Scratch Game Design

Scratch Chase Game

(If it goes back to the game you're done with, move your mouse pointer)

Hey guys, so something we've been working on is Scratch. Scratch is a website where you can create your own game. It takes a lot of coding (if you make a complex game.) For my game, I've thought of penguins. Who doesn't like penguins right? So one of my characters (out of two) is a penguin and the other one is a shark. You can say that it would be a real life situation where a penguin is running or swimming away from a shark. No, it won't get eaten you'd only lose points so no death is shown. I won't say that everybody would like my game that I created, I'm only a beginner so you have to deal with it for now (not like I'd be a professional.) It's the user who'd decide on how they would be affected by my game and it's not the best, don't expect some huge explosion then the penguin pops out of nowhere then met a villain (shark) and it has to run away from it in the sea. Yeah, none of that just some simple game where you run away (so complex I know.) I'm going to be honest, for the first few codes that we've done I was like, "Oh yeah, this seems easy. I can manage this project!" and then it gets to actually making it, then I went from "Yay" to "Nay."

I'll go in depth and tell you about my game. My game contains 2 sprites as so called in Scratch. The sprites are a shark and the penguin you see above. The idea of my game is stated on my first paragraph, it's to run away from the shark until the timer goes off. I did draw my own background and penguin, I tried my best. I had a set of plans on how things are going to go, but then I had to change it because I didn't have that much time to work on my Scratch. In my opinion, not that much people in my class drew their own sprites nor background. If I compare my game to others, one feature that would stand out is that I drew my background and penguin. (The most important and outstanding thing of all *wink wink*) To be honest I really like what my game has come to, it doesn't really work that well but it works and I tried my best. It amazes me that I can make my own game and let the whole world see and play it and compliment it how bad or good it is. I've tried my best and I know I can go over and beyond on my level at the moment, but I'm having some trouble with computers (it's not working) so I don't have much time to work on it except for school.

To be honest, I didn't copy all my code from another scratcher. I've learned from my previous scratch game which is the Chase Game. I've learned how to make it jump and so on. But overall, the best code I've done would be a simple jumping. I know its simple, it's just jumping you can just add a forever code with a sensing code and motion. Not my case, the trouble I had on making my sprite jump and gliding or falling back down was very challenging. That's what makes it the best code I've done, I've figured out how to make it jump and go back down. When it touches black then it stays there and you can jump to the next platform. Yes, it does look fairly easy to do but trust me it works great. If you played my platformer game let me tell you that there is a lot of bugs that I have to fix. One of the major one is when you reach the last level and you go to the red box it makes the sprite float up. I don't know what happened but it works fine in the first level then it goes all down hill on the second level. That's the main one actually, nothing else bugs except for the last level where it floats and then you get stuck and then you go from smiling to "oh, now what?" thing. I do hope you guys like it, it's exceptional if you don't I get it. Just hoping you guys would, I know how bad I am at Scratch, younger students than me is better than me to be honest, I won't lie about that.

Invention Commercial

P3T5_Invention from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Do you guys remember the commercial project we did? Well let me tell you more about it! My teams goal was to make the video work. Since our invention is an app and we can't make it since we have not learned to do so and we don't have that power. We made a video, not mainly showing and containing our invention because we didn't make it. It was hard not to show it so we tried our best to make the audience and the video make sense on how the Conflict Checker works. It kind of works but overall we could've done better and more entertainment. It was hard to think of an invention you can invent because these days, the things you see is very complex. It might look innocent on the outside, but the inside is a math problem.

The best team moment that me and my teammates had was when we were filming. When we film there is a lot of goofing around but we get work done so no worries! Filming is like the best part of doing a project for GT, you get to spend time with your teammates outside of school while doing your work! Doesn't that sound fun? Yes it does, we had all our fooling around time and serious and do our work time. We sometimes got off task but we got everything done even though we didn't have any film for the first few days but we worked it out and we were the 2nd team that turned their commercial in. I'm very proud of that!

