To create immersive VR game – http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2890374
1# Consultation
Immersion in game
Game is still too board
Immersion in IMAX etc…
VR vs AR -> Why the more immersive the better?
2# Biblography
Understand
1# LVL6 Direction
Game designer
related to final degree project
Game -> Immersion -> Virtual Reality (AR is apart of it)
Mostly about education = edutainment
Proposal – Big Data
Big Data: A medium for Creative Industry to create a better User Experience.
Research background and questions:
In today’s Digital Age, most of the human’s behaviors had been tracked and stored as data when they interact with digital technologies like phone applications, purchase transaction record, websites and social media activates. According to the IBM (2015), 2.5 quintillion bytes of data had been created in the last two years alone. These complex data is rapidly increasing every second and has become hard to be organize with traditional method which then defined as “Big Data”.
These data has been widely used by companies to analyse their audience and this can be seen from Netflix. Russell Glass and Sean Callahan (2014) mentioned in their book that Netflix had funded 100 million dollar into one of their show and the source of this confidence is from Big Data that gives Netflix a deep insight into its audience viewing habits.
This paper will introduce the usage and benefits of Big Data in creative industries with the support of case studies and points by experts. By studying Big Data, this paper attempts to create an easier way for designers to use Big Data to create a better user experience.
Research Questions
- What kind of Big Data relevant to the creative industries?
- How can these data be used to create a better user experience?
Research Scope and concept:
Big Data has been providing benefits to all kind of industries which means this topic will provide a wide range of information. So, the focus area of the study will scope down to creative industries and user experience (UX). The reason is that, big data provide information that related to human behavior which then help designers to understand their audience and create a better user experience that fulfilled their ‘likes’. The other reason being that UX design is the most important way to attract audience to increase the company’s profit which means this will be helpful in increasing marketing skill.
There is the possibility that the research may cover data visualization that help designers understand big data. Concepts that may be useful in answering the questions are data mining, cloud computing and the four V’s of Big Data. These concepts were coined by and examine the ways of data been collected and used.
Research Outcome and Relevance
The outcome to the first question can create a clear understanding on what type of Big Data are there that are relevant to the creative industries. The outcome to the second question may lead to a better understanding on how creative industry can combine creativity with data to create a better user experience for their audience.
Such knowledge is relevant to digital creatives in a digital era which includes Interactive Multimedia professionals because it can help track and analyse the audience’s behavior to scope down the target audience which is what designers are always struggling with.
Research Feasibility and Ethical Concerns
The proposed research is moderate. The topic of Big Data has been briefly introduced in Content and Management class during the first semester of level 5 to understand how contents were collected and managed before proceed to create a website with dynamic contents. Few of the references with important points were also found by the author to help create a better understanding in big data to support this paper.
Big Data itself will be a challenge for the author because a lot of unfamiliar computer science terms were used in academic and professional sources. Thus, more studies have to be done to have a better understanding on it, but terms used in Big Data that are not related to the essay topic will be avoid.
There are no ethical concerns for this proposed research as it is in the form of a degree research essay that uses mainly secondary sources.
Reference List
IBM (2015). Bringing big data to enterprise. [online] Available at: https://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/what-is-big-data.html [Accessed 5 December 2015]
Glass, R., Callahan, S., (2014) The Big Data-Driven Business: How to Use Big Data to Win Customers, Beat Competitors, and Boost Profit. pp 88 – 89.
Mozer, M., (2014) Big Data and You. The Rosen Publishing Group.
Schmarzo, B., (2013) Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business. John Wiley & Sons.
Marr, B., (2015) Big Data: Using SMART Big Data, Analytics and Metrics To Make Better Decisions and Improve Performance. John Wiley & Sons.
