Geometric Portraits

Facial expressions are universal. Just like love, math, and many other things. I believe that facial expressions are universal because even though we all may speak a different language we can communicate with our faces. We are born with facial expressions. When we are born we cry, and crying is a facial expression. I just think that your face expression is the most important kind of expression of all time! Imagine life if you could only express what you are feeling only with your body and voice. Things would probably get kind of creepy to be honest. Talking with your face can have infinite meaning to everyone around you.

To create your own Poly portrait you first have to get organized. Take those extra steps to make sure everything has a place to be. Then you have to either take a self portrait, of your self of course! Or you can take a portrait of anyone you want to. When you have the portraits choose your favorite one But make sure the portrait that you choose is one that your subject is looking away from the camera. Then when that is all sorted out, you will be opening the portrait with PhotoShop. Make sure to set your settings so that your height is 11inches, your width 8.5 inches, and your resolution 300 pixels. Then when that is done you need to get organized! Make a background layer and lock it. Command J your portrait layer and lock your original portrait. When you have gotten organized you are now going to click on the polygonal lasso tool and start creating you triangles. But make sure that after you create each triangle you do click on the "I" on your keyboard which will bring up the eyedropper tool. When the eyedropper tool comes up it will let you select the different color shades on wherever you drew a triangle. When you have the right and appropriate color you can press alt delete and the color that you have selected will show up! You need to do that on every part of your body.When you are done with that you can cut around your subject with the polygonal lasso tool and make your background customized. Make it look crazy! But make sure that it kinda goes with your "theme". When you are done you can command save and re-format it into a JPG. Of course you can do a little customizing to it. But after that you are done!

All of the poly portraits that I have created are different in some type of way. Some were easier than others, and some are nicer than others. That is because as I made more poly portraits the steps became more difficult and the expectations got much higher. I think that my poly portrait #2 was my best work out of all of them because I think that I executed the expectations perfectly. Even though my poly portrait #2 took a little longer to create it still ended up being really nice! Poly portrait #1 is the one poly portrait that I created that I am not that proud of to be completely honest. It is because of the extra steps that I personally don't think is necessary. Like the outlining before actually using the polygonal lasso tool was really time consuming. The outlining was really frustrating and confusing when it came to using the polygonal lasso tool and tracing the triangles that we made. The reason is because it was really hard to tell if you were overlapping your triangles, so when I turned off the outline there was a lot of gaps where my skin was visible.

Verbal Landscapes

MataJ_Retime from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.
Nature is all around us. There is really no way of escaping natures presents. I live in an area where nature surrounds us. So nature impacts my life a whole lot. One way nature impacts my life is through emotions. When i'm around nature it just fills me with different kinds of emotions. I feel happy, relaxed, overwhelmed, and much more. Nature is something that you just can't live without! There is really no way of living without some kind of nature around you. It doesn't matter what kind of nature it is. Did you know that we are apart of nature. We are mother natures creations. We were brought into the world along with the other types of nature around us.

Have you ever wanted to create your very own timelapse? Well with these simple steps you surely can! The first step in making your very own timelapse is to grab your camera and find a good looking landscape. A landscape where you can see 2/3 of the sky and 1/3 of the ground. You want to make sure to get a greater ratio of sky than ground. You can take a timelapse of the ground if you want to, but that would be really boring. Next you want to make sure that your camera is steady and sturdy so that your timelapse doesn't make anyone dizzy. You can use an environmental or a man-made tripod. Whatever works for you. Then when you find your tripod and you are all set up all you got to do is start your camera and wait for 5mins or more whatever you decide. But the minimum is 5mins.

There were a lot of challenges with this project. My main issue was finding a unique spot to shoot my timplapses at. It was also hard to find things to make slow-mo's of that were interesting. So basically finding something that no one else would do was the hardest part. I tried to film my timelapses at places that I thought no one else would think of. But of course I was wrong. A couple of my classmates had the same shot as I did; which was fine because we live on a small island. There is not that much places that are easy to reach and not much places to go to either. But the shots that I got were good enough to the point where some of the shots are somewhat unique and meets the goals and requirements. But the slow-mo's were I have to say the hardest shots to film! I didn't really know what to take slow-mo's of. There was nothing I could think of or have the patience to film; and because mostly everyone in my class took slow-mo's of waves crashing at the beach. I wanted to be different so I decided to film a bee going from flower to flower and put that in slow-mo. It actually turned out really good I have to say so myself. I also got a shot of some old leaves falling on the ground from the ground point of view.

