Final

After many test prints to get the page closely portraying as a part of Popular Mechanics magazine, I felt that it was an accomplishment to create a page that can blend in with the other pages visual wise. Now Cyborg Pigeons are part of the Tech Watch tab of Popular Mechanics.

Unfortunately, I could not find a paper that matches the paper that the Popular Mechanics magazine uses so I end up using plain printer paper which is the thinnest paper I could get.

The piece gives a journalist's story about the release of the Cyborg Pigeons, thought of and written by me and revised by Shona:

Wireless connection problems have always been around, with sudden disconnections or loss of signal strengths.

But not to worry, these Cyborg Pigeons are here to save the day.

The people from PigeTech have spent many years studying the pigeon and during this long period of exploration, their positivity in the potentiality of the pigeon has increasingly grown.

Cyborg Pigeons are able to identify electronic signals, which is exactly why they love to hang around wireless hotspots. These hotspots not only entice the pigeons but of course people who need to get connected, thus making it a double benefit for the pigeons, as where there are people there is always food.

With a great amount of research, PigeTech have created a metallic skeletal suit which can be implanted into the pigeons. Hence, when the pigeons rest on telephone poles they can gather electrons discharged from the wire. This way the electrons will be recycled by the pigeons and be used like resceptors to increase the range of wireless connections, increasing the power of signal strengths.

“Now everyone who uses wireless connection will love Cyborg Pigeons,” said Ian Kazensky, CEO of PigeTech, during an interview of the Cyborg Pigeon public release.

Here is a photo of the final piece:

Working on the Magazine page

On Wednesday of May 5, 2010, I was working in Photoshop to create an x-ray view of the pigeon with the metallic cyborg skeleton.

Today, I'm creating a story background for the company that will be creating the Cyborg Pigeons called PigeTech and also working to get the page to look closely like the magazine of Popular Mechanics. Another thing I'll be working on is finding the page to print this on.

Here is the magazine that I will be working with:

3D Model Presentation

Today everyone gets to present their 3D Model of their creature for project 4.

Pretty much it is to remind everyone what idea I am working on and showing the model that represents the creature which mine is a skeletal form of the pigeon.

Now I just have to look for a magazine that will fit for my pigeon, something like a technology magazine or national geographic about the changes in nature.

Shaun Presenting Photoshop

Today Shaun gets to show us the potentials of what Photoshop can do even though it is more limited than other Adobe programs such as After Effects.

There were total of 7 students attended for Shaun's lecture.

Even though I pretty much learned most of the Photoshop's features from my DSGD 83 class like isolating images, I still learned some new things such as making 3D images and creating brushes.

Structural Idea and Sketch

On Monday April 26, I sketched out the outline of what the pigeon will look like.

The sketch is also an outline for how the thin steel wire I'll be using to construct the 3D model.

Thinking about 3D Model

On Wednesday April 21, I came up with an idea along with discussing about it with Shona to create a model pigeon out of metal wiring to create the skeleton. The metal wire skeletal form is the be the model of the metal skeleton technology that is implemented into the pigeons. The model will not be too detailed, but enough to understand the concept.

Building a Small Gadjet

On Monday April 19, the class have a workshop of building a small light sensor LED gadjet.

The process of building the gadjet was fun even though it was confusing at first.

I am glad that I get the chance to build a small electronic device since I never get to build one before.

Presentation of Concept

On Wednesday April 14, the class presents their ideas and concepts for Project 4 of urban San Jose phenomana.

For the final product of my project, I believe I'll be going for making a magazine page, just need to find a technology magazine to place it in.

Continuing Research/Presentation

Today is just a continuation of researching about pigeons and brainstorming or listing of concepts.

Pigeons originated as Rock Doves and from the bird family of Columbidae within the order of Columbiformes.

Pigeons are known to be one of the smartest bird species. People have used the pigeon's talent to be messengers because they are able to recognize and differentiate people and able to return back to the sender after the delivery.

There are many potentials of what pigeons can be used for. Such as their poop was commonly used in the Europeans as saltpeter for gunpowder.

Pigeons are money makers for people who are into racing pigeons by training them to out run each other.

Pigeons living in the urban cities mostly live to mate and breed which is why there are a lot of them.

Even though pigeons are mostly seen as unwanted pests for their waste in commercial areas, they have been known to be fantastic creatures.

So how about having some more use for pigeons?

These are my rough ideas for a phenomena:

• able to identify wave signals such as antennas, internet activity, cell-phone signals, radio waves
• these pigeons are valuable to guide or navigate signal connectivity since they are able to sense such signals
• these pigeons adapted to transmitter signals, just like they have adapted to the human world, that they can act as a router
• these pigeons can be found typically anywhere that has telephone poles and wires
• just like pigeons can recognize the English alphabets or the way they can learn to become homing pigeons, they can now recognize electronic frequencies
• by owning one of these pigeons, they can grant wide range signals for cellphones, blackberries, and other wireless connections

Shaun gives me a great suggestion, base on my idea of pigeons emitting electronic waves for reception, for an idea about people implementing or changing the pigeons exoskeleton into metal like Wolverine.

