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Golden X Awards

The golden X awards were announced, congratulations to all my peers who won something, I would have like to had some pictures but unfortunately I was unable to attend.

Rabbit Hole

Bin your Butts - Jenn Leheny

Evil Frank - Megan Brooks

Douchebag Nate - Linn Legros

Experimentation

USB Drives - Clement Clark - Lewis Matheson

Rocky the Unsustainable - Hew Sandison, Viktoria Halas, Mark Weber

Wira - Anna Richardson

The Bin Twins - Breanna Werner

Poster

$erebrum the Zombie Rapper by 

The Great Maintaino - Jim Wilks

Noxious - Adam Pettigrove

Content

Atticus Nouveau - Hannah Sorenson

MC sustain “Them’s tha Rulez” - Rob Steep

The Great Maintaino #2 - Michael Willliams, Jim Wilks

User Content Generation

Dr. Oplet - Steph Outteridge

Bad Chad - Vivienne Tran

Credible - Charlie Bartak

Sustainability Message

Miss Sustainability UC - Samual Okabe

Franco the Fair Trade Farmer - Lakyn Cooper

Pepi - Niranjan Nirmalarajan

Roberta Recycle - Suzy Koe

Character Interaction

Green Zombie feat. Evil Frank

Earth Killer Ken - Alexandria George, Jessica Lenehan, Emily Vrbenski

Sustainability Man  - Sam Bartlett and Rob Streep

Bronze X

Franco the Fair Trade Farmer - Lakyn Cooper

Silver X

Sustainability Man feat. MC Sustain - Sam Bartlett and Rob Streep

Golden X

The Great Maintaino - Michael Willliams, Will Jordt, Jim Wilks, Mathew Ruth, Courteney Jonas

[getyourgreenon]

Reflective Blog Cross Media Production 2013

Character made with the help of stripgenerator.com

In your own words describe the character. What type of character is it ? What is the characters attitude to sustainability issues ?

 Carlos is a strongman both physically and morally. He has dedicated his life to the service of the planet after years of witnessing its degradation by humans all around the world, he believes it's his mission to save the planet one university at a time. Sometimes stubborn sometimes free thinking Carlos believes the only real way to get the message across it through brutal force. Growing up in a circus for most of his life he also appreciates the small things and what it takes to laugh and have fun. He needs to show people the proper way to look after the planet as if it was do or die for him.

Describe the audience that this character was designed to attract.

This character was designed to attract people with a sense of humor, those who appreciate comics and those who like the idea of heros vs villains. Naturally not everyone will be into such things so it is important that I tailor my platforms so that everyone can experience the greatness that is Carlos. 

  Describe the platforms that YOU developed the character on. (should be at least 2)

I developed my character through two different platforms, one being more accessible to the wider audience which is Facebook and the other being Strip Generator which is targeted more at the niche audience of comic strip fans. They can both crossover relatively easy.

Provide links to what you consider the best piece of content that YOU developed on each platform.

Two of the best pieces of content that I've created for my audience would have to be the poll on facebook with the question 'What is the most sustainable way to get to uni?' with the results being enlightening to say the least.

https://www.facebook.com/CarlosClimateChangeStrongman

And the comic strip intro where the other characters of Carlos' adventure are introduced in a vividly comic style.

http://stripgenerator.com/strip/741626/introducing-carlos-climate-change-strongman/

Provide documentation of your characters rabbit hole on campus. Give credit for the idea and implementation. Did any audience come through the rabbit hole ? How do you know ?

Here is a simple example of my rabbit hole on campus. The poster provides the attention grabbing ploy while the small print provides the information necessary for the individual to 'follow' the rabbit down the hole. I got the idea from my peers who had started posting similar posters around campus, they reported some interesting results so I agreed to use this method over others. Unfortunately my facebook page did not gather enough likes and so was not enabled to examine data and so as much as I'd like to speculate I'll leave the results at null for now.    

Upload an image of the poster that you created, and describe where you put it, and why you put it there.

This is my basic design for Carlos Climate Change Strongman posters, I put them in high traffic areas along with other posters so people could get a feel for the variety of characters while absorbing the message of sustainability as a whole. There is one right next to the Media Store room as well where people are often seen waiting in a line, hopefully they will get to read my poster while they do so.

What cues did you use to transition the audience across platforms ?

I managed to use a number of cues to transition my audience from one platform to another. A QR Code and website address was used from the poster to the net, then on facebook my main cues were status updates which informed the audience of the strip generator website and the comic strip stories I had created for Carlos.

Which parts of the narrative did you tell on each platform ?

I told the back story for Carlos on the stripgenerator platform and then climate change narrative on facebook. 

Reflect on what you have observed and learned from the experimental phase. 

From looking back on what I've learned over the experimental phase I see that the transition from design stage into experimental is not always without problems and unforeseen circumstances. In fact for me it was relatively smooth but from hearing other stories and reading blogs things can fall apart if you try and be too ambitious, this is where I like to go back to the design principle of simplifying. Any great idea can and should be boiled down to its main constituents if ever the process of building goes astray, usually we as creative practitioners lose sight of our message and so simple is better in regards to design.  

