Workin' on the Avatar

Second Life is absolutely killing me. I understand how SL shows a progression in digital media, but I don't see how it fits with the curriculum of Visual Communication. I feel like scripting and building is so much more geared toward computer design and graphics. I'm an English major...that's not my job.

But I'll do it...cuz I'm too stubborn not to do it.

Screen Cap of Avatar:


So, here's the most I have of my house so far. I say most not because I didn't work on it, but because the sandbox I was in started to add random pieces to my "lost and found" inventory...and thus I couldn't get a full picture of it. Ugh. Second Life is starting to grate on my nerves. And my house was awesome, too. There were stairs and hanging moss...

^*$%@_*^

Chapter Six: Media in the Everyday Life

I found this chapter particularly interesting for a few different reasons. Being involved in both a sociology class as well as a public relations class this semester, I’m finding it interesting on how much of the course load seems to overlap.

What I found particularly intriguing is how media seems to be directed towards the “everyday masses” and yet, when we sit down to actually view “everyday,” things aren’t necessarily as we’d see them in reality. Take television for example. As viewers, we often see television as a medium of distraction. In today’s society, nearly every person (at least in the US) owns a television set. But what we watch on that television differs.

How often do we watch a television show, more aptly, a reality show? Reality shows are one of the most common and well watched forms of entertainment on tv. But though we tend to assume that the television is presenting real life, if we stop to think about it, there’s nothing real and everyday about bombshell babes trying to make friends with the geek squad or a single dad that works on a far shipping in 12 lovely ladies from all around the country in hopes of finding true love.

Media stations are trying endlessly to find forms of entertainment that brings real life into the living room. But how ironic, that what we label in the media industry as real life hardly every happens in, well, real life.

Something else that stuck with me from the chapter is just how pervasive certain images are within our society. Certain photographs, portraits, sometimes even brand names become so quickly synced with our everyday happenings. If asked, I bet there is not a certain person in this room that cannot conjure up some image of the 9-11 attacks. Many people can also imagine the famous Obama “hope” poster that prevailed during his campaign. These images have been ingrained into our memories just as much if not more than the actual information itself.



And how quickly we get these images and information as well – the chapter opened with the specific reference to checking your mail on your iPhone! When did we become a culture so driven by brand names? If you asked a student demographic, most would probably get their news not from a local broadcasting network but from The Daily Show or Colbert Report. The media has so branded our interpretation and input of information, ideas and new in the world that we associate things now not necessarily with the information we are getting, but the conduit for how we are receiving the information. We don’t listen to music anymore…we listen to iTunes.

Chapter Five

Perhaps it’s just me, but I found chapter five and its discussion on technology versus how it changes society incredibly interesting. While one side of the argument is that society is what demands the changes in society, another side is that it is the technology itself with changes society.

I think that to some extent, both work simultaneously. For example, take something like the roomba (for lake of a better example coming to mind). No one needs a roomba per se. Technology is increasing because they are looking for ways to make life easier. But society is also getting lazier because of the convenience that technology gives us. It becomes a situation then of what came first, the chicken or the egg?

Another example that we could discuss is the idea about pictures and photography. It used to be a social norm within society to have portraits done. If you were high in society, you would spend hours sitting as an artist sketched your outline and painted a picture. Now, it has become more common place to be instantly gratified and have a family portrait taken at Glamour Shots in the mall. For those that still want an actual portrait to hang over their mantle, the artist will still paint a picture, but they will use the photograph as a base model instead of the actual model themselves.

After awhile though, even photographs became obsolete and cinema became the new rage. Portraits took much too long, photography was more instant, but film could show a progression of images.

Visual Communications Proposal

Proposal: I intend to look at video game and how they have changed and adapted as there have been advancements in technology, with a specific look at the Final Fantasy series.

What are you trying to prove?