Additional ideas I have after Shaun's suggestion:

• in realization of the potential of these pigeons, a technology was made to implement metallic skeletons in the pigeons in order to enhance the feature
• the metallic implant in the pigeon's bones allows their talons to draw electronic emissions from the electric field around the telephone wires without disrupting the actual signals
• the metallic bones in their wings act like multiple antennas to send out electronic signals

Here are some pictures of pigeons around telephone lines that I found from flickr.


Some images I found online to reference the pigeon's skeletal structure.

Researching for Project 4

On Wednesday 4/7/2010, after the introduction of Project 4 from Shona, the first idea comes to mind is Pigeons.

Here is a site I took reference from:
http://www.deterapigeon.com/21-amazing-facts-about-pigeons.htm

Film Presentation

Today is the day to see all the films created by different groups.

All the films I have seen looks great, every film is interesting in their own ways of their concepts.

Here is the Vimeo of my group's film:

Parallel Frequencies

Enjoy.

Second Day of Editing

This was on Wednesday, we finally put all our clips together and inserting parts that we were missing in to it such as little scenes that hints to the viewers what is going on. Karina and Melissa continues to do the editing.

As I have expected, Shaun points out to us that we are missing a very important scene to make the whole concept of our film complete. The missing scene is a scene where the girl from the "parallel world" is at the same location as the original girl when they wanted to meet each other.

So in order to take this scene I had to call Melissa to meet at the location on Today, Thursday to film the scene. The change is not much, but it's an important content for the concept of our film.

In my opinion, our film could have been a lot better if we had put more time and devotion in developing the whole sequence. I believe the problem deals with the organizational structure of who does what and the planning was not thoroughly constructed. It's probably my fault for thinking about the story in a complex way.

In the end, our film is about one minute shorter than the minimum requirement but as long as the concept get its point across I'll be quite satisfied.

First Day of Editing

We are mostly starting the editing phase. Since I mostly did the beginning work of the storyboard, I thought it would be best that I let Karina, Melissa, or Kimberly to do the film editing.

I was mostly working on making the video phone sequence while the others work on putting the clips together in iMovie.

I finished the video phone sequence through adobe after effects which was hard at first but I'm getting the hang of it, hopefully ill learn more things for later usage.

We couldn't finish the entire editing today so we let Karina handle the rest of it since she was the only one who has her own Apple Mac laptop. Hope she does well. As for me, I have to try to make the spark effect on the cell-phone when it first "fell" on the ground.

Second Day of Filming

Finishing the filming with the other half part of the girl from the "another world".

First Day of Filming

Time to get this filming started.









Time to get this filming started.

Finalizing the Storyboard

I discuss the twicks or small changes to the storyboard from our last meeting can just created a new outline that is more accurate or clearer. We will pretty much keep how the story is going on the previous storyboard but just change the ending and the way some things will be presented.
I think the important thing to do now is to get the filming of the live action scenes first then deal with the special effects and such later.

Storyboard Drafting and Discussion

Today is the discussion of story-boarding. I had my brother to help out drawing the story-board since he is an animation major. Shona and Shaun also came over to listen to our idea. Both gives the suggestions of how to make the story more about technology having the mind of its own. This gives me a realization that I didn't thought clearly about the story specifically about technology and for this project the technology is suppose to be the main idea.

Film Planning

Today, our group finally have the chance to thoroughly discuss about the cell-phone phenomena idea. For now, only the film layout is written down, but I will get my brother who majors in animation to help out with creating the story board based on our outline.

Here is our outline:I am glad that Melissa was able to simplify my thoughts because I was thinking about this film in a complicated way when it was not necessary.

A new member and filming practice.

On Monday 2/22/2010, we have Karina as a new member to our group. Now we have four people in our group.

I have to tell her about the idea our group had decided to follow through on the film project.

It's kinda hard to repeat myself, especially about a lengthy summary of our idea. So I refer Karina to read my blog about our first meeting.

Later, Shawn gives us a project where we have to come up with an idea of strange occurrences to be interviewed by the other groups.

I probably should have thought of something funny to do to entertain others, but my mind was in serious mode, but I still enjoy the jokes that other classmates did.

Interview 01


Interview 02


Interview 03


Interview 04


I try my best to keep things moving but it is hard when it seems like the whole group depends on you since you are the one with the idea so they think that they can't or shouldn't give any input on other ideas they might have or at least able to expand and elaborate on the idea I had.

I believe that I have to figure out a way that my idea can relate to my group so that we can collaborate more easily. Otherwise I felt like I have to do everything when I know that's not true, but it just felt that way.

First Formation of the Film Group

Today is the first day that filming project is introduced by Shona. Varies examples were demonstrated of the possible potentials for this project.

