Week 6 & 7 Environment Progress

Hi All,

You’ve all been hard at work putting together some environment design progress and It’s good to see you all understanding and utilizing the tools we’ve been talking about in class. Here’s a link to a folder that houses all of your hard work. Take this opportunity to see what others are doing and how they approach constructing visual mood boards for an assignment like this.

Environment Progress

As you sift through this and get inspiration/ideas, know that you will have to week 8 to complete this assignment.

Something else due week 8: a proposal for your final assignment due week 10.

You are to choose one of 2 choices: Film analysis or Style analysis. This is a deeper dive into a topic that surrounds an existing intellectual property. The idea is that you will be asked to join a team and have to produce work for them based on the project that already exists. What you decide to explore is up to you. Here are a few topics of suggestion that can get your mind working. Take this opportunity to dive into something you like and want to learn more about. Or take this opportunity to get to know something you know nothing about! As long as it’s exploratory and not something you already know, then I will be happy.

Film Analysis

Style Analysis

After you have perused those two possibilities, let me know what you will be exploring and presenting on the final day. Take this survey and I will know what you plan on doing:

Final Survey

Thank you,
Fernando Olmedo

Week 5 - Environment Design Visuals

Hi Everyone,

This week, I went over various methods of gathering images to begin compiling reference for our environment design assignment. Use those tools to put together a few pages that could potentially help you in your design process. The homework is as follows:

1. Description of your space and who it belongs to.

2. Motif/Theme: collection of images that focus on a certain shape/idea/material that relate back to the owner of the space.

3. 1 page of standard elements that serve as the building blocks of the space (e.g. walls, floors, light, doorways, windows).

4. 1 page of standard props that populate the space (e.g. tables, chairs, plants, artwork, technology).

Remember that I would like you to use real world images that describe the space. No concept art unless your space exists in a past era where photographs are nonexistent. In the case that you are looking to those eras, you are only to use academic/architectural images that are as close to life as possible.

Here’s the link to my presentation from last week:

Environment Design

Week 4 - Screener Questions + Interviews

HI All,
Thank you all again for a wonderful class. We got through a lot of material so don’t feel bad if you have some questions regarding how to construct screener questions and conduct interviews. Below and in the resources on the right I will provide you with all the relevant documents to get you on your way. The first and most important is that you remember to go over the consent form with your interviewee.

Informed Consent

Next, here is the slideshow presentation, screener questions spreadsheet, interview synthesis .pdf, and a worksheet to help you organize everything.

Primary & Secondary Research

Screener Questions Spreadsheet

Interview Synthesis

Interview Worksheet

Homework:
Conduct an interview to help you find insights that make your character complex. Once you have your data, detail what you changed/improved about your character (you can use the interview worksheet to stay organized). Compile everything you’ve done for this assignment in one pdf. That .pdf should have the following:

1. Character Description

2. Character Moodboard

3. Informed Consent Form (filled out)

4. Screener questions + synthesis (Interview Worksheet)

If you have any further questions of I’m not clear, let me know and I’ll explain myself better.

Thank you and good luck!
Fernando Olmedo

Week 3 - Character Development

Hi All,

Thank you for a wonderful and insightful class. We talked about research ethics, got to see some awesome inspiration and research spotlights and kicked off on our character development assignment. For those of you who would like to revisit the lecture, here’s a link to my slides presentation and the informed consent form I went over in class:

Research Ethics

Informed Consent Form

In terms of homework,
your task is to create the groundwork for a character. Here’s a link to the assignment I presented in class:

Character Creation

Character Design quick setup

Develop your character

- Write 1 to 2 paragraphs about your character. What are they like, who do they resemble (cast your character). Ask yourself a few key questions: What does your character want? What does your character need? What is your character’s flaw? Give me three affinities. 

1. Broad (i.e. Justice, Chaos, Major Philosophy) 

2. Medium (i.e. the color red, round things, weather)

3. Focused (i.e. specific tool like a kitchen knife, a grappling hook, a cuban cigar) 

What is an affinity? 

1. a spontaneous or natural liking or sympathy for someone or something.

It might help to identify your own affinities to begin to understand the complexities of what can go into a character design. For example, I personally like the color green (Medium affinity). Every time I get the chance to choose a color in a video game or a tabletop game, that’s the one I choose. 

I also really gravitate towards what I would like to consider a noble disposition. I like the ideas behind chivalry and honor (Broad affinity). I tend to lean towards characters that embody that like paladins or knights with an honorable pre-disposition. 

