Oh, By The Way...

Since the beginning of the semester, I've been testing the Live Let's Play waters. For those that don't know what a Let's Play is, I'll tell you:

Initially, a Let's Play was an interactive screenshot-based play through of a video game which enabled forum posters the power of suggestion of behavior or movement. However, after a while it's melded into more of an expression of the Let's Player's-- or LPer's-- own experience within a game. Some of them have glitches, others include a degree of original material created for the sake of the narrative they were weaving. A personal favorite which I find myself reading over and over again, The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing, is a popular one and an excellent example of how Let's Plays can entertain and show how others experience video games.

In recent years, the Let's Play community delved into video commentary, which was for a while considered dodgy in terms of legality. After all, the entire game is shown to all! Surprises and the story are left for all to see-- and without paying a dime! However, because it's all purely shown and not actually played by the viewers themselves, that in and of itself is considered a performance, and a person's performance in a game cannot be owned by those that own the videogame IP. Additionally, many of these Let's Plays are also reviews by nature-- when playing a game, a comment about a buggy physics engine is often expression, for example, and thus it can also legally count as a review. IN this sense, and with these in mind, I knew I could manage to get away with doing livestreams. Hell, Twitch.tv is dedicated to it.

So far, I exclusively livestream games of the Horror genre, for better or worse, Triple A to Indie, Immersive  to RPG Maker. I also play these blind because, well, I typically have at least one other person with me. This way, either I or one of the other 'cast members' will be legitimately spooked and bring about entertainment to my viewers that way, or there'll be another person for me to banter with, cracking jokes all the while. I use it a a means to study game design and to showcase the state of horror games as a whole.

We started off with Five Nights At Freddy's. We couldn't make it past the fifth night, which is fine since we weren't supposed to make it past the fourth night anyway. We've covered a multitude of games by the time of writing this bog post, having streamed Five Nights At Freddy's 2 this time last night, closing out this semester and marking the change to another recording location for a time. All in all, I've found it enlightening for a couple reasons. Namely:

1. It's hard to find a good horror game. In fact, a lot of horror games suck.

2. Even a good horror game can have otherwise scare-happy individuals bored.

3. Not all horror games have a win condition.

4. It's easy to find terrible tropes and memes within the horror game community.


I learned a lot more than that, such as how to test audio levels, which softwares to use and how, whether a game will function properly in X settings rather than Y, or if I have to rig up a Z setting somehow, et cetera. the entire thing is a learning process. iI do plan to continue streaming Saturday nights at 8PM like clockwork, however, regardless of my low viewer count. I do it for my own amusement, anyway, so it's not like I have much reason to stop. With that being said, I do take it seriously and any suggestions are much appreciated. IN the coming months I plan on releasing the recorded videos to the world of YouTube-- edited a tad for various reasons-- and the creation of a Facebook page-- possibly a Twitter-- so I can more easily post events and make them known.

With all that said, here's the link to toteslegitstream. Nothing has taught me more that everything is a constant learning process than this personal endeavor, and nothing brings me more joy than to reduce my friends to tears through either fear or laughter.

Tune in at 8PM EST every Saturday for a streamed horror game with commentary.

News Trustworthiness Survey

In a departure from the regular topics on this blog, I'd been tasked to create and spread a survey in late September in order to collect and view and analyze the information-gathering habits of those interested in fulling it out. In particular the survey asked about which news sources they trust the most, how many and which other sources they use to verify the accuracy of their primary source's information, and other such factors. My results were vaguely interesting.

 "Other" Responses:

This first question was meant to see which mediums the respondent uses as a means for following current events. I should note that these were not exclusive choices. As the chart states above, a surprising percentage of respondents cited print as one of their means of following current events, while just as many follow entertainment-oriented news talk shows as sources of information. One less person uses cable TV news networks for their news than their accompanying websites. This would coincide with the overall perception of a drop in cable subscribers as well as a drop in those that care for the 24-hour coverage networks as a whole, vying for more immediate and succinct news blips-- if not for the fact that entertainment-oriented talk shows are just as high as print media. This discrepancy could be a result of either the availability of the entertainment-oriented talk shows on streaming sites or the dark nature of current events-- the fact that they primarily cover negative topics-- benefits greatly from a comedic boost to lighten the impact or simply acts as a degree of separation from the negativity of the situation.