I don't really agree with my critique because two people grading my work with a two which I don't think was fair because there were others who really deserved a two but didn't get it. But other than those two bad grades, I do agree with the rest of my scores. I think it's fair that I got graded a three 's and four's because one of my shots were shaky but not to the point where you would get dizzy. I also didn't really put as much text effects as I wanted too, because I kind of doubted how good it would turn out. But now that I got feedback I realized I could have put way more text effects on my project,, I also could have balanced my audio out more. My audio wasn't bad. It was actually pretty good. I just think that I could have played around with the audio a little more so that it would sound more professional.

Poetic Personal Statement

This quarters assignment was Poetic designs. What we basically did was take pictures of things that mean something to us and we added some poetry to it. Poetry is a type of literature. I think that poetry is a more emotional and sometimes touching way of expressing your feelings. Usually poetry relate to people and the way they may feel. Poetry is used to express feelings. In my opinion it is a more creative way of expressing your feelings. Sometimes poetry can be personal, meaning that the piece of poetry you may be reading doesn't really relate to you but it is about the poet and the way they are feeling. To be honest I am not a poet type of person. But since I do write a lot and enjoy writing, I sometimes catch my self being a poet without even knowing it! But even though I do not write poetry I enjoy reading it. I'm pretty sure that every one has listened to poetry before. If you listen to music than you surely listen to poetry. Music is poetry with rhythm. So basically we hear poetry on the daily!

I like to be myself, don't need to hate
I move to the beat of my heart rate
My motto is to be yourself

because there is really no one else
Reach for your goals like no there
Along the way you may discover something new
Or maybe not, you never know
But right now I'm gonna outgo

In my poem I used rhyme. I used rhyme my forming my poem in a way that each two sentences or lines ended in the same sound. For example know and outgo don't end in the same letters, but they end in the same sound. I used rhyme because I feel that it went well with what I was writing about. I also used rhyme because it is a personal preference of mine. It is kind of difficult making a rhythm to my poem. This is just an opinion, but I think that rhyme is prettier when you read it. But of course everyone is different. I also didn't use rhythm because I think that rhythm makes the poem sound more like a rap. Which isn't the style I was going for. I was going for a more calm poem. The kind of poem that when you read it you automatically feel relaxed.

Music Video Finale

P2T6 Focus from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Our very last G.T project for this year is Music Videos. I'm super excited for this project. I think that this project is the most less stressful project out of this whole year. From experience producing your own music video is really easy. All you need to do is be creative, and a song of course. My teams song is Focus by Ariana Grande. When making a music video you don't just get a song and start filming. Well you can but it won't look as good as if you made a story line. A story line is this whole lay out planning what is going to happen in your music video. It is kind of like telling a story. But you are taking each lyric, or sentence and type/write what you are going to do. Our storyline relates to our lyrics because it is all about sass. We went for a diva  kind of feel. You know what I mean? The song is called Focus, the most repeated lyrics in the song is "Focus on me!" over and over again. Doesn't that seem a little sassy to you?

My favorite fast-edit montage sequence is Rocky vs Ivan training montage. I love this montage because First of all I love all the Rocky movies! Another reason why it is one of my favorites because when ever I watch it over and over again, I always get that feeling that I am apart of the movie. I love how well it is edited. Every time the background music hits each beat the either the shot type, composition, or even a scene changes.  I also love that even though each shot is fast and quick you can see and hear and feel the story of what is happening you can feel his exhaustion, pain, agony. But you can also feel his happiness, his pride, and his dignity because he worked so hard to get where he is at. It's pretty obvious that this is one of the best montages ever if i can get all those feelings and you can probably get that too, from a 20-30 second montage of him just training. Imagine the other montages in the movie. But I like the training montage the best. 

