FREAK FACTOR

Freak Factor by David Rendall

Throughout the essay, David Rendall lists possible solutions to identifying weakness and utilizing it within one’s own personal career. He lists a total of 9, but 3 in particular stick out to me. Those were #5, 6 and 7: Foundation,  Focus, and Fit.

            Foundation is the concept of recognizing one’s strengths and building on those strengths. I like the fact that he makes a connection between passion/proficiency and people’s strengths. I find that when I do things I will be much better at things that I enjoy doing and have no problems working on those things. It is natural, that the more you do something the better you’ll be and the easier it’s going to get, allowing you do enhance that skill even further. I like the ‘Freak Fallacy’ and ‘Freak Fact’ at the bottom of the #5 passage. The fallacy being that strengths do not need work because they will always be there, the fact: “If you don’t use it, you lose it”

            Focus is the concept that one is not able to efficiently multi-task and work on both eliminating weaknesses and increasing strengths. It is important to do one or the other and in my opinion it’s much more important to increase strengths and ignore the weaknesses, however there are certainly drawbacks to that approach as well. It is imperative to the ability of improving strengths to truly focus step by step on one aspect in order to produce exceptional work.

            Fit, I think, is the most important. It’s not about adjusting and adapting to surroundings or expectations, being successful is about finding your nook, finding a place where you fit in and utilizing your strengths at the location to use the focus and foundation in order to be efficient. Again the fallacy and fact really sum up the passage. Fallacy; I need to adapt to fit the situation: Fact; You need to choose situations that fit your natural strengths. One will always do better utilizing their strengths in a particular area than branching out and being efficient in several areas but not have an expertise of any.

            As far as the creative process goes, I haven’t really found my focus or my fit, however I’m working on the foundation. When it comes to being creative I have trouble imagining brand new ideas. I can take someone’s rough idea and tweak in to something doable but I’m not the best fresh idea guy, I need to get it out of my head that everything’s been done because I’m sure there’s plenty more left to be done. My strengths are that I’m very patient and easy going, I can roll with the punches and adjust to situations as certain other things may arise.

Collapsus

Collapsus

Collapsus is a form of trans-media that was quite confusing when I first began using the medium. I thought the game was a very creative and innovative way to involve politics with video games. The interface took a minute to get used to but I found myself transferring back and forth from video streams to the animations, then back to the mini-game. Trans-media work in general should be the next generation of entertainment. Graphics are getting more realistic and gameplay gets faster with better graphics by the day. The need for a new form of stimulus is soon approaching. There’s always a chase for the next big thing and although I have no idea how it is going to be done, I believe it is the next step after people realize 3D is not that cool. This course overall is a fairly good basis of knowledge for allowing students’ interests to be sparked at the sound of certain forms of media. This allows the students the opportunity to work with several different forms of media, hands on and do classwork that is relatable to the careers we all aspire to have.

Gaming Reflection

We were not prepared in class to present our game so I do not have the ability to critique my presentation, however there were a few points that could have made the game better and I figured I'd try and demonstrate my understanding of the Game Play concepts.
Two things that may not have been understandable from and audience's persepective would be the game's objectives because the objectives are basically whatever the user decides they are, as well as the goals. If the gamer does not want to work out, eat, collect Dino teeth, he is not forced to do so but his actions could result in homelessness, death, poor living conditions amongst many other negative possibilities. It is a simulation of real life in prehistoric, cavemen days, so one could choose to or not to participate in the expected activities. Also, this game seems to be an in between of Age of Empires and the Sims, because they can develop technology and skills but the gameplay is a lot like the Sims because everything can be bought and/or created by the gamer and placed in the gaming space. The games mechanics only involve the mouse and the arrow keys. The arrow keys move the character around the the mouse allows the player to interact with various items on screen. The rules are pretty basic. Basic rules of gravity and physics apply. Also, the gamer must remain within the gaming space.

Hero/Villain Critique

James Myers' Hero/Villain
This is a critique of James Myers' Characters:

The characters developped by Jimmy show great creativity. I like the contrast of color, using blue and green between his hero and villain. The hero is mostly green, symbolizing his love of money, considering he is 'Mr. Money Bags', rightfully so. The Tax Man is much more bland, kind of boring with a suit (ripped due to bulging muscles) with his IRS briefcase and nerdy glasses. The Hero appears much brighter than the villain, maybe due to the choices with hue and  saturation. The hue as I mentioned for the Hero was an analogous color scheme using greens and yellows, and the villain was basically just blue, making the two of them almost a split-complementary color scheme when used together, making it aesthetically pleasing to the viewer. The storyline and character relationship is very creative, taking a boring taxman and making him an evil genius is pretty funny and Mr. Money Bags, how could that not be everyone’s hero, the guy is clearly an excellent role model and can make money grow out of nowhere, whenever he wants, what a swell guy. It is ironic that the tax man is a villain, considering that an everyday tax man is working for the government to collect money to make this country the way it is, making that a good thing, yet he is perceived as evil because no one wants to hand their money over to the government.

Hero/Villain Assignment

Hero - Disco Dave

Villain - The Man

This American Life

This American Life 

I would pick the power to fly, basically because I love the outdoors and would love nothing more than to be in the clouds looking down on it all just flying around with no help or need for any other equipment, just a person in the sky. I suppose I would try to use this power to spread karma throughout the world. Trying to right wrongs and correct mistakes for people. Flying is kind of a cheesy power to want because, who wouldn’t want to fly?! But it would be great to have the ability to fly.

Superpowers have many issues, among them and probably the most obvious one is it gives people power, which in most cases is not a particularly good thing. Power gets to people’s heads and people’s heads get them in trouble. Being able to fly is a great super power, however is never the sole super power of any super hero. The reason super heroes can be so successful is their mass of special powers and in Batman’s case, special weapons. I feel the need to mention Batman because he has no super powers besides intellect and he does a lot of good for the city of Gotham. Having powers in the wrong hands of people can make for some disastrous and destructive issues amongst the community.

Video Joke Assignment

The first joke was a pretty straight forward remake of the joke, from the point of view of someone sitting in a room and a friend sitting across the room telling a joke.  The other one is similar with a little addition tacked on. The two utilize line immediately, developing a line of sight between the performer on stage and the audience in the crowd.  I really like the use of shape “Big Blonde Women” by using a very tall, very large blonde man, dressed as a woman, added to the hilarity of the video. This video also utilizies tension and release by building the tension as the ‘blonde’ yells at the standup comedian and continues berating the young man, building tension, then finally turns out the women was yelling at the inanimate puppet on the comedians knee, thus creating the release. The other video was very well done and the ‘big blonde’ women would have turned out much better if we used a different camera but still the videos were equally funny. The ‘blondes and puppets’ has a great moral at the end of the story. This video shows great contrast compared to the satirical/ sarcastic nature of the first joke. The puppet goes off on a rant talking about how people just have to get along and we have to accept our differences if we’re going to be in peace somehow. Both videos are great, given more time and better equipment they could have been much better however I understand that the intention of this course is not purely for video.