Tag: Exercise

Exercise 3, See Yourself Sensing: 66 Meters Apart.

 

66 Meters Apart is a project that explores the disruptions in the train of thought when a speaker is articulating their words, as our brain functioned as it should, we’ve forgotten how complex the brain are in these almost instantaneous real time processing of information that we sensed. By using 66 Meters Apart, user will have personal experience of these disruptions within our thought and notice how easily it is to distract our focus even from simple task like reading out loud a few sentences.

 

The 66 meters refers to the metaphorical distance created between the mouth and the ear through digital latency of 200ms, which is the time for sound to travel approximately 66 meters. As we hear our own voice through bone conduction from our vocal tract to our ear (which is much faster than the speed in which sound travel in air of the same distance), the physical latency it took to hear ourselves speaking is almost instantaneous and we were accustomed to this. By introducing a 200ms latency of us hearing our own voice, it could greatly impede our concentration in thinking as well as speaking in most of us.

The system which I am using for this project is the Lattepanda, which is a hackable computer and I’ve installed Max MSP into it for this project.

As LattePanda does not come with a sound card for microphone input and the only headphone require input and output jack separately, I had purchased an USB soundcard on carousell and luckily it works.

I was prepared to write the slightly longer code which require to delay the sound from the input to the output, however I found out that there is a “Latency” function in the audio setting and so I used that instead, also, I’ve add an audio gain to the patch to increase the output volume of sound. This is the simplest piece of patch and it works just as I needed so being simple is really good!

 

Response to Chapter 1 from Kim Goodwin, Designing for the Digital Age

I personally think that this is a really good read and it seemed to me that Kim Goodwin was writing from the point of view of a designer within a product design company(product could be tangible(physical product) or intangible(service or digital product). As in the corporate world, there will always be a team of people weather big or small, who fulfills the different role within the project like designer, engineer, marketing and so on, this information about designing human-centered product within the ecosystem of structured company would be really useful when we graduate and step into the real world. As of for now, we not only have to understand the role of the designer(which was covered in this reading), we too, must learn everything from the engineering(the coding/construction) to marketing (pitching/selling the idea) prospect that will lead to the completion of a project.

 

The Design Process:

In terms of project planning and management, I partly agree with the chart which the book is focusing on, the “Process”:

This chart seemed really logical, but I think that in real life designing situation, the research and project should be happening simultaneously.

I drew this chart as I personally think that it would be rather inefficient if we were to plan a project before doing any research regarding it, normally during research, there would changes made to the project which will drastically change the planning of the project or even scraping the idea due to really similar product already existing in the market without prior researches. This is why, I think that the safer way is to research and plan simultaneously to avoid wasting time, effort and resources.( As mentioned in the reading – Project Planning is happening “Before dedicating resources to a project”.)

 

Research, the good old research.
Image result for research gif

I always think that research plays the greatest part into designing,

“To solve a problem, you must first understand it. Good research helps you make the best product definition and design decision later on.”

I totally agree with this sentence as a research well done will not only help the designer to understand the situation better, it will also help them to understand what resources is available to them which will help them to complete the work in a more efficient manner. For example, sometimes, outsourcing the productions of parts might be of a better quality at cheaper price and faster than to produce them in house within a certain company, and this information could be found during the research.

 

In Summary

I really think that this will be a good guidance to creating a human-centered product or services if I am to read the whole book, by reading this chapter, it gave me the rough idea of how to plan for the planning process, as I did not previously know that we were supposed to think about implementation of support to our project/product which we are making.

When I was reading the Principles, it mentioned that “Does it help your user to accomplish their goals?” and ” Will it help the users minimize their work?”  as the evaluation of weather a supposed principle is both true and applicable to the problem in front of you, these evaluations are indeed wonderful, however, not all products and service were designed with maximizing user’s convenience in mind, how about in situation where the customer is not the user, do we take the end user or the one who is paying the bill into the consideration?