This music video showcases my best work as a director and editor. Since I was the team leader I really had to stay organized and focus, especially because I was the only second year student in my group. I think I showed myself that I can be a really good leader/director if I just stay calm and do what I have to do to get things done. Not just get things done, but get them done right. Honestly I am really proud of how our music video came out. I didn't realize that I actually love editing and just being hands on with the project. This was my first time editing without an 8th grader walking me step-by-step through everything like last year. This year I kind of felt like the 8th grader. Even though I am a 7th grader. I only felt like a "8th" grader because I was more experienced than my team mates because I am a second year student, and I am just so proud of what we accomplished in the time we had and the circumstances that was brought up with filming schedules, and coming in at recess to do some extra editing here and there. So all I have to say is Amazing Job Wailana and Ella! 

 

Animated Life Lessons

P2T7 Blossom Learns Soccer from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

  For this project my teammates were Blossom, and Akasha. Our story is called Blossom learns soccer. We chose this idea because it brings out all of our traits. For example, Blossom is un-athletic, self-doubtful, and awkward. Akasha is athletic, kind, and self-less. I am a person who likes to make people feel good about themselves, athletic, and kinda a drama queen. Our story helps exaggerate our characteristics because the story revolves around Blossom and how she really wants to play soccer but is kinda unsure if she should take up Akashas offer for her to play soccer with them because Blossom doesn't really know how to play soccer. After Blossom finally agrees to play, Akasha introduces Blossom to Akashas other friend Jaesha. They get on the field and start kinda a scrimmage then all of a sudden Blossom gets passed the ball and tries to shoot it into the goal but ends up hitting Jaesha. Jaesha gets kinda upset and walks away. This exaggerates how I am a drama queen because it wasn't really necessary to storm off like that. Anyways... after that Blossom ends up being really hard on herself and decides to not show up for practice the next day. Akasha and Jaesha ends up finding her in the park and gives Blossom a little pep talk to cheer her up to keep playing soccer. 

We certainly put a major life lesson in our story and I think this lesson is super important. Our life lesson in the story is to never give up on yourself or your team. Basically never give up on anything or anyone. Giving up is not a good trait to have. We believe that no matter what the situation or problem is there will always be a way to solve it and keep moving forward. Another life lesson that we put into our animation story is to do what you love to do. We think that this is a good modo to live by because if you think about it, if you don't do what you love your life would be miserable. Nobody wants that right! We show that in our story because Blossom really loves soccer but doesn't really know how to even control the ball. Blossom feels like she needs to give up because she made one mistake. She takes it really hard on herself. But Akasha and Jaesha believes in her and how long she has come from when she first started, and they don't want her to give up on herself and the team.

Considering that we have never worked with each other we were pretty productive. I guess. Well it was pretty hard for us to keep each other focused. But we did pretty good. To be honest we procrastinate a lot. I think that we were so caught up in the due date and how much time we had. We were so scared that we weren't going to get it done by the due date that some of my teammates were thinking of doing the disaster plan the disaster plan is where you take the drawings that you drew on the storyboard and add it to the Imovie. But when Mr.Sanderl told us that he was going to extend the deadline we chose not to do the disaster plan because we chose to utilize the time that we were given to finish our animation story with the requirements given to us. I think the biggest challenge was the actual animating. I think that was the biggest challenge because I was the only second year student but still I didn't know a lot about animating which was pretty hard.

  

Character Development

 My name is Jaesha Aaliyah Hulilihoano Mata. I am quirky, clueless, sociable, awkward, and sensitive. But like every other person in this world I am not perfect at all. I have some good qualities and some bad qualities. Some good qualities is that I never bully, I always try my best, I am rarely sad, I know how to make people smile, and I like to go with the flow. Some bad qualities that I have is that I am the kind of person that lets people walk all over them. I can be a drama queen at times.

 The character traits that I chose to exaggerate is The part of me being a drama queen. I am going to exaggerate this trait because I think being a drama queen will be funny because drama queens over exaggerate anyways so I think putting my drama queen trait will be a good thing to add to my character. Another trait that I plan to exaggerate in my character is being pretty clueless of whats going on. I want to exaggerate this trait because I think it represents me the most. I also plan to exaggerate the way I don't care what anyone else thinks about me. I want to exaggerate this trait because I feel like it's not that often where you see someone especially a girl not care what anyone else thinks about themselves.The last trait that I will be exaggerating is being awkward because it is the trait that represents me the most out of all my traits. Also I just think it would be funny in the animation if I over exaggerate.

