jakelowebct

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Wrapping Up

Today, we came into class to finish up the final things that needed to be done. Firstly, we worked out the setup for submission. We already had the plate (acting as a bowl, because bowls warp the image too much), so sourced out a glass and a soup spoon for added immersion. We also covered the table in a tablecloth so it is more homely and less “classly.” Ravenne put together the final cut for the projected video, combining all of our animations into one. The projector now faces directly down, opposed to the 70-or-so degrees that it was at before, creating a much nicer image. Jordan created some posters of information for marking, and I created instructions for operations incase our laptop or the projector turns off. We are now completely set up for submission.

Now, all there is left to do is finish off our PDFs and submit! I look forward to being able get back into class so we can start getting ready for showcase. We are hoping to add more immersion via sounds and hoping to duplicate the image so two people can experience it at once.

Below, you can see a picture of our completed setup:

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#CTEC709 - Assignment 2 Post Index - Jake Lowe - “Renew”

This is a post index that links all of my blog posts from semester 2 of 2020. Weeks 1-5 outline the time from assignment 1, and the rest is from assignment 2. This is my primary documentation method for both my research and making process. I have split it up into different weeks to show what we were working on that given time.

Week 1 - Group Formation

No Longer Online!

Weeks 2-3 - Ideation

Early Ideas

Developing our Idea

Narrowing in on Ideas

Where I’m At

Weeks 4-5 - Online Time

Lockdown Part 2

Online Meetings

Back Online and Critiques

Reflecting on the Critique

Making Decisions

[Week 6 + Semester Break]

Week 7 - Getting Back to it

Back For The Last Time

Planning for the Next Few Weeks

Weeks 8-9 - New Direction for Project

In-Person Critiques

Finalizing Software and Review of Crit

Applying Crits + New Software

Getting a Projector

Target Demographic + Animation

Extension

Weeks 10-11 - Full Production Mode

Class

Research

Planning the Build for Projector

Physical and Digital Assets

Sourcing and Purchasing Brackets

Week 12 - Wrapping Up

Final Week

Building the Projector Stand

Nearing the End

Finishing Touches

Key References

Wrapping Up

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Key References

Below are the key references that I used to contextualise our project:

Chen, Y., Cheng, J, J., & Creamer, K. S. (2007). Inhibition of anaerobic digestion process: a review. Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, North Carolina State University, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2007.01.057

Lee, Y., Kim, S., Kwon, E., E., & Lee, J. (2019). Effects of carbon dioxide on thermal treatment of food waste as a sustainable disposal method. Department of Environmental Engineering, Ajou University, Republic of Korea. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcou.2019.11.004

Love Food Hate Waste. (2020). What we waste. Love Food Hate Waste NZ. Retrieved from: https://lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz/food-waste/what-we-waste/

Reynolds, C., J., Mirosa, M., & Clothier, B. (23 February 2016). New Zealand’s food waste: estimating the tonnes, value, calories and resources wasted. MDPI. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture6010009

Schanes, K., Dobernig, K., & Gözet, B. (1 May 2018). Food waste matters – a systemic review of household food waste practices and their policy implications. Institute for Ecological Economics, Austria. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.02.030

WasteMINZ. (September 2013). Summary of existing information on domestic food waste in New Zealand. Food Waste Research 2013. Retrieved from: https://www.wasteminz.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/Report-on-Food-Waste-in-NZ-2013-Final-1-3.pdf

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Finishing Touches

As submission draws nearer, we are starting to wrap up the project. The animations have all been completed and the physical side of things is ready to go for tomorrow. Everyone’s animations need to be stitched together for the final video that will be projected, which we estimate to come out to about 2 minutes long total. Sound effects also need to be added which will be done tomorrow as well. We will be using stock sound effects so that they are basically guaranteed to sound good. We were there for over 10 hours to make the most of the day before submission, working to get everything done on time and to a good standard.

Tomorrow will consist of setting up the physical space with a set table and chair, including the items to go on the table (plate, knife and fork, etc.). We will also be putting up information posters to instruct the markers how to use it and what it is all about. Our laptop that we will be running the projections off should be with us tomorrow which will be ideal. The final thing to do will be to finish off our PDFs and then submit! It’s been a busy week and we’re looking forward to submission!