In the situation of selling service as products, having the best service(above user’s expectation) at the reasonable price would greatly increase the perceived value and customer’s loyalty to an extend, and so is a good marketing strategy. If a good marketing strategy is being considered during the planning phase but not as an after thought (like now we have a good product, but how do we sell it?), could the marketing strategy be seen as the product itself?

 

 

 

Thoughtful Interaction Design Reflection

I found the Thoughtful Interaction Design really enriching and there were many useful ideas which I could learn from. Although Lowgren was specifically mentioning about the topic revolving “Designing digital artifact”, like he mentioned:

“Interaction design refers to the process that is arranged within existing resource constrains to create, shape, and decide all use-oriented qualities (structural, functional, ethical, and aesthetic) of a digital artifact for one or for many clients.”

Thoughtful Interaction Design?
Good Design?

I did some research about Jonas Lowgren and his main area of expertise includes collaborative media, interactive visualization and the design theory of digital materials. He focuses on the digital world and “design” to him is very different from how I interpret it. He places huge emphasis on the “digital artifacts” while I am for the inclusion of more than just that. I think that his concept of thoughtful interaction design could definitely transverse from the idea of just within the digital world into the physical world because not only do we interact with the “digital artifacts”, we also interact with the “physical artifacts”, take for example, a normal physical door. By not placing a door handle on the top corner of a two meters tall door, it might seemed commonsensical, but that is “Thoughtful Interaction Design” to me.

I think that for an artifact(digital or physical) to be an amazingly-thoughtful-interaction-designed, it has to be design with the consideration of all targeted user, how and where will they use the artifact, and account for the safety while fulfilling the expectation of the users, the specification of the client, and when it goes above these basic of an artifact, it has to inspire other designers to follow or “copy” the system or the ideology behind it while simultaneously, the original designer/company would improve the existing design and strife for a better version because nothing is really perfect,

Working with design means that you continuously need to define and redefine what you think of as good design. It is a never-ending process of thoughtful reflections.

And when something was brilliantly designed, not only the customer wants it, the competitors(existing or potential) would want it too.

The iPod Generation 2

I think that the iPod classic 2nd generation from 2002 was brilliantly designed in the aspect of thoughtful interaction design, it had also changed people’s life drastically, even though it was not the pioneer of the iPod series, nor the one that made the biggest leap in sales, I personally think that the 2nd generation iPod classic was the breakthrough within the realm of interaction design, not forgetting that there were many iPod generations to come after the 2nd, each had their multiple system updates and then upgraded to the next generation and then came iPod touch, which gradually evolves to the latest iPhone X.
(Just to be clear, I am definitely not a supporter of Apple and even dislike it as a brand, but their product marketing and system design sure is amazing.)

The biggest change that apple made from the generation 1 to generation 2 was the inclusion of Windows system for syncing the songs from iTunes, as the biggest downfall for generation 1 was that Apple forces the user to be running an Apple computer system to be able to use the iPod, this resulted in the potential user who doesn’t have an Apple computer to be excluded. In Generation 2, Apple included the Musicmatch Jukebox to manage the user’s music library and transfer music to the iPod which made generation 2 the first iPod for Windows.

Before iPod, the usual MP3 Players could hold like 100 songs, and then there was still CD player, where… yes is could hold 1 CD(about 20 song), I remember it took some time to click through the music in these MP3 players.This was the exact MP3 I used when I was young. It has 128mb storage space and uses one AAA battery.

I always think that the ipod were magical in a sense that the circular touch-sensitive wheel, these were really the thoughtful interaction design that was mentioned in Lowgren’s book:

Design work is given form and structure by designer’s own thought, consideration and actions.

These circular touch-sensitive wheel was designed in the consideration as of how they marketed the iPod: to”put 1,000 songs in your pocket.”(which was really ground breaking during that time). The designer took the system advantage(also the limitation) into consideration… Imagine that the iPod does not have the circular wheel for the user to scroll through the song list, and the user did have 1,000 songs, how long or how tedious would it take to click the down button or the next button to go to the 499th song in the list?

