#XMP2013

[getyourgreenon]

Poster Blitz

This week we focused on getting our characters into the wide world of the UC Campus. With so many options and not a lot of time I decided to streamline my design and keep it simple with the posters only showing Carlos his message, a website and a QR Code. The poster blitz began well but since as I am behind I found that most of the 'good spots' were already taken, the 'good spots' are usually high traffic areas, sometimes near or on signs and places where people might have a bit of spare time to whip out their phone and access the QR code. No matter I found a few alternative spots that other people hadn't yet thought of but you're just going to have to find those for yourself.

The poster allows stimulating engagement while not giving away too much so as to build the interpreter's intrigue, hopefully leading them onto more investigation through the rabbit hole and onto one of the websites provided. By having a simple message that conveys humor as well as getting the point across about climate change the interpreter can understand what the whole campaign is about just from a simple picture and slogan. The slogans I came up with are in keeping with Carlos' fierce Strongman persona 'Recycle or I'll crush you', 'Turn off that light or I'll crush you' and 'Drive to school and I'll crush you'. So far these are trial slogans and I'm hoping to get some feedback off my peers as to their effectiveness. In the meantime I'll continue to come up with classier slogans that convey a simple message.

 I've also joined Hipster Barista's portal on Panoramio where I've uploaded the poster positions with all the other characters.

http://www.panoramio.com/user/7667884

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability #rabbithole #takeaway (at University of Canberra)

[getyourgreenon]

Experimentation Continued...

So far no new likes on my character's facebook page, I'm going to have to go all out with the posters me thinks... or I could team up with another more popular character, yeah! 

https://www.facebook.com/CarlosClimateChangeStrongman

[getyourgreenon]

Workshop 03 - Transmedia Hackathon

This week we were lucky enough to experience something not usually seen at UC or in media class for that matter. Augmented Reality or AR is a form of media that crosses the boundaries of graphic design, 3d animation, computer generated effects and 3D film. We were introduced to the app 'Aurasma', an AR app for Iphones which actually gives you the option of building your own simulation with extra features available through the website. After seeing a few impressive examples, mostly games, we received Ipads and were instructed to create our own using our characters.

 I decided to save Carlos as he was still in development and instead choose Hans & Hedi as I'd already developed them. Each person drew their character onto coffee lids, we then assigned them to groups on the floor within the areas of good, evil, cheeky, neutral  etc. I placed my two cheeky companions halfway in friendly/good and bad/mischievous. 

The character coffee lids. 

  We then regathered our creations and used Aurasma to create a custom made AR app. The coffee lids were used to create the 'trigger point' for the app, this is when someone moves their phone over the lids they will magically spring to life, the same principle is used in the technology of QR codes. I created a spider that jumped from my coffee lid, the accuracy was quite amazing but I ran out of time to progress my design and save it, ideally the AR would have linked to my website or character page. This is what's called a 'Rabbit Hole' where you create a ploy to capture the target audience's curiosity by leading them from one platform to another.

 We then enjoyed some interesting presentations to do with sustainability. The plan now is to spread the message as widely as possible across the UC campus and give our characters a change to go viral, if that happens then half our work is done. 

[getyourgreenon]

Tutorial - Experimentation

 This week's class was all about experimenting with our design ideas relating to sustainability. After the character design exercise in last week's workshop we were ready to build on the concept of creating characters and their importance in the role of trans-media. For my sustainability campaign at UC I thought long and hard about what would be most acceptable, something students at UC could really relate to. After a few initial drawings that ended up in the scrap I used my digital skills to bring to life my character, Carlos Climate Change Strongman.

A few of the previous character designs.

Carlos Climate Change Strongman.

 Creating the character from geometric shapes was simple enough but developing him into a well rounded hero with the qualities of a saint was another thing completely. Having an engaging back story is essential for any comic hero, incorporating this story into the theme of sustainability and tackling climate change was a little more challenging. The back story of my character is as follows: Carlos lived in an orphanage in the outskirts of Mexico City up until he was 15. The orphanage was run by an evil Baron who sold children into inhumane experiments run by an evil doctor. Some of the children survived these experiments and went on to become villains and super heroes in their own right. Carlos appalled at the unsustainable practices the Baron was running in the orphanage, along with the experiments, seized his opportunity to escape and joined a visiting circus. Hidden under the fat of an elephant Carlos snuck out of the God forsaken place he had grown up in and into the wide world of climate change. He spent several years touring with the circus as their strongman before returning to the place he once lived. Freeing the children from their bonds, Carlos defeated the Baron and his men only to have the evil doctor escape with a few of his experiments. Carlos vowed to stop unsustainable practices in universities across Australia and he started with UC, to this day the evil doctor haunts him by unleashing his minions to wreak havoc and make Carlo's mission harder. And so the saga begins...

