The best thing I could say about this project was that there was a lot of variety. I’ve gotten the plush in many unique situations. Most of the situations were treating the plush as if it were alive or was a person. These were the most interesting to me because I really got to take some really cool looking photos such as the one shown below.

If there is one thing that I should have improved with the project, it’s that I should have taken more risks with my photos. A majority of the photos are of Sonic doing stuff. I should have done stuff to transform him. There was one moment in the project where my teacher told me I could take photos of the plush burning. This Sonic plush is really important to me and there was no way I would burn it. The furthest I’ve gone with the transforming concept was with the photos with the shaving cream and water.

I wish I could have come up with more ideas for the photos. When you need at least ten or twenty more photos, new ideas are difficult to come by. I tried not to get repetitive with my last photos. There have already been so many ideas used for the photos. The project was meant to push our creativity to the limit.

I wish I had more supplies available to me. I came up with some really good ideas that I had to cut. I didn’t have the proper tools to take shots that make Sonic appear to be standing on his own. If I did, some of the photos would be improved by quite a lot.

Overall, it was a challenging project that could’ve been executed better, but I can still say that I am satisfied with the final product. I still had a lot of great photos despite these shortcomings.

Drawing in Space Sculpture

For this part of a project we had, we were supposed to transform 2D drawing that we made before into a 3D sculpture. We would have to use different types of materials to make this sculpture. I used the three following materials for this project: wire, wooden sticks, and rubber bands.

At first, I wanted to make this sculpture with wire only. I found out early on that it was impossible to do this with the wire itself. That’s where the sticks come into play. Despite looking cool, the sticks were used to stand the wire up. I never gave much thought to using the rubber bands, but I needed to make the shadow of the sculpture look interesting enough to draw for another part of the project. I broke the rubber bands and tied them together. The final product is what you see in the picture above

100 Solutions

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0M5oqs3qYxKJJ

This project required us to take 100 pictures or more of an object of our choice. The catch was that each picture needed the object to be within a different circumstance each time. It wasn’t enough to place the object in different places for your photos. I chose a Sonic the Hedgehog plush for my object.

It was very difficult to come up with 100 original ideas. I tried to come up with as many as I possibly can. I made sure that I kept my Sonic plush, some tape, and some props inside of my backpack every day.  When I came up with a great idea or I found a perfect photo opportunity, I decided to make the best of it. It got difficult to come up with more photos when I’ve gotten so many already. Some ideas were either too time-consuming or were just impossible to pull off. I would look to my friends and family for advice on what else I should do. It took much of my time, but I got 100 photos. I only show two of my favorites in this blog post, but all 100 photos are in the link below the photos if you are curious about the rest of them.

Elements of Art

Line

Shape

Texture

Value

Color

Plane

Volume 

Mass

Space

Light

Time/Motion

Principles of Design

Unity/variety

Balance

Scale/Proportion

Rhythm

Emphasis

If there has been one game that was truly inspiring to me, it has to be Sonic Mania. The game went back to what many people have loved about Sega’s mascot. It brought the blue blur back to his 16-bit glory.  Sonic Mania was a fan project that became a dream come true for not just fans of the Sonic franchise, but also for the developers of the game.
Promotional image for Sonic Mania

Sonic Mania was developed by Christian Whitehead (Taxman), Simon Thomley (Stealth), and Pagodawest Games. Image of Whitehead, Thomley, and developers from Pagaodawest Games at the Sonic 25th Anniversary Party

Both Whitehead and Thomley have grown up playing the Sonic games on the Genesis and have been inspired by them. They both have made Sonic fangames before they worked with Sega. Christian got his start at Sega with the port of Sonic CD for mobile phones and consoles. He made it run better than the original game with his Retro Engine and he added new features, such as the inclusion of Sonic’s sidekick, Tails, as a playable character.

Thomley would later come in to help Whitehead create ports of Sonic 1 and 2 for mobile. Before they started developing Mania, they wanted to port Sonic 3 and Knuckles to mobile as well. Unfortunately, the idea only came as far as a concept video and a Change.org petition.

Whitehead and Thomley then started to work on a prototype for Mania. The first zone they created was Studiopolis Zone Act 1. They met with Takashi Iizuka, the current leader of Sonic Team to show off the prototype. Iizuka-san was astonished by the amazing prototype that was created. It was enough to start the development.Studiopolis Zone Act 1 from Sonic Mania

The game was revealed to the public during the Sonic 25th Anniversary Party in San Diego. It gained praise for being one of the best Sonic games in years. The development team was made up of Sonic fans who are known in the community. The game would come out to much critical acclaim on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and the Switch.

Sonic Mania was a love letter to the entire Sonic franchise. It was an amazing game from start to finish. I do not think I will be excited for a video game like I was for Sonic Mania. I was glad to know that it lived up to more than my expectations. I would have paid more than $20 for a copy of Sonic Mania. I never played a game that had so much love put into it. I am a huge Sonic fan myself and to see a game in the style of the Sega Genesis games was more than a childhood dream come true. The story behind the history of Sonic Mania has taught me that anything is possible and dreams do come true when you work hard to achieve them. It truly was “by the Mania, for the Mania.”

Title Screen for Sonic Mania

Albert Einstein (Randy Rabanal)

One of the first pieces of art that I want to show off is a piece that I entered into a contest. This was a line drawing of Albert Einstein that I created the first year of highschool. It was not really meant to be anything but submission for a contest. I was kind of worried that I was not going to place very high at all, but I got second place surprising. I am not really sure how many people put in a submission for the contest. It was great getting $400 dollars from the contest. I kind of wish I could have at least fixed up Einstein’s face and make the drawing a little more realistic, but it is still one of my favorite moments of freshman year.

