Behind the pretty picture (Final Task)

Cosplay is a very strange hobby. There are multiple different ways to do it and you are only one who can say what your limits are. How much money or time do you want to spent on it? How precisely you want to mimic everything you see...People often argue who can cosplay and what, but for me, it has always been about having fun and challenging yourself. You might be 20 years old female but who says that you can't be that 200 years old demon from hell or a freaking alien/robot from space?

I was positively surprised to find this article where they told about "Psychology of Cosplay" survey which was created by Dr. Andrea Letamendi and Dr. Robin Rosenberg. This survey was created after cosplay had had some negative light and I think it's great that people are making things clear. People who cosplay are not different from people who don't. Cosplayers aren't just some freaks that think that it is Halloween everyday.

What is common to all cosplayers, is that in one way or another, we want to make fictional characters to exist in real world, even if it is just for one day. What a great way to escape reality! And sometimes people aren't even cosplaying characters, I saw Howl's moving castle once. Who wakes up in the morning and decides: “I want to dress up as magical moving castle!”?

Most of us have seen pictures of cosplayers, even if you don't really follow that scene. Usually those pictures are taken by professional photographers and costumes are really well made. Often those are pictures of “famous” cosplayers. We see the pretty picture, but we don't really think what all needs to be done before that picture can be taken.

Whole scene might seem peaceful and fun hobby to those who don't do it themselves, but there are actually lot of ridiculous things going around. The reason why I made these comics, was to show you what goes behind those cosplay pictures you see. Cosplayers go through a lot before they can but those amazing looking pictures online. 

1. First comic is about how you so often spent so much time, just to fail at the end. You learn from your mistakes and keep going on.

We all have our different ways of solving problems.

Some people try to fix the old one and others just start all over again. It's always fun to talk about different ways to build something. It's a great way to start conversation.

 2. There are also times when you just can't feel happy about your costume. You see everyone else as a perfect gods and feel like your skills aren't good enough.

Too often I hear my friends to say that they thought they looked horrible in their costume, but now that they can see picture of themselves they realise they look ok.

It can also be reverse, you think you look good unless you see your picture. It might be part of Finnish nature but it's defiantly something we should try to get rid off.
We keep spending lot of time with those costumes, we should be able to feel good about even if not everything is perfect! You are doing it to have fun.

3. Last comic is about taking the actual pictures. It can be fun but also complete pain in the ass.
Sometimes you just have have winter photos and characters don't always have the best clothes for that. Also there is the fact that other people exists and will see you.

You can also take photos in studios but that needs more arranging and sadly you don't always have possibility to do so.
Photoshoots are great way to have time with your friends and even though I haven't done it in a while I have lot of good memories!

 

Sources:

 http://ifanboy.com/articles/what-is-cosplay-and-why-do-people-do-it/ 

http://www.dailydot.com/fandom/psychology-cosplay-survey-results/

Oh no, spoilers!

There is a constant danger when you are surfing through the internet. I'm talking about spoilers! Is there anything else that could flatten your excitement? You start watching new series, you start loving it, you can't wait to see what happens next, and then some airhead from internet manages to spoil it to you! And most likely could not see it coming. That sweet feeling you have, when you are waiting to know what happens next is lost. Element of surprise is destroyed. All you feel is hate and disappointment. This all happens so often, at least if I can believe the angry tweets my friends are making in Twitter.

I might be over dramatic, but I honestly don't like spoilers, they kill my purpose to watch the series. Does this mean that I'm a bad watcher? If only reason I watch something is to be surprised I should not be watching any of mass films. They are full of cliches and often I can even predict exact words they are going to say. But I still watch them! Why? I hope I might get positively surprised!

My hate towards spoilers is quite extreme and that's why I have some sort of weird respect for people like Patricia, she said she doesn't mind hearing spoilers. She actually even asked to hear them! But I could not tell her any because I thought it would be wrong thing to do. You would not hurt your friend even if they asked, so why should I tell them any spoilers ether? But I think it is great that people can enjoy stories even if they know what is going to happen.