HALOGENIC (2013). Big Data + Creative Industries = Slim Pickings? [online] Available at: http://halogenic.me/2013/08/10/big-data/ [Accessed 5 December 2015]
Rolston, M., (2014). The Next Era of Designers Will Use Data as Their Medium [online] Available at: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/rise-of-data-artists/ [Accessed 5 December 2015]
CloudTweaks (2013). Cloud Computing Helps Reduce Costs For Media Producers [online] Available at: http://cloudtweaks.com/2013/10/cloud-computing-helps-reduce-costs-media-producers/ [Accessed 12 December 2015]
15. Essay structures
For my essay, I’m going to narrow down the ideas and go for Photoshop in advertisement as my direction.
Below are my essay structure, might change when doing the essay.
14. Conclusion
Lastly, I would like to conclude all my researches and ideas.
Technologies keep on developing and bring a lot of convenience for the humans, most of us for sure own at least one technology device such as laptop, computer, smart phone , camera and so on. These has been widely use by the us.
Functions and software inside those devices able to let us achieve our goal easily.
Cameras combine with Photoshop, Instagram and many more other software and apps, can make everyone a photographer because the process to produce an image with different kind of effects is so much easier compare to the past.
These technologies and software also act as an important tools and mediums for the Photographer to improve their photos, promote themselves ,communicate with other photographers or even followers and make a living from it.
These had become a ‘must’ in the career.
Not only that, Photoshop also plays an important role for photographers in advertising field. Photoshop able them to enhance their photos or even correct their mistakes. What most useful with this software is that it lets them achieve the result that can’t be achieve in reality – photo manipulation. Still, these technologies and software are just a tool, patience, creativity and skills still plays a huge role on creating an artwork.
13. Realistic vs Illustration
In this post, I will talk about the similar functions between the photoshopped advertisement that I’ve collected and how it is different from illustrated version.
Photoshop base is more into realistic style.
Those are few of the photoshopped advertisements that attract me.I’m more into these advertisement that show awareness than fashion advertisement, it is quite straight forward in visual aspect but do let me think twice about the issue. I already shown some in my previous posts but here are some others that I personally like it.
Semiotics Terminology can be seen in the photos above.
All of the photos above are going for surreal style because to show awareness, is better to relate the image objects with the reality but in a twisted way so that it can let the audience understand easily on what that certain object represent and think twice of what that certain object mean when it being place in this way or combine with other elements.
One of the example from the first photo, we know that ‘secondhand smoke’ means non-smoker who breath in toxic-chemical from cigarette. The photo show that the kid’s ‘second hand’ holding a cigarette, which telling the audience that kids literally still smoke if you smoke because they are inhaling the toxic chemical that released by your cigarette.
The third photo is quite interesting too, indexical sign can be seen in here, it send the message to the audience in a tricky but interesting way. It shows the detail of a place and people inside the tooth, at first I was distracted by the beauty of it’s visual and did not think about the message it want the audience to receive but the words on the bottom right bring me back to track. It says “Don’t let them stay” and the word stay in here means decayed (the sound of ‘stay’ and decayed’ in Chinese are similar) which is telling the audience to avoid tooth decay. In here, a small sentence also plays a big role in sending the message (ads by a toothpaste company).
Same goes to the last photo of that pug that looks like bread, it wrote “You eat what you touch” which means that if you eat after you touch a certain thing without washing your hand properly, you are literally eating that thing (ads by a soap company).
As you can see, each of them contain an object’s image that act as signifier (any material thing that signifies – words,images or expression) which also signified the audience with their concepts (awareness of…) so I really like this kind of advertisement , it shows a creative way to tell the audience , it’s fun and interesting to see and think.
So,what about graphical illustrated advertisement?
When I browse through Google for awareness ads in graphical illustrate base , the results were all still in Photoshop base , illustrate ads can be seen mostly in products advertising because the style is more into colorful and abstract style which is not suitable to show serious awareness.
Based on some research by Mike Vito and Louis Perrotta, bright colors and creative shapes are most likely to gain more attention since people tend to see visual first (Mike,V and Louis,P ,2006).