Below is a screengrab of my near-completed timeline for the animation:

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Nearing the End

Today the whole group met again in studio and spent the day there. The first thing on the agenda was to get the projector up there in a secure way using the rachet strops that I brought in. A slight misjudgment that I made whilst building the projector stand was where the strops need to go. I had imagined them going around the whole thing and the projector, but it turned out that didn’t work. A small cut with a jigsaw later saw the strops fit perfectly. We now have the projector up on the wall permanently and ready for submission. Now all we need to do in terms of setup is “set the table.”

Other than that, we were all working on our individual parts for the animation – the assets and motion – and we are slowly but steadily working towards submission. Overall, I feel as though we are relatively on track and am looking forward to seeing the finished project. There is still a little bit left to do, and we are all helping each other to go to the end. Tomorrow I will be back in studio to do work and prepare the space further for submission.

Below is a picture of me installing the strops for the projector, and further down is us testing out the animation on the table:

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Building the Projector Stand

I spent the day in studio today working on and completing the stand for the projector. It went well and is very sturdy sitting up on the wall, awaiting the projector to be set up on it. I started out by measuring our t-wall and taking readings based off the brackets that I bought in. Following that, I sourced a thick piece of wood to act as the shelf that the engineering student’s stand will be screwed onto; one trip to the 3D labs later saw that cut to size. Next, I screwed the stand onto the shelf with six screws on each side; then attached the brackets themselves onto the self. With the stand built, the final thing to do was to attach it to the t-wall, and using my prior measurements, I screwed it into the side of the wall and down into the top of it, making for a secure hold. If I am honest, this stand is rather overengineered, but at the end of the day I feel much better about leaving a projector sitting up there knowing that there is no chance of it falling.

Tomorrow I will be bringing in some strops that I have at home to hold the projector tightly on the stand which will complete the projector setup. Once that is done, all we will have left to do is set up the table and we will be ready (on the physical side of things) for submission.

Below are some photos of the process and it completed:

In the above image, the projector is being held there by me. We still need to strap it on.

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Final Week

Leading into submission week, I have mostly been working on creating assets for the video to be projected. This involves taking a reference image into Illustrator, drawing over it and changing it to fit our purpose, colouring it in and saving it as an Illustrator file – as those can be worked with easily in Adobe After Effects. I have the task of creating assets for the stirring of the soup to mix the ingredients together, and then the soup being consumed and “draining” away. Next steps would be taking the assets into Adobe After Effect to bring them to life and prepare the video that will be projected. Things are looking relatively good for submission, we just got to push till submission.

I have also been working on my PDF for submission, it is going well, the toughest part always seems to be keeping it somewhere in the realm of 1000 words and not going way over. I am trying to be as concise as possible and portray what I want to say in a cohesive way. Tomorrow I will be heading into uni to build the holder/stand for the projector with the brackets and hopefully getting that finished.

Below is an image of my new and improved soup! I am quite happy with the style and how it turned out:

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Sourcing and Purchasing Brackets

Taking the advice of Krishna, today I went to my local Bunnings to purchase some brackets for the stand to attach the projector to the wall. There was a large variety, but I ended up going with some heavy-duty self-brackets. They are made of steel and take up approximately the length of area horizontally that the projector with need to be protruded and go a similar distance vertically. In the case of them not being the right size, I also purchased one size smaller of the same kind. The larger ones should do the trick, but it is a good idea to have as many materials as possible just in case something doesn’t go to plan.

The original plan was to use four brackets, two on each side of the t-wall, for maximum strength, but Krishna suggested only needing two brackets plus a strap for safety, and having these large brackets in hand, I am pretty convinced we will only need the two.

I will go into the mech lab on Tuesday to start making the structure to hold the project as at this point, we should have all materials needed – there’s scrap wood and spare screw available for use in the mech lab, so those will be used.

