Drinking My Bliss

For my three hours of bliss I decided that I would catch up with some friends and go to a local bar.  This idea was great minus the fact that everyone I tried to get to go out for a day drinking fest was either working or in school.  So I decided to include the stuffed animal assignment into my bliss assignment.  I'm a big fan of the drinking shows Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy.  In theses shows the host has a mascot of a monkey that makes appearances from time to time.  I located a similar stuffed monkey in my apartment I had when I was a younger kid and decided to head to a bar near my place to have a drink with my new drinking buddy.

I was curious to see what reactions I would get by bringing a stuffed animal into a bar.  Since I frequent the bar near my house and know the staff the reactions were not as extreme as I originally thought.  The whole day of bliss was fun and brought some of that childhood moments back.  I think most people had a favorite stuffed animal that they always carried around.  I had a few that I was never apart from.  I think doing this assignment brought those memories of valuing the stuff animals of my childhood.  Maybe it was the memories or booze, but it inspired me to think about my childhood.  In the day and age of being busy with school and work the ability to remember childhood memories was great.

Does it add up???

Inspiration>Idea>Concept>Trial>Refine>Product

This is the equation that we were given in class.  I think this way of looking at projects is a fresh perspective and outlook.

For inspiration in my own opinion the basis of this comes from a person's own background and upbringing.  I think we can all have similar inspiration from something but it is how our own life memories and background that we can use this to create ideas and art.  I think I find most inspiration from audio and visual based media outlets.  I'm always listening to music and grew up playing music so that aspect of creativity and inspiration always helps me create ideas.  I'm also a huge movie fan and I think my background of watching movies helps lead to inspiration in my own video projects.

For the idea, in my opinion this is a direct result of the inspiration.  An idea can be big or it can be small but all creative projects need an idea to create something.  I might move concepts in front of an idea since concepts can be in a person's mind and really do not need to be a physical idea.  Maybe concepts and ideas are interchangeable more then individual placements.

The trial and refine steps in my opinion can be grouped as one.  When I plan out projects I would use more a test phase then trial and refine.  I test out certain ideas and see how they work with the concept and idea I originally had in my mind and on paper.

Product is the obvious final stage in the above equation.  I disagree that this is the final and end all step of any creative project.  I think truly creative ideas can never be finished since everyone has a different outlook on an idea and could give additional inspiration to make the original idea even more complete.

My revised equation would be 


Inspiration>Concept/Idea>Testing>Product......

I just bought the Back to the Future Blu-Ray trilogy a few months ago so I've been watching those movies lately so my inspiration came from that.  My concept idea was an idea that was also inspired by the clothing company The Hundreds that is based out of San Francisco.  The Hundreds does a lot of stuff with pop culture to inspire their different clothing lines.  My idea was to take the characters from the back to the future movie and place them in an add that The Hundreds could use to promote their line of clothing.  I had to work thorough different pictures and after that I decided a black and white look would be the best for the concept and idea that I wanted to put across.  After testing my ideas the product that I came up with is this:

Thoughts on the field trip

I thought the field trip was pretty interesting and it was good to get out of the classroom and be able to walk around.  Although I had already been to both of the rooms that we toured it still was interesting to see from a seeing sideways perspective how both rooms could be used.  When I originally toured the rooms a year or so ago the tour was more focused on the academic stand point of the rooms rather then the creative seeing sideways aspect.  Overall I think looking at the rooms slightly differently was a fresh outlook.

Class response/discussion 1-31-11

For the idea of concept vs final project I think that they always directly influence and impact each other.  I think for any quality final project good planning and concept that helps direct the final project for an intended audience is required in the long run.  I think all of the ideas of concept, final project and intended audience all go together in coming up with a complete quality idea.  I think that going into a project having an intended audience in mind helps create a specific concept that leads to a final project aimed at that intended audience.

I think people in the class are starting to start thinking more out of the box so to speak.  We have all been trained by the education system to think certain ways and I think as the semester progresses all of those traits will be broken and the class discussions will be more interactive with the whole class.  I myself have started to start thinking more then the accepted way that I would have thought before.

Break those rules, but stay safe and legal.

This topic of breaking rules frustrated me a lot.  I wasn't really sure how to tackle the topic at hand.  I thought about it for awhile and decided I would deal with the human senses.  I decided to try to complete a sound mix without using multiple audio systems to preview my mix.  The consequences for not doing this are that I would not be able to get a true representation of my mix by just using the computer.  I went ahead and mixed the project by just using the computer to listen to the mix and leaned that when I listened to the final mix in my car the sound was not how I originally thought it was.  I learned that listening to a mix on multiple systems lets the human ear hear any differences in mixing.

Class Response 1/24/11

I enjoyed the class this past week.  I was a little lost when we were told to go out and find something that nobody else would see.  I wanted to find something unique and something that only I would have seen.  It was a interesting day of class.

One rule that I was always told to follow was the rule of not swimming after eating right away.  My mom always used to make sure I followed this rule.  I really had no feelings to this rule at all.  I figured since it was a safety rule that it was there for a reason.  If I had not followed the rule I would have gotten cramps and probably not felt very well.  I decided to follow the rule because I didn't want to get cramps and feel sick.

What Do You See?

This is how I imagined a 25 cent sticker on a vending machine.