Author: chasecstubbs

This week in our zoom call we got to present the site we drafted to Kaci to see where we were at with our media and site as a whole. Going into it I was fairly nervous because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with my part, and also I was worried it was not interactive enough. As a group we met about 1 hour before our actual presentation to get everything in line on what we would say, and make sure no bugs would pop up. The call prepared us very well for when we talked to Kaci I think.
The call went smoothly I think with what everyone said, how they presented their piece and the media they had captured. We all had little hiccups with some videos on the site but she talked us through those issues. That was an easy fix. We all got really good feedback, and she seemed kind of surprised on how prepared we were, and how well everything came together given our circumstances. That allowed all of us to take a sigh of relief and hunker down for our final presentation next Wednesday.
We are not done yet, but all in all I am very proud of the group I was assigned and happy I got to work with them. No one could have guessed all of this would happen. We adjusted quickly though and fingers crossed, did a job well done!

This week we as a group are finalizing up our website to get ready for the presentation on Tuesday. I am hoping it goes smoothly and that we did everything the way we were supposed to since we pretty much did a full 180 on what we were previously doing. I feel good about things on my part of the website, and I am feeling confident in the rest of my group members to come together and finish strong with this. I am most looking forward to receiving feedback on things we can do to touch things up before the final presentation and turn in. The advice will be very helpful.

As for myself, I finished up getting my media this week and putting it up on the site. I just need to record an interview piece with my brother about the topic since he is very knowledgeable about it, so I think that’ll help tie my part together really nicely. I figured out how to make the words on my page appear in a mirage type of way and also how to make the background images stay as you scroll which was something I liked in the presentations I saw during the semester. My fingers are crossed everything ends up going well.

I am dumb and forgot to the blog last week and then I wasn’t able to get on the Zoom call tuesday because of some technical issues. This past week was not too hot for me. Anyway though, the assignment is starting to come more and more together as each of us has found what we want to specialize in. I am going to give beginner tips on how to shoot a bow, equipment needed and I am thinking of providing interviews with my brother who is an avid bowhunter. That was what I was going to ask about in the call but failed to get on, so if anyone has an opinion on that let me know. I just thought of it because he would be able to give some more technical terms and knowledge. Otherwise, I can have him teach me and I can give video lessons or do an interactive aspect that way.

I do have actual content now which is a step in the right direction. I capture some images of the bow and it’s accessories using my brothers camera. I plan to use these picture to show a visual of what one would need instead of just telling them. I really wish I could have joined that call, but the group has done a great job of communicating with me about everything. I showed them by pictures as well and they seemed to like them.

Finally our group has a way cooler name now I think because before we were just “Ice Skate Group”. We are the Quarantine Crew now and he have a pretty legit looking logo to go on the site that Katei put together.

I finally got to present my interactive website this week. It was not in front of the whole class though since we no longer have any more in-person meetings. The rest of the students, as well as myself, were presented to get our credit had to do so through Zoom. I had a little bit of an issue figuring mine out so I missed pretty much the entire meeting. I am sure the sites were cool and could have given some more great ideas to use. I did mine on The Boat. It is an interactive website about refugees traveling across the ocean and the struggles they faced. The part I liked most about the site was the 3D aspect of it. The appearance of images and objects looking as if they were hanging in the air looked cool to me. The sound was also a very neat part of the website.

This week my group-mates and I were able to connect as well as our professor via Zoom as well. This made trying to coordinate everything a lot easier since we had just been mainly using our group-chat. Our call started by getting some minor details cleared up about how the rest of the class and project will go. This discussion leads us to want to change what our project was focused on altogether. Instead of learning to ice skate we are going to play off this quarantine life and put a fun spin on it by providing ways to beat the boredom we are facing. I want to do my part in learning to shoot a bow. I have great resources here in my dad and brother so it should go smoothly and be fun as well.

I am not sure how to exactly write this one or what to say. Everything still feels pretty surreal. It all feels like a movie and makes me realize I took my normal day-to-day life for granted, that’s for sure.

When the news got to my group about classes now being online and that classes this week were canceled, we all immediately started talking in our group chat. Some members of the group are now having to go home by parental request, so not everyone will have as much camera time now. That will still be okay though as they can still contribute to the website and the editing process. As of right now, I plan to stay in Lincoln since I have a job here. A lot of businesses have been shutting down as of late though. If mine were to do so, my parents want me to go home too. This is a tricky time to be alive.