 If you want to create your own animation character all you have to do is follow these steps. Before you do anything you have to get organized. For example, I organized my folder like this, new tab<Gif<front<back<side. After you get organized you can get ready to create your own animation character! The first thing you will do is have someone take three different pictures of you up against a green screen. You will be taking three different picture front, back, and side. When you are done with those three pictures you need to put them in it's assigned folder. See being organized will be helpful! Next open photoshop. When thats open press file<open. Then you will find your front picture. Then you will press open. When that is open in photoshop you need to press the quick selection tool. When you select that you will need to outline your body with that. It may be a little frustrating and difficult but with the green screen background it shouldn't be that hard. When you are done outlining it you need to press refine edge. When you refine your edge you need to make sure to press okay before you do anything! When your done with that then you need to press command<C & command<V. That will copy and paste your image for you in a new layer. You can not forget to copy and paste your image in a new layer because the refined edge will not be seen. From then on all you have to do is make sure you stay organized as you are saving your animation character.

.MOV Film Festival

P2T8_JaeshaSearchesReality from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.


I think our keywords connect with our audience because we have some words like flashback, memory, challenge, experience, and change. These words will connect to our audience because it easily tells what is happening in our story. I think that our audience will understand and connect with our key words because everyone can relate to them. A flashback can be a very touchy thing or not. Experience, I'm sure everyone has experience with something. Lastly change, Change is apart of life. Literally everyone changes. These are some reasons why our key words connect with our audience.

Our overall message that we are trying to make the audience get in our movie trailer is to treat others how you want to be treated because what goes around comes around. I think that this is a very important message that everyone should get. We chose this message because bullying is a very, very big deal. Bullying has gotten worse and worse over these last couple of years. It has ruined peoples lives, and we just want to bring awareness to it. I'm pretty sure that our story can relate to a lot of people. Everyone has been bullied right? Well in this story we decided to tell it backwards. It takes you through the mind of Jaesha the main bully in this story. We are teaching her a lesson that bullying is not okay. Bullying is not a good way to deal with things.

Doing this project I think the biggest challenged we faced was actually meeting up to film. I think it was a challenge to do so because whenever we would plan with each other we would cancel on each other last minute. We either had appointments, practice, or some other really good reason. It honestly wasn't a big deal though we were all understanding with each other. But still it was kinda frustrating because for most of the films we needed everyone to be in it. Another challenge I think our team faced was coming up with an idea. Well I wouldn't say it was a challenge. It was more like frustration. When you have three creative minds on one team you are bound to have a brainstorm explosion. We had so much great ideas to share with each other. But when it came time to share them with each other it began to start a war! We kept going back and forth about who's idea we are going to use. But after all the arguing we finally decided to put all our ideas together and make it into one fantastic movie. We had some challenges but other than that it was great working with my teammates to make an extraordinary movie trailer.

Tiny Spherical Worlds

Compositing images is when you combine two or more images to be edited in a way that it looks like one image, instead of several parts of a whole image. I think compositing images is used for creating interesting pictures. That looks abstract. But yet professional. One image is not enough to composite an image. To composite an image, you need more than one image. You can edit just one picture and leave it, or you can use multiple images to create a really creative picture! Also you need multiple images so that it can bring depth to your image when you composite images. Personally I can definitely tell if an image was made out of multiple images, and when it is made from one plain image.

There is a really slight difference between a spherical pano, and a polar pano. Though these two image styles look alike they are different in many ways. One way these two images are different is because the have different polar coordinates. You may be able to tell if the picture is a spherical pano or a polar pano by the way the pictures look when you are done putting in the polar coordinates. You will be able to see the point where the two ends meet. The polar pano is the image that looks like the foreground of your pano is the planet/world or whatever you want to call it. The spherical pano is when the sky looks like the ground, and the ground looks like the sky. Another thing that makes the polar and spherical pano different is the way you edit them to turn them into you worlds. When you are in photoshop making your polar, before you click to polar coordinates. You actually have to go to image<image rotation<180`. Making sure to do this is very important because turning your polar up-side down before you hit polar coordinates will definitely make it look different from the spherical. For the spherical pano  you will need to skip the image rotation so that you will be able to achieve that inside-out world affect.