I find the third image quite interesting, the style is like what we can see in children’s book since it is about an ad about safe guarding children from websites to prevent ‘things’ in internet to ruin them (notice on the left, there’s a soldier going to shoot a guy). For me, this image kind of a combination of photoshop and illustration , everything is colorful and imaginary graphics and then there’s a realistic humans which stands out from the image.
This is still consider as fantasy to me since it is based on a Marvel comic. Compare to other breast cancer ads, I prefer this idea, the graphic is simple but it does convey a message clearly in an interesting way- “even super woman can get breast cancer”. The downside is, people who doesn’t know about this comic, wouldn’t understand it.
After observing all the photos above, I feel like normally this kind of illustration ads hardly convey a message clearly compare to Photoshop.
As for Photoshop base, the visual is hard to gain any attention if put as poster aside with illustration base but it is more ‘clean’ and realistic for the audience to understand the concept/message.
For “realistic” visuals, people can “relate” to realistic depictions better than to abstract ones, which is in turn probably a function of their imagery value regardless of their specific content. (John R.R , 1982)
Reference
Webneel(n.d.). 30 Brilliant Anti Smoking Advertisements for your inspiration – Best Posters and Campaigns. Available at: http://webneel.com/30-brilliant-anti-smoking-advertisements-your-inspiration-best-print-ads-and-posters [Accessed on 24th June 2015]
John R.R , (1982), VISUAL IMAGERY: APPLICATIONS TO ADVERTISING, Association for consumer research. Available at: http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=5909 %5BAccessed on 20th June 2015]
The University of Vermont(n.d.), Semiotic Terminology. Available at: http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/semiotics_and_ads/terminology.html %5BAccessed on 24th June 2015]
Dr.Brian(2012),Visuals in Advertising, WordPress.Available at: https://smartamarketing.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/visuals-in-advertising/ %5BAccessed on 24th June 2015]
Mike,V. and Louis,P. (2006),Attention In Advertising, Berkeley EECS. Available at: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~stellayu/artvis/project/ad/index.html %5BAccessed on 24th June 2015]
12. Value of a photoshopp-ed photo
Previously, I was posting about how and why Photoshopped images being used in advertising.
It let viewer to see the ‘ideal’ or even manipulated the ‘reality’ but give a clear and strong message to the viewer.
So, what about the value of an Photoshopped image?
There’s a lot of photographers who manipulate photos into fantasy style and make a living from this kind of technique.
One of the famous photographer that makes a lot of surreal photos- Erik Johansson.
He inspired by great surrealist artist – SalvadorDali and René Magritte and he self learn in photography and retouching.
He works for a lot of famous companies such as Google, Adobe, Microsoft and so on.
Below are few of his artworks,
I really love his works , the realistic and imaginary objects/actions were well combined together.
He mentioned in his interview with the creation project that each elements in the photos are taken individually by him and piece it together.
If the objects can be taken in a better lighting , it creates a pretty photo and when it combine with others, it shows more realistic view.
As you can see from his works that the photo he create are mostly related to reality’s object and twisted their logic because he usually get his inspiration from things around him in daily life.
Try to see ideas in everything you see, question logic. It’s also a lot about being able to realize it and in the end that is just about spending a lot of time in Photoshop learning from your mistakes (Erik.J ,2014).
In the end, this shows that one still have to let Photoshop correct your ideas because things that you imagine wouldn’t look the same in reality. Photoshop able the user to combine and see whether it fits , if not, correct it with lighting or combine with other elements. Even it fits, one still have to keep on trying because each elements can provide a different type and feels of the image.
Unlike the WWF photos that I’ve shown in my previous post, Erick mentioned that he don’t really add hidden meanings in his artworks, he focus more on visual aspects and the images that reflected his thoughts (Erik.J ,2014).
So I guess it’s more up to the viewer to see the message in that sense. When I would read children’s books as a kid, I rarely read the text. I just wanted to look at the pictures and create my own story. People should be able to do the same with my pictures. I merely want to give it a title and not talk too much about the message of the picture (Erik.J ,2014).
