CCDN 231, Assignment 3 Write up

Richard Hpa

CCDN 231

300226122

Tutor: Philippa Shipley

Glamour. It is defined on thefreedictionary.com as ‘an air of compelling charm, romance, and excitement, especially when delusively alluring’. But glamour is not something that can be strictly defined. It all depends on the viewer. In an extract from the book ‘Glamour: Women, History, Feminism’ written by Carol Dyhouse (2011) she states ‘glamour (like beauty) can be judged to exist in the eye of the beholder rather that which is beholden’ (pg1). She is ultimately saying that something that might be glamorous to one person might not be to another. But I believe that there is one thing, which is always glamorous to everyone, themselves. Everybody in his or her own way finds himself or herself glamorous. And I wanted to create an experience which focus’s on the aspect of self-glamour.

                                                                                               

The idea of self-glamour is something that can be involved with everybody. There are times in everyone’s life where (no matter what they look like) they find themselves glamorous’ In a Journal Article written by Carol S. Gould (2005) titled ‘Glamour as an Aesthetic Property of Person’. She states that ‘Glamour, I argue here, is this sort of personal quality’ (pg. 237).  What Gould is saying is that glamour all depends on the person. That glamour is personal and no one person can define what is glamorous and what is not. When reading that quote it gave me the sense that everyone is glamorous in his or her own way. So if everyone were to think of him or herself as ‘glamorous’, then this experience would emphasize that idea. Another quote which I found that that strengthens the last one was in ‘The Times UK’ Newspaper, this article written by Joan Collins (2006) states ‘Glamour has a lot to do with attitude and poise -the internal virtues’ (pg57).

Quotes like what was written by Dyhouse, Gould and Collins are the reason why I did this experience. In all three quotes they do not mention anything about looks but more of a ‘personal’ or ‘internal’ feel to glamour. All these quotes support each other which states that there are a lot of people believe that glamour isn’t just all about beauty. Making an experience that makes everyone feel glamorous has to not involve things that are gold and glittery, or are which I myself consider glamorous, but things, which I believe that everyone finds glamorous.

The Inspirations for my experience came from the 1937 Disney film Snow White directed by David Hand. The main thing that inspired me to do this experience is the magic mirror where it will tell you who the fairest person of them all is. I am planning on taking that part of the film and twisting it a bit to suit my experience of making someone feel glamorous. Like all of the Disney Princess’s, Snow White was shown to be extremely beautiful and glamorous. Snow White is a film that a lot of people have watched during their childhood. Many girls in their childhood have often dreamt about being like Snow White and being ‘the most fairest of them all’. So especially for girls I hope that my experience would bring back a sort of nostalgia from when they were a child, where they would dress up as princesses and make themselves as glamorous as they could be.

My experience was designed to make the user feel glamorous by projecting a live video feed to them onto a mirror. At first the mirror had just written on it, ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most glamorous of them all’. When the user presses the spacebar on the computer, then the words rippled like it were a pool of water and then fade to the live feed of them. I believe that my experiment was a success and all the users enjoyed the experience, and they were all quite mesmerized by it. This links in very well with a quote in Elizabeth Wilson’s (2007) entry titled ‘A Note on Glamour’ written in the Journal ‘Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture’, She stated that in the eighteenth century glamour was described as ‘when devils, wizards or jugglers deceive the sight, they are said to cast a glamour over the eyes of the spectator’ (pg96). The experience was not designed to focus on just one person but for anyone to participate in.

While the users were participating in my experience I was recording them from a camera, which was placed next to the mirror, so I could record their reactions to what they saw on the mirror. I recorded 4 different people and in all four cases they were all surprised by the outcome of my experience. When spoken to after the camera finished recording the users stated that it was quite beautiful and quite memorizing. And according to ‘Glamour: Making it Modern’ by Michael Lassell (2009), ‘One could, at one time, speak of being ‘under a glamour’, as being under a spell or enraptured’ (pg8). Two of the testers said that they could not keep their eyes off the screen because they were surprised at what was happening.

In the end I believe my experience was a success and that it did create a glamorous feeling to the user. The response to my experience was positive and was linked real close to some of the quotes which I got, especially Lassell’s quote from Glamour: Making it Modern, which pretty much linked perfectly with the responses. This experience worked exactly as I had planned it to and I am really happy with the outcome

References:

Gould C S (2005). ‘Glamour as an Aesthetic Property of Person’. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 63(3), 237-247.