 To promote the story of Carlos and his message I have decided to go with a few options. Having a range of platforms when promoting a product or message in trans-media goes to the very core of what  trans-media is all about. The more varied dissemination techniques available to me the more people I'm likely to reach. My main two platforms for this project will be Facebook which has the potential to reach millions of people all over the world and comic strips in the form of posters around UC. By having these two platforms spearheading my campaign I think I'll have a good balance of both students and people who aren't familiar with UC or XMP and so increasing my chance of effectiveness.   

The Facebook page for Carlos:

https://www.facebook.com/CarlosClimateChangeStrongman

  Comic strip Online:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/stripgenerator/strip/62/61/47/00/00/full.png

[getyourgreenon]

Workshop 02 - Ideation

I was sick when it came time for workshop 02 so I made up for it by attending the catch-up workshop the following week. Like the previous tutorial we were split into think tanks and addressed with the question of 'Who are the primary media users in our world today?' We brainstormed our ideas on post-it notes before thinking about what types of media there was out there. We then matched these two categories together to form groups of media users with their most likely used medium.  

 My group was assigned the group of music lovers and we decided their most used medium would be youtube, radio, TV, podcasts, streamed media from the net, Itunes etc. We were then instructed to think about ways in which these target groups could best be reached, we agreed that posters and radio would best suit our audience. Using these mediums highlighted before we were then instructed to come up with a character that would fit into them, they could be anything as long as they related to the genre of media users and their most used medium. Our group came up with a headphone character. The idea being that each earpiece would have a different personality and so would be able to hold a conversation with each other. This idea was developed into Hans and Heidi, a German duo who love everything to do with music. They have their own radio talk back show as well as having a visual presence around campus. The workshop was cut short because of another class but we took the idea of Hans and Heidi home with us to develop it a little more.

Concert goers and their most used mediums.

[getyourgreenon]

Tutorial - Discovery & Interpretation

In this tutorial we discussed design in creative thinking and how it is applied to construct a solution for a real world problem. We reviewed a design thinking template, it's main points being stepping out of our comfort zones, embracing our beginner's minds and realizing problems are just opportunities in disguise. For me this advice was like a breath of fresh air, too many times growing up are we taught this type of thinking gets us no where but the truth is that it is not until a problem which can't be fixed logically occurs that right brain thinking comes into action. Indeed it takes both sides of thinking to have a fully conscious human being. 

 The exercise for this week's tutorial was to gather inspiration by brainstorming and recording whatever came to mind. By using the principle of juxtaposition we managed to design pictures representing sustainability on campus. The way we did this was by first forming groups or 'think tanks' of 4 to 5 people. With post-it notes at the ready each of my group members wrote down words that stood out to them as I outlined my idea for a sustainable solution for engaging people on campus. Each person in the group took turns to do this and by the end of it we had a whole lot of post-it notes on this huge piece of butcher's paper, we were instructed to sort out the notes into three categories which we determined. Using these categories we were then instructed to draw a picture representing our ideas.

The result of my 'design thinking' drawing.

 This picture may seem ominous at first and while I drew it with the intent being it was open to interpretation, like most art is, there can only be few conclusions drawn from this image. The fact that I drew it in relation to sustainability on UC is even more intriguing, unfortunately I cannot remember it's true meaning but only know each part of the image represents something different. For example the cross beam represents 'support'. As for the other parts I'm sure they would come back to me if I stared at them long enough.  

[getyourgreenon]

Day 1 - Examples of Transitional Media

Today in class we discussed transitional media and it's potential for storytelling. Stephen gave us a few interesting examples, one was the hype campaign of Stephen Spielberg's film AI, where there was an online community set up and given codes to unlock secrets relating to the film. The concept worked so well the community thrived and went on to crack other puzzles on the world wide web, even at one stage coming close to finding out who was really responsible for the 9/11 attacks in New York, so close that the FBI shut them down. We were asked to go and look for some good examples of transitional storytelling in the media, I've known about this site for a while now and thought I'd share it here. http://thewildernessdowntown.com/

The Wilderness Downtown created by Chris Milk is an excellent example of transitional media in progress. It combines music, film, google maps and user interface to create a personal story and an inspirational one.