As technology has changed, so has the way that people entertain themselves. In particular, video games have seen a drastic overhaul in form and function as time has passed. Beginning from 1969 when William Rusch filed a patent application for the “Television Gaming Apparatus” (later to be known as the Magnavox Odyssey) to today’s Xbox360, PlayStation3 and Wii, gaming itself has changed just as much as the games themselves.

Why are video games so important?

Video games are important, at least in the idea of visual communications, because they demonstrate the growing use of technology in digital media. As advances in technology are made, graphics and other picture qualities must increase as well in order to keep the populace interested. In the past few years alone, video games have changed from 8bit color schemes CG movements. Classic games such as pong were shown in black and white and consisted simply of trying to keep a ball positioned between two paddles. Today’s games include much more intricate maneuvers such as intricate battle sequences, puzzles and strategic plotting. Before players were content with Pac man in arcade form at their favorite diner or movie theatre, but games and systems have now become more home compatible – they are slimmer and generally more challenging in their character.


Final Fantasy I battle sequence

Final Fantasy VII battle sequence

Final Fantasy XIII battle sequence

What example do you plan to use to illustrate your point?

Few games have been around as long as long as the Final Fantasy (ファイナルファンタジー ) franchise. Hironobu Sakaguchi created the first installment of the series in 1989, nearly a decade after Pac man became popular. Sakaguchi joked that since Square (now known as Square Enix) was about to hit bankruptcy, his final game would be a fantasy, hence the title of the game. When the game was met with wide success in both Japan and North America, Square continued to produce Final Fantasy games, a trend that persists today. Since 1989, there have been 13 Final Fantasy games developed, the last of which is due to be released in the United States 2010. The Final Fantasy games have gone from the Nintendo console to PlayStation, PlayStation2, Computer, and PlayStation3. To become more versatile and appeal to a larger audience, Final Fantasy XIII is set to be released on both the PS3 as well as the Xbox360.

How have video games affected the digital media industry?

Video gamers have become so obsessed with their respective game titles, they many video games have been transformed into other media. Many games have been transformed into movies. Such popular titles include things such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken and Final Fantasy. Mortal Kombat has sparked not only a movie in 1995, but also a TV series and other merchandise. There is even rumor that there is a remake of the movie set to release in 2010. The Final Fantasy line has sparked not one, but two movies: Final Fantasy Advent Children and Final Fantasy – The Spirits Within. While Advent Children is based more directly on what happens post the conclusion of the famous Final Fantasy VII, The Spirits Within was a modern marvel when it was released. According to a review on Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum, “Final Fantasy is also a mesmerizing technical achievement, and a breakthrough in the synergy…between digital gaming and movie-going. Untethered from the conventions of human-emotion-based storytelling, these computer-created characters represent a cinematic art of the future taking its first baby steps today.” Just to show how quickly digital media changes, over the four years of production time used on The Spirits Within, by the time the final shots were rendered, creators and animators had to return to some of the earlier shots – they needed to be redone because they didn’t match the later images. The software used to create the images had become more advanced and thus more detail was possible.

Chapter Four: Realism and Perspective

Chapter four speaks a lot about the idea of “realistic” and what that concept actually means. Most people think that realistic constitutes as something that you would find in real life, something that is unaltered. Like a photograph. But when you think about it, how often are photographs altered? With the advances in modern technology, it is incredibly easy to doctor a photo and make it look as if it were real. Even more so, pictures that could be taken to look like a snapshot in time could actually have been staged. If things are staged, do they lose their reality, or are they just trying to portray the reality in which the creator intended the viewer to see.

Another interesting fact is the idea about doctoring a photo in the sense to make things look differently. I don’t mean this in the sense of photoshop, where you change the actual elements pictured in the photo, but things such as black and white, cyan and sepia. Black and white film, as well as sepia tones, were used in the past because of the absence of color technology as well as to preserve the photo. Now, with the click of a button we can easily modify a photo to be taken digitally with these specific tones. Changing a photo to black and white can easily give a picture a different feel than what was originally intended.