Personal Projects

Fall 2019

Below you'll find a variety of projects I have completed and worked on. Some of them I am extremely proud of, others were definite stepping stones toward later works. All of them, however, have led to the person I am now and have contributed to my understanding of the digital world. 

Almost all projects were done externally from this site specifically. Links provided on this page will lead you to various works that I have created and have worked on. 

Project #1: The Infographic

        So originally within this piece, I was struggling to create something that was inherently "my" brand. Originally I created this piece. And although this was a concepted design that I was looking to pursue, it felt more like a Twitch product, than a product that I was creating on my own. So for the adjustments made I looked to create something that was more "me" and that could express the  concept a little better. The original watch-face type design was going to be used to show the different levels of Twitch Viewership growth over the past 5 years. I thought the concept was cool, but the execution was lacking. So I changed it, and I went with something that I could 1.) manage and 2.) was something that looked aesthetically pleasing and still delivered the content.

        Overall, I was quite proud of the transition I made. Obviously the change was quite drastic, but I kept the concept in-line with the image I had in my head for the project. I made something that was easily comprehensible and aesthetically pleasing. The branding you'll come to see a little further down this page, and that in itself is a whole other tale!


Project #2: The Corpus Analysis

        Above you'll notice a project moreso about the analysis of my campaign throughout this class' theme of projects. The goal was to create an understanding of the question What awards a video game with the title of "Best Game of the Year"? To answer this, I browsed a site known for its reviews. However, the reviews couldn't all be controlled and the two independent variables between each piece are Time and the Reviewer. Each review article for a game can be written by a slew of writers that work for the company. My goal was to isolate the reviews associated with the Game of the Year award winners and to see if there was a noticeable pattern. The goal of the corpus analysis is to perform a distant reading on a given material to distinguish patterns and analyze what those patterns could suggest. The piece itself explains my thoughts and conclusions regarding this topic and the presentation itself was created on a site known as Prezi.

Project #3: Photostory

        This next project is a little more difficult to integrate into this page itself, so if you follow this link ⇐ you'll be taken to a site containing my attempt to this project. This photo story was completed by me in a number of different ways. It was my first time using a program known as GIMP. A free alternative open-source software used to edit images. The images of the games found within the post are completely unedited as it would've been  unnecessary to enhance or change the look of the original products. The real life images, however, were  a completely different story, and it was here that a majority of my challenges took place. The first issue I ran across was the resolution of each image. Each picture was taken from a different era, with a different camera, but all were imported as the same resolution.

        Conflict began to arise when blurriness from movement, filmic grain due to poor lighting and the  camera's limitations, as well as the noise present in the images, again, due to the lighting. All of this surmounted to different techniques needed for the different images. The first was the simplest because it just a matter of correcting certain colors within the image, especially for the red jersey I was wearing and the green from the carpet and couch. The image present on the TV was a little too blurry and so I had to sharpen that fram of the image just enough so that the game could be more clearly seen. The next image was the hockey tournament in which I'm huddled on that left-hand side holding the controller. The image itself looks much better than the original and a lot of that is due to the lack of red-eye seen within each person's eyes. Individually zooming in on each person's face and trying to remove red-eye was the most challenging part of this whole process regarding the photo story. Those were the majority of the revisions made.

Project #4: Podcast

        The last project within this campaign of creation was a podcast. That's it, a simple little 10 minute podcast or video relating to a topic that fit with the cross-media campaign. Mine, however, seemed to be a little less simple upon creation. I constantly was getting video file corruptions (thank god for backups) and audio levels were a little less than ideal. However, I feel like I made up for it with an incredible transcript. 

       

       The video itself can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/cLppwr062Cs. For some reason I could not overlay, or remove the blank space audio in that portion of the podcast without the remainder of the file becoming corrupt with the video software I was using. (Yes, this is the last time I will ever use any of Corel's video-studio project software). THERE IS USE OF ADULT LANGUAGE, although infrequent, it is still present at parts during the video. For the transcript of the first 10 minutes you can find it here.

Overall Theme and Scope:

Logos - 

• Color: Orange, Black, White
• Font: Raleway (Raleway Heavy)

 The logo creation was another difficult part of the process and a lot of the work stemmed from earlier iterations and overall prototypes. The ones that didn't make the cut can be seen below.

Lastly, there was the blog that I was regularly updating and keeping throughout the process of this past semester. The majority of all the works expressed within this site can be found right on over there so if you'd like to view and check it out the link is here.

Spring 2019

UPJ Backroads (A Redesign)

Recently, my team an I have been tasked with rebuilding, and completely overhauling, an on-campus club's website! This project was my main priority in this senior-based capstone course. Here, we were tasked with interviewing editors and staff of the club to gain insight towards the various things they wanted changed. Their main issues with the sight were as follows:

1. Lack of a proper submissions infrastructure
2. Better back-end storage delegation
3. A more organized and easily viewable collection/archive
4. An aesthetically pleasing site

I've also kept up in keeping personal blogs for various topics of my own interest and if you'd like to check them out, I will link them here and here!

There I talk about my interests in Virtual Reality, Sci-Fi, Interactive Fiction, and all things related to Bungie and their current game Destiny 2!