This is one the faults I have when it comes to consuming media. If I know the story it's very hard for me to be interested. I can't even watch any trailers of movies because nowadays they tell you everything. Maybe I should try to grow mentally and learn something from Patricia.

I have to accept that internet will always be dangerous place, you can't make it completely spoiler free. My solution for now is just to stay away. No more tumblr for me!

Gamejam

Last weekend was quite exhausting but really interesting experience. We had 48 hours to make a game and with several assets to use, such as Motion capture, green screen and dolly cameras. Our team used mo-cap to capture animation for our game character.

We came up with this game idea where you are sneaking through a dark room full of cats. The house was some crazy catlady's and your mission was to get through without waking her or any of the cats. If you made too much noise it was game over.


Here are my 3D-models of the catlady and cat:

Both days we left around midnight and came back around 8-9am. So we didn't sleep too much, just enough so we wouldn't die middle of it all. Unlike other game jams I have participated this one had media around. Yle was filming and interviewing us all the time. I guess that was because we were using their equipment and premises. Thank god we had Barbara, I was hiding behind her back every time camera was coming to our way.

Fun fact: Every night we had to dig the car out under the snow.

 
Whole weekend was scary and full of confusion but I think we all learned a lot out of it so in no means it was useless. I'm happy that I managed to participate and the game was even playable! Me, Barbara and Eeva managed to get two programmers to join our team. Without them the who game play would most likely been non-exiting.

Presentations

If there is one thing that has come up in every course I have attended in this school, it is presentations. Seems like power point and students talking is a common teaching method nowadays. It seems to me, that where presentations make students look for the information themselves, they might learn it better. But sometimes I feel like you learn only the part you have to present. Other student's vain explanations doesn’t give enough concrete information.

No matter how much I hate speaking front of the class room I can't say it is useless. If there is something media have not been able to fake it is voice. We can manipulate image, lights, basic sounds. But real human voice and good speech, that is something we can't fake. After all, you need real people to make media. This is very small thing to realize but think it is quite common to miss. People can wear make up or even do surgeries to make themselves beautiful but only way to make your voice believable is to practice.

Oz

I have to write down some sort of textual analysis about Oz. (I'm not sure how good textual analysis this will make since I'm just letting out some of steam) I'm talking about TV series that run through 1997–2003. There are six seasons made of it but I have only seen first two and half seasons. Honestly, I can't remember when was the last time I saw TV show which coul wake up this many mixed feelings at me. I'm questioning my morale and what is right, what iswrong?

If you don't know, Oz is about Oswald State Correctional Facility which by the way is level 4 maximum-security state prison. So all the prisoners are supposed to be quite hard core if I may say so. And this is what makes me feel so confused all the time. I know those characters are getting what they deserve and they can simply blame themselves for it. Sure, there are bad guards and flaws in the justice system, but still they have done something we all clearly label as ”bad.” So why, why I'm feeling bad for them? If it's right thing to do and what they deserve, why I feel like something is always wrong?

Everything is moving all the time. First, somebody is the victim, then all suddenly they are the ones who do the bad deeds. You sympathize with one character but the next moment you are repelled by them. It's very upsetting. I feel like I can't trust any of the characters to please my morals.

When there are no good characters you naturally start adapting to closest one to yourself and you start looking at your own flaws. Would that be me? If I was in a prison like Oz, would I have done that? For a example, there is one character that broke another inmate's arms and helped others to break his legs too. He admits being a horrible person. All he wants is somebody to love him and I guess that's why I can't hate him. I admire it when people can admit that they are not perfect so now, even if we are talking about somebody who is violent, manipulating, lying bastard I would still be really upset if he dies.

There are so many twists in the plot and how characters grow that I'm not even going to start talking about that. I have realized how naive I am. I keep thinking that when some characters act good they will stay good.

But no, it doesn't work that way, they will make me hate them and be disappointed. Still, I keep hoping. Somebody has to have a happy ending?

You want proof that Oz is written well? We are talking about male prison. Full of males. And still they have managed to include 5 women into the plot and none of them are victims. (There are incidents but they are never portrayed as helpless.) 

