2011年10月31日月曜日

Summary/Response to Timmmmyboy

The Self Portrait ArtistMichael Branson Smith had a lecture, "We Are All Artists", in his blog for ds106. What he claims all about is that anyone can be artist. It doesn't matter if they're not art major students. 
We are all kinds of artists.
We just don't see that way.
In his opinion, creativity is not what we get when we're born but something you can learn, and ds106 is a good place that you can be inspired by much of creativity and grow your own creativity.

I agree with his idea. I hope I can be an artist somehow ! And his lecture made me reconsider about the importance of social media. I mean, social media gives people places to show their creativity. This is really important I think. Ds106 is a perfect example. People post their work on ds106 and it's viewed by people all over the world. Same in YouTube, flickr, etc. These platforms and its convenience highly encourage people to be artists I can tell !

Image: The Self Portrait Artist by scottnj through CC licensing.

2011年10月13日木曜日

10/13 - Midterm Blog Post !

OK, I choose "video" as the topic of this blog post!

      In the ds106, I found an assignment in video category, that is "How I Made It".
This assignment basically wants student to edit so called "Tutorial video" that teach
how you can create certain type of art, video, etc. This assignment reminded me a
popular tutorial video that is teach how you can shoot Kamehameha in your video!
Check the video here!




      In the last post, I talked about fan films on YouTube and then I introduced
a Kamehameha video for an example. That one actually followed this movie.
This tutorial video got almost 3 million accesses so far, definitely one of the most
popular tutorial video on YouTube. Because of its popularity, you see hundreds of
Kamehameha clips there. Check this blog that lists up several Kamehameha videos
on YouTube!

      Kamehameha is from Dragon Ball, famous blast attack in the anime. Since the
anime have been watched in many countries. There are million of DB fans all over
the world. This is a quote from a blog.
"It was one of the first cartoons that done Japanese Anime renouned in the Western World and non-stop the doorway to the entire world"(by caro).
Especially, Kamehameha is so popular that Kamehameha Contest was once held at 
Armageddon Pop Culture Expo in New Zealand. (Check this blog explaining about the event!)
This popularity and great tutorial video create helped many Kamehameha shooters upload
their videos on the Internet! This is a good example that tutorial video can be so influential
to other people. It even can create such a interesting and big wave!


Kamehamehaaaaaaaaaa!!
Steve Saylor - Photoshop Fun

Image: Photoshop Fun by Steve Saylor through CC licensing.

2011年10月4日火曜日

New Stream of POP Culture: Fan Films

Welcome back to my Blog!
I belong to the group of Fans 2 in my class, so I would like to introduce a interesting new stream of POP culture driven by fans on social media. That's FAN FILMS!
The idea of the fan film – an amateur, not-for-profit work inspired by a commercial movie, TV show or comic book – (Jane Graham) (Link here!)
Watch this one for example. ("Re : dbz kamehameha tutorial after effects" by Mocarg)

You see tons of fan films like this if you surf YouTube. What encouraged fans to make these movies?


(1) Price of high quality PC and editing software.

Film editing used to need big and expensive machines and studio.
Not long ago, video editing was possible only with the help of expensive equipment and a substantial amount of training (infoweblinks.com)
So film editing was only for Professional people and you needed to be rich to make fan films for your hobby.

How about now? Many good quality PC costs  less than 1000$ (Check here!). Movie editing software costs about 150$-1000$ (Source!). Moreover, some software like Windows Movie Maker cost 0$! These amazing price change enabled fans to edit own fan films for their hobby today.




(2) YouTube and other movie sharing plat forms.

They got equipments for their jobs. Great! Then what they got next is space that they can share their movies to other people. YouTube and other movie sharing plat forms have been acting a big role for this part. Fans upload their fan films, evaluate each others. This is a new wave of POP culture started by fans on social media.










Because of these reasons, fan films became so popular and it is no longer just a hobby of fans.
If you have any favorite movie, TV show, anime, comic, etc, go to YouTube. You see some fan-made videos and it makes you smile.


More examples ! (StarWars)

DorkmanScott(3/14/2006)
After Effect (Adobe)

YukiKomuro (11/8/2007)
LSMaker (Free)
Windows Movie Maker (Free)