Roughly half of the respondents cited news aggregate websites as sources. This suggests the individuals either prefer getting multiple sources regarding the same story or prefers increasing the likelihood that any particular story will surface; some agencies don't post about certain topics until after another agency did so, and some falsely report. Alternatively, they only follow the news aggregate websites focused on particular topics of interest or, in the case of Fark, find the headlines funny. Some specifically listed Reddit as their source, though it technically counts as a news aggregate site due to the way it operates.That being said, 'Print' is the real outlier with 75% of respondents stating they use it enough for it to count. Well, aside from the .edu/.gov sources.

Lastly, Facebook is listed as a source, suggesting said individuals do not actively  pay attention to current events unless in response to another person's reaction. It makes sense: Why hunt down news if someone else is going to post about it anyway? However, in my own Facebook feed I've seen this behavior in practice; many times the sites turn out to be hoaxes or less-than-scrupulous Onion knockoffs which intentionally exist to spread articles meant to illicit anger so their site receives more links. Many times the articles are easily refuted with a Google or Snopes search and two minutes of my time. Even so, those that had responded on average use multiple mediums.

"Other" Responses:

Here I wanted to see, of course, which news networks they followed specifically. I see that two people skipped this particular question. Again, they were non-exclusive answers alongside an "other" category. Two more people follow CNN than MSNBC or Fox, which both received four respondent marks. The Blaze-- Glen Beck's news network-- actually received a mark.  One person actually mentioned PBS, another mentioned the Sourcefed network on YouTube, and NPR was made mention with a solid two.


 I notice they did not include NPR in the previous question's set. Either that's a failing on my part or they simply did not consider including in in the previous question's data. CNN is viewed by over half of the remaining respondents. This suggests that these individuals habitually view CNN at the very least for the sake of verification-- or it's the other way around. Either way, there's definitely overlap regardless of medium.

"Other" Responses:

This is starting to paint a fairly clear picture. It's beginning to seem as though CNN's website is at the very least the go-to site for verifying a news article seen elsewhere and at best their primary website and cable news network source with seven respondents. This is in contrast to Fark with a whopping zero-- despite its user-aggregate and comedic overtones. A very significant portion of respondents rely on Reddit, another aggregate site that may or may not have comedic overto9nes in a post title. Digg is used by some, as is Fox, though not many. One individual points to blogs, NPR, and interest-based aggregators, another pointed to BBC's companion website. Still, one person focuses on .edu/.gov sources.

With this data, I'm beginning to see the data form a cohesive picture. My theory is that, for Websites, CNN is the main go-to for current events once someone is made aware of it by another source.  This most likely occurs with news aggregate sites or Facebook: A person makes a post linking to the article, so someone checks CNN to see if it's a real thing that's going on, and they move on to anther source. Alternatively, it's directly linked by the aggregate site itself, bringing them to the page.. The basis for aggregate sources is that it's user-driven rather than executive-driven, meaning that the user-base determines the frequency of which any given site is linked.

This reinforced my theory that CNN is at least checked s a method of verification. More importantly however, it shows a level of distrust regards of a single news source: nobody that took my survey chose zero on this question. This means they always verify a current event story with at least one other source they consider credible. This suggests that the people I reached out to, on a whole, don't fully trust any one source. The numbers diminish from five to three with every additional source used to verify an initial source. This suggests they follow the "Trust, but verify" model of thinking. IN this case, it could very well be they want to verify certain facts aren't just wild speculation on the original source's part, however it could be to simply verify the story is, in fact, a real one; as I've stated earlier, some websites exist solely to receive links, and include both real and false current event articles in order to keep their readers on their toes.The more sources used to verify information, the less the individual trusts the initial-- or any-- one source. This suggest that the prevailing issue is in regards to false stories.

I wanted to know where people went to for their primary source, and asked them to specify:

Two people skipped the question entirely, and one person failed to follow basic instructions; another person's was vague. However, CNN, Reddit, and Facebook posts seem to be the most widely  relied on as primary sources. However, what about trustworthiness of a news source?

There you have it: Each of my ten remaining respondents stated they prefer verifying every article they come across to make sure it's legit or correct. Some are simply distrustful of the Internet, and others cite experiences with news agencies being incorrect or falsely reporting in the past. Not a single respondent has a significant enough level of trust to not worry about story verification.

While CNN, Reddit, and Facebook are the primary sources of information among those that responded, none of those surveyed trusted their primary news sources enough to take them at their word. People on average would verify by two other articles regarding the same story before coming to any conclusion or ending their research. A significant portion of individuals use multiple mediums for news-- TV, print, and Internet sources seem to be used in tandem, though print and websites seem to be the most popular. The takeaway from this is that people are distrustful of single sources of information, and as such rely on as many sources and forms off delivery as possible for verification of data either until they're satisfied or until they get bored and move on to amusing cat pictures.

