On Friday, October 9th, Hideo Kojima left the Tokyo offices of Konami, the video-game company where he had worked since 1986, for the last time. The departure ceremony, according to one of the hundred or so guests who attended, and who asked that I not use his name, took place at Kojima Productions, the director’s in-house studio, and was “a rather cheerful but also emotional goodbye.” He said that he did not see Konami’s president, Hideki Hayakawa, or its C.E.O., Sadaaki Kaneyoshi, at the party, but some of Kojima’s colleagues from other studios showed up to pay their respects, as did many of the people who worked on his most recent directorial project, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The game, which takes place in mid-nineteen-eighties Afghanistan and Zaire, made a hundred and seventy-nine million dollars on its launch day, in September—more than the two highest-grossing films of the year so far (“Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Jurassic World”) combined. In the past several decades, Kojima’s name has become synonymous with such blockbusters, and with the Konami brand itself. His impending resignation had been rumored as early as March, but the fact of it remains startling—as much as if Shigeru Miyamoto, the originator of Donkey Kong and the Mario brothers, left Nintendo. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hideo Kojima Leaves Konami as Company Makes The Switch to Mobile Games and Pachinko Machines. On Friday, October 9th, Hideo Kojima, famously known for his creation of the Metal Gear video game series, left the company he has worked with since 1986. Since 2007, Konami has shifted their main focuses towards mobile games, which gave them an eighty percent profit increase between 2011 and 2012. Konami has also invested in Pachinko machines, which bring in more money than funding AAA video games. Kojima's last and biggest project, Metal Gear Solid V: The Pantom Pain, took too long to create, and cost more than the company wanted, thus causing a fallout between Kojima and Konami. Today, Kojima has created his own video company, Kojima productions, and is currently working on his next big project: Death Stranding. The reason I chose to present the information above as a leading paragraph is because it sums up the situation pretty well. Readers can see why Kojima left Konami (mobile game shift) as well as the reasons that led to the departure. It gives viewers every important bit of the article without going to the statistics of mobile game success.
For my capstone I am both running a radio show called "Let's Get Reel" on Shepherd's radio station, 89.7 WSHC, as well as work on the station as Program Director for the semester. The new year came in, and with it, new opportunities for the station. We at the station have had a rough start with staffing the first week of classes, but we've started to gain a few students last week for both DJ positions and both PR and marketing positions. We've kept in contact with a cool app called Slack. It helps us a lot with keeping communication on track. I have been appointed as WSHC's representative for Shepherd's SGA weekly meetings, and from there I hope I can network with other campus organizations to get WSHC on the map at Shepherd.
As for overall public relations and marketing, we're bringing in a graphic designer to help us with our prototype flyers that we wish to post across campus by mid-February. We have also set up both Twitter and Instagram sites for WSHC, that are still on private settings until all functions of both social medias are completed. A new website for WSHC has been created by a fellow student this year, and it is pretty fantastic. With it, we can create bios for Spring 2017's staff, as well a schedule of radio shows we have lined up for the semester. Along with all this, we have a few big plans that we hope to get approval for, so I'm not gonna spoil them now in case they don't happen, but they are pretty neat.
Tomorrow starts Week 3 of both school and capstone progress. I am meeting with my adviser to make sure I am using my time and resources well so far. Also, between you and me, the physical aspect of the station has been pretty cluttered lately due to lack of sufficient storage for a bunch of useless CDs. So this Friday, a couple staff members and I are clearing room in one of the communication department's basement closest to put all those CDs in. We want to creating an inviting environment at the station, and that can't be made possible until the boxes full of hundreds of CDs are gone.
That's pretty much it for progress on my capstone the past two weeks. I'm pretty proud at how far we're getting the station this early in the year. My dream is to have it fully functioning and staffed by the end of this semester. Who knows, maybe it'll spark a lot more interest next Fall after I graduate. That's a nice a idea that keeps me going on the project some days.
On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright did the unimaginable and created a vehicle that could soar. The vehicle flew above 120 feet over a 12 second period on it's first flight. Such a feat wasn't accomplished overnight, yet, the Wright brothers were persistent.
The brother's dream was first thought up in their bicycle shop in 1896.
Art & Copy is a film documentary created in 2009 by Doug Pray that reveals the thoughts and inspirations of advertising creatives that invented many of the well known ads that we all still remember, despite viewing them years ago. There were many interesting tidbits in the film that analyzed advertising experts, ads such as "Just do it","Got Milk", and "Where's the beef?", but what I found particularly interesting was the segment that talked about Apple's first television advertisement.
