Research

 Semiotics (22/02/2022)

In today's lesson, we learned about a theory called Semiotics, then as a class, we looked at the meaning and some examples. After, we then talked about the 3 semiotic categories. Lastly, we analyzed an image and picked out parts to analyze and decide if it is an icon, index, or symbol.

Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. For example traffic signs, emojis, and emoticons used in electronic communication

Iconography- is the use of particular icons to symbolize things

These are anything that represents or indicates something else, which we call an ‘object’. Doesn’t just mean pictures, can be physical feelings or sounds.

Icon- resembles the object. For example, a picture of a chair represents a chair

Index- a sign that implies something from the object. an example would be a heart shape that implies love.

Symbol-a sign that is not inherently connected to the object. The connection between the two is a conventional one particular to a culture or society that is taught. For example, a floppy disc icon implies saving your work. Another example is the crucifix implies Jesus's death.

Semiotics Analysis

Todorov Theory (23/02/2022)

In today's lesson, we will be learning about Todorov's theory. For the first part of the lesson, we analyzed the 5 Narrative beats. Then we started to analyze the (2017) wonder women movie and put each part of the story into the 5 narrative beats. Finally, we used the knowledge we learned from this lesson and watched one of the 5 movies, and used its narrative to put into the 5 narrative beats.

Todorov's theory wasn’t for film or games in particular, but narrative and stories in general. The narrative is broken into 5 parts or beats. Each beat represents a new part of the story relating to the characters this theory is widely applicable across books, film, and games.

Equilibrium- normal state of being

Disruption of the equilibrium- a problem comes along and disrupts the equilibrium

Recognition of disruption-  the character realizes the problem and tries to fix it by following leads of some sort.

Attempt to repair the damage- the character may need to save someone who may have an idea of what is causing the disruption 

New equilibrium- the disruption is no more and the characters would either have a devastating change to their life or get to go back to normal.

1. Equilibrium	The normal world and characters as we are introduced to them at the beginning of the story. Everything exists without any disruptions, whether this is a positive or negative normal.
2. Disruption of Equilibrium	Something comes along or something happens that disrupts the equilibrium.
3. Recognition of Disruption	The character(s) is spurred on by the disruption to start a quest to do something about it.
4. Attempt to repair the damage	Maybe the hero has to save someone or find something? Maybe it is more personal and the hero has to sort their own life out or solve a problem and sort the disruption.
5. New Equilibrium	The disruption has been solved, whether positive or negative. The characters now have a new equilibrium, a new normal, whether it is the same as at the start or not.

wonder women analysis

 

Todorov's Narrative Theory Worksheet

From this research, I can now use Todorov's theory in different media texts. in my future projects, I can now use what I have learned to summarise narratives into five paragraphs,

Animation research (07/03/2022)

In today's lesson, I will be doing a bit of research for my final major project which will be animation.

The technical skills I will need to improve on are my digital art skills which I will be looking at YouTube tutorials to help me or I can start practicing on Photoshop or Pyxel Edit, Pyxel Edit is an art software that I have struggled to use and I would like to practice drawing on it so that I can depend on it as a plan B. This would save me a lot of time because if I struggle drawing detailed characters I can straight away switch to Pyxel Edit. from my research I have managed to find some YouTube videos on people using photoshop and Pyxel Edit.

From this tutorial I learned that I can apply the glow effect to my work to make it look bold and more clear.  Without this tutorial, I would have struggled a lot because my Idea was to use it in the background for the bridge so that it would be a rainbow bridge but with a glowing effect.

 

From this tutorial, I learned the basics of how to animate on Pyxel Edit. This video helped me a lot because it showed me step by step how to animate. The example that person gave was a coin spinning which was a bit more complicated than the animation I did but it was still very helpful.

I will also have to improve using Adobe Animate because I have tried to do some animations but it never looks as smooth as other people's animations, to help me I am going to look at some YouTube videos and apply them to my work. For me animating has always been a struggle because I get confused with the layers and how they work but then I realized that it is like photoshop. I also struggle with drawing the character in different positions. I have researched some videos on YouTube and I have found videos on how to animate in adobe.

The tutorial I have used for my animating solution has helped me a lot because it now allows me to animate detailed figures walking. The step-by-step walking animation guides me on how to make the legs move. the technique this person used was just 4 steps and then repeating them which is a lot better since you can copy it and paste it again and again.

Another skill I would like to improve on is time management. In order to improve this skill, I will need to practice this at home or look at videos on how people deal with time management. Time management is something I can do but with recent projects, especially the one we had to create an animation as a group, I was very stressed when we did that project because my group was not in for the planning so it was on me to assign them with work, we ended up with an unfinished animation and ever since I have tried to get ahead. When it came to making our game we did really well in the planning stage. However, in production, we were a teammate down so Charlie and I split the work and managed to get through a lot. In the end, I was very pleased as we had a good finished product. For my time management, I have looked into some scheduling websites and I have found a way to make reminders on my phone.

One of the researches I have done is getting to set a reminder on my phone using a widget. As you can see it allows me to set a time and date for when it is due and it allows me to categorize it to make it neater and clearer

Excel is another software that can be used to schedule your work. these boxes allow us to separate each word into a table. People can use this as a way to schedule their work

Research on SUPERCLASH (09/03/2022)

Today I'm going to be doing some research on my background and the character's colours