With the circular wheel, the user could easily scroll through the list at great speed by spinning the wheel.

The whole form and aesthetics, material used, hardware, software, even till packaging, was well thought of for the optimal user experience, the size is just right to be carried around in the pocket of jeans (target audience demographics placed into consideration), the placement of the screen and the directions was ergonomically constructed so that user could use it with single hand operation, back light of screen vs battery life were well balanced to have good visibility and above average battery life so that user could use the iPod wherever they go and it should last long enough until the user could charge it(understanding the target user). Every aspect of the iPod was efficiently designed to suit their target audience. And by watching the advertisement from that time, it is rather clear who the target audience was.

and then came this:

Young active hipster.

 

In Conclusion.

I think that through the eleven pages of reading, this quote impacted me the most as a designing student,

“We are all living in a world almost completely artificial and designed, and every new addition, every new design adding to this world has an impact on how we experience the whole”

(I like how it goes from a designer’s perspective to a user’s perspective here)

“Design is about shaping the world we live in by creating the conditions” and “it means that you influence people’s work, leisure, and everyday life.” It let me realize that we are actually living in a world that is partially ran by designer, every thing we saw, every thing we touched, was designed by someone at some point of time. We, the designers in making, may hold the power to change the everyday life of the people we’ve never seen in our life.

 

 

Exercise 2, 100 boots: mOFOs – The story of Many Ofos. (Lay Valerie + Tan Siew Hua + Bao Song Yu + Ong Zi Feng)

 

Bike sharing had been in Singapore for almost a year and it is rather successful (transportation for us wise, not in business or government policy) and we could virtually find these bikes anywhere and everywhere (like in the drain, read: man throw ofo bike into canal)

There are 3 major bike sharing company running in Singapore, namely OBike, MoBike and OFO, and out of the 3, OFO is in striking yellow and would be nice in contrasting to most background and so we decided to use OFO for this work! (not because OFO was free from Monday 22nd January to Sunday 4th February, we would definitely pay if we have to. Really.)

During our first session of mOFOs we shifted bikes to create a roadblock in a void deck, by doing so, we had many curious passerby coming to us and asked why are we blocking the path? and we told them that we will remove the Ofos and they are like “ohhhhhh ok”. One even took the pictures of the bike too! she must’ve like our installation and think its really organized and definitely did not think about complaining us… 

And on our second session of mOFOs, we went to Chinese gardens and shifted the bicycles around, Senior Nat saw us during his MRT ride and he alighted the train and helped us to carry the bicycles. Thank you again Nat! =D

at the end of the day, we got photos taken by random passerby and it was uploaded onto Reddit Singapore… well… that’s free publication!

 

Team mOfos Signing out.

 

 

 

Telematic Stroll to the Sunrise.

First of all, we did not want to use the Facebook Co-Broadcasting function as our goal of this Telematic Stroll is to test out the system for our final project(there will be four broadcasting at the same time and none of us could see what others are doing, yet we will form a piece together.) ANNDD MANNNNNNN~~ THIS WORKS SOO MUCH BETTER THAN EXPECTED!!

Telematic stroll

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Monday, 6 November 2017

This was the Broadcast which I did and viewing it individually doesn’t seemed like much, its just a random walk-around video which wasn’t impressive at all.

But when linked it with Bao’s Broadcast… Things get a little more interesting.

 

  1. Both Broadcast were not edited in any way except for putting them side by side, if we create a video wall and play it directly, it will be the exact thing.
  2. The video were done on the spot through Facebook Live without any feedback of the other Broadcaster available to both of us, we only know what we were doing while unable to see the other party, even if we do, there will be a 7 second delay between broadcasting and watching live.
  3. In conclusion, This is Magic.

But how are we doing it? It’s a secret for now and we shall keep it until our final project. For now we are still improving our system and you should just take it as it is a MAGIC. TADAA!! A sense of wonder for a viewer is what we wanted to achieve. 