All Hail Apple.
Now, I'm not a big fan of Apple products. I have never owned an iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mac, etc. I intend to keep it this way unless prompted by a greater force than my morals to use one. However, I do respect Apple's advertising campaigns, especially the ones with the colored backgrounds, black silhouettes, and white earbuds. It was surprising to learn that Apples first commercial, which was aired during the 1984 Super Bowl, was not informative, but rather pleasantly absurd.
I loved learning through Lee Clow, the man who co-created the ad, that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs both paid for it out of pocket. Honestly, the ad worked pretty well on me. I feel like if I had watch this ad during the 1984 Super Bowl I would have been immediately interested, and would have begun researching what the hell a "Mac" was. It's also pretty cool that the commercial also sparked a renaissance-like change when it came to filming and editing future commercials for several companies. I had never seen the ad before watching this documentary, but I have seen something similar in the past when the video game company Valve ported their popular game Half Life 2 to the Mac OS.
So yeah, it was pretty neat to put two and two together nearly six years later. As I stated before, I don't like Apple products, but the advertising division of the company definitely knew how to put their product out there. I'm a little curious as to what kinds of ads will be memorable in the near future, especially with so many of them being constantly thrown at us day in and day out.
It's been a tough couple of weeks with college and working this semester, but I have taken some time to begin practice on animating in Source Filmmaker. I've been learning about the different models, particle effects, lighting, and time manipulation during free time between my busy schedule. For an assignment last year in Dr. William's animation class, I opted to use Source Filmmaker to create my animation, and this was the end result after a few hours of experimenting.
It was short, it was simple, and I used a few techniques in posing and lighting that I was happy to figure out and implement. However, for my capstone project, I wish to create something 10x greater than that assignment I roughly put together. I've already got a rough story idea in my head that involves elements inspired by films such as 10 Cloverfield Laneand Ex Machina. I don't want to spoil too much, but I have a feeling this will be fun to animated, especially when it comes to character facial expressions. I'm still reading through the books recommended to me by my advisor in my last post, so the story could still drastically change. I've began study on pose-to-pose animation in Source, and I've been following tutorial videos like the one linked below to better understand the technique for my end product.
Alongside animation practice, I've been reading scholarly articles on the overall subject of 3D animation. Pat Power's Animated Expressions: Expressive Style in 3D Computer Graphic Narrative Animation contains a lot of interesting viewpoints about the visual styles and semiotics of animated shorts. It also goes in-depth on subjects such as projects with a mix of live-action and CGI, which was an interesting read, but I mostly stuck to the research on animated shorts. I hope that my animation manages to bring emotions out of my audience, rather than thoughts like "this looks pretty meh" or "I think I saw a glitch in the background". The story and characters are my main focus in this short, and I'm going to polish the overall animation so that the audience only pays attention to said story and characters. This is going to be a project I will be putting quite a bit of effort in within the next couple months.
This election cycle so far has been a wild roller-coaster that I've wanted to get off of about 6 months ago. Each day one (or both) of the presidential candidates says something outrageous, then it's blown up on most major news networks for about 24 hours, then swept under the rug to make room for tomorrow's scandal. I know, this is how it's been for years in our society, but it feels a little different this election, doesn't it? Many people, including myself, believe it is thanks to the internet's archives of poor decisions made by both candidates over the past few decades, and every day more and more stuff is archived, which can either benefit both candidates, or severely hurt them. Usually, thanks to selective bias, it's the latter. I've only been following this election since last November, but I have kept up with it almost everyday since. After my chosen nominee was pushed out over the summer in favor of someone I trust less than a gas-station egg salad sandwich, following this election became less about caring about the future of this country, and more about entertainment. However, putting my utter discontent of both presidential nominees aside, I do respect both nominee's effective use of fear-mongering, blaming others, and telling voters just what they want to hear to gain their support. It's not a system that appeals to me, but it seems to work for the uninformed common masses of this country. In this blog I will discuss my understanding of the semiotics of the current election cycle, and how the presidential nominees got to the positions they are at now.