After that, our group was formed by drawing numbers out of a cap. My partners are Kimberly and Melissa. Melissa had to leave early so we quickly exchanged our contact information such as our e-mails and cell-phone numbers.

I am left with Kimberly after Melissa left. Kimberly starts off by asking me if I had any ideas for the film because she is not into the whole tech-savvy things or sci-fi, at least that's what I can remember she told me.

I answer her question with a story I remember reading from a visual novel I read nearly 3 years ago. The visual novel is called "Resonance."

The summary of the story that I told Kimberly is from what I can remember of the main plots.

The setting is during the summer somewhere in Japan.

A high school girl was late to class so she rushes to school putting her cell-phone along with a juice box in her book bag. As the girl rushes to school she crashed into a boy who was also late for school. The collision causes the juice box to squish and splat breaking the girl's cell-phone. The boy apologizes but the girl yells at him for how he is going to pay back for her cell-phone, but the boy just continue rushing to school. After school is over, the girl is depress about her broken cell-phone. As she walk home, her cell-phone receive an incoming call. The girl answers her cell-phone which reveals a girl and later the sister of that girl. Since it gets confusing here without labeling the characters, lets call the first girl Jill, the second girl Alice, and the sister of the second girl Lily. And to fast forward the story, the girls becomes best of friends after many days of summer and eventually wanted to meet up since they live in the same place and probably gone to different schools. They decide to meet up at the train station at lets say 11 am. When Jill arrive at the meeting location at 11 am, she did not see Alice or Lily (Jill knows what Alice and Lily looks like because the cell-phone was a video-phone). Jill calls Alice, asking her if she and her sister is here yet. Alice told Jill that they are here at the station below the clock. Jill is below the clock of the station but she still did not see Alice or Lily. It is then that they realize that they were at the right place but in a different world or parallel world so they can never physically meet up with each other. They are depress about this fact but there is nothing they can do about it. Instead, they try to hang out with each other through the cell-phone as long as they can till the next day (which was near the end of summer). Jill tries to contact Alice and Lily, but the cell-phone did nothing. Next day, cell-phone still did nothing. When it was the start of the autumn classes, Jill felt that the experience she had with Alice and Lily was like a dream. When Jill walks to school, she meet the same boy she crashed into at the beginning. At first the boy was startled to see her, afraid that she is still mad at him about breaking her cell-phone. But Jill did not yell at him, instead, she thank him. The boy and Jill became friends after that. The End.

Kimberly likes the story and I like it too. So this is a potential story that I believe we can work with. I just have to e-mail Melissa about it and see what she thinks.

Project 01 - My Interest Exposed

Natalie Bookchin

The work she done has a story is based on a 1966 short story by Jorge Luis Borges or called "The Intruder."

The story is a grim tale of prostitution, fraternal jealousy, and violence against women in which two brothers fall in love with the same woman, share her, and sell her to a brothel.

It has an interesting way of presenting a story through a series of classic computer games.

What I like about this work is the way the it is created to have interaction with the viewer.

Direct Links: 1, 2.


Man marries virtual girlfriend


The man, known only as Sal9000. He decided to marry the virtual girl from ‘Love Plus’ named Nene Anegasaki.

I can understand how Sal9000 can fall in love with a virtual girl since I do have feeling for girls that are just drawings. But, the difference is that I would not go as far as marrying a drawn girl.

For me, this feels like living with a programmed machine. I'm not sure whether Sal9000 likes Nene just because of her appearance, behavior, or expression in the game. Whatever may be the reason, it would be like someone falling in love with a concept idea that the creator implemented to his or her character.

Direct Links: 1, 2.


Life-like Robots

Actroid made in Japan present DER2, a life-like robots with human expressions and motions.

There are many other life-like robots made in other countries such as the United States and China, but this one appeals to me the most. The appearance of this Actroid looks very realistic to a real female.

This makes me wonder how robots living, interacting and communicating with humans will be like once they are fully operational. I am very curious on how the relationship between humans and realistic robots will be in the future.

Hopefully the future would not end up in an apocalypse prophecy in the movies of Terminator 1 (1984), 2 (1991), 3 (2003) or I, Robot (2004). Perhaps it would be more calmer and emotional similar to the movies of Bicentennial Man (1999) or Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (2001). Either way, I just hope that these robots will be made for doing things for the good.

Direct Links: 1, 2, 3.


Nyan Nyan


A YouTube clip that I found to be fascinating is the remix music video of a scene from an anime Macross Frontier. The one that originally caught my attention was the one that is about 9 minutes long with just the loop of an 8 seconds scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCimwxjj9m8

It is originally only a 8 seconds but it was probably so enticingly cute that people would create clips of different ways in repeating this scene, at least that's what I thought and felt about it.

This nyan nyan was introduced to me from my cousin. I was just playing cards with my other cousins until I suddenly heard "Nyan-nyan, nyan-nyan, nihao-nyan! Gorgeous, Delicious, and De-culture!" repeat, repeat, and repeat. This was the background music for our card game for about 3 hours.