This is our one and only try. Most of the times we were uncoordinated and we did not discussed what to film beforehand while there were mistakes made everywhere throughout the broadcast and we did some of the mistakes at the same time which made it seemed intentional, making it even more magical.

To point out some of the wonderful MAGIC we did.

In this Telematic stroll, we had found out what problem there is during the live broadcasting and will improve it for the final project, also, it had been a really long time since I woke up this early.

When I left house, the sky was still dark and it reminded me of my future.

 

I really like this random shot before the Stroll.

After the stroll, when the sun finally rise.

we checked the timing for sunrise and it stated that it was 6.47a.m, but the actual sun came up only around 7a.m which is when we finished our Telematic stroll.

Luckily for me, right after we finished the broadcasting, it started to drizzle. And did I mentioned that we were supposed to do on Monday morning and we woke up at 5a.m. and it was raining so we postpone our stroll, it was really lucky for us that it wasn’t raining on Tuesday morning even when the weather forecast said would.

Finally, I am REALLY impressed when I put the video next to each other, they worked really well and there is improvements that could be made and we all learnt from it.

 

 

Networked Conversations With Second Front Review.

This was a eyeopening Network Conversation with five of Second Front’s member – Bibbe Hansen, Liz Solo, Doug Jarvis, Patrick Lichty and Jeremy Owen Turner  This Conversation was HIGHLY advertised on Facebook by Prof Randall, and I found it really funny that the artists(Patrick Lichty) commented that they sensed danger in it and Liz Solo and Bibbe just found that comment funny and went along with it.

During the live stream, when there was a technical error when Prof Randall disconnected as a host and many disconnected together, I was lucky to remained in the chat room with a few of artists still streaming, they were really excited about the technical error, they Laughed Out Loud and being really thrilled about the fact that “Every where they go, they would crash the system.” JUST WHAT HAD THEY DONE IN THE PAST? I am also really amused with Bibbe with her animated personalities that she felt like a 8 years old kid in a 60 years old body where she gets excited fairly easily.

It is really interesting to see that the artists viewed their Second Life character (Avatar) sometime as themselves and sometime as a separate entity where they would mention what they did in their performance with “I” but also gave third person introduction to their Avatar during the introduction in the Network conversation. I guess they see the body of the Avatar as a separate being but shared the psychological, intellectual, emotions, conscious and all intangible aspect that made us human with the Avatar, this really seemed to be similar with the movie “Avatar”(2009 film) where the “Blue Avatar Thing” shared everything with the main character except for the physical body, and when Second Front logged out of the Second Life, the character will be inanimate and lose their “body” until they logged in.

On the upper half of the poster are the faces of a man and a female blue alien with yellow eyes, with a giant planet and a moon in the background and the text at the top: "From the director of Terminator 2 and Titanic". Below is a dragon-like animal flying across a landscape with floating mountains at sunset; helicopter-like aircraft are seen in the distant background. The title "James Cameron's Avatar", film credits and the release date appear at the bottom

They also mention about the identity within Second Life where they did a work in the past by interviewing the people in real life and recreated the information they gained and place it directly into Second life, They would also change their Avatar appearance to replicate the other member’s Avatar and place a tag with the name of the character they copied and act as them for some time, also to add to this identity within Second Life, Second Front found it really interesting to place unsuspecting Real Life people like Andy Warhol into Second Front’s performance, as mentioned

“There was a Fluidity of Who was Where and Who Was What In Second Life”

Anyone could be anyone at any place, there was no clear boundary of what you can be in Second Life, this was what made Second Life so intriguing to a point that people lost themselves in the game.