Donald Trump, potential billionaire, has a long history of being a TV personality, real estate entrepreneur, businessperson, steak salesman (my favorite), and many other professions before becoming a nominee for one of the most powerful people of the world. One outside of the loop may ask: how did this guy become a presidential nominee? Simple! He speaks at a 6th grade level, something almost all eligible voters can relate to, and he speaks his mind. He attacks anyone who makes fun of him, no matter how small the comment, and his followers seem to love it. "A man unafraid to speak the truth" one may say, appealing to many, but mostly those with not-so-politically-correct-views. Hostility, aggression, "weaponized stupid" is what seems to keep Trump's support alive nationwide. He's psuedo-popular among many ineligible voters (most under 18, or outside of the country) for being a vessel for memes across the internet, calling him the "God Emperor", a title given to a fictional faction leader of the table-top game Warhammer: 40k, but hey, there's no such thing as bad press! His constant presence on Twitter also keeps him relevant, which brings me to a major point:Trump's understanding of the internet. Trump seems to adore being in the limelight. He understands that the internet is the place to go to gain support, despite the negative content it generates against him daily. He has a far better handle on this type of communication than his opponent, Hillary Clinton, who appears to ignore or misuse the internet's great potential, but more on that later. What's pretty impressive about this candidate is how he's managed to gain so much support while only spending half of Clinton's Campaign Funding, a decent portion of it self-funded.
As far as I can tell, these seem to be the major factors that appeal to Trump supporters, and I didn't even delve that far into his policies, which don't seem to be that big issue of an issue for both candidates this election cycle.
Clinton needs millennials, badly. She's got a lot of support from name-recognition, SuperPACS, and being the first potential female president, but that's not enough. She managed to write a majority of them off during the Sanders Movement, believing they wouldn't impact the election much. However, the opposite is the case, and it's led to Trump catching up to her pretty quickly. Millennial's aren't the Clinton Campaigns only problem, there's Benghazi, refusal to release transcripts to paid wall street speeches, the whole email and FBI thing, the Wikileaks thing that made Debbie Wasserman Schultz step down as DNC chair only to be appointed an honorary chairwoman for Clinton's campaign a few hours later, the recent IT guy incident, and many more that seem to be ignored by major media networks, mostly CNN for some reason. (Hint: CNN's parent company is Time Warner) If we pretended that none of that ever happened, what we are left with is an unlikable person who just can't seem to hold on to people's trust. Her platform seems to be "I'm Not Trump" rather than actually talking about her policies. She may be a decent choice for baby boomers due to the remembrance of the nostalgic era of her husband's presidential terms, but to Millennials who are constantly update by the internet (including myself), she's not very favorable. Her recent health issues and compulsive lying are what's currently bringing her down in the polls, but hey, at least her Millennial pandering is getting better.
In conclusion, the internet is key to understanding the semiotics of this election. Not biased websites connected to television news networks like Fox and CNN for republicans and democrats respectively, nor liberal sites like Democracy Now, but a conglomeration of fact-checking sites like Politifact. Sites that due extensive research rather than playing on one's emotions for ratings. From what I understand, our culture is really into bias confirmation due to the multiple sources of news that specifically pander to those with certain views rather than giving a non-bias article for all. The fault can be traced to the politicians that can't seem to keep money out of politics, fueling the divide between parties, and also giving us possibly the two worst candidates in American history. 2016 will most definitely go down as one of the worst political years in recent times.
Last week I decided to change direction on my capstone and beginning working on an animated short using the open source animation software: Source Filmmaker. This software is used by the video game company The Vavle Corporation to create animated shorts for their video games using their game engine as a base. I've been fascinated with 3D animation as long as I could remember, and I thought that creating a project within the software for my capstone would be a great first step to finding a career in animation. However, I know that before starting any of the actual animating, the writing of the short must first be completed to get a good idea as to where the direction of the animation is heading.
Screenshot of Source Filmmaker
My Capstone adviser recommended to me to books to read before I even think about opening up the software to begin working. The first being Ideas for the Animated Short: Finding and Building Stories, which focuses really well on the writing for 2-5 minute shorts, as well as acting and dialogue. The second book is Gardner's Guide to Animation Scriptwriting: The Writer's Road Map, which delves into script-writing with illustrated text and detailed instructions. I have ordered both books last week and eagerly await for their arrival to begin studying. Along side the books, I have found multiple scholarly articles on animation that provide valuable information on animation, albeit some of it a bit dated. I've already began thinking about what kind of story I want to tell with my animation, and I feel like with enough dedication (and tutorials) I can pull off a decent end product by the end of next semester. To demonstrate what people can do with Source Filmmaker, I have provided a video from Youtube below of one of my favorite animations created by an ordinary guy for fun using the software.
For my first project I know that I won't be able to create something this amazing, but it's the kind of video that I like to strive for one day. For my next entry in this blog, I will discuss putting what I learn from the books I ordered to practice on a script for my animation.