Finally, the tool/item (focused affinity) that might resonate appropriately with the previous affinities could be in the form of a shield or a sword. Putting those three elements together makes it easy to see that the perfect character for me is Link from the Legend of Zelda. 

What are some examples of affinities and how would you classify them within the three I’ve outlined above?

The Mood Board

The second part of the Character Design assignment is the Mood Board. This is simply a collection of images that best represent your character. It is imperative that the images you select are specific and focused. They should be a starting point for what your character might look and feel like. This is not a simple costume or shape exploration assignment (although that should be a consideration). Some of the images you choose should also carry emotional weight to them. 

Deliverables:

8.5 x 11 description of your character including their affinities.

11 x 17 mood board with a collection of images describing your character.

Thank you and good luck!

-Fernando

Productivity at Home

Welcome Back! (kind of)

I hope all of you are happy and healthy despite having to spend some time isolated in your respective homes. I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage you to practice healthy social distancing protocols to keep those with compromised immune systems safe. It will be a challenge to move everything into a remote learning space but with a little effort and organization, I believe you will all be incredibly successful. I find that this can be a very educational experience for each of you because you might find yourself in a very similar situation as a freelance designer (minus the pandemic thing). Here are a few key principles that have helped me in the past when approaching a self motivated work pipeline:

Productivity at Home

1. Habits and Hygiene

   1. Wake up and go to bed at relatively the same time.

   2. Get up and get dressed as if you were going somewhere offsite to do your work (I find that the act of maintaining my hair helps too).

   3. Eat your meals at the same time (lunch at lunch time, dinner at dinner time, etc.)

   4. Give yourself a stop time. Give yourself 8 - 10 hours of work/day and try to get everything done in those windows. Try not to tell yourself “just 30 more minutes”.

2. Exercise, movement, and breaks

   1. Plan on exercising at least a little bit everyday. Schedule this in your day to day. Go for a walk to make sure the sun touches your skin (vitamin d is both beneficial and crucial).

   2. Hydrate regularly. Make sure you’re consuming enough water throughout the day.

   3. The 10-10-10 rule: Every 10 minutes, focus your eyes on something 10 meters away for about 10 seconds. If you can, setup your workspace next to a window to make this easier.

3. Separate your spaces for maximum psychological benefit

   1. Your sleep space should be your sleep space.

   2. your eating places should be your eating places.

   3. your work space should be somewhere other than either of those places.

4. The power of externalizing your tasks

   1. Write down the things you need to get done during the day. At the very least, say them out loud to yourself or someone else.

   2. Post-its are a wonderful way of externalizing your tasks and as a way of visually making progress on those tasks.

   3. Construct a Kanban or Scrum board to better organize your tasks (this works well with multiple categories like classes or team mates). There are also digital versions of the Kanban board like Trello (I’m still a fan of the physical old school).

Week 1 - Welcome to Art of Research for Entertainment

Hello and welcome!
I’m looking forward to having you all in class and exploring the wonderful world of research. We will be focusing on research methodologies that should help you in any field you find yourself in, but we will be taking a look at how those methodologies help inform entertainment design and storytelling specifically.

Your first homework assignments are the inspiration board and the research spotlight. You can find examples like the one I presented in class in the resources link on the main page. Here’s a quick rundown of what is expected in each assignment:

Inspiration Board

• Must be google slides or powerpoint slideshow for ease of presentation on zoom

• Choose at least 6 sources of inspiration (Things that inspire you to be a designer!).

• Inspiration can come from just about anywhere; video games, movies, apps, cars, places, people, etc.

• If you find something in the process of completing this assignment that is inspiring, feel free to include it!

• Show a sampling of imagery that exemplifies your inspiration. Make sure you put the names of these things so your classmates may do further research on their own.

• The last source of inspiration in your presentation should lead into the research spotlight

Research Spotlight

• Research spotlight is a deeper dive into one of your inspirations. Mine was an artist (John Singer Sargent) but yours can be any subject that you’re super into.

• Explore and present more about that subject or source. The goal of this presentation is to educate and inspire others.

• Make it’s something you care about because your enthusiasm will come through in your presentation. This is essential for an entertaining presentation.

• My research spotlight was done using Photoshop, but feel free to use google slides or powerpoint as well.

These assignments are due by the next class meeting. Please submit them to the dropbox using the submission link on the main page. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at fernando.olmedo@artcenter.edu

Peace
-Fernando Olmedo