I think that my finished "tiny worlds" are convincing enough. I think so because the pictures I took were of landscapes that I personally see everyday. It's not too over the top, to the point where it's someplace so exotic and fancy. I think my pictures the perfect landscapes that show who I am and where I grew up. Also I think that my "tiny worlds" are convincing because I didn't over edit them. When I say over edit I mean taking a picture and turning it into something to over the top, to where the picture looks totally different from when you first took the picture. While I was editing I was trying pretty hard not to over due my picture. Even though the landscapes that I took was beautiful. It still needed a lot of help. I tried to take the pictures in a golden hour. Which is when the sunset casts a beautiful light. But it didn't show up that well in the pictures I took. It kinda looked pretty dark to me. So with some editing with the help of adobe bridge I lightened the picture up. I also did a little bit of tinting to add some surrealism. But in the end my two spherical and polar panos turned out just the way I wanted them to turn out. CONVINCING!

Hockney Style Joiners

Some ways that David Hockney's photomontages are different from mine is that he probably put more thought into what he was taking his montage of. Another reason why I think that his montages are different from mine is because of the quality of his work. I think that it is different because of the quality because he probably had a lot of time to do his montage and think about what he was doing, and we only had like a couple days to think what we were going to take a picture of. Also I think that His photomontages are different from mine because his is more professional. He put a lot of thought into it. He took pictures that expressed something about himself or things that happen around him. I just think that his pictures are really deep, His pictures have a lot of meaning.

Images can send so much different messages to so much different people. For example if someone took a picture of someone helping out a stray dog then that would send me positive messages/vibes, v.s if someone took pictures of people neglecting their dog then that would send me negative messages/vibes. Do you see what I mean? Images can send so much messages. Thats why I think that when you take a picture make sure to think about what you are taking a picture of. If you just take a random picture and don't think about it first then people are going to get confused about what kind of messages you are sending. Some people might get some positive messages and some people might get some negative messages.

For my final image the message I want for my audience to get is that they are like flowers. There are many flowers. There are also many kinds of flowers. But every single flower is one of a kind just like everyone in this world. I am hoping that my audience gets the right message. The positive one. Another message I hope my audience gets is that even though there are people that think your not like other people and think you are different then don't take it hard. Embrace it, because I would rather be different and shine in my own light than be a follower and be the shadow of someone else.

2016 Aspirations

Hello 2016, goodbye 2015. New year new me, and new goals. Some of my goals are to be more organized. I will try to be organized in school and at home. I think being organized will have positive effects on my school work. That's one of my next goals. My second goal is to get straight A's. This has been one of my goals for many years. This past year I was so close to getting straight A's. But I think that I just need to push myself harder and always but my 100% in everything I do. My next goal is not related to school, But this goal is to get my tumbling down. Such as a back tuck and a summersault. I really want to learn how to do more tumbling because I want to be the best I can be in whatever I do. My next goal may sound a little silly. But my goal is to eat breakfast. I tend to not eat breakfast in the morning because I just don't have any time, and I am always in a rush in the morning. So I am hoping that this year I will make time to eat breakfast because I think that it is the most important meal of the day because it will fuel you up for the day. My very final goal for 2016 is to just go with the flow, because I am just realizing that I am just to O.C.D about my life. I stress over it too much because I want everything to be perfect. So this year I am going to try and simmer down a little and just let life do it's thing.

 One goal that is most important to me is to push myself harder to get my straight A's. That one goal is the most important to me because getting straight A's is a really good thing. I think getting straight A's will be a really big confidence booster. I have never gotten straight A's before. I know it may sound silly to say that, But if I really want something I try really really hard to get it. Also it will probably make my parents very happy that I am doing more than great in school.

To reach and achieve this goal I think I will need to do it step-by-step. First I would have to go over my past report cards to see what subjects I need a little help with. Second I will have to address my teachers in that subject and have a sit down with them to talk about what exactly I need to do in order to do better in that class. Next I would get a tutor to support me in the subjects I am struggling with. Next thing to do is study, study, study. Lastly what I can do is to perform what I have learned. I really think that