Totes Legit Inspiration and Design Process: A Story.

So, back in the spring of 2013, I was taking a Web design course. We were tasked with making a website for ether a real or fake retail store. As I was-- and still am-- an amateur web designer, I opted to create a fake store website. What type of product, though? We had to have a main page and ten sub-pages, which meant we needed content. At this same time, I was really struggling with CSS; I couldn't make heads or tails of them, honestly, until my third project. I opted to make a site for a used video game store because I had a few ideas on how to fill up the page requirement effectively and lazily. Don't judge me: I'd had a bunch of ideas floating around already, so implementing them were gong to take a bit of time regardless. the effortless part was the brainstorming aspect.

Implementation, of course, can be difficult. especially when first using CSS. I wound up using a solid image for all of my backgrounds, meaning none of the content boxes would be able to extend or shorten based on content. While it was originally a problem, it worked out in the end; when I tried to create buttons using the 'slice' tool in Photoshop, the buttons came out mangled. From there, the site looked totally sketchy and untrustworthy. Which gave me an idea.

I don't know where I heard it, but someone said "totes" instead of "totally" in my vicinity and-- as an Internet addict-- I was already aware of the 'seems legit' pseudo-meme. So I combined them into 'totes Legit', as in 'totally legitimate'. It's meant to be somewhat sarcastic. From Totes Legit, I decided to roll with it and create a mascot based off of different attributes people associate with sketchy characters: Sunglasses prevent us from seeing a persons eyes which can give away signs of lying. not only that, but studies have shown we tend to engage in less scrupulous behavior when we perceive ourselves shrouded in dark, even if it's just because we're wearing sunglasses. People with scars on their face are assumed to be former criminals or otherwise perpetually up to no good because of social schema associated with scar tissue, so he had to have a scar on his face. A trench coat is, obviously, meant to creep people out because of the pervasiveness of the 'flasher' trope in society, though also as a reference to the classic 'meeting an informant in an alleyway' trope associated wit some spy films. The fedora is also taken from that same trope. The blank, featureless skin or mask is there to remove their humanity further. The fact that he smokes is meant to make him even less appealing for parents and children as someone they'd want to approach on the street to further go over-the-top with 'creepy guy' tropes. He has a nose in profile, of course, but otherwise Legit's features aren't noticeable. For all practical purposes, it's a white mask that he can eat, drink, talk, smoke, and breath through unhindered.

I came up with a throwaway back story for this character and everything, and then worked on the rest of the website, writing things based on what I'd love to see in a game retail store. Here's the link:

http://cantonweb.net/kear100/project_2/index.html

I was- and still am-- quite proud of the result. Sure, when I eventually re-make the website it'll actually be well-made. however I like that the website is so shoddily put together; it almost adds to the sketchiness of the store.

Fast forward to Fall 2013: Digital Illustration + Typography. I made it into a thing:

This was my final project for the class. I wasn't allowed to do anything else, either My teacher found Totes Legit so awesome and my InDesign work so good that I had to make, specifically, a Totes Legit magazine cover with two interior pages. Took me about a week in total to make.

So, Totes Legit is a silly thing I created almost two years ago which is slowly becoming a major part of my life. Originally, I wanted to create a completely new character for this superhero comic we're supposed to make, however a short-story deadline was up, so Totes Legit was my fallback. I spent the bulk of my time trying-- and failing-- to come up with another. Call me unimaginative, but I think it works out well. IF I'm going to be creating this character in Mudbox, I'd like to enjoy the source material. I drew up a crude sketch for class:

He wears dark brown or black leather gloves, has a light gray trench coat, smokes, etc, and has flaps for video games embedded in his jacket. I wrote a new back story for him earlier in the semester which is viewable in a previous post, however it's incomplete-- and intentionally so.

His powers will be that he has an easy time finding obscure objects in containers, the more obscure the better. for example, Custard's Revenge is easy for him to find-- there's probably a copy floating around in his jacket-- but a copy of Destiny would be nigh impossible for him to reach should he actively search it out. Also, his attack involves thrown video games. In part of his back story, his magical abilities manifest in the ability to use a particular type of item as a throwing weapon which increases density and speed based on some attribute. His powers accidentally imprinted on crappy video games, so now if he fights crime, he throws terrible video games at his foes, the worse the better. Their density and speed increase to compensate for one another and result in really fast, really hard-hitting blunt instruments. They disintegrate on contact as a result, reverting to their original density immediately after impact. I don't mean necessarily story-wise terrible games, but on all aspects of a game. A game that's equally as bad as another game is good can still hit just as hard as the good game if it's enjoyably bad. His ability to find obscure items works only for a copy. Not any unique versions, save for special exceptions.