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Physical and Digital Assets

Yesterday in class, other than just working on a solution to getting the projector up on the wall (going to buy the brackets in the next few days), I was also working on Adobe Illustrator with Ravenne and Shel to continue making assets for the projection. We have been improving over the past couple of weeks and are getting more efficient at making them. I have found myself deleting old ones and recreating them much better and much faster than before. The next big thing to tackle will be Adobe After Effects to give the assets some life.

On top of that, we have all been working together to come up with how the project should be displayed when it comes to assessment and showcase. We are going to set up one of the square table to accommodate one person for a “meal,” this entails that we with have a chair at the table, a tablecloth on the table, a plate to be projected onto, and cutlery set out for the participant.

I feel like we are starting to pick up a good momentum now as we work toward submission. Now we need to focus on getting the content done and getting all of the materials that we need for the project overall.

Below is a screengrab of my first attempt at an iteration of soup. I am tracing the image to learn how to use the program, I still have a lot to learn!

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Planning the Build for Projector

I spent a fair amount of time in the mech lab today to run a few ideas past Krishna. The problem that I was looking to solve was how we will suspend the projector to the wall facing 90 degrees downward. The first thing I did was take measurements of one of the t-walls in relation to distance from the table we will be using and how far out the projector needs to be. Showing Krishna, he seemed confident that it will be relatively easy, proving we make it strong. As a basis, we will use a premade wooden projector stand leftover from a previous project and build off of that. He suggested that all we need to do is modify the old stand to sit at a 90-degree angle (it is currently at roughly a 75-degree angle), and flip it upside-down to get the straight down shot. Then all we would need to do is add is a couple of shelf brackets and perhaps a strap to hold it all in place. There are plenty of spare materials in the mech lab that we will be able to make use of, but I will need to go to Bunnings (at the recommendation of Krishna) to find some good brackets to support that weight.

Below is a picture of my plans:

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Research

This post is dedicated to research and will cover the key concepts of our project, summarizing the research we have done in relation to it.

Our target demographic is the people who buy the food in a household, as they are generally the ones in charge of the food overall and hence the disposing of it.

Food waste is a large problem, as large percentages of food is thrown away in New Zealand households. This creates problems such as C02 and methane gas.

Our project aims to educate people about that to do with food waste instead of throwing it away by providing the options of composting and anaerobic digestors.

In the given context of our project, we place the user in a familiar setting, a table set for dinner to give an immersive experience to make their brain associate dinner with being green and disposing their food waste in a greener way.

Our project is contextualized in this research and provides a basis for the facts and solutions it is based upon. The research helped us keep grounded and focused on the right tasks, and kept us form drifting too far from the point that we are trying to drive home.

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Class

In class today, we spent quite a bit of time planning for what to do next. Unfortunately, only half of the team was in class because of sickness, but that is okay because they were working from home. The main topic for today was planning out the animation and how to go about doing it. An interesting point that was brought up is that we can make use of vector images in our drawings to save time. I personally think I will be drawing my assets because I have a lot of simple shapes compared to the others, and therefore it will not be completely necessary for me to use them. I will start drawing in Illustrator to get a feel with it and then work my way towards After Effects and get a feel with that.

Other than that, we have high hopes with the project, especially with the week longer, and we are definitely going to make use of it! Next up is planning on how we are going to get the projector up on the wall in the right orientation, which I am slightly worried about – I really don’t want it to fall, so we are going to have to make something very sturdy!

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Extension

As submission drew closer and closer, we were all starting to feel the pressure of the deadline – as did a lot of our classmates – we decided to apply for an SCA extension and got it. This means that we now have an extra week to complete our project. This opens up the project a lot more for us and allows us to do more and puts us more align with the plan that we originally had in terms of how far we would be in the project in relation to the end date. It also allows us more time to learn Adobe Illustrator and After Effects and hence improve our skills and hopefully get a better-looking project at the end of it. I worry that we would not have been able to do what we intended to with the project without that extra week, and I am very grateful that we now have that option.

It is important that we use this time wisely and really start cracking to meet our new deadline. I’m feeling much more confident about bringing our project to a reasonable level of completion now that we have the extra week, and things are for sure looking brighter. Now it is time to step into gear on the project and start producing!

