and decided to add in rules. We wrote these on a whiteboard and added diagrams. Here are the rules we added.
This was not a great game idea as it wasn’t very original and unfortunately we continued this project with the same narrow vision.
Our final game was a version of snakes and ladders. See here.
Rules
-board game.
-snakes and ladders pretty much.
-Roll both dice and move the numbers on the die added together.
-If you encounter a square that has a tsunami 🌊 on it move forward the amount of the number in the middle. Another way to determine how many steps you need to take, is you’ll see 2 droplets of water, that’s where you stop.
-If you hit an earthquake square you drop to the square where the crack ends.
-If you roll a double thats higher than 3, the tectonic plate movement happens, which means you move to the highest numbered square of the row. If you get a double that is three or lower, you move to the lowest numbered square in the row.
-if you roll two numbers that add up to 6 (for example, 1 and 5, 2 and 4, 3 and 3), you must bring in the coloured die. The red side activates the volcanic eruption, and you have to miss your turn. The green side mean you can have 2 turns.
-First person to square 90
We then looked at probability of events happening in the game
Here is our game
My partner wanted to base our tectonic plates game on snakes and ladders and I said ok.
In retrospect this was a bad idea. Choosing snakes and ladders as a base for our game meant we could not be creative in producing our own game with different counters/ board and it meant our rules were limited and I think stopped us from using our imagination. I wish I hadn’t agreed as Overall I was not happy with the game we produced.
Here is the game we produced, the rules the board and the concept.
Next time I produce a game I think I would not base it on a game that already exists. I would try to be creative with the following rules and ideas to base it on.
I would have a board that was cracked in half and the aim of the game would be to win pieces to put the board back together and mend the crack.
I am currently working on this game as a home project. There are 2 teams the Mythical beans and the Humans, you play on one of the 2 teams. The Mythical beans aim is to destroy the earth / game board the humans aim is to repair the crack in the Earth’s crust. The board is made up of 3D jigsaw pieces that players can win and take in and out of the board. The Mythical beans can create earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other disasters the humans have to work to stop these happening. I will update this blog when i have more ideas.
Toodles.
My maker experience
In this project we learned how we as students help to build and strengthen the PLP learning team. At the start of the project we asked ourselves a very important question (which I said a lot in elementary school) why are we learning this? We found that we were discovering our best attributes and how we help make a team. We then went on to learn about the BLJ (the big life journal) which was a series of chapters that we were told to fill out. This would help us learn about ourselves and what we hope to accomplish and achieve, or even what we think success is.
We then made our Memoji laptop characters and added stickers of things that we like (you will see my one later) but in doing so we also learned how to use the app keynote to make presentations. After that we made our digital selfies. These where photos that we took and edited to tell people what sort of person we are, this is mine. For safety purposes I must mask my face and name.
Following this we learned about what our first milestone would be, which was creating a user manual. You must be thinking what is a user manual and that is a valid question! A user manual is a guide that you throw away whenever you get something new that needs to be built or operated. But in these terms it is a guide on how to operate us (the PLP team) properly. The first thing we had to do was read the mentor’s texts which were the teachers user manuals. Then we modeled ours from theirs. Once again for safety I can not show these, however sections of mine are on my team contract page below.
Our second milestone was creating a team contract page on our blog. On our team contract page we showed what we could bring to a team. The elements that I highlighted were the fact that I can be funny, I can be kind to people when they are down to cheer them up and I can come up with good ideas but also listen to other peoples. I am supportive to other people when they do not understand the work and I am good at speaking and presenting.
Following on from the team contract the next mile stone was selecting three things from the big life journal which I talked about previously. These parts had to be selected carefully as we were only given three. We did this because we would use this later use them for the final presentation. The three elements that I chose were my interest brain ( which was things I find interesting in life), my dream board, which is a collage of things that I hope to achieve in life and finally a diagram of things that I can and cannot control which was a diagram of things I can and cannot control – what did you expect. I have shown these above.
We then took all of these things and collated them into a final presentation. We showed the PLP parents these presentations and they gave us feedback. These are my critique sheets.
This is the presentation I made do you agree with this feedback.
During this project I found the following things difficult.
Creating the team contract page was initially quite difficult as I did not know exactly what to do, however, a teacher assisted me and explained what to do. I also found the user manual a little bit hard because I needed to do a lot of self analysis. I was very pleased with my Keynote presentation as I thought I was going to fail drastically but I actually ended up doing alright. This ended up being one of my favourite parts of the project and if I were to do it again I would probably do less clicking and saying eh heh.
Before this project I thought all I could do was be funny but I have learned that I am more than that and I am a helpful attribute to the team.
My Ad experience
Hello Internet!!!!!!!
My name is Caden and in this post I will be telling you about my experience with the project Medium Is The Message. First of all we were told the driving question of this project, which was ‘How does what we see hear and view influence us? And I said “that’s a good question.” Thus we embarked on the journey that would be known in history as Medium Is The Message.
My group received a business to work with and partnered up to create something that at that moment in time was not yet revealed. We quickly discovered from what we were learning in our lessons that we would be making an ad for HONEYS DONUTS. At first I was unamused because most ads are boring to me and I just skip or ignore them but I would soon learn that making an ad is not what it seems. What I discovered was eye-opening.
I had no idea that making an ad was so difficult and involved so many different stages and drafts, which made a lot of great ideas fall by the wayside. Initially, we were building our knowledge, we did this by analyzing an ad by Apple about the Apple HomePod. From this I learned about target audiences and how I could attract different types of viewers. This would help me later on. Here is a link to the video. https://youtu.be/70P7-pkyP4Q
Later on in the project we analyzed historical media, this gave us a better understanding of two dimensional ads and how to make them eye-catching. From looking at these, we learned that we had to make the title POP and make the main feature the image so that people didn’t get bored by reading too much text. From my own personal experience I remembered that when an ad has a funny slogan or a pun in it I remember it more. I tried to include this in my work. This is the media I analyzed.
The final part of building knowledge that I’m going to speak about is our ad journal. This is a selection of ads that we found in our every day life that we made into a journal to critique them and analyze key elements that we needed to include. From this I learned that I needed to make my message clear- that honey‘s donuts are the best donuts you can buy- the business told us that! We also needed to advertise that the donuts were very local. We added the location so people would know where to come if they wanted a delicious treat. Also we learned that we had to make the food look good and when I say good I mean really good these are known as persuasive techniques. This is my ad journal.
After gathering the information that we needed we were set the task to make our first ad. Now we all knew that this would not be our best ad and even if we thought it was amazing and could not be improved it would have to as it was only our first draft. This was my first attempt!
Terrible I know. I did not even have the exact address of honey‘s donuts and the ad is very plain. However, the logo is a good size and the picture of the donut I used the whole way through because I like it and I took it myself at the shop. We then went through the process of develop and critique, where our peers and our mentors helped us build and improve our ideas. This slideshows shows my progress
During this project I struggled with a few things. These were using my feedback effectively, continued motivation and coming up with ideas. However, I was really proud of both the photo I took at Honeys and used as my main image and the slogan I wrote using the word bee as a pun in “You’ll bee back soon”. I have learnt that in order to create a good ad you need perseverance and good ideas.
Now this project is coming to a close I can finally answer the driving question. How does what we see hear and view influence us as human beings? And the answer my friend is yours to explore, however this is my blog so I do what I want and my answer to this – we are mostly influenced by what we see as we are engaged by bright colours, vivid images and funny slogans. We are surrounded by ads that influence us both consciously and subconsciously. They influence us in what we eat, what we buy and where we go.