I couldn’t really think of a secret, but I could think of things that people don’t know about me and probably never would unless I told them for no reason, so I decided that would have to do.
So my secret is I have an older brother named Cory that died a few weeks after he was born.
The Fear assignment was particularly hard for me to come up with something because I don’t really feel that I have any fears. I’m not really sure if this is because of my mindset, or if I just haven’t experienced something that would make me afraid yet. After thinking for awhile, I thought maybe I could find a fear with this assignment. So I decided to ask everyone to apply my philosophy of “What’s the worst that could happen?” to their fears. This sort of turned into people not really answering that question, and for many of the fears I felt like I would be a dick if I just said “Well what’s the worst that could happen?”, because it seemed like some people would take that as me belittling their fears instead of me just trying to figure out why they’re afraid of something. Since I didn’t really get any answers, I decided to modify this experiment to what I think the worst that could happen is for each fear, then see if any of that makes me afraid. So this will be quite the long post.
1. Not getting to make game: This one actually applies to me very much, because I want to be a game developer when I graduate. I have faced the problem of wanting to play games more than create them just like this, and decided that the worst that could happen would be I get a job that is just sort of a daily grind job that I don’t care about. Although that would also mean that it probably would be a job that I wouldn’t have to take home with me like a game developer, so I would actually have more time for video games, and I don’t think I would extremely hate that life.
2. Not getting a job because of being fat: The worst that can happen here is obviously not getting a job and having to either settle for another job you don’t want or unemployment. I can understand the fear of getting judged by a stereotype like being fat. I think it would be awful for people to judge me before they even know me. I have actually felt this sort of stereotyping (to a much lesser extent) because I’m a gamer, and sometimes people see me as just a lazy guy who wants to just sit on the couch and play games all the time. While I wouldn’t completely disagree with them, I feel that I CAN get jobs done and I’m not lazy….at least not all the time.
3. Fear of creatures: I didn’t really get a good look at this fear because I didn’t see what was shown that the person was afraid of, but I got the main idea, which was there was some creature that was scary. The fear is usually just sitting alone and thinking “What if that thing is here and jumps me?” I’ve had this sort of scare before, but I know how to deal with it, so it’s not a problem to me. Whenever I think “What if there’s some creature that will attack me?” or something like that, I tend to think of the actual odds of that happening, plus even if it did happen, who cares? I would be injured or dead, meaning I feel some pain and get through recovery….or I’m dead.
4. Fear of children being abducted: This fear I can’t really touch on because I don’t have children, but I imagine this is something that potentially could be a fear for me. I have thought about what if something happens to my family and things like that, but it has never been abduction. Usually it’s just thinking what would I do if they died, but if they were abducted? I’m not sure.
5. Fear of a bad review: The worst that could happen here is other people bashing my review, and since I don’t really care much about what random strangers think I don’t believe that this fear would have an impact on me at all.
6. Fear of failure: The worst that could happen if I fail would probably just be I dust off and try again. I try to shrug failure off and use it as a learning experience for the most part.
7. Fear of no control: I tend to not care who’s in control so this would be another thing that doesn’t affect me.
8. Fear of being judged: This would go back to the me not caring about what strangers think thing. However, if my friends and family were judging me, then I may care. But I would think that I would just try to change myself if it was a small thing or live with them judging me if it was something big.
9. Fear that creativeness is lost: I sort of have this problem except I feel that I don’t have much creativeness in me. Sometimes it takes forever for me to actually think up something creative to do, but then other times I just get an idea that seems very creative to me and it alleviates that worry. But the worst that could happen would go back to the first thing on the list and I would just have to find a different career and dedicate more time to video games.
10. Fear of being startled: I don’t really have a fear of this, because I embrace the instinct. I believe that being startled is a good thing to have because it keeps you on your toes and paying attention. The worst that could probably happen is getting startled and accidentally punching someone in the face or something similar.
11. Fear of the unknown: The worst that could happen? I don’t know, it’s unknown. My approach on this is, if I don’t know about it, how can I be afraid of it? I don’t know the facts, so therefore I can’t judge whether or not it’s a threat.
