ruby's blog

I found Façade interesting. As a player, I could create a story with the computer characters, the couple, Grace and Trip, together. I could even move some of the objects in the setting, like the wine glass and the wine bottle. During the evening gathering, the couple argued and I, as a guest at their home, could be the one who changed the intensive situation in the story. I have watched the videos about Façade on Youtube. Some of the videos like Façade- Gay and Façade Drinking Problem were really interesting.
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Although Eliza, as a Rogerian psychologist, can communicate in natural language, after testing Eliza for a few minutes, I realized that Eliza is not wise. I have discovered that she has patterns of answer. No matter what you say or ask, she has a set of answer to answer you. Sometimes, what she answers do not make sense or are not logical, especially when you ask silly questions.
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This was the first time I read interactive books like “The Abominable Snowman”. I was really into the ideas of choosing your own adventure and having 28 possible endings which aroused my interest in the book. In order to read the book, I needed to jump to different pages and search the way to find the Yeti and my friend Carlos. There are two conditions on some pages for me to choose from. My every choice can create different storylines and this can lead to different endings.
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Reality TV is one genre of tv programming which presumably is not scripted and what it presents is, most of the time, thought to be real. It can be a game show, a competition, a documentary of real events, a drama and so on. However, whether reality TV is real or fake is a debatable. In some reality TV shows, it seems to me that they are scripted and the “actors” follow the scripts and they are told by the directors what to do in the show.
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Video mashup, combining different videos into one, is a genre of mashup. In class, we watched some video mashups. I think video mashups are an interesting and useful tool for narratives. Dr. Rao told us that many video mashups are for entertaining people and for fun and many for other purposes such as for political purposes, like promoting US president candidates’ political programs or attacking their political programs. Through video mashups, the producers can express their own views on something.
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We watched some more animations in class last week. I was amazed by the music and the sound effects in the animations. They all work very well with the plots. In Sinking of the Lusitania, the music changes as the ship is sinking. I think it can draw the audience’s attention to the sinking and what will come next on the screen. More importantly, with the music, it can somehow express the emotions. By that I mean for example as music is quicker and more intense, the audience may feel that the Lusitania is sinking faster.
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This week, we watched some animations in class. In the videos, McCay showed his friends his drawings which he made into animations. McCay’s friends even did not believe he could make an animation with his drawings. I was really impressed by how McCay made those animations. In order to make the objects move in an animation, most of the time, he needed to draw thousands of pictures by hands. Now with the help of the high technology, it might take at least a year to make an animated movie.
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When I was reading Little Nemo before class, I found it quite interesting because I had not read any comics with captions or descriptions below the panels before. But after a few pages, it took me a long time to read the captions so I skipped all the captions and only read the panels. I think maybe comics in 1900s had captions but it is not necessary for me to include those captions in any comics and I can still understand or guess what is going on with the stories without them.
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I am not a big fan of comics. Every time when I read comics, I would ask what is the logic behind because to me, comics are unrealistic. I do not really understand why the main characters in the comics would never die even they have gone through accidents or tragedies. Like in 'Vacation Time', though Donald Duck has slapstick collisions with the deer, he does not even get injured.
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I found it very interesting when I was playing "Passage". At the beginning of Passage, the "guy" fell in love with a girl and got married with her. Then they walked together till they died. Their clothes and images changed from young adults to old people and the background greyed when they were walking from the beginning to the end. This game has told me that as the background changes, the most flourishing part in life is the teenage adulthood and ageing is grey and sad.
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