Breaking it down who did who and why did they do. Let me tell you about it, Ashley filmed with me since Julie couldn't and we've done well on that. She was on the days we had to film and she was right on track. She helped a lot, she cooperated with me and Julie really well and she saved our lives when our battery died (we used Ashley's camera.) Julie mostly did the narration and the planning on what we had to do in school, she couldn't really film with us but she helps on working and filming in school for the voice-overs and narration. While I, Kyla went all out and kind of took control on how the filming will go. I mostly did the plan with the help from Julie and Ashley and when Julie couldn't attend our filming session, I changed the plan on that day. For the little time we had, me and Ashley achieved on filming every single part. I also did most of the editing in iMovie with some helps and suggestions from Julie and Ashley.

Composition Scavenger Hunt

Recently, we made a video about composition techniques with our teammates. From all the 20 techniques, we were only assigned to do 10. In those 10 techniques, the most important one I must say is Rule of Thirds. You might think, "Why Rule of Thirds? What's so interesting about it?" Well, let me tell you what Rule of Thirds is. Rule of Thirds is a major rule and well known for taking pictures or a video that includes an interview. This allows your picture to be more interesting and dynamic shots and it acts as a frame for your image.

From all 10 composition techniques, in my opinion the hardest one is Contrast in Content because a lot of things are related to each other. In that, I mean flowers, leaves, trees, grass are in one category of plants! That's the mistake we made for ours, we took a flower and put in on the grass. As we though that, that was contrast in content but Mr. Sanderl said that, that's in one category of plants. Nature is related to each other in some way, the only contrast in content I can think that would pass is a human against grass. If you think of things really thoughtfully, I guess you can come up with a lot of things than I would. There are some other hard ones, but how you plan on taking the picture takes a lot of technical thinking.

My teammates are Julie and Ashley and they are really helpful on planning things. When we think together we actually get a lot of ideas to add onto our invention. Basically, we all our in charge of planning outside of school and we've done that already. Ashley and I thought of how the scripts would go and the composition techniques and shot types. Julie was the one who planned things out and just gave moral support and thought of a lot of ideas we could do. While I, helped with the visual plan, b-roll planning and the timing. I know that we will finish all our b-roll over the weekend and even though my teammates have hula and cheer practice (while I don't play any sports so I'm literally free) we will get it done. It isn't hard if you think of it and we only have to consider the shot types and composition techniques.

Cracking the Code

For this new quarter, we're learning about coding which is new for GT students since Mr. Sanderl never taught coding. In my opinion everybody should learn how to code because it's something you don't need knowledge and something easy to learn. As far as I know, not that many people has jobs, some doesn't even like their own jobs but coding is fairly easy to learn. If you're insecure about how smart you are, worry no more. Either you're smart or not, none of that smartness will really get into coding. Just easy tying and making up codes for everybody to use, think about it. You'll be helping other people to get smarter, internet changed our lives! If you see the future from now, think about how much impact the internet will have on humans and who knows, coding might help a lot of people on getting jobs and the internet will expand. Can't you just imagine that, to be honest without coding the apps used today won't exist. So thank coding on making such amazing, useful, fun apps.

My first experience for coding was actually the first time we did it in Mr. Sanderl's class. I've seen people doing coding but never tried it myself. It was actually really fun and semi-hard since I can't tell apart my left and right on a computer screen, it changes within the direction you're in. Who knows left might be going up and right might be going down or totally different ways! Other than that, it's a pretty easy thing to do (because it's for beginners) so easy. Overall, I would love to learn more about coding, I do know that it will eventually get harder and I'm ready to take that challenge. At least I'm going to learn something new, even though it will get hard I won't give up (I almost did) I got through the first one and got my certificate.

We've been practicing our coding skills on a website called code.org (it's obvious what you're going to do.) For the last few levels and the last practice we had, there was a level where we could make up our own game. There were multiple (I mean a lot) of codes that you could choose from to make your game. I totally knocked that down, knocked down every level except for the last one. Also, you could choose your own character, if you want one or two you could, you can make them touch, shoot saucepans? I know it's funny to think about, back to my game I haven't really made it up because we had limited time. My plan was to make a game that had Baymax, Hiro, Elsa and Anna (so they won't be alone from their movie) basically they would play a game by shooting a random item to each other. The teams are separated from left and right, they dodge forever at whatever the other team is throwing at them and you can control either Hiro and Baymax or Elsa and Anna. In advance, all that didn't happen just in my imagination that couldn't put into real life, but I've gotten Elsa in position you can control her and also Anna. I will still work on it, if I can accomplish my plan and if I do that is just amazing (since I barely got through the first lesson.)