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Target Demographic + Animation

A topic that we have been skirting around a bit is that of our target audience. This is something very important to a project as it shows who it is marketed towards and who should be using it. We have had a couple of ideas floating around about our target audience, but have finally decided on one, and are committed to seeing it through. Our target audience is: the people who buy the food in households. The reason for this is that they are generally in charge of the food in a household and hence are the ones disposing of the food waste (or at least know about it). This allows us to have more context behind our work and be able to curate the content to a specific demographic and hence get a better reception from them. I feel as though this is a good move to make and gives us a clear direction and keeps us thinking about the meaning behind the project as we go.

On top of that, we have been thinking about the aesthetics and style that we want to go for in our project – this includes the animation and the posters, etc. We want it to be appealing to look at, just like food, and to draw the attention of people. We have also been looking into tutorials to gain the skills required to do the actual animation. Here is a link to one of the tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKCR-Az7Oy0&ab_channel=SonduckFilm

I’m feeling good about our current pace and hope to keep it up. I look forward to start making stuff for the project and seeing these ideas become reality.

[jakelowebct]

Getting a Projector

With the digital side of things sorted out (ish) for now, we turned our attention to the physical side. Since we want to be creating a digital dining experience, we need a way to display such content. We have two options – a TV facing upward on a table, or a projector facing downward on a wall. Evaluating the two options, we were quickly able to rule out any possibility of using a TV for a couple of reasons; firstly, we are wanting to put plates etc. on the table which may damage the screen, and secondly, TVs aren’t designed to be laid down like that, meaning we would have to build some sort of rig to hold it safely in place (not exactly ideal). That turns us towards using a projector. With previous projects, I have only used large heavy projectors with special mounts, and considering what we want to use ours for, that will likely not end well. Therefore, I loaned out one of the medium sized projectors from the mech lab for us to use.

I stood up on a stool with the projector on to gain an understanding of the placement that would be required and if it would even look good in terms of picture. The picture is adequate and will work with what we want; now we face the dilemma of getting the projector into the right position…

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Applying Crits + New Software

Last night and today, the group and I have been in talks about the crits and the project. We want to make use of the crits as much as possible this time around and try to make the most of the feedback while it’s fresh in our minds. The thing that we focused on the most was what software we will be using. We had a couple of options such as Unity or Adobe’s various applications, but in the end, we decided to move forward with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects. The reason we opted to go for these two is that we think that we should first work towards getting content shown rather than interactivity (with a webcam, for example), so that there is stuff for the audience to see, rather than having something you can interact with but not see anything interesting. If we have enough time, we can go back and add true interactivity, but we will first work towards creating a video to some degree. Assets will be created on Illustrator, then animated on After Effects to create the content that we will be projecting.

This time of reflection has been helpful and gives us good direction for the next little while. I hope to keep this cycle of reflecting up, as I find it very beneficial.

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Finalizing Software and Review of Crit

Yesterday, we had the crit session. Overall, I felt as though it was a success due do the reaction and feedback from our peers. Below, I have listed the feedback that we received, along with my commentary on how I think we should address it/my thoughts on the comment:

“Hologram prototypes”: holograms aren’t something that we have looked into for this project. While I don’t think that we will implement then into the project, I think it will still be an interesting thing to look into for research purposes.

“Do more prototypes”: I agree that we should do more prototypes. At the current, we haven’t done many physical prototypes, just a lot of digital/paper-based ones, so it will be good to get some physical ones going.

“Feign interactivity for proof of concept”: this is a good compromise if we are running short on time and are not able to add in interactivity into our projections via the means of a camera, etc. and instead just using a preset video.

“Shorten animation”: this again comes down to feasibility, if we are running short on time, it may be a good idea to make the animation shorter rather than longer.

“Adobe Animate + After Effects + Premiere Pro”: these are good some software recommendations and we will consider them when deciding on software to use.

“Audience?”: this is a good thing to think about – who is our target audience? We definitely need to nail that down and stick to one.

Overall, I feel as though this is a good set of feedback, and it really helps us to think about filling in those gaps in our project planning, allowing us to make the necessary steps towards making our project good.