12. Fear of subliminal messages: This is actually one that I didn’t expect to see, and was happy to discuss it. It seemed pretty interesting. I never watch much TV or pay attention to ads, so I don’t really know if it affects me. But the worst that could happen…I guess you get brainwashed? Which if that happens I think your beliefs actually change, so you would still feel the same way, just with different beliefs. I don’t think that’s to awful.
13. Fear of not being able to fit into society: This one is another one of those I don’t know because I’ve never thought about it fears. I was asked during class what would happen if I lost my sight and/or hearing, and I decided I guess that I would find something else interesting to do with my life. Would I be sad that I couldn’t really play video games anymore? Hell yes I would. But life goes on.
14. Fear of the dark: The worst that could happen if you’re alone in the dark? I guess you could trip in fall, or someone could jump out and mug you. Although I think this fear may also stem from the fear of the unknown, which in that case refer to number 11.
15. Fear of sharing about oneself: The worst that could happen is some people don’t like who you are. Which in that case, there’s plenty of people in the world, and some are bound to like you. I don’t really have a problem with sharing about myself, it’s just that I don’t much because I don’t think I’m that important of a person. If someone asks about me I’ll answer their question, but otherwise, it doesn’t really matter what I say about me.
16. Fear of having friends that you could let down: This is another fear I haven’t really thought about. At least not from this perspective. I have always tried my hardest to never let any of my friends down, because with the friends that I choose I believe they would do the same thing. Although my situation has never gone so far as to be afraid of MAKING friends because of that reason. I believe that if the person is a real friend then you’ll be sure to get it done, and if something comes up and you don’t, then they would understand anyway, so it wouldn’t really matter in the end.
17. Fear of the picture of the exorcist girl: The worst that could happen here is you get freaked out. I mean some people may say the worst that could happen is if she pops out at you and kills you or something, but if you think logically about it, that’s ruled out pretty fast.
18. Fear of being wrong: The worst that could happen? I’m wrong. I’m fine with that. No one is right ALL the time. However, I DO hate being wrong, so I always try to look up and make sure what I’m saying is fact before actually saying it. Am I afraid of it? No, it’s fine if I’m wrong, but I don’t want to be a spreader of false information because I, myself, HATE it when people spread things like rumors as fact, so I try to avoid that.
That’s pretty much everything. I don’t think I got every single person’s fear, so sorry to the few who got left out of this. Also, I typed this while pretty tired, so I didn’t analyze it like I normally would to make sure I wouldn’t accidentally insult anyone. So sorry to anyone that may read and feel insulted, but know that I didn’t mean to belittle anyone’s fears or anything like that, just simply try to understand them better and see if any apply to me.
One thing that I hope will always stick sideways from this class is the first assignment we did. We were just given a bead, and told to do whatever we wanted with it. I liked this assignment, because I used it as an excuse to learn something (how to import a 3D model from Maya to UDK). I’m hoping that I will be able to use this assignment to give myself goals over the summer and in the more distant future. To be able to say “I want to do something with _____”, then just do something with it while learning something new would be a good habit to develop.
The second thing I will remember most is being able to show off what I did, and seeing what others did even if they’re completely different things. I’m no stranger to seeing others people’s work and talking about it, but in other classes it’s always the same project I did, which means it’s somewhat similar to what I did. In this class pretty much every person’s assignment turns out different, which means looking at two different things. I think this could be useful in my career choice of game design because even though I’m wanting to do things like level design and 3D modeling, I can look at things like the soundtrack and learn to critique it differently, because I know it’s a completely different project even though it would be for the same game.
The third thing that I believe will stick with me from this class (I hope) is learning to look at things differently to make things more creatively. I have often had a creative block in my mind while trying to create things, mostly because I don’t know how to modify what I’m doing to work. The what if assignment really helped me with that because we HAD to modify what we were doing as the assignment. I’m hoping that if I ever get stuck by not being creative in my life, then I can ask myself “what if” to get the project flowing again.
This class has been drastically different from my other classes this semester. This semester my other classes have piled on the work, and I have been learning quite a bit. The reason I’m happy I took Seeing Sideways, though, is because it doesn’t pile on the work as much, but I still learn a lot. Of course it’s about creativity and not things like learning how to animate, so I know the processes are somewhat different, but it’s nice to have the change of a class that isn’t so demanding, but still just as useful in my life. I’m hoping that the rest of this semester this class will further my mind in ways of unblocking my creativity so I can create new worlds in my mind without having to think up the premise for endless hours.