They all are strong in their own way and not all of them are likeable. Some of them are cold-hearted bitches and that's why it is so awesome. They are real characters! Not just some pretty wallflowers.You actually hate them for what they are, not because they are boring.

We shouldn't ether forget their multicultural cast and all different religious you can see inside the prison. It feels corny to say, but I think Oz one of the most honest portrayals of humankind I have seen in TV. In a way it is sad. Are we living in a world where producers are not afraid to have realistic cast and characters in general unless the location of the story is in prison?

I can't help but think about other TV series which is called Orange is the new black. It also has really good cast but once again it's happening inside a prison. Actually all the prison series I can think of have multiracial cast. I don't know if they all are always portrayed fairly, but I know that they are there.

Can't we show/write/cast people in realistic way unless they are portrayed as some ones who have done something wrong?

Well I try to stay optimistic. At least it is a start. We all are portrayed as shit and filth under you shoes. That's what Oz is telling us. We all are made out of the same shit. Hopefully some day we will get more shows that are not afraid to show world as it, but this time from the good side.We can be the stars in the sky! Just don't murder, rape, drunk drive or rob a bank and the world can be yours! 

Honest News

During the class we designed our own kind of news show. Here are the questions we needed to answer:

What is the mode of presentation?

Basic idea is that we have two reporters and they both have very different attitudes and opinions. Other one is always sarcastic and always making jokes where the other one is plain serious and talks about things as they seem for most of us. First they of course just tell us the news but then they start commenting and speculating.

What kind of stories do you focus on?

Every program would start with news with light content so they could make jokes and make funny atmosphere. After that they start slowly moving to slightly more serious issues step by step. There are lot of thing people are afraid of talking about and in this way we could make people focus on those things in a interesting way. We would always offer two different opinions and that way people would have to think and look for their own.

How do you keep people engaged?

We are fed lot a of information every day and I believe there is a market for this kind of news. We would make people angry but we would also keep them awake and waiting for more information. We are not trying to make this program into trash news but instead just to make people listen. Sometimes people understand things easier if it wakes up emotion. We are so dead to all horrible things that are happening.

If our style is often sarcastic and playful, then if some day we would chance the style of telling the news it could make a big effect on people's mind. We joke about everything else, but not about that thing? That would make an illusion that this matter is too serious even for us to joke about.

How do you employ other media platforms, social media and user generated content?

Because of the nature of the program the location of studio would be a secret. We would have post boxes where people could send their messages but other media platforms would be ignored. We are not interested to hear people's endless Facebook comments. If you have something to say you have go through some trouble for it. Buy a post stamp for example.

Reality hits hard

Today I realized it has been a very long time since I watched news from television. How funny it is that I open TV only to watch some brainless trash? Imagine how back in the old days it was very same TV that told all great news and showed sophisticated shows with meaning. At least that what I imagine it was like. And now it is full of lies and shitty programs.

And now our pre-task for this week is to watch news program. This will break my loop of trash and maybe I will see something that has "quality content". Notice that I'm not completely trusting that news will have any of it... But it's nice to hope.
Maybe I have been watching trash TV just to escape the reality. 
 

But today I saw quite nice post on 9gag. And after I Google searched it I found an article about it! It's from the Guardian. (I'm sure you are happy Chris) Social media star Essena O’Neill deleted her Instagram account! Read the article to know more. All I have to say I'm happy for her and it's great to see that some young people can get smarter and realize that not everything in social media is real. Now she actually can make good rolemodel to others. So maybe all those years posting pictures were not for nothing.
Today's lesson: You have life outside your social profiles!

How horrible can media be in 2025?

This is how:

I guess I should open this up a little bit?
For me the two most horrible things I can imagine in furute is that they stop printing on paper.
I wouldn't care about newspapers so much but I can imagine that after newspaper magazines and books would be next. I just love books. Real books you can hold in your hands.

And other thing is the filtering the internet. It is good to filter some of the websites your child uses but if we are always controlled it would feel like there is no privacy left.