My Humorous Monologue

For our new project called Comedic Monologue that we started on about 1-2 weeks ago I've learned some things I never did last year. For example, I learned some new functions of the camera I never knew about. Also, that deadlines are technical things, a deadline is a deadline. Nothing's a joke whenever it comes to deadlines, the closer it gets we get stressed out and panic. You have to be doing your work as early as possible so that you don't have to worry that much. Another thing is that you can make a joke out of boring things. Can't you believe it, you're making something lively and humorous out of nothing, take my joke as an example, homework. Plain boring homework turned into something actually useful (well it is, just turned into a joke that you can laugh at.) Although my jokes not that funny.

One crucial thing we need to have and know about is "padding." Padding is when you wait for 3 seconds after pressing the record button, then start talking when 3 is over. This way your voice won't get cut because the camera starts recording for about 1 second after you hit record. Do the same thing when you're about to hit the stop button, this will also help you by not cutting your voice. Remember that padding is one of the biggest thing you need to know when recording, if you don't pad most likely some of your introduction and ending is cut off.

Can't you guys believe it that I got a vote! I know right, I can't either. Believe it or not I expected some 2's but I got 4's and 3's which is good. We critiqued our videos and voted for who's one was the best which was Makaio's, you can check out his blog on my blog if you want to see his video. Anyways, this project had me have my ups and downs and show my strength and weaknesses. This project was not that easy as you think, I mean think of making your own joke that makes people laugh and it has to be 30 seconds or more. That's not the only hard part, signing out a camera with more than 20 people waiting in line after school and if you don't get one, then your more likely to not finish your work. Although, with your friends to help you out, that's something good right? Of course, and also laughing at other people's joke (but not mines because it's not that good.) There are more of my strengths and weaknesses for this project but the ones I listed above are the main ones. (Not that much strengths, but hey this project wasn't meant to be easy.) I could improve by making/creating a magnificent joke that will make everybody laugh. I would check out a camera at least 2-3 times and get better shots, that's basically it. The flaws on my video, I would change all that to make it al least close to perfection.

Comedy Writing

Sense of humor is an important character trait because it expresses and reveals who you truly are. By laughing hysterically and making non-sense jokes reveals part of you. Your shy self if you are, becomes shameless and their creativity takes place. Positive emotions are coming out of you and everybody likes that, it makes them feel a sense of satisfaction in their lives. You have a good laugh a day and you'll remember it for the rest of the day and this will make you smile.

To write a humorous narrative follow these 5 tips. First, think about and consider something that you think your audience will laugh at. Remember to connect to your audience and tell a joke that'll make your audience laugh and not only what you think. Second, think about current events because those events can make an excellent joke material that you never knew would. Third, watch out on making any controversial topics that might hurt somebody's feelings without you knowing. Fourth, try figuring out what kind of joke structure you want. For example a one liner punchline, remember that less words on describing your joke. If you write a whole story, that will bore your audience on how long it takes until you get to the joke. Fifth, add some sarcasm and exaggerate some words, this way you are enhancing your joke. After all that, if you think that you have a good joke, practice your joke to a friend before telling an audience. Other peoples opinion on your joke will help you so you can revise it till' its great.

My comedic monologue is about homework and originally got the idea from Mr. Sanderl. It's pure sarcasm and won't offend anybody. In my opinion, my comedic monologue is funny because we have our point of views with homework and if you add sarcasm to it, it'll make it funny. Sarcasm makes everything funny and that's why I used that technique. Here's my joke, "Homework, the BEST thing you'll ever get from school! Just spend 8 hours in school and another additional hours doing homework is the bestIf you don't turn it on time, OF COURSE you're not going to get a bad grade. Just a few warnings and a few calls home, but that's not a BIG deal. Maybe just a few "You can't do this" and "start doing this" on your everyday basis. Just to get you started on your LOVELY homework. EVERYBODY looks forward on having homework over the weeken because isn't it the best!? I can't wait to see another lovely pile of homework to do, just GREAT I LOVE it SO MUCH!"