Here Come The Iraqis (Randy Rabanal, Ellie, and Nate)

The story behind this was that I had to create a music video parody for AP U.S. History and I never created one before in my life. I had to come up with lyrics for a parody of the song “Here Comes The Hotstepper” and I needed to do it in a group. If you watched the video, it should be obvious that it was about the Gulf War. I did most of the work from the lyrics to the editing of both the video and the song. It took hours to create and it felt like a nightmare. This video is one of the reasons I refuse to use IMovie anymore. I loved being able to make hilarious stuff, but this was driving me crazy. There were people asking me if I was finished with the video, because people have heard of the video and how bad it was. There was this one girl who could not stop laughing for ten straight minutes and I barely showed her one minute of the video. This video really shows off the kind of clown I am. My teacher told me that this was the best music video that came from the project.

This was one of the first times that I have made a music video. I have edited some videos in the past. This was the earliest video I could find and this was one of my favorites. If you look through this channel, most of my videos were for projects I have had in high school. I did enjoy making these and I had fun spending multiple hours trying to make just about everything perfect. I was not really trying to do anything fancy with this project. I just wanted to record with my IPhone and make some hilarious stuff. I love joking around. I was considered one of the funniest kids in my school and my videos really helped to show that. Something about this video was really important to me. I do not really like it all that much, as I cringe during every single second. I just found that it was something that really got me started with testing my editing skills. The editing is a bit awful, but I have improved over time. If you watched the video and you got a chuckle out of it, that is all I wanted from my videos. I am the kind of guy that likes to entertain people and make them laugh. I would not change anything about this video. The amount of cringe kills me and that is why it is always nice to look back at something you created and look at how far I have gone.

I have found that my schedule is very consistent. I have made a schedule based on my experience this past week. It was a schedule that I have been comfortable with since my first day. You are given a lot of free time during college and most of that time is going to be either studying or doing something else. The only time that I know is going to be used for only studying is during my time at the library in between my class periods. It was very difficult for me to be able to make a concrete schedule for the weekend as those days are wild cards for me. I cannot predict what may possibly be happening during those days.

I have found that using a schedule like the one I have been following since my first week is very helpful for someone like me who likes to take a basic idea of my day into consideration. I never really strayed away from what I am used to doing. The only moment on a weekday that I broke away from what I normally do was on Monday when I decided to go to Hobby Lobby in between classes to get some art supplies. I would normally wake up around 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. and I would go to my classes. The only time that I would change things up would be after I am finished with my classes. I would either study or do whatever. I usually go to sleep around 10 p.m. 12 p.m. at the latest.

The weekend was very inconsistent. It would range from me doing things like doing my laundry to watching a movie with a friend. I honestly could not have predicted what was going to happen. It is probably since I have more time to do whatever I wanted. Of course, I have taken time to do my work.

Overall, I have found myself to be almost consistent during the weekdays and I found that I am about everywhere when it is the weekend. I still manage to complete all of my assignments on time though.

 

The first article, written by Tim Leberecht, talked about twelve key things that entrepreneurs need to learn from artists. They talked about all the important ideas and things that come to make good artists. The second article, by Amit Gupta, begged to ask the question if artists could be considered entrepreneurs. This article went on to make comparisons between artists and entrepreneurs. It talked about how they are both creative and are able to come up with solutions to problems they want to solve.

Like entrepreneurs, I think that artists should keep in mind the state of the market that they are going to release their work into. Artists need to be creative, but they need to make sure that their work is released at the right time. They need to know their industry and how they can be different from all of the other artists.

I agree that artists should be considered as entrepreneurs. Artists are the people that try to experiment and create something that would be different from anything else around the time. We get to see developers make video games that are from what people would normally play. Different Ideas are not only part of the video game industry. We get to see different types of movies and other types of media as well. People are taking risks by making new art. Art flourishes through distinct and new experiences.

I agree that artists are to be able to be more creative when they are put under constraints. Constraints allow artists to come up with new possibilities that would not have been considered before. I had a project for my Foundation of Art and Design class that was very tedious due to the rules. We were assigned to take one-hundred pictures of just one object. The catch was that we could not just take photos of the object sitting in different places. For me, it was hard to be creative enough to be able to take one-hundred different pictures, but I would not have been to come up with all these creative ideas if there were no rules.

If there were some other characteristics that stand out to me would be that artists are like children and that they are passionate about their work. Artists have a child like imagination that allows them to come up with many good ideas. Artists really do care about the art they create as well. Why would they put their blood, sweat, and tears into their projects if they did not care?

Artists and Entrepreneurs are two sides of one coin. They both work hard and take their own risks with their ideas. They both have the ability to be able to come up with their own brilliant ideas. When you think about it, there is no major difference between the two besides art and business.

The Grit Test tells people if they have what it takes to handle college. Luckily for me, I got a score of 3.88 out of 5. I would say I have a pretty good chance of doing well in college. I have more Grit than 70% of the United States. That is some decent evidence. If there is one thing that I need to work on, it would be to focus more on any upcoming assignments.

I am not sure what I could possibly do to improve my grit. I could probably spend more time studying or planning further ahead for my schedule. I need to work on assignments and try to finish them the day that they are assigned. If I am able to do these things, I will be successful.

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