Falling down the mysterious rabbit hole of Photoshop and AR's and coming back up from my journey into the unknown with two, in my opinion, successful inquiry assignments
First blog post and I'm already so nervous yet excited to show my life to others. This is the start of something completely new to me, I've written about my inner feelings and interactions before, but putting them out on a public platform is extremely new to me. This post is based around my experience with an assignment from my digital learning media class thats a part of the art education program, here at Texas State University.
Inquiry 4: Gif & AR was an inquiry that I was not excited to start on. The first inquiries has been nice for me to start exploring technology but once I read the template for inquiry four I felt like I was being thrown into the deep end of a pool without floats. The other inquiries had only required computer apps that were very simple to mess around with and more physical art but this one required photoshop and an app that I had never heard of that somehow made a virtual reality right before your eyes. Photoshop isn't an easy program unless you know where every tool is located and it can be tricky even if you do because the program can mess around with you or at least I felt like it was messing with me. Professor Sean Justice began this inquiry by introducing it while the class was finishing up working on their database's. He performed a tutorial, that was optional to watch, on photoshop about frames and creating movement with the figure you chose for the gif. The decision to make the tutorial optional was helpful to students catching up on their assignments but for those who have a hard time focusing it probably would've been better to make it mandatory so that we could learn as a whole.
The Process:
I was still working on my files for my database and other assignments so I never participated in the tutorial and thats where my small downfall began. I finished my database that class and started drafting out what I wanted my gif to be while I was working on other assignments but I never actually started animating any of my drawings and as I looked around I realized my classmates were twenty steps ahead of me constantly. Sean passed out small cards that had words on them that were mood based and he told us that our gif had to be based off that word, that it needed to describe that emotion, so I started thinking of ways that what I already had in my mind could show that emotion of frantic that I received. I decided to make a transparent gif so that my gif would have a greater interaction with my AR. I thought that the creature I was drafting was simple, but my character had more layers of different positions than those I saw around me and I started to feel stressed on if I should make something easier or continue and possibly not finish the assignment on time.
During my process, I realized that drawing on photoshop was easy enough but I had to focus on remembering to choose different layers if I was adding to certain drawings on specific layers. Its something you get the hang of quickly but its tedious work. I would say that the most difficulties I had came from saving my gif. I would follow the instructions that my classmates gave me, but the document was to be saved as a .gif and once you viewed it on your desktop or in a folder I was supposed to see the thumbnail of the document moving like a gif, of course, that didn't happen. I had to ask my classmate Claire to come over after my 10pm work shift to help me correctly save the document the night before the gif was due. After I understood how to correctly save the document it was a much easier process for me and I even made a gif and AR right before class for a better grade. The AR application that we used was EyeJack and it was pretty simple. The instructions were laid out when you first open the application, so the process at that point was fast and easy to understand. I think that was a big part of why I was scared to start this inquiry because making my gif come to life on another background seemed impossible to me but the software given to us put my mind at ease.
Beginning of the End:
Throughout this whole process my classmates were a huge help to me and I just want to give them a little shoutout in this blog since they're one of the main reasons I was able to finish. I think its great for students to feel comfortable enough to not only ask their teacher questions but also ask their peers for help when they need it. When we finished our projects we shared the link to our project and had a small viewing party of everyones work. This process was hectic but eye-opening because we finally were able to see what everyone had been working on, the styles of each individual really showed in their pieces while also sticking with the words that Sean gave us, for the most part. I think that its very freeing to be given the option of two gifs because one was able to be based off the emotion but the second one was required to be. This is an excellent ideas for lesson plan projects so that you are still in control of students by formulating a rubric for them but they also have freedom for the second project that is based off what they choose. The last part of the whole project was actually sending in the projects and that required just sending the .psd file, the .gif file and the jpg of the target background to Sean over email.
Whats Next?
I think overall this was an interesting experience to begin with and I loved illustrating the gifs myself instead of using images from the internet. I plan on using this later in life for sure and its a process thats pretty simple and easy to remember for later on. The idea of bringing photos to life that may not be alive anymore really interests me and might be something I create a project out of in the future or for my last assignment of the year.
second gif made after the worm that could possibly be based on the word frantic but its up to the viewers and what they see
This background target is a collage that I made in my art adolescents class that is also a part of the art education program at Texas State. I wanted to go further and incorporate art from other classes and I even based the gif off an image that was already in the collage so that there was more of a connection between the pieces.
Footage of both my AR's working in class through the app EyeJack
Claire's gif and AR based off word "Greed"
Nadia's second gif and AR not based off word given
Thank you so much for the support! Come back for my next post! (#art2372 #arteducation)