Motivational Poster

In our new project called Motivational Poster we require 2 text layers, 4 images, kerning, triadic color scheme, visual balance, blending options, personal quotes and our manifesto that we made in our previous blog post. The two text layers are personal and manifesto and the 4 images is our symbols and a portrait picture of us. Kerning is required because there shall be no empty space and the whole entire page should be filled with words filled with our personal quotes and manifesto.

I made my Motivational Poster by having all the things I need like my manifesto and personal quotes. First I created a text box for both of my text layers. Then I left aligned my text so it's easier to create a box, I used the kerning tools to do so. After that, I added my symbolic images and a portrait picture to create my background. Next I started to add my triadic color scheme, adjusted my colors to match my background. It wasn't that hard to do as kerning. After that I adjusted my background by going to Layers> Layer Adjustment and adding color balance to match my text layers. I also added curves but I don't think that's a must. After that I just saved it to a JPEG and turned it in on time.

The biggest challenge I faced and mostly everyone is kerning. Trying to fit everything without any space is just hard. At first I thought that I wasn't going to fit everything together but I did and it only took about a week or less. How I would improve my kerning is just adjusting my text size so it's easier to fit everything together and it doesn't take that much time to try and fit small texts throughout the page. I also think that if I hadn't gotten that much words and could've just had little text so I only had to adjust the text size and fill the page completely easier than the hard way I took.

Personal Manifesto

Hey guys it's Kyla and I'm back from summer!

Here are 5 interesting facts about my current self. Nothing really has changed from me, I'm still weird like always, still stubborn, fun to be around with, makes a lot of friends, and I love being around with kids. This starting of the school year I had made a lot of friends that are mostly six graders. I'm pretty sure they know that I'm weird but don't worry they are too. I'm not that stubborn in my opinion, although my friends probably thinks I'm still stubborn like always. Kids makes me happy, their so cute and playful like me.

Give Chances to People! Follow your Heart. Take Risks! Set Goals for Yourself! Live Life the Fullest Way Possible. Nothing is Impossible. If you want it, Work for It. Extend your Dreams. See the World. Discover. Be Grateful with what you have. Find Love within your Loved Ones. Learn to Love Others. Love Yourself and Others. Adventure throughout your Life. Learn to Forgive, Forgive and Learn. Make Friends so you’re not Alone in Life.

My manifesto applies to my readers because overall what I'm trying to say is that live while your still a kid. Do all the things you've never tried so your childhood was worth it. Your not going to be a child forever so cherish it before you turn into an adult and do work all the time. The most important is setting goals for yourself, only a portion of people can explore the world. I suggest to make a list and work on it till' you get to the point where you are proud that you achieved your goals you set.

Music Videos Rock!

My teammates are Raiden, Jhoanna, Ashley, and I. We didn't have that much things done but we still stay productive. For our music video my teammates contributed by helping out. Ashley helps us film, Jhoanna tells us some advices on what to do, me and Raiden does our parts in the music video which is about half of our plan. Raiden is a hardworking teammate, he makes sure that we get things done and tells us what we do so we can stop doing it. Jhoanna is like a person who cheers for us when she isn't doing anything but when it comes to her part she will work. Ashley likes filming so she is somewhat our filmer and does a great job at it. Were eventually going to do Ashley and Jhoanna's parts when we can, for now we are doing me and Raidens' part first because we have a lot to do and we should to the hard things so everything else is easy work.

My opinion on which part our audience will enjoy is the story. The reason why is because its about love and you know people will find one, one day. It can probably relate from your past or your upcoming future. That's basically the part that I think you guys will enjoy, there are some other parts to see but I don't know if your going to enjoy it. Either or I think this music video is going to be enjoyable for all the people out there. I find it interesting that most of the teams has to do something about love. Love is such a strong word to start off with, so we will probably encounter some problems.

For this music video it will show what we learned this whole entire school year by our editing. How we use transitions, effects, etc. because that makes everything more interesting. Also how we can use simple effects to make such a great impact on to the film. For example slow-motion can make things all dramatic and adds emotion. To make this music video awesome we have to work together and put together our brains to make it work. Even though we learned a lot of things, I forgot some of them. That's why we have teammates! To make us remember things. This project I think tests our skills, if we listen closely do Mr. Sanderl's demos, and to have fun. There is some ups and downs doing this project but we will work it out.