Today in class I was trying to think about the fear assignment while it was being discussed. It is a hard subject for me, because I don’t really have any fears that I know of. I mean, I can become afraid, and sometimes use the fear for the adrenaline rush (I find it somewhat easy to get in a fear mindset to make me pay more attention to things), but whenever it happens I always just think “What’s the worst that can happen?” Most people say “Well what if you’re hurt?” or “What if you die?”, but then don’t really understand when my answer is “Then I’ll be hurt, the pain will pass, life goes on” or “I’ll be dead…so I won’t care.” When I think about the worst that can happen, I don’t feel a fear overwhelm me, and I don’t feel depression set in. I just realize that life is temporary, things happen that sometimes we can’t control, but it really doesn’t matter. In the big scheme of things, what is our one life in this universe? When you think about it on that scale, you can truly realize how insignificant your being is, and it is humbling. I feel that I do not have fear, because I realize how little whatever happens to me matters. Of course this is a developing theory that I don’t think about often, and it may be different every time I think about it, but the constant is always me thinking “What’s the worst that could happen?” and then just not being afraid.
Now I do realize this may make it hard for me to do the fear assignment, but I guess I’ll just try to think about it and see where it takes me. Maybe I’ll discover a fear I actually do have, or maybe I will become even more fearless and skip the fear I have and not even have to ask what’s the worst that could happen.
Since my totem was an Eve hypo replica from Bioshock, it was somewhat hard to think of something I could do with it in an unexpected way. After reading the assignment again, I realized that I only had to use it as a starting point, so that opened my mind a bit more to other options. After thinking for a bit and going through some ideas, I decided to focus on the Eve’s purpose in the game it came from.
In Bioshock, Eve is used to fuel plasmids, which are things that rearrange your DNA to give you powers. In the game all of these powers are used by you to defend yourself from the people that have gone insane (called splicers) and use these powers against you to try and kill you. So I decided that what if instead of trying to kill everyone with these powers, all the splicers used their powers to help people. So I used Photoshop to piece together what it would look like if some splicers helped out an orphanage. There is one helping them with their electric bill by supplying them with electricity with the Electro Bolt plasmid, and another cooking some food for the kids with the Incinerate plasmid.
One of the things that I took from this day’s class was it’s good to make time for yourself, even if you’re really busy and can’t. I tend to do this and not mean to, although I don’t really like it. When I need to get things done the most is usually when I tend to just say screw it and play a game. Take last night for example. I was supposed to finish some walk cycles for my class Wednesday, but instead I just tried out a few new games. Did I enjoy that? Yes. Will I be happy I did that tonight? No. Because now I have to cram everything I didn’t do last night into one night. In a way I hate it, but I also don’t care to much because I think I do better under pressure. If I didn’t have to finish it in one night, then I would probably only end up getting half of it done in twice the time. An example of that is a sketch I had to do for my 3D modeling class. I have until Thursday to get three done, so I started working on it Friday night. Then I worked more on it Saturday during the day. Then I worked even more on it Sunday. I don’t feel I’m that good at drawing, so I felt that I messed up a lot and wanted to fix everything. I still feel that all the proportions are off and would kind of like to just start over on it, but I need to work on other work or else I’ll have only gotten one sketch done in the span of a week.
So I guess I take time for myself by playing games when I have all this homework because I think that in the end it will actually save me time, because otherwise I would end up just working on one piece of homework that entire time, and barely even getting that done because I keep wanting to fix it.
Something that I noticed today was that for our project, almost everyone had something to do with a tiger or being held captive. While I realize this was the assignment, I figured more people would do their project on the last of their what ifs, making it not really related, especially since I asked if that was ok last week in class. I was thinking that my what ifs would lead me to something completely unrelated, and I just wanted to make sure that I was understanding the point correctly. Since it was even confirmed that that path was perfectly ok, I was expecting to see a lot more random things in projects. But going through all the projects, the still all had something to do with the main topic. I didn’t know if everyone had just done something and then asked what ifs, or if they only asked what ifs about the project and constrained themselves to staying with those topics. Since no one said where their thought process ended up, I was left wondering.