What would you do differently next time around ? 

I would employ more platforms with more access to students. So instead of centralizing my character around comics and facebook I would take the charaqcter to them, possibly through the use of enticing free stuff or a mascot. Perhaps both. 

What you would do if you could get funding to develop your character further ?

I would develop a short animation based on the comic strip series, perhaps I could follow Emma Keltie's model for success in web series and trans-media. 

What are your thoughts regarding the Design Challenge "Can we use Transmedia to Inspire a Culture of Sustainability at UC ?" Do you think we have succeeded ? Do you have suggestions on what to do next time if we tried this challenge again ? 

I think cross media is one of those developing concepts where just about anything is possible if we put our minds to it. Engaging a transitory audience with a potential size of thousands is also difficult; to get the best results I think localizing it to niche markets within this wider audience of UC would be the best approach (take comic fans for an example). Promoting the message of sustainability on campus, or any just cause for that matter, is probably the most worthwhile application for cross media at this stage of it's development, however it is not usually a worthy cause that develops new technology but rather the consumer's needs and desires which don't always fit in that spectrum of 'just causes'.

I think aspiring for a culture of anything is a well deserved goal for such exercises, though in short, I don't think we achieved it this time around. This may be due to a number of factors; while we did raise awareness to our cause by such exercises as poster blitz we may have pushed it into the audience's face a little too much. Overkill is a deadly sin in any marketing campaign, I believe the trick, and maybe for future attempts, will be to entice the audience into creating a culture for themselves, whether this is done by hype campaigns or even shock campaigns is completely up to the next class but it is well worth taking what we've learned here and thinking about it for next time.

Has the integration of the topic of sustainability into this unit changed your behaviour in any way?

Somewhat.

[getyourgreenon]

Workshop 04 - Evolution

 For our last workshop we were treated to an 'x-pert' panel, the creator of Newtown Girls Emma Keltie and the director of Canberra Youth Theatre Karla Conway who has a new show '35 Degrees 17 South' which uses a whole range of trans-media platforms integrated with theater. First we heard about Emma's success and how her Youtube project grew into a successful business model. What began as a kickstarter project in March 2012 is now one of the most successful Australian Youtube series with over 1.6 million views worldwide. She explained her success was largely based on market research and involving the audience in the creation process which meant creating polls, forum space and a lot of leeway to incorporate their needs and wants. She admits there was a lot of luck involved and trial and error played a big part in finding the right balance between user interaction and her vision as the creator. Overall she couldn't be happier and with plans to further the series it's bound to grow.  

Karla explained her project as an adaption to the world of interactive media. Instead of having trans-media as a competitor to theater she Incorporated it into her practice to make a hybrid of active-passive theater. The results are surprisingly amazing with success in just about every aspect of the production, the only real problem highlighted was the time it took to build and integrate cross platforms, keeping costs to a minimum was also an issue. Something that really interested me was her goal to focus on presenting the artist's needs knowing they were shared with the audience. Creating a story line that used the different issues of climate change, social injustice and over consumption proved to be an effective strategy.

 We then formed groups to devise our own trans-media game model based on our ideas of sustainability at UC, however I had to leave early and didn't get to see what my group came up with.

[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

[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]

Workshop 01 - Discovery

 Our first workshop of the semester and everyone was a little anxious as to what to expect. Luckily Stephen explained the process very well and with templates and slideshows to show us the way how could we go wrong? We were divided into groups, I had a few friends in mine but most people I'd never met before. We were then briefed on the UC's new sustainability project and a garden for students to be erected sometime later this year. Our job as students in XMP and future media practitioners is to promote sustainability on the campus through storytelling techniques using transitional media. A large feat but something that is ultimately going to prepare me for my practice in the future, very exciting.

 The aim of the first workshop was named Discovery because it's when we can discover our potential and the potential of the medium in creating a proper message for people at UC. Groups were given several minutes to think about ways in which to engage students and staff at UC. How would people interact with the garden? Who would be interested in a garden at UC and get the most use from it? How can we commit people to a garden even when they're not at the garden? These were some of the questions we considered and the problems we knew we would have to address.

After brainstorming for a while we came up with the idea of incorporating some AR into the design of the garden so people could be entertained and informed. We also though a weekly kids show would be a good way if introducing children to the garden, for this we created a mascot; Carrol the Carrot.

Our design concept featuring Carroll the Carrot.

Our QR code illustration.

Our design and how it fits into the larger proposal of the garden.

After formulating our ideas into a design we thought would be sufficient, the groups then took turns to get up and propose their idea to the rest of the class. There were a lot of good ideas, however, it seemed as though most groups had shared ideas such as the QR Code and augmented reality. Out of the ideas that really impressed me was the cooking with fresh produce in the garden and another one where different society's own different patches and get rewarded for growing and caring for their patch. There was only one other group that though of the children interaction using a mascot. After the class voted for the best ideas, that other group came first, we came a tied second and another interesting idea came third.

Before the workshop finished we heard from Amber, a former student who has used AR and video to build a map of energy use on the UC campus. It was quite interesting to hear about her method and seeing the end result was just as impressive.

[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.