Lyrical Livelihood

In this new project my teammates are Raiden, Ashley and Jhoanna. We had the choice to picked a song to lip-sync and we decided to pick Sugar by Maroon 5. My favorite lyrics in Sugar is the chorus. In most of the songs I listen to my favorite parts are mostly the chorus. I am in-charge of part of the chorus which I will lip-sync. The lyrics of this song makes me feel hyper thinking about sugar.

Our music video is Sugar by Maroon 5, we picked this song because we agreed to it. How this song is organized, by the beat and all makes it a remarkable song. We know the song and it's lyrics so we don't need to spend our time to memorize it. Also, this song has a very catchy chorus that we can easily dance too, but we don't know if we are going to dance. It does have some high pitched points but we can deal with it.

Our visual story for this music video is about Raiden "chasing" me which relates to love. If you listen closely to the lyrics it talks about how he needs loving. Although he is singing to people who is getting married it still relates to love. We are re-creating that by having Raiden as the man who chases a girl (me) because he wants her back. We are going to add some flashbacks to make it look like they had loved each other.

Our Animation Story

P5T8 Sophia Faces Fears from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.


Each team had to pick a focus statement to show for their animation. Our focus statement for this animation is "Sophia Faces Fear." This tells Sophia's story because it shows her facing her fears and it shows the fears she faces in our animation. It's pretty hard to tell that she's facing her fears but I hope you understand it. Sophia was played as herself, Alaka'i as Harry Potter, Micah as the professor and me as the friend.

Our lesson for this animation is that you can face your fears if you believe in yourself. Sophia wanted to get out of the book so she had to face her three biggest fears to get out. It takes courage to face your fears, Sophia is scared but she still decides to take the challenge. By the end she receives a trophy for all that she's done.

Our best moments were in the beginning and the end because we didn't have much stress at those points and we felt relieved when it was the end because we accomplished a lot. Our worst moments were in the middle of the making of our animation. We had to deal with a lot of things, we argued but we got it together. Also sometimes we can't decide to do which and which scene is which. Half of the time we argued about those things.

Animation Outtakes

For this new animation project Alaka'i, Ashley, Sophia, and Micah are my teammates. We are expected to do a real life animation mixed with Photoshop, Stykz, or Whiteboard. Two interesting facts about Ashley Alfiler is that she cheers for Eagles and she wants to be a coach when she grows up. Sophia Gregory plays the piano and also plays volleyball. Alakai Gonsalves is in Boys Scouts and likes to play sports.

Stop-motion animation is a type of animation that requires photos. To make one, you need a bunch of pictures that describes what the person is doing. For example I am walking, each step I take somebody will take a picture, when you put all those together it will look like I am walking normally but in pictures. GIF is an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format. This kind of format allows people view it in the Internet. Although, you have to draw out your scene.

Our story is about "Sophia Faces Fear", she dreams about her being in the Harry Potter book/movie. Her dream takes her on until she faces her biggest fear and a challenging challenge. Her challenge was to go through a raft while an alligator is chasing her and fighting a snake. We are going to manipulate the movie, we are not going take a picture of the actual movie. You should care because our story is all about facing your fear and how your dreams can take you places unexpectedly. We really had a hard time to think of this idea, even though it's not a type of story that makes sense, I hope we still get a good grade

 

Typography Images

Typography is the style of a printed matter made with facts about the person you're doing the typography about. It can be used to make an impact because the words contains facts about the person and we will remember because its part of the image. We can look back to the image and we will visually see words that relate to the person. That's how typography images can make a huge impact in the future.

During this project the hardest challenge for me was placing the portrait on the mask. I couldn't see the images so that was hard but I got the hang of it. I labeled them so I know which is which, then I started doing whats suppose to be done. I overcome this issue by listening to Mr. Sanderl's direction and watching a video. It was pretty easy because Mr. Sanderl and some guy help me, one we watched a video how to make a typography image and that helped me a lot. I had some struggles on making our teacher portrait but by the end, I actually helped a lot of people to get done. So I know that I clearly know how to make a typography image.