 

Throughout the Network Conversation, Second Front talked about topics which were really got me thinking about the third space performance, as they are moving towards the VR, Patrick Lichty also mentioned the possibility that the neuro-plasticity might takes hold, if we gets too engrossed with the Virtual Reality, our brain may be rewired to evolve along with the technology and they briefly mentioned something about Neil Harbisson (I think, my ear-to-brain-to-hand function were not fast enough to write it down, but Patrick mentioned about some guy and I think its Neil Harbisson after I googled) where his brain was rewired because he uses sense that we would otherwise not use in that context, This is why the VR headset will someday affect our visual cortex, and by using VR, isn’t it just putting a screen to the third space right in front of our eyes and transport us directly into the third space? The future will be amazing for sure.

Lastly, I would like to agree the Network Conversation (I cant remember nor did I write down who said it again, and this is not the exact words but what I interpreted and summarized) that

“Performance is all about the body, what if we take the body out, we have emotions, we have feeling.”

When we are in the Third Space, it is real as there are all of what made us human, except the physical body. These panels(the Adobe Connect grids) is a great example of bringing people together through Third Space.”

If there are anything that I learnt from the Network Conversation, It further emphasis that the third space is a very new platform for human to be in and we are still in the process of integrating into it. It may take some time before our brain complete the rewiring so that we can have the thirdspace as a new human sense through the “Evolved neuro-plasticity” which might not even happen, but while the possibility are endless, so why not just learn from the Second Front and to have fun in doing things we all like while enjoying the process of creating something regardless of the end result but only focus on the enjoyment of process.

Nonetheless, the Second Front enjoyed and had fun in the Network Conversation!

 

Robotic – Final Project Prototype Part 4 – Unlimited Revisions.

There is only testing and remodeling, testing and remodeling after i went to simlim to look for a battery 2 weeks ago.

After that, the battery could also power no more than 3 servo at once so I purchases some AC-DC 6V 10A converter online and had been waiting for its arrival since then.

meanwhile waiting, all I did was re-model almost everything again and again…. and I also downloaded ZBrush- a 3d sculpting software and learnt it just for me to sculpt the turtle appearance since i have to learn it sooner or later and luckily I tried it now so I know that there are actually a lot of problems in my current structure when place in the shell I modeled afterwards.

After last post, I’ve built a bigger base mount for the turtle.

This was originally the rough full size for the turtle base, Version1, Version 2 with 2 arm motor attached, and Version 3 with no Arm motor attached.

And I downloaded Zbrush and started to learn how to sculpt something in it and MANNNNN IT IS HARRDDDDD

And then I printed it out in smaller scale to see how it feels.

And to check which layout should work.

 

 

and since after I did more research on turtle, I realize that the bone structure of the turtle wasn’t straight and so I tilted the motors to give it an angular tilt for it to move more like a turtle.

then I tested the structure of this configurations.

I also modeled a arm motor connector and found out that this is WAAAYYY to long for it to work properly, and another problem is that there is still not enough tilt, so I changed from a 45 degree tilt to a 22.5 degree tilt.

This is the Version 4 and Version 5 of the motor mount, I’ve decide to make it higher so to be able to turn the arm in the correct direction, I’ve also tried to add the middle servo which will control the turtle head retraction and head/tail turning.

This is with Version 5 base and version 2 Motor connector which are much shorter.

Next, I further edit the turtle shell and upscale it to see how it fits into my system, however i found many problems here like it doesnt fit well. Since I can make adjustments to the layout, I decided to use another method to do the leg mechanism.

By combining this lever system straight into the leg.

The 4 generation of motor connector.

This should be the mechanism I will use for the leg, I hope it works.

for now, I have to test them out again.

Research Critique: Jennicam

First thing that came to my mind when researching about Jennicam….

It is wonderful that she was doing what she liked by putting herself on the line(ONLINE).. but what if its a ugly man doing the same thing but because he is an exhibitionist, would “Johnnycam” be as worthy as the Jennicam?”

This is just a thought of mine on the thought of “What If” and there will be no clear answer to this.. or is there?

OK Nevermind.

Back to the reality… The critiques.

