Author: Yi Shan

Link: https://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~ys3041/audio/story.html

In this project, I am responsible for the website coding. We three wrote the rough storyline together and then work on the script. According to my partner’s requirement and my opinion, I designed the layout of the website, which is not that difficult.

My first work is to find out the way to the countdown on the website automatically. I searched on the website and then get some codes about counting from 1 to 10. Then, I revised it to the countdown.

In our design, if the audience clicks the start button, the sounds and countdown will go through automatically. Our original idea is to set a different interval. For instance, the interval from 190 to 180 is half second, but the interval from 180 to 179 is the duration of audio. But this is too hard that I tried a lot of time and also asked Professor Moon for help, while they all could not work.
 

So I changed the design of the coding. I used the click count to control the audio and countdown. So when the audience clicks the button, the first audio play. And when they click the button again, the countdown started from 190. It would end at 180 and played the second audio. Hence, my coding is when the countdown stops at a certain time, the audio would be switched and played.
 

Since professor Moon’s coding doesn’t help, I emailed him before I wrote the new coding. When I went to his office, I showed him my coding and he helped me to improve my coding. Since there are some tricky parts in my coding, we changed the frame of the coding. In this coding, we used three functions. One is for countdown by click count, the other is for the time interval and another one is for change number of the website. So in this website, when the audio ends, the countdown starts.

  

Finally, I got the audio file from Chloe and Vincent and double check the audio with the script in case of the mistakes. And I implement them into the coding.

Difficulties:
For my part, the most challenging part is the logic of the website. How the code works and the causal relationship are very important in this coding. And the other thing is the last part. When the day counts to 0 days, if the audience clicks the button, the last scene plays. While from our coding, the countdown goes on when the audio ends though the number is negative. I tried a lot and at last, I used this to control it.

I think this part can be improved but now I don’t have any other better idea.
Thanks for my partner’s work and Dave’s suggestion. Thanks to Professor Moon for helping my coding.

This article discusses the two different perspectives from Joy Garnett and Susan Mediselas. And this article also mentions something like the former article talking about—the originality and borrowing work. Garnett uses the image from “The Molotov Man” in her work as an inspiration. And Meiselas also takes the photo of “The Molotov Man”. So there is an argument of the ownership of the Molotov Man. This question is quite like the former article that the author discusses the plagiarism. Many artists may borrow the idea from other people’s work. And this article is talking about the conflicts that they both borrow one point as an inspiration.

From the article, it is not hard to find out Garnett and Mediselas actually have two different understanding of the Molotov man. I think it is natural that they use it in different ways. But the important thing is, what is mentioned in the last post, the art itself. How the artists recreate the elements decide whether the work coincide and need to discuss the ownership. Actually, there is still no answer to these conflicts. I hope that maybe in the future we can have seldom struggling and the artists can produce their work easier.

This article is talking about plagiarism from a very interesting perspective. The author points out that some great artists say that they also admit they may borrow something from other people’s work. And the important thing is how to judge the plagiarism. Since when we want to start our project, we also go to the website and find some inspiration from other people’s results. In the article, the author takes cartoons as an example that there is a very common debate on the nature of cartoon, which is “animation is built on plagiarism”. But the question is that the animation has to do that. If there is not the original version, how can the animation imitate and reproduce the work? And what impressed me most is the sentence “most artists are converted to art by art itself”. That makes me think about the questions that the most important thing for art is its content and meaning. Although the artists borrow something from other people, the most impressive and successful thing is still created by the artists themselves.

This audio podcast is really interesting and this is my first time to listen to such kind of audio play. In the other class, I was required to listen to the audio play adapted by the novel and analyze the differences between them. This time, I only listen to the audio play and I have some new findings of the audio play.

In the audio, sound and dialogue are very important. At the beginning of each little dialogue, we can hear music lead into the dialogue. The music can remind the audience of the shifting scene and changing time. And the background music can also hint the situation of different scenes. And the clear dialogue must be clear enough since the audience understanding of the podcast is dependent on the dialogue.

For the director of the audio play, the most important thing is to find out how to transfer the four-dimension scene into two-dimension signal and convey the information to the audience. So the foreground and background sounds in the audio play should be paid attention.

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~vsw227/comicProject/start.html

Description: Our project is an educational project about the history of the houses.

Original idea: At first, before we have a group, I came up with an idea to make a history timeline of women’s dresses. Since my group member Vincent is a guy and he disagreed with this idea, so we changed our idea to make a history timeline of houses. And we would create a stick figure that it can work through the timeline and introduce the houses from different countries.

Process: I am responsible for the visual part. The first thing is to draw the stick figure. I created two stick people and let my teammate choose one. And then I drew the walking and talking of the stick figure. And it can also rise left or right hand to introduce the houses. In the original idea, we designed that there was a small story of the invention of the construction hat. So I also drew the walking and talking of the stick figure with a construction hat.

The second thing is to deal with the picture of the house. So I turned the picture of the houses into comic styles.

Since Vincent created the square boxes, I cut the pictures into squares. And I prepare 22 for Vincent to choose the best 11 for 11 times.

The third thing is to find pictures of raw material. The pictures Tenielle found are not comic enough that we think it is not easy for the audience to figure out what it is. So I found the comic picture of the raw material.

     

The fourth thing is to make a square picture of the time. I typed the words in the Word and cut them into squares with photoshop. and here is the first one.

The fifth thing is that I suggested Vincent have a background for the project. So I found two pictures of the brown paper for him to choose. The brown paper may have a historical atmosphere.

And I also help Tenielle to do the research of the Chinese ancient houses.

Challenge: This is my first time to draw on the computer. So I downloaded software and used a lot of time to learn and exercise it. And it cost me a long time to draw the animation part of the stick figure because I want to make the stick figure moves naturally. So I tried a lot of ways and compared the stick figures with each other to make it walk and talk like people.

 

And I also learned how to turn the pictures into comic styles. The proportions of the special effect for the different pictures are different. Some are 100% and some are around 70% because some houses will lose their original color in 100%.

Improvement:
In our original goal, the picture of the stick figure can change that it can talk and walk. However, Vincent said it is difficult to change the pictures so he just used one picture. And I think we can change the picture of the stick figures. And I also want to have a talking bubble beside the stick figure to introduce the houses, while now the description is at the bottom of the houses. So I think we can explore more in this part.