A lot fo my contribution to the group this week just came from trying to help allocate specific duties to people, but that is pretty much what everyone else did as well. These blogs carry more weight now with all that is going on, and it will be interesting to see where this goes.

In this week’s interactive website presentations, the one main factor I saw was that they had a track type of theme. They would move a character or piece of the site to show the rest of the environment and other features. I liked the simplistic approach to the ones shown. You can make the coolest website ever, but if no one can navigate it or find what they need to, it is useless. We could do something similar by having someone skate across the screen to find our videos and tips.
As a group this week we focused a lot on how we want the layout of the site to be. This has been a lot easier to do after seeing some of the great ones that have been shown in class. We talked about it a lot more with the recent changes and challenges that come with the university closing too. Since I was the one that created the initial site layout I made sure that everyone had the link and was able to contribute to it as well. That way we can always work on it without necessarily in person.
It will be an experience to see how everything goes now, but I think with how my group has been communicating and cooperating so far, I know we can get what we need to do still.

We are officially at the midway point of the semester which means we are at the midpoint of our project as well. Everything feels like it is flying by honestly. My group has been doing a great job of keeping in touch throughout the process. Everyone is willing to do whatever needs to be done to make sure the finished project turns out the way we know it can.

This week in class we divided up our preliminary content paper into sections and assigned each part to a member. This way we know everyone will have their input involved. That is what my group has been trying to make sure is done ever since the beginning. We don’t want one person doing everything or a person’s voice to go unheard. We also learned about how to properly use some of the equipment we hoped to use last week but failed miserably. We still got some good content to start though. Our videos and photos will be so much better now after that extra instruction.

To wrap up, the part of the paper I was assigned was elaborating on our vision for the site, and the plans we discussed while at our first skating session. Once we got there the ideas start to flow more, so I am excited to see how everything turns out. There aren’t any worries that I have about our project currently. Especially after that extra instruction, we received this week.

The presentations this week were very interesting and offered many techniques that I liked. The CSS site about the endangered animals was very interesting to me. I liked the geometric aspect of it and how simple, but visually appealing it was. The Mario museum site was also a fun one that fed off of nostalgia. I had never seen anything like that site before and the 3D aspect of it was pretty eye-opening with what is possible. Those were my two favorites, but all of the sites this week were good. They incorporated sound, visual appeal, and amazing techniques around their central story perfectly I though. Some of which I hope to include in our project.
This week we finally made it to the ice rink on Tuesday. We had some technical difficulties right off the bat with the Osmo mobile piece. We were able to figure out other ways to do things through with the DSLR. So one thing we need to fix for next time is if we don’t know how to exactly use some, ask. A lot of ideas started to flow out once we started skating. Our project started to make more sense and come together which was fun to see and talk about.

This week was the first time my class started to present their interactive websites. All of the ones shown were really good I thought. One of the most apparent aspects of each site to me was that they all had a slight constant movement element. For one it was a slow zoom in ion their pictures and another had a background that moved as your scrolled. It made it look as if the main background was on top of it, giving it a 3D type of appearance. Some of the sites didn’t include all type of media which I thought could help tie the who production together. It would have been cool to hear how loud the bike was for example.

This week we just finalized when we were wanting to meet to go skating for the first time. A time that works best for all of your schedules we decided was next Tuesday after class. We will have to figure out who is going to do photo, video, sound, etc but that will all fall into place once we actually get the equipment. I will have to bring that up in our group chat soon, so it is easier when we get the stuff.

This week we got to dive deeper into how we want to capture our journey of learning to ice skate. We discussed setting up wireless mics on each other to record our falls and possible profanities for a comical factor. To get video clips, some of the ideas we’re using an Osmo to capture stable shots as we follow one another around the rink and possibly set up a 360-degree camera in the middle of the ice rink. We can do that best if we are able to reserve a time for just us. That way to don’t run into any issues with upsetting someone. The same can be said about the photography needed. I think the ideas we have now are a solid start. I am sure even more will pop into our heads once we start skating.

Most of my contributions this week came from just laying out some ideas with the rest of my group on how to capture the media. I had the idea of the camera stabilizer but wasn’t sure what it was called, so thankfully Kaci was able to help us out there. That will make out recording sessions so much easier and more manageable. For the next time, we meet we should discuss other ways to create the content. Even going to talk to Susan in the equipment center would have been super helpful