Jennicam is a wonderful form of broadcast that was developed from a simple test of trying to write a script that takes a picture with a webcam and upload it onto the website, she started to show the website to her friend and slowly, it gained popularity and there is no reason to stop. Then when she became relatively popular, she started to charge a subscription membership at $15 per year, for those who are subscribed to Jennicam, they could enjoy the pictures to be uploaded every 2 minutes while those who are not subscribing, they can only see the new picture every 20 minutes.

Things that you charge people to view must be really exciting so there will be this many audience willing to pay just to see it? NO! As mentioned by Jennifer:

I think if I weren’t normal,  it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.

She agreed that Jennicam is full of boring-day-to-day-stuffs and this is what made Jennicam so interesting, because there is nothing extraordinary in it, everything is unscripted and whatever happened on Jennicam just happen naturally and this is the beauty “Livecasting” that Jennifer was the pioneer in.

What might have made Jennicam so popular back then?

I think what made Jennicam so popular to an extent that there were 4million view on a single day at its’s peak was because of a few reason..

Firstly, there wasn’t that much things to do on the web during that time and like our senior Kapi said during his presentation,

90% of the information on the internet was generated in the past 2 years

and I found some source of it for credibility check
It meant that before 2003,(the year that Jennicam ended) the information on the web was so far lesser than 10% of what we have in the current time, this means that the chance of people spending their time on Jennicam are far greater than if Jennicam were to appear in the current time. Also, Jennicam was pioneer to do this online and surely she did gain some popularity because of this.

Next, It gives the viewer a sense of treasure hunting as the selling point of Jennicam was that it is normally boring 99% of the time and there is the 1% which Jennifer would show something that people were waiting for on the Webcam like being naked, having intimacy contact with her boyfriend and she said

“The first time one boyfriend and I did started kissing, the site went down pretty much immediately from too much load”

The beauty of having 99% of the time as being boring and 1% exciting bit made it feel like the good thing are worth the wait, which unlike other webcam strippers, who are naked most of the time so once Jennifer do something out of her ordinary, it will make the Jennicam viewer feel lucky.

Lastly, it feeds on the Loneliness sentiment within people. People who feel alone will feel better if they see someone are as boring as they are in real time as David Letterman said in the video:

“This is really all people want, people are lonely and desperate, they are lonely, desperate, miserable human beings. They are reaching out, they want to see life somewhere else taking place, it’s comforting, don’t you think?”

Yes, I think so too, there are reasons why Mukbang are so popular all over the world.

Jennicam is like a 24/7 Mukbang which accompanied lonely people so that they can see another human somewhere in the world and the more they watch it, the more connected they feel to Jennifer. But this is where things gets weird.. those who are feeling really connected to Jennifer only have a one way connection and they could possibly see Jennifer as a 7 years friend while Jennifer doesn’t even know them. I personally think that this is somewhat similar to fans and idols while some hardcore fans revolve their life around the idol, the idol don’t know they existed. This is really sad for these people whom watch Jennicam due to their loneliness, Jennifer might be all the friend they have in their life, and in 2003, BAM!! ONLY FRIEND DISAPPEARED.

Image result for lonely gif

The Idea of private and public had changed since internet.

In the past, privacy was what was behind the walls and if you close all doors and windows, you will have a private space, but now the invention of the webcam and internet, it opens a window within the private space and on the other side of the your window, there could be countless of viewer who is able to look into the window you’ve opened in your private space and since anybody could just look into your window, doesn’t that made it a public thing since anyone can just take a look and decide to stay and watch it further or just leave?

This is what the Jennicam was doing, she opened a window for 7 years that anybody could look through it, in her own private space but was her private space really private as anyone could just take a look at anytime? Although she said:

“Because I don’t feel I’m giving up my privacy. Just because people can see me doesn’t mean it affects me – I’m still alone in my room, no matter what.”