As for our next assignment, I have been thinking about what I could possibly do. Since what I enjoy doing is playing video games, it would be somewhat hard for me to bring in a souvenir when everything I do is on a screen. The only thought I have is bringing in a screenshot of something, so I guess I’ll see how that goes.
My what ifs when I thought about a tiger:
Something that really caught my attention today was what our mind thinks about when our mind is on auto-pilot. I tend to do this quite a lot, but not during a normal day. My mind tends to not wander when I am doing things like listening in class or something I’m interested in at home, with the exception of when I get bored (in either scenario). However, when I’m tired, all of this goes out the window. My brain will go wherever it wants, whenever it wants without asking permission. Like today, when you asked what my brain thinks about when we zone out and I actually paid attention to what I was thinking (sometimes I won’t, which leads to the not remembering what happened AND I can’t remember what I was thinking about).
I thought about other planets and what they would be like, and if I could create my own interesting planets in new stories of mine (thanks to this cracked article for keeping my mind on this recently http://www.cracked.com/article_19662_6-real-planets-that-put-science-fiction-to-shame.html). I thought about a recent video I watched that talked about how giant jellyfish are a problem in Japan, and how people are trying to come up with things that the mucus from the jellyfish can be used for so the fishermen won’t go poor because they can’t get any fish (they were talking medicine, but I was thinking why couldn’t it be used as a squishy shield, like in knee pads and things?). I also thought if we could harness the plasma from lightning, would that be a beneficial energy source? Could we create our own lightning storms in the atmosphere and have sort of plasma collecting machines? Of course the last one is limited because of my small knowledge about lightning and plasma, but that doesn’t stop my mind from randomly jumping.
Because of this random string of thoughts that I go through when I’m tired, I’ve started to enjoy staying up all night more than I used to. A few years ago when I started college, when I stayed up all night my focus went to the assignment I was staying up for, then my focus changed to concentrating on staying awake for the class the next day until I got home and fell asleep. Now when I stay up all night my focus is on the assignment I’m staying up to do, then I just don’t care after that. I let my mind just wander with no focus, because it’s more fun that way. A lot of things just seem more funny, and I like that. I think when something like a crappy joke can make you laugh for a minute, then life seems better.
Plus this about sums up my time management strategy. I know I have obligations like class and work, and need to take time to go to them. This keeps me from doing things I need to do (homework) and things I want to do (play video games). I could just use ALL my free time for homework, then have no time for anything else, but I don’t like that. So my strategy is expand my schedule by sleeping less. Some would call that a sacrifice, but once you get used to it it actually becomes more fun than stressful. Well…as long as you make sure to be careful and don’t try to do something stupid like drive when you’ve been awake for 36 hours. That’s why I’m happy I live within walking distance of IUPUI.
This creation is what I made to portray my re-envisioned book. Minecraft seemed to fit what I was trying to convey, since it is very easy to create an environment, then change that environment if you want to.
Now the first picture is a sort of scene I set up that could be in someone’s story that they created. It’s a brick house surrounded by a wall with a gravel path and some trees. After I created I thought maybe one of the creator’s characters just lived here and maybe you could go talk to him to advance the story.
Now say that this character betrays you later, or is just inherently evil. Someone may think that the main creator’s scene doesn’t match what this character seems like in the story, so they would take the story into the editor and recreate it the way they believe it looks the best. This would be how the second picture comes about. The brick is replaced with a darker brick-type material, and the roof changed to stone instead of wood. The surrounding walls become worn-down and left without maintenance. The lawn has become infected with a sort of sickly grass and weeds are left untended. The path has changed from gravel to something more sinister. All of this seems like it would fit an evil character much better.
After re-creating the scene (if that’s the only thing they wanted to change), they would upload their edited version to the website for others to experience. If the player is supposed to experience hesitation to go into this person’s house, having a nice little house for the evil person to live in won’t convey this at all. So if the setting is changed to something more sinister. This would lead to a better overall story, because the settings would convey the message of the character better.
I believe if this type of story-making were set-up, there would be fantastic adventures created with it, and then built upon by others, making an even better experience for everyone.