Even thought is more on aesthetic view, one photo still can tell a lot of story to different people depends on their perspective view.
Now,let’s stick back to ‘value’. In my opinion, his artworks contain a high value because he took a lot of time on creating one photo , months to think of an idea and collect materials and after that,took hours to edit them together. His editing skills used in those artworks are quite advance too, he understand how the light and shadow works and make the objects seem to blend in and give a realistic looks. The other thing that caught my attention is that his ideas are creative and unique, element inside are ordinary but he twisted the logic. I couldn’t see any message from those artworks but I felt ‘wow’ the moment I sees it.
So, after seeing all the photos above, what do you think about the photo below?
Does it provide any ‘value’ to you?
When lecture shown me and my classmates the photoshopped image above by a Malaysian artist Yee I-Lann that sold for rm117,000.00 in Hong Kong (Andrew, S. ,2008), my classmates shown a huge shock and disappointed reaction. I can understand and expected those reactions the moment I saw this.
I am proud that a Malaysian artist can sold this much for an artwork but I couldn’t accept it, I couldn’t appreciate the artwork.
It’s not about how this result can be easily achieved in Photoshop , is just that I couldn’t understand and sees the value in this piece of artwork. Not only I don’t get the idea or message, I don’t even feel anything from the aesthetic view.
Reference
Andrew, S. (2008). Whither Malaysian art?. The STAR Online. Available at: http://www.thestar.com.my/story/?file=%2F2008%2F11%2F23%2Flifearts%2F1838390 %5BAccessed 19 Jun. 2015].
Johansson,E. (2011). Impossible Photography. TED. Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/erik_johansson_impossible_photography?language=en [Accessed 21 Jun. 2015].
Mark (2014). Interview with Erick Johansson. ShotKit. Available at: http://shotkit.com/interview-erik-johansson/ [Accessed 21 Jun. 2015].
11. Photoshop ads give a deep emotion
Previous post show that Photoshop used to edit the lighting and beautify the models into more ‘ideal’ looks, to manipulate the reality. In here, Photoshop not only use to create/edits ‘ordinary’ objects for advertising.
With the Photoshop, why limit one to only ordinary ideas that we can see in reality? why not unleash our imagination and create scenes that we can only see in dreams ?
In here, I will be talking about how and why Photoshop use to fantasize ads.
Example can be seen from a famous animal and environment awareness ads- World Wild Life (WWF);
Without Photoshop help, how do they achieve this realistic fantasy style? Harm a real animals in order to achieve this? Then what’s the point of showing animals awareness?
Photoshop plays an important part for my course too. Above is one of my photo montage from my previous Pixel,Image and Sound’s project, without the software, how can I easily achieve this result?
Let’s compare one of them,
Which one ‘hits your heart’ more? The exists mounted deer head or the manipulated image of a baby?
To me, the left one makes me feel that , “Oh,it’s just another mounted deer head for decoration” , because this object had become ‘normal’ for us and wouldn’t think further.
While the right one turned the situation and makes me think deeply, “What if the deer that got hunted and mounted was my baby?”.
All of the images above are fake, of course, no animals nor humans were harmed to make these photos.
The main reason to create all these is to give a strong warning and feelings to the people, to make them think why the editors compose these objects in the images, to make them aware of the situation that is happening in reality and it achieved these goals.
Reference
Thomas,M.(2012).WWF Bluefin Tuna-Panda .CS Society. Available at: http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/guerrilla-marketing/the-32-most-creative-wwf-ads/ [Accessed on 19 June 2015]
Ryan,L.(2010).The 32 Most Creative WWF Ads .Creative Guerrilla Marketing. Available at: http://pancho.cgsociety.org/art/cgi-lightwave-3d-tuna-fish-modo-wwf-photoshop-photography-xsi-thomas-mangold-bluefin-gorilla-1045222 [Accessed on 19 June 2015]
Bren's Workspace 