Yes, she is alone in the room but that doesn’t meant that she got her privacy, imagine that the webcam is an actual opened window and every time a viewer would pop his head on the window and look into her room but can only stay outside.(Jennifer is still be alone in the room) would she freak out? I think she would, at least for the first year.. The biggest difference is that she is unable to see her viewer and have this false sense that she is protected through the barrier of the internet distance. So was she losing her privacy? I think she definitely did since she will have to adjust her life due to Jennicam like when she is having intimidate actions(sex) with some of her boyfriend, they would turn off the light and do it under the blanket, this, isn’t it losing of privacy?

 

In Conclusion

In my opinion, Jennicam is similar yet different from when we do a live broadcast. The Similarity is that both are unable to retrieve what was put on there when the viewers saw it although we could probably delete it afterwards but we are unable to undo what the viewer saw. The difference between Jennicam and our live broadcast is that due to the short time frame of the live broadcast, it is possible to have a general idea of the content within the stream and “Act” upon it but in Jennicam, who we saw is probably who she was as it is virtually impossible to act 24hours a day for 7 years, and we are getting the realest Jennifer as possible.

Jennicam was a work that place herself on the limelight of the internet for 7 years, the popularity she gained might be accidental, maybe she is an exhibitionist who like to show herself naked sometime, but I think that she was definitely lonely because when she wrote her code and uploaded the webcam picture to her website, she showed her friend as a form of attention seeking and she unexpectedly seek-ed the attention from the whole world. Although she did not start with this reason, but she definitely progressed into capitalizing and selling her privacy for some fame and money.(which I don’t think it is negative at all, its really smart to do it!)

 

Robotics – Class Assignment 2 : Come On Barbie. (SuHwee and ZiFeng)

Our Initial idea was to have a head to bang onto the wall/table just because it will be sadistic and funny to watch. So our basic idea was to use strings and wires with plates for the head to move in any direction like to swivel around as it adds to the eccentric aspect of our idea. We did lots of trial and error as we were not sure what could work or not. First, we 3D modeled the servo mount which will pull the strings.

Meanwhile, we also went to look around in carousell for heads which could fit into our project nicely and is near for us to purchase them so we asked countless of dolls/plushie sellers on carousell

Then we realized that a square base we did previously was relatively inefficient as the part of the servo that spins was not centralize within the mount so we re-designed the 3D model.

After which, we did experiments with the plate for the “Neck” of the doll.


One spring in the middle was too flimsy until we added strings

emulation of 3 motors and movements, We were impressed.

And we fixed everything together and tied it with fishing lines.

With the setup above, the doll head was relatively heavy when attached to it,so it does not come back to the standing position so we modified the system with some blue felt to strengthen the system by a bit.

and then after some coding……

I am Bonnie, The Next Pokemon Master. (Alter Ego/Video Double)

My First idea Diden’t work, but I’ll do documentation on it….

It took me a long time to think of someone to base my Alter ego on, I really wanted someone who is very different from me, relatively well known and have some comical effect, and after a long period of researching what Alter Ego is(from youtube), someone flashed across my mind….
KIM….
KIM….
KIM JONG UN.

Yes. This.Image result for kim jong unNot to be disrespectful to the Respectable Supreme Leader Of North Korea. I kind of love him and thought that I could draw some similarity between us…. Black hair with similar hairstyle, Asian, double eyelid, protruding ears, I may be able to pull off some similarity and could impersonate him with some a lot of makeup prosthetic fats and makeup on, some tape on the eye(classical stereotypical joke). First I will get my hair slightly shorter.Hair cut (sideburn fade) – Done

Next, Style my hair:
Roughly~ will put more gel to press it down after the makeup, Done for now.

Next is to cover my thick eyebrows… I’ve Tried Makeup(Foundation,Cover base, Consealer and BB cream, I don’t know what they does and all seemed to be the same thing but I was told which order to apply them) which I borrowed from Su Hwee and it doesn’t work as my brows are too protruding and the makeup does not hold them down. So I hair gel-ed my eyebrow down and use Plasticine (I blended many colors to produce my skin tone) mixed with Vaseline to give it a mud like consistency and applied over my eyebrow, which I thought it would work.
I’ll makeup over it and draw fake Kim Jong Un brows later.