Twitter stalking

I had hard time choosing who to follow on Twitter. Honestly I'm not that interested in celebrity’s life. As long as the person is good at what they do I'm happy. Lot of actors and writers are already giving lot of their time just to produce good stuff, it feels little greedy to expect them to give us their personal life too. Though it's not really like that. Their facebook and twitter accounts mostly are just part of the campaign.

That's why I find it even more boring. Why would I want to follow somebody who is just trying to keep up good image?

After long time thinking I choice Billy Boyd. Why? I'm not the biggest Lotr fan but once upon a time I was in London Winter film and comic con. It was pretty small event. They had lot of guests and Billy Boyd was one of them. As the day was ending and they were closing doors I saw him walking through them. There would have been plenty of time to ask for picture with him but as a regular antisocial Finn I was too scared to do so. And I wasn't just scared, somehow it felt rude to go and ask a picture with some stranger? You don't do that with people you don't know. Right?

Because of that I have quite bitter memories whenever I hear Boyd's name so I though maybe following him on twitter would help. But no. Honestly Boyd's twitter is quite boring. It's like he goes there always once in a day and there is nothing interesting. He just wishes some people good birthday, maybe posts some selfies from backstage and he was in some expo in Canada last month? Not the most inspiriting twitter account I must say. There is no much interacting with fans. Maybe that's because he's not such a hot topic anymore? He has been doing more of a musical career lately if I have understood right.

Are his tweets boring? You can decide that yourself. Here is his one of his tweets:

"Great night with @gibsonguitar . Beautiful new guitars for 2016, wonderful people and great music from @LosLobosBand

I survived!

I survived through the whole weekend of Comic con. Be proud of me. Three full days I spend with complete strangers but still it wasn't awkward. There were people everywhere, doing all kind of things. Funniest thing might be when there was two people playing a car game and it was shown on a big screen and there were lot of people just sitting on the floor and watching. I guess it was some sort of tournament? In my last post I told you about things I liked but nothing is perfect.

Comic con had some real problems. I think the biggest failure was on Sunday when we found out that they had only one cloakroom to use (on previous years they had two) and it got full around 11 am. After that if you came to the convention with your luggage you had to carry it with you everywhere and people who tried to chance in to their cosplays couldn't do that. Some people just decided to leave compleatly.

In Finland we don't have expos like Comic con. We have lot of conventions but they are mainly for Japanese pop culture. There are of course Finncon, for science fiction and Ropecon for role players. But there is nothing you can compare with Comic con. I'm not saying that London Comic con is better than any convention in Finland. Because it surely is not. In London they have big names and lot of people, but the heart of the organization is not made by fans, unlike in Finland. That makes a big difference.

It was easy to see that advertisement and making money had much bigger role than in Finnish conventions. Sure they got free goodies, but also load of advertisement and useless crap. What I did not expect was that in some technical things they are way behind us. 

For example the stages they have, they are enough if you have some famous person up there and all you do is ask questions. But, if you are making a cosplay show on that very same stage it's not going to work at all. The stage is small and nobody can see anything. This year there was lot of technical issues during the Euro cosplay contest, the lights went on and off very randomly and sometimes they played the music too early. Even without those problems the stage was not good enough. It was really small and unpractical.

Here is picture of the winner of Euro cosplay 2015: 

My super busy weekend

So yes, I attented MCM London Comic con on October 2015. If you ask me what I remember about that weekend, I would say people. There were so many different kind of fans and how they showed their point of interest. Some people cosplayed, other took photographs, they draw fan art or their own stuff, people bought lot of merchandises and took pictures with their idols... There were so many different things fans could and did do that it felt little overwhelming.

We all have our own top interest and should focus on that. My first comic con problem was that there were too much going on. I felt huge need to run from one place to another at the same time so I could see it all. Which naturally isn't possible.

On Friday I thought the best thing ever was the comic village where people were selling their art. I loved it and since it felt like good idea to support independent artist I spend way too much money on there...