My four visual examples as shown is my typography portrait of my teacher of my choice, how I started from scratch then to an amazing image. One of them was our practice typography portrait and then we stepped forward to a more higher expectations. We made our final image look like its a real-life photo. I am very proud of my final and practice because you can tell how we really took a step forward to a higher, advanced, tutorial image.  What makes my practice different from my final is because we colored the words and you only see words and not the face, the words outline it. My favorite one is my final because I learned how to challenge myself to finish it correctly and to make it perfect. Now I know how to make a typography portrait like a professional person.

Double Exposed Portraits

Portrait Photography is a picture of a person or two and the picture expresses the person's feelings, mood, and personality. The main focus is the person's face, the body and background may be concluded with the image. Portrait Photography could relate to a profile view and silhouette because they do something with the person's face. Profile is an outline of the person's image and silhouette is an image of a person or an animal that is black and outlined black which make the whole image black. We will use the outline of our face and blend in pictures within our faces to make it look amazing.

Double exposures are created in Photoshop by following these steps. Step 1-9, this will help you learn how to make a double exposure image in Photoshop. To get your images in Photoshop you have to go to: File>Script>Load Files Into Stacks>Browse>Take your three images>Start. If you are a person that likes photos that are blended into each other then you'll want a double exposure image. It combines 2 images that symbolizes you and the side of your face, and from there your going to blend them together to make a double exposure image.

My symbols are parts of nature, this represents me because I love nature. I have a flower and a t-leaf flower. It's very unique and there's a lot of things to explore, and that's what symbolizes me. My quality could improve if I would've took a picture of the sunset or something like that about the sky. Although, there's only a few things I can take a picture of around my house, so it's limited. Also, I would've improved if my portrait picture shows more of my face and not that much of my hair, because my hair takes up three fourths of he space on my face. That's it for now, and keep in touch because we have more blogs to post.

HDR Photography

HDR Photography is drawing with light, HDR Photography is used for taking pictures and you can take more than 3 pictures in different exposure levels. What I dislike HDR Photography is that you take a long time to adjust the exposure because of where the buttons are at. What I love about HDR Photography is that we can make a picture that we created and edited by our own.

If you want to know how to make an HDR image you need at least 7 images in different exposure levels. Then you have to go to Photoshop and go to File>Automate>Merge to HDR Pro>Browse then you pick your 7 photos that you took and start compiling them to make a realistic image using all 7 photos. I will guess about this, but I think that HDR is different from automatic HDR because your the one who's taking the picture and its not going to do it for you.

For my HDR landscape and experiment, the thoughts that went to it is, it needs to be surrealistic and it has to meet the expectations. I never worked so hard on a project like this one, we had to have 7 photos in different exposure levels, for landscape we had to get the sky and the foreground which was a struggle for me. When I was going through the process on making my HDR photo, I went through a lot of complicating things like how to put the levels in the right space, and that's it for now I hope I helped you guys on how to make an HDR image.

Movie Trailer Critique

Our project is about a Lego Man dreaming about him in another type of person. My teammates are Alaka'i Gonsalves, Kacie Burns, and Meleana Keawe, our trailer plan as you can see has all the information we needed to do to make our movie trailer work out. I contributed by writing the voice acting script and helping out to make the synopsis.  All of my teammates contributed in some ways. It was a tough trailer to make, especially that we have an animated trailer.

Our project requirements were our trailers needs to be 1 minutes 30 seconds to 2 minutes 30 seconds, foley, movie poster, 5 scenes, VO (voice acting script), text layovers, and dialogue. We almost completed the requirements but we only missed a few. Like foley and we only did a few dialogue, and if you wanted to know what foley is, here it is. Foley are everyday sounds like clapping your hands, stomping, whipping a whip, and typing.

I do agree about our critiques, even though we only had 3 votes. We could've done a real life trailer but we did a Lego animation. Yes, animations are hard and we never learned about animations yet, but at least we tried and we were the only team that did an animation trailer. We got a lot of compliments from our teacher how we did a good job on doing a different trailer, and I felt special because our trailer was unique. We didn't really want ours to be the best and all the people voting for ours, we did expect that we have 3-5 votes.