Also, his suit and mask cannot come off. His hat puts itself back on upon it being taken off and tossed, and his sunglasses reveal only another identical set of sunglasses underneath. He cannot create an infinite number of sunglasses because it's a permanent physical illusion rather than a duplication glitch. His hat and sunglasses dissipate as soon a they make contact with a solid, liquid, or sufficiently think gaseous surface or environment. Only those that desperately need him can find him, which suits him fine. He's incapable of removing the suit, however he never gives off a foul odor. He's also unaware of his real origin and identity.

Only well-after creating Totes Legit did I encounter Stoned Gremlin Production's "Game Boys" film and animated series. In it there is a mobster that sells old video games and peripherals to people in an alleyway. While Game Boys predates Totes Legit by many years, I had not seen it nor was the animated series in production until well after I created Totes. There might me some inspiration for his ability to fnd obscure items, however. Here's a link to Game Boys (Warning: It's Shot On Shiteo, so the video AV quality is terrible):

http://blip.tv/the-cinema-snob/game-boys-4122704

As you can see my process for creating Totes Legit is pretty indicative of the character.

I Have No Skills But I Must Animate

so, I've been doing absolutely terribly in Maya. I've never een humbled by a piece of software before to this degree for so long. Aspects of 3D modeling which I'd expect to be relatively simple are painstakingly tedious and obnoxious. Yet, animation is largely easy for me.

Seriously. the first tutorial we did was the animated solar system,which I found only lightly tedious and partly fun. that was a nice tutorial. This time, however, I had to animate this:

So, when I first started to try this tutorial, I expected to have even more problems. after all, I had trouble simply putting things together-- let alone having them move around. Oddly enough, though, I found this particular tutorial incredibly straightforward and somewhat easy. Mind you, when it came to exporting the poses as an animation file to create a .gif, I totally forgot how to do so since it'd been well over a month since I did anything regarding that and the tutorial didn't outright detail how to do it again. so, there is that. Barring that, though, the thing animated well, and I was even able to move my keyframes around in the graph editor. Here are the poses I screen-capped for posterity:

With this tutorial I learned a lot about how to map joints together and mapping skeletons to geometric shapes. I also learned that up-and-down motions also have to be animated unless the character runs in such a way which prevents head-bobbing. I actually found this fairly entertaining and enjoyable... probably because I didn't have to mess with the graphics. Maybe I'm better with the animation back-end than the visual attributes? What does that say about my graphic design prowess? I ma have to lay down for a while.

The Tutorial I couldn't Even Start

I'm just going to be honest here: I couldn't even start this tutorial. When it was assigned, I was already actively working on two of them-- the wagon and the lamp-- which were giving me countless problems even up to the points where I stopped. Since the textured decorative box requires successfully finishing the Wagon tutorial, I went in thinking that maybe-- just maybe-- the book would be lenient and write this mesh tutorial as though the wagon wasn't touched on in the book. It'd make sense to do that anyway: Most software tutorial books I've used in the past have correctly assumed users would be jumping around in the book rather than approaching it as a sequential form of literature.

I am disappoint.

no, that was not a typo. Here's as far as I got:

 That box I did not create. I had to load up a box made for the tutorials because I wasn't able to get to putting the finishing touches on my own. I already went into detail in there, but as a reminder, here's the last step of that tutorial:

I more or less told you in times past, dear reader, that the creator of this book knows Maya is an incredibly clunky, difficult program. I hesitate to refer to the writer of this book or Maya evil, however. that suggests a level of ingenious intent to troll by either Maya's creators or the book that, frankly, I don't think either are capable of. the textbook's attempt at humor falls flat when their own tutorial is largely what demoralizes me-- more so than Maya itself.

When the start of this part of the tutorial includes a note that four of the meshes were missing, I internally shouted "DONE" and metaphorically flipped a table:

 

Next time: The last assignment in Maya (that I know of) and an odd upturn.

UVs Are My Anti-Happiness

So I think this blog is aptly named. not only is it half-superhero monologue, half-3D modeling practice,but I feel as though I'm simply just flailing about in Maya-- to an extraneous amount. So, Superflail.

