What Happened Today

I worked on the Kururugi today. I hope it looks less Battlestar Galactica-y.

Almost done

This is the Kururugi so far. I plan to come in on Tuesday and add some last minute touches, just to make it a little more exciting...

The Kururuginator

I modeled a spaceship today! I call it the Kururugi. It is a mix between an X-Wing, a Viper, and the Lancelot. You can't really see the Lancelot yet because I haven't colored it yet, but the front is like an X-Wing and the wings are like a Viper. I also added a cool thing that I'll explain later but I haven't the time right now.

Today I gathered inspiration for my spaceship. I plan to have somewhat of a mix between a Viper and an X-Wing. The front will have the shape of the front of the Blackbird and the back will have x- wings. I also want to incorporate some of a Code Geass Knightmare such as the Lancelot, but I don't know how I will do that yet... I plan to at least base my colors off of the Lancelot. Anyways, I am excited for this project and hope it turns out nicely.

The Daft Punk Document

10-7-15

This is a report/reflection of my bionic arm scivis thus far. I have put together an outline of exactly what I want in this video. This may not be exact, but I want approximately one minute to be about what happens to your body/brain/nerves post-amputation. I want the second minute to be talking a little bit about the mechanics of a basic bionic arm. ie. what parts are necessary to be controlled by the brain, the basic components of a very basic arm. I want the last minute to bring the body and machine together. How does the arm know what your brain is saying? How are brain signals interpreted by the machine? I have also been toying with the idea of adding a character for flavor and comic relief, but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. I am now starting the research. I am in the process of gathering sources. I have found web articles, a YouTube video, and some TED Talks. I want to find some books for resource diversity, but I don’t know how many books I can find on a subject so new.

10-9-15

Well then. I have changed my topic. I am now working with Jane on her dopamine / happiness project. This is very good for many reasons. A) There is now less stress on me. B) Jane got a perfect score on her personal project and knows how to beat the system. She’ll be a great mentor.  I am new at this whole 3D graphics thing and to pull of my own scivis is somewhat unrealistic. I like this change. However, I now have to tweak my timeline and criteria. Do I have to get my timeline re-approved? I have already redone it twice… Anyway, I really have to think about this, and I need to figure this out. I am very excited about this project, but I don’t know all of the details. The topics I will now be researching are dopamine pathways, macro and micromolecular modeling, and mMaya modeling. I think that I’ll be able to find diverse sources for this. I hope so anyway. I will help with modeling and rendering. Another cool thing about this project is that I will be able to submit something to TSA this year. Next year, I'll know all about that process and I'll know how to do it. This will be a very nice introduction to TSA and I am very excited about this project.

Here are some cool pictures I found that relate to this new project:

I don't know what these are but they look cool.

つまらない

Today I typed up a small series of questions that I wanted to ask. The reason I like to type up questions before submitting them/asking them is because I really like the idea of revision. I often get disorganized in my speech and I get very stressed out because of this disorganization and become more disorganized, more stressed out, more disorganized, and the cycle continues until I become an embarrassed, panicked mess. This is why I like typing up/writing out complicated questions such as the ones I had today. When I write them out, I can make sure that I am saying exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it without getting interrupted, panicked, then embarrassed. Sure, if I have a small question such as "how to you change the beveling offset" or "what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything" then I won't have to write it out. Today's questions were not only complicated, but kind of weird and a bit embarrassing. I'm not mad or anything, I just wanted to explain this so that you don't think that I don't want to talk to you. 

Anyway, after the letter I started writing my reflort (reflection/report). I titled it "The Daft Punk Document" because I had "Get Lucky" stuck in my head. I may or may not change that title, I haven't decided yet.

Looking Stuff Up and Being Confused.

This week marks the start of my research. I finished my outline of what the video will look like and then I started looking for books, videos, and articles that fir the criteria of what I want to know. I looked at our school library (and did not find anything), and the Aurora Public Library catalog (no dice). However, I did find quite a bit of cool stuff when I just looked on the internet. I found a couple TED talks about how the brain works and quite a few articles. I did not find much about the mechanics of a bionic arm. This is expected. I'll just have to do research on general mechanics and apply it to making an arm. I am pretty excited to learn about this stuff, I find it really cool. I really want to know what happens to your arm when it gets amputated, ripped, or bitten off, but when I consulted Google Sensei, all I got was "How to Cut Your Arm Off"... The confusion is real.

Inspiration

So the inspiration board was kind of hard to make; my project is more science and research based, as opposed to creative and colorful. I decided to get pictures of cool-looking bionic arms, including the 3D-printed Iron Man arm and some pictures of Fullmetal Alchemist character Edward Elric's automail arm. I also looked up pictures of arm muscles and nerves. I thought they'd be useful. Sorry this post and last post are both late... I've been really busy this last week.

Here's the link to the padlet:

http://padlet.com/jediplatypus/4s9b96iiwdf3

Deformers

Today's assignment was cool. It really was. I loved being able to adjust the settings, not knowing what each feature did. Funny story, when I was experimenting with the twist deformer, I was testing the limits of the deformer's numerical values and I typed in 420 for the start angle and suddenly, my project went from bland to rad (almost rhymes...?). Anyway, today was cool.

**I wrote this during English on Tuesday, but we started doing something and I didn't get to post it. Sorry... I'll post twice today to make up for it.