DMA 201 Project 4-Trevor Maier

For Project 4, we worked on filmmaking. We made videos, along with audio music tracks for the videos to describe an emotion. The emotion I picked was discontent.

There are many people that film and edit videos every day, which I find amazing. This filmmaking project was not the easiest thing in the world. Just figuring out what to film was a bit challenging. I would say that the most challenging thing for me was editing the film. I wanted most of the changes in scenes to go along with the beat of the music. When I made an edit and shortened one clip, it could have thrown everything else off. This was definitely more of the tedious work. The thing that I found easy was transferring the videos from my camera to the computer then to Adobe Premiere Pro. I also found it easy to mess around and make col music in Garage Band.

In this project I learned many things that could easily help me in future assignments. I learned how to run Adobe Premiere Pro, which I can use to edit future videos. With this I learned how to add effects in the videos and include transitions. I learned how to make songs on Garage Band. I also learned how to animate with Adobe Animate which I can use for titles in videos.

My film is just a basic video that does its job of portraying the emotion discontent. It definitely could be improved though. A couple of ways I could have improved it would have been to mess around with Adobe Premiere Pro a little bit more and to have taken more time and looked for more interesting videos. The more time you spend on something, the better you’ll get at it. Though it may not be the best, I believe the film does its job to describe an emotion.

Even though we had a lot of freedom in what we got to film, I believe that one way the professor could improve this assignment would be to give us more guidelines in what to film. If this happened, there would be less chance that you get stuck not knowing what to film. This could allow the project to get done quicker.

One thing that helped inspire me in this project was this article The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t by Steven Johnson of The New York Times Magazine. In this article it talks about how it’s not okay to steal other artists’ songs. This played a factor in me producing my own music with Garage Band.

Overall I really enjoyed this project. I got to experience some filmmaking and even though I did not find it the easiest thing in the world, I really enjoyed when everything came together.

My emotion was discontent.

DMA 201 Project 3-Trevor Maier

For Project 3, we worked on game design. Our goal was to create a maze game.

For the majority of this, it wan not easy. I often got lost and fell behind, but I learned many great things that I could use if I wanted to continue with game design. I learned how to run Unity, which I could use to create games in the future. I learned how to make a terrain, put mountains with a landscape on it, and create a path for the player to follow. I also learned how to include a pink coin as an objective for the player to get at the end of the maze. I put in particle system so after you receive the coin, it goes off, along with a chime. I can use all of the information I learned for future games.

The most challenging thing for me was probably figuring out how to get the character to pick up the coin and set off the particle system and chime. I figured this out by checking the “Is Trigger” box in the PickupPrototype section after putting all of the chimes and particles in the right spot.

Below are a few images of the game.

The game is a simple maze, but it does its job of being a maze. One way my game could be improved would be if I took more time to make the mountains look more appeasing. They are just kind of there, I’m sure there’s a way, I just haven’t figured it out yet. One thing that inspired me was the game “Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.” This game had many cliffs and mountains that I was reminded of when I was creating mine. although there is no similarity between the mountains in my game and “Uncharted,” the mountains in “Uncharted” inspired me to make grand mountains.

I think the professor can improve this assignment if we gave ourselves characters that we made, like a pawn. This would just give each game even more originality.

Overall I really enjoyed this project and am looking forward to seeing what I can do with game design.

DMA 201 Project 2-Trevor Maier

For this project I learned how to use Brackets, create an online resume and how to include an image with a link to take you to a desired page. I also learned how to include images onto the page.

I found this project difficult in the sense that I have never used Brackets before, so I had no idea which codes did what. I didn’t know how to make certain items go in certain places, but I kept to a “basic” design, to make sure that it did not look messy. By keeping it more basic, the codes felt easier to type.

This is my logo that I used on my page. It’s basic in a way which goes along with my resume.

My submission could probably be improved if I experimented with more on Brackets. It seems a little simple and almost too basic. I tended not to do too much more than what we were shown. If I asked how to do somethings, I might have been able to do more with it.

The professor did a really dice job showing us this project, but one thing that I think could be improved would be if we were given a page or sheet that went over some codes to use on Brackets. That way we could experiment with even more features.

I can use the knowledge that I learned from this project in potentially future projects or if I wanted to make something else on Brackets or change my resume again. I can put certain icons and link them up to the page that I want to send you to when you click on them. For example, I used this with social media icons.

A specific article that influenced me was the article “The Cult of the Complex” by Jeffrey Zeldman. he talks about how sometimes, simple is better. I made my resume pretty simple so it will be easy to follow. I also used a font that is easy to read with colors that are not distracting. This helps focus the reader’s eye. Being simple is not always a bad thing.

DMA 201 Project 1-Trevor Maier

For Project 1, we worked on making a Halloween card.

It wasn’t easy and I often made a mistake, but I was able to understand and use Photoshop more efficiently. I learned how to download an image and use it as your background image, cut an image out of its background, wrap text around a shape, use different effects, and how print the card out.

Here are the images for the card

Front
Inside
Back

For my card, I got the Halloween saying from a website, which is ultimately what inspired my work. I used spooky trees from Unsplash.com to give an eerie vibe. I also got the jack-o’-lanterns from there. To go along with the saying, I put a black cat on the front, also from Unsplash.com. On the inside I finished off the saying, wished the reader a Happy Halloween, and included the other jack-o’-lantern. I made the inside black to go along with the theme. On the back of the card I drew one more jack-o’-lantern and wrote “Designed By Trevor Maier, 2019.” This turned out to be quite some fun.

I definitely feel that I could have improved my work by trying more things out. I still only have a small grasp of Photoshop, but if I played around a little more, I might have found something that I really liked. The thing I found most challenging was just remembering which tool did what, along with switching layers and completely separating an image from its background .

I can use what I learned for this project, like the downloading of pictures, separating an image from its background, and printing on my future projects.

I felt that the assignment could be improved if we were given more time to work on the actual project in class. We would get more time to work on it and we could ask more questions and get an answer right away.

Overall, I really enjoyed this assignment. We were given the opportunity to make something and have the sense of feeling accomplished afterwards.