Not that anybody wants to know even more about what I'm not capable of creating in Maya, but I'm going to cover how I failed at simply texturing this wagon:


                                   

 It's a lovely wagon, isn't it? Too bad the wire mesh tool isn't given it's own section in the book. Otherwise this proper example of a mesh wouldn't look like it was starting to be stretched out by a black hole's event horizon. Here's the book's example:

 

And below is what I had in class. Mind you, I did try to fix it, but the tools aren't exactly intuitive or easy to use, and I wasn't really able to scale it properly. as I recall, many of us had trouble doing just this part:

 [Lolwat.]

Now, while I did learn a bit about UVs at the time, none of that information stuck because I was distracted by trying to make my crudely-drawn white stripe adhere properly to the side of the wagon. Unfortunately, I was never able to get it right and I had to move on to other work. when I revisited it today, I had to reapply the shape from scratch, leading to this: 

Note the tiny white specks near the front of each side. Yeah, I was able to apply the mesh again, but it had forgotten how to orient the image I was applying to it, so even less of the texture shows. for the record, here's what the book asked me to create in Photoshop:

Beautiful.

Yes, you read that right: Not only does this book miss loads of steps throughout, but it also assumes you have access with at least Adobe Photoshop. If using a legitimate, legal copy (for the record, I have the CS6 Master's Collection) of Photoshop, the cost of entry for this tutorial book just skyrocketed exponentially, even though the purpose here is to learn 3D Modeling techniques in Maya, not creating the textures themselves. A person who could only afford Maya and this tutorial book would then be screwed unless they hunted down an open-source software capable of the same mechanics. A bit of a tangent, but it's an issue I have with this text on principle.

Anyway, I filled in the lines as best as I could when using the transparent wire mesh I'd created. When I input it into Maya, however, it was skewed and did not line up well at all. when I had to re-apply the texture, it lined up even less. From this, I learned a few things:

1. When texturing a mesh, you have to be 100% exact.

D. Whenever a work uses external files, it's often best to work in one long session rather than stopping for a while and returning later-- otherwise, Maya will troll.

~. Never trust the book and iterate the save both before and after doing anything.

XI: Document everything via screen shots.

I did learn a bit about UVs, but I'm more confused by them than anything and I'm starting to think that 3D modeling just isn't my strong suit.

 

I don't Trust My Book

I'm using the textbook "Introducing Autodesk Maya 2014" tutorial book Dariush Derakshani. I think that was our first mistake. With every tutorial we've covered in my course, they've either forgotten a crucial step, assumed (wrongly) that the person following the tutorial would remember art of a step mentioned halfway through a tutorial two chapters previously, or would flat-out get the operation wrong. I'm thankful that the pdf is available online so I can show screen-caps from it.

Now, i'm not saying that's the case with the Lamp tutorial;however, I can't help but sit here perplexed when, after following the tutorial by the letter, what should turn into one of these highlighted items:

I instead get this hollow ring:

 I set everything how the book said prior to creating the ring, and the next set of steps moves on to copying and pasting the product of the CV tool curve. So, according to the book, what i did was supposedly correct. and yet, a setting is clearly wrong. I can only imagine that, when it had me center the pivot point, it centered on the wrong point, thus creating the ring. It makes sense; the center of the ring is clearly in the center of the scene. however, I didn't see any move tool or anything pop up when I centered the point, and the tutorial didn't say to move the project to the center; I'm clearly meant to have the pivot point for the curve moved from there. So, I have no idea how this happened. It's as though the book assumes Maya is going to work. except the writer of this text knows Maya is an incredibly temperamental program and it doesn't always work, even when it should-- as evidenced by the following line when it comes time in the book to render the decorative box from before:

"14. Save your work, grab someone you love, and give them a hug."

When your textbook includes demoralizing lines such as this when it's trying to teach you how to do something-- when the text itself is inaccurate to the point of hair-pulling frustration-- then something is terribly wrong.

It's not to say that these tutorials are absolutely impossible; I'm sure that I'd probably understand things better if I as able to take a lot more time on each given section, and if I wasn't so easily confused by the text. It could even just be terrible reading comprehension skills on my end-- who knows? Or the text is just not set up in a way that's beneficial to my form of learning. I did learn a few tool shortcuts, however, and I'm getting a lot better applying flat textures to surfaces. I'm absolutely terrible with multi-surfaces meshes, as we'll soon see with my poor excuse for a wagon. Still, Maya stopped fighting me when applying textures directly to planes! So, progress? I also did learn how to use CV Tools despite failing in this instance to continue past one. so, at the very least, I did take away a few lessons from this particular project.