Collins, J. (2006, April 22). Glamour: [final edition]. The Times. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.helicon.vuw.ac.nz/docview/319504665

Extract from Dyhouse, C. (2011) Glamour: Women, History, Feminism. London: Zed Books.

Wilson, E. (2007). A Note on Glamour. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture. 11 (1), p95-108.

Lassell, M (2009). Glamour: Making it Modern. New York: Filipacchi Publishing.

Hand, D. (Director). (1937). ‪Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . [Motion Picture], United States: Walt Disney Productions

Words count: 930

MDDN 243, Project 3, Refection

I am quite proud on how the final game came out. It took a lot of work and a lot of late nights. But we are all happy with it. 

If we were to do this project again we would defiantly plan our time more wisely so we don't have a lot to do on the last day. Also we wanted to add in some sort of scoring system into the game, sort of like what angry birds have with their stars at the end of each level. And we wanted there to be a bonus round if you complete all under a specific time.

We have all decided that we want to keep expanding on the game and keep working on it as a hobby throughout the summer. Our goal is to do all the things which we wanted to do for the final and also turn it into an ipad game. And hopefully once it is 100% done but it on the itunes or google plus store.

MDDN 243, Project 3, Baby problem

I have figured out what was wrong with the collisions with the baby why he disappeared. It was because he had to many frames in the animation which I wanted to play.

To get around this I have split up the animations into 2 sets. The sucking animation which plays right when the collision happens and a Spitting animation which happens when the space bar is pressed when the sucking animation is playing.

Another problem which I found is that the baby would be pushed when the collision happens. At first what I did was make it that the baby cannot be pushed. But then the baby would walk underneath the tables and chairs in the room. To get around that what I did was just make the mass of the baby 150kg. So since the batteries mass is only 1 Kg he doesn't have enough mass to be able to push the baby.

MDDN 243, Project 3, Sound

In our game we have some really awesome sounds. James has made all the sounds from scratch which is really awesome. In the main levels we have different tracks which are on loop for the entire game. They dont seem like they are looping but are just one massive track. We have a few other sound effects aswell. The ones which are in the game at the moment is the sound which happens when the battery hits a power up.
We have other sound effects like ones for charging and the baby and they are going in as soon as we manage to fix the babies collision problems

MDDN 243, Project 3, Baby animations + Collisions

For our game the bad guy is a baby, yes I know a baby but hey its the only thing we could find out to be bad for batteries. The movement of the battery is an AI. He will always follow the battery as long as it is on screen. His speed changes every few seconds so sometimes he might be following you really slow and the next it would be really fast. What happens for his movement is that if the x is greater than the battery its left animation will be used and if the x is lower than the right animation will turn on.

What we want to happen is that when the baby hits a battery then the babies animation will change to one that has him sucking on the battery. When this happens I want to disable the movements of the battery and hide the actor and when the animation is finished it will all turn back on. The same code applies to that as the movement. If the babies x is greater than the batteries than play left sucking animation.





But something has gone wrong with this. Whenever the baby hits a battery both the baby and the battery will disappear. I have no idea what is going on with this and it is really frustrating me. I am trying to get it to work. But if it doesn't work we have decided to make it that the baby just dies and then will go to a kill screen for the baby. Hopefully we can get it to work before the final hand in.

CCDN 231, Project 3, Documentation

Here are 4 videos of people participating in my experience.

Alex Le

CCDN 231, Alex Testing from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

Ian Ferguson

CCDN 231, Ian Testing from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

Dr Sarah Baker

CCDN 231, Sarah Testing from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

Philippa Shipley

CCDN 231. Philippa Testing from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

MDDN 243, Project 3, HUD

Our HUD for our game has gone through several different atheistic changes. All of them have had the same lines of code to keep them from working.
They have all be anchored to the screen so that they don't even leave the spot which they are in.

Our final HUD was quite complicated though.

For our new Hud we have the actor on the top left and the amount of charge which he had. The image of him changes depending on what your energy level is and also if you have a power up on or not.

They are all one actor type that has no collision on it so it doesn't get effected by other actors. So what happens is depending on a specific event the images will change.

As for the HUDs at the bottom of the screen. They represent the appliances which are in the room. At the beginning of the level they will all be unknown. which means that you have to find out where they are. Once you have found the appliance around the scene the image will then change to an image of that appliance. If you are outside of the charging region for the character the image will darken a little bit but once you get back in it will return to normal.

 Just like the Characters HUD these have no collisions and are anchored to the screen so they wont move and wont be affected by other objects in the room.

To get the Appliance HUDS to work I made it that when the character is in a region the animation for the HUDS actor will change depended on what happens.