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Week 3 Comic Pitch – Kai and Kevin

Everything in this website is drawn with white outlines on a black background.

The comic starts with a gif of a car driving down an empty highway at night where faint music slightly distorted music plays to emulate a radio. clicking the gif will cause the next scene to appear where the scene starts with two people in the front seat talking about their engagement. The man is bringing the woman from los angeles to san francisco to meet his parents once more before marriage. It’s a quiet drive and the clock says 3 am. after clicking again a text box appears where the woman starts asking about the mans childhood and how his parents raised him. flashback scenes depict his childhood where his parents where slightly distant but loving, neither side was able to truly express their feelings and so the man knows little about his parents past and life and vice versa. The radio plays and for a brief moment the static mentions an armed robbery where an older couple was shot and killed, but the man and the woman disregard the report and continue talking about his past. They stop at a gas station where the neon lights artificially brighten the previously black and white comic. The woman goes inside the gas station to pick up snacks and drinks while the man fills up gas and smokes. Time passes and the man wonders why the woman isn’t back yet. He goes into the store and finds the woman in tears and whispering into her phone. He goes up to comfort her and the woman crumbles into him and repeats “im sorry im sorry” the man doesn’t know what’s wrong but the woman is in too many tears to explain. The gas station radio repeats the news and the location of the robbery and the man realizes what had happened. In silence he helps the woman back to the car and they drive off. The next scene is identical to the first scene of the car driving down an empty highway. The point of this comic is to show the shock of death and how it can happen to anyone and cannot be prepared for.

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Week 3: Comic Strip Idea- Cara Chang and Helen

Me and my partner were discussing possible comic strip ideas and we came up with a pretty comical idea which was to base it off of a vegetable farm, where a group of vegetables are plotting an escape to run away from the farm so that they do not get eaten by the farmer. We are not too sure if this is our final idea yet but this was one of the first ones we came up with that sounded pretty entertaining, so we thought we would exercise the idea! We will also talk about the idea more in person during recitation tomorrow.

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Recitation 2: Arduino Basics by Madeline Shedd

February 25th, 2019

Materials:

  • Arduino Uno
  • USB A to B cable
  • Breadboard
  • Buzzer
  • LEDs
  • 220-ohm resistors
  • 10K-ohm resistors
  • Pushbuttons
  • A handful of jumper cables

Circuit 1: Fade

Circuit 1 Diagram

Circuit 1

Since we have become more comfortable reading schematics for simpler circuits, we were able to build the circuit fairly quickly. After uploading the code and trying it the first time, we found that the LED was really dim. But it did noticeably fade as planned. We at first thought it was something wrong with the LED itself, but it turned out we had the wrong resistor in. After switching out the 10K resistor with a 220 resistor, the circuit worked perfectly.

Circuit 2: toneMelody

Circuit 2 Diagram

Circuit 2

Building this circuit was really easy because it only required a buzzer, leaving no room for us to use the wrong resistor this time.  It worked the first time we uploaded the code onto the Arduino Uno board. 

Circuit 3: Speed Game

Circuit 3

Circuit 3 Tinkercad

Circuit 3 Schematic

Circuit 3

This circuit looked a little daunting when we started. After digesting the instructions and the pictures given on Tinkercad we were able to build the circuit. After putting everything together, we thought we did something wrong in our wiring because nothing was happening when we pressed any of the buttons. But it wasn’t anything wrong with the circuit itself, we had just forgotten to use the serial monitor to start the game. The Speed Game was then fully operational.

Circuit 4: 4-Player Speed Game

Circuit 4

Once finding another group to team up with, we started working on the code. We basically copied the parts that had something for “player 1” and “player 2” and added two more players. Then we connected two breadboards, one having just LEDs and buttons, and uploaded our code. It worked the first try.

Question 1:

Today, its almost impossible to function without some sort of connection to technology. I can’t think of anyone I know who doesn’t come in contact with some sort of computer on a daily basis. There are many purposes and jobs these devices and programs serve, but they all run on the same simple principle of input and output. By building these circuits, we can see it very clearly when we input code and an output, like a flashing light or a tune playing, is the result. And interaction is the loop of inputting some form of information or command that returns an output based on the input. 

Question 2:

I’d want to create an art installation that would make it seem like you’re walking through the stars. It’d be a large room that would give the illusion of being endless like outer space itself. I’m not sure where I’d want to put it, just somewhere many people would be able to experience it. It’d be simplistic but beautiful and calming to be in.

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Comic Idea—Vivian Zhu & Sebastian Lau

Introduction:

Sebastian and I had the idea of creating a comic based on Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry “Medusa”, which illustrates a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair in Greek mythology. It goes with a storyline which set the audience/the viewer to be a poet Carol Ann Duffy herself. We figured this idea out by looking for our common interests, as Sebastian and I share really different cultures and family background. Turns out we both like anime, poetry and mysterious things. More details regarding what we imagine our project will look like can be found in the text below.

Storyboard:

  • You are a poet and you fell asleep when you were writing some lines on the poetry…
  • The stage switches from your home towards a narrow room, decorated as from mid-century in Greek, with sundries piling up around you.
  • You tried to find out who you are,  hence you began clicking on the things all around you…
  • Certain objects, when clicked, will change into other things, with some lines brought up (exactly some part of poetry you wrote before you slept). 
  • Through this process, you will finally become aware that you are the Medusa herself.

Illustrations:

  • We are sure how to use the coding techniques to make everything happen. It’s only a matter of how now.
  • We will draw the scene and also find images of real objects to support our stage.

Java:

  • We are using Javascript to move the story along, especially the part where the audience is able to interact with things around him or her.
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Week 3: Comic Idea – Sebastian Lau (Chen)

At first, we were looking at some of our interests to see if there were any topics we could write a comic about. We didn’t really have any so we took a look at some of the examples. We both agreed that whatever we did do should have a story. At first, we were thinking of doing something based on Japanese anime as I am somewhat familiar with them and there would be lots of source pictures we could use if we couldn’t really make the art ourselves. However, after looking at a poem we thought about doing a poem translation where we would both look at a poem (one of us would look at a poem in English and the other would look at the same poem but in Chinese). The interactivity would come in where the user could hover over lines and see our interpretations of the same line in the form of pictures. As we were looking for poems I came across a poem titled ‘Medusa’ that I had read in high school and thoroughly enjoyed. After a bit of discussion, we decided to do a story where the readers could go through ‘Medusa’ and see how the lines of the poem could be visualized (as it’s quite a visual poem).