Now some Fake Cheek Fats:
I thought it look OK now as I should be applying makeup to my whole face later to cover the noticeable color difference.

And then comes the Fake Double Chin:
Fake Double chin supported by using metal wires within the plasticine and with rubber bands holding it at the back of my head, but then…..

FAILURE DISCLOSE!

Up till here, everything look promising… until I tried to blend the Fake Double Chin onto my face using the Plasticine-Vaseline mud mix.. it does not stick to my face if I move even a tiny bit. So I removed the idea of double chin and proceed to the makeup.

Expectation:
Image result for kim jong un impersonation
This is a Kim Jung Un Impersonator Kim Jung Um

 

Reality:
My eyebrow cover fell off while I was finishing with the make up, the Fake Double Chin doesn’t work, I look more like a (failed)Geisha than Kim Jung Un……
I am shook and decided to give up on this idea.

 

And the comes Bonnie.

Bonnie is a Female Pokemon Trainer from the Kanto region of Japan. Trying her best to become a Pokemon Master in the future, She had received her first Pokemon – Bulbasaur 3 days ago from Professor Oak and is currently on a journey to Pewter City on her quest to defeat all 8 Pokemon Gym leaders to earn the right to challenge the best in the region- The Elite Four.

I am Bonnie, a Pokemon trainer from Japan. I want to be the very best like no one ever was, to catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause. This is a Alter Ego project for assignment 2, sorry but I hope you don't get cancer from watching/hearing this.

Posted by ZiFeng Ong on Wednesday, 23 August 2017

Why did I decided to do this weird thing?

First, Why a girl with weird voice?
I wanted to have an alter ego of myself as someone I’ll never be, biologically and psychologically speaking, I will never be a girl but I thought it would be really funny to be a girl temporary, at least in the digital space.
Aaaand about the annoying-feel-like-punching-cancerous voice, I am seriously sorry, that’s the best I can do, if I retake 5 time, 5 times you will want to punch me. But I told myself after the previous live video that I will try to speak more in the video so Bonnie spoke for me.

And then why a Pokemon Trainer?
As the extension of the previous reason, someone I’ll never be.
Pokemon doesn’t exist regardless how much the Pokemon community wanted it, they are only virtual. It was my childhood game, I’ve played almost all of Pokemon’s main series and still plays Pokemon GO now, it’s a childhood fantasy that still lives within me- Travelling, Exploring, catch Pokemon, breed Pokemon, meet new people, fight them, take their money after beating them and be the best like no one ever was.

Japanese?
Japan was my dream destination since young so it’s still the number one country I want to visit. Nipon Banzai!

What’s up with the setting?
The location was set to be somewhere grassy as there need to be tall grass for the wild Pokemon to appear plus Bonnie is on a journey to the Pewter City. I’ve been to this place 2 years ago, both side were tall grass and apparently they chopped off one side now and Bonnie’s sad(lesser wild Pokemon for her).

It is a good place to film this as there will only be passerby occasionally. There’s basically nothing there as it was a train track which stopped working in 2011 and got removed afterwards, so its good for me to do this man-in-wig-blasting-Pokemon-music-shouting-go-Bulbasaur-in-a-cancerous-voice thingy.
I got the oldwig from my mother and that’s the only one I could get, the cap is a Pokemon Go- Team Valor cap, the orange hoodie and the headphone was to give Bonnie the anime feel.
If you watch it without voice, its kind of good actually, and this was from a NG try.. I did a few tries and the one I uploaded was the best… just imagine how bad cringey was the rest.

Best part of this 1 min live video…

The video was SOOOOO bad Cringey to a extend that it might be good.

And this is the first time I saw this in my facebook feed cos I don’t have many friends…..

 

So if you happened to stay till the end of this long post, here’s a bonus photoshopped photo for you.

A picture speaks a thousand words, but with Photoshop, it tells a thousand lies.