Saturday's highlight was Doctor Who panel, there were some writers and directors of the show. I was positively surprised that there was one quite young female writer. I'm not going to comment on that more because I haven't seen the episodes she has written so I don't know if she is any good but I have hope so.

What I heard from other visitors is that usually in May Comic con has bigger stars. So, next time let's go there on May!

On Sunday... There was the Hillywood show! Visit their Youtube channel if you don't know them! I'm not their biggest fan but I do enjoy watching the parodies they have made. It was really heart warming how happy they got when they saw how excited and happy fans were when they saw them. It was also funny how you could see that they also are just fans who after hard work ended up being famous. I think they said they have been doing this for 9 years?

Google you are my creepy stalker and over protective mom

Google never stops surprising me. Today it was reminding me about my flight to London that leaves tomorrow. Since when has Google known about my flight plans? I still don't know how. Well part of the reason why I'm not looking in to it is because a.) I'm lazy, b.) don't really care (seriously I'm not that important, if you want to spy me feel free to do so) and c.) if there are things I don't like or understand I tend to ignore them.

I'm a person who never reads those small texts after contracts so I won't be surprised if I hear some day that I have sold my kidney and brains to Google so they can do some nice experiments. I would be a little upset but not surprised.

Somehow Google manages to make me feel stalked and "over protected" at the same time. When ever I use new computer to sign in to my account I get emails everywhere telling me that I have singed in at new computer. Don't worry Google, it's just me.

I use Gmail, Google maps and Google drive almost daily. I think three different apps from same corporation is quite lot. And I'm sure there are more I'm using but just not realizing it. For example Google search. I use it so often that I don't even realize it is Google.

Is our privacy being compromised? Well most likely yes. In future probably even more. My solution to this problem is to stay as unimportant and as boring as I can. That way if somebody would accidentally stalk me they would stop very fast.

Comic industry what are you doing

You can thank other media course I'm doing at the moment for this post. Our job was to make a research on subject of our interest and I chose eComics. Downloading comics and reading them from your computer or phone isn't new thing anymore, but is it destroying printed comics?

After short research it seemed quite clear to me that is not the case. Quite opposite actually. Digital comics have chance to prove themselves being useful if the industry managed to develop some things. For example the pricing is ridiculous. You would think that since there will be no costs from shipping or printing the price would be cheaper. That's not the case at the moment. Only small part of comics are cheaper when you buy them digitally.
They might be scared of losing profits if people can buy comics cheaper online but I think they worry for nothing. Most of the comic book fans are collectors. You are proud of your comics and you want to be able to show them off. Cheap digital released would just help them to get more readers. Usually when people get hooked they will start buying other merchandises too.

I also found one interesting article here. It had lot of good points. I don't really care about rivalry thing going between Marvel and Image comics. But what I could agree with is that Marvel has lot of characters people love more than anything. Only problem are the story lines which are super confusing. I like reading Marvel comics but I would lie if I said I always understand what is happening in them.
You read one good story and get all happy just to soon to be disappointed when they start over and all that has happened is wiped out. I feel mad that they keep destroying great characters and good story lines just so they can get a little bit more money. Even though, honestly sometimes you are just happy that the story line gets erased. Writers keep making crazy stuff up to get people interested. It's just like soap opera!

So instead of worrying about losses you might get from digital publishing we should really start helping companies like Image comics to keep making comics with reasonable stories and good characters! It shouldn't be all about money. Most people don't start making comics just because they want to get rich. I can't imagine worse plan to get rich that being a comic artist. Where do we go wrong?

The Cheetahs

We had to design our very own reality show. We ended up with idea where three or possibly more students have to go undercover and act as if they are students of different field. For example three art students go undercover in astrophysics class. These three people are called Cheetahs.
All students in the class are told that they are coming from same study field so these three art students don't know about each others. If the undercover art student is found out they get eliminated. So you ether study really hard to be good or then you cheat. As long as you don't get caught everything is allowed.
If Cheetah finds other art student they can join their forces or try stab each others on the back. You just have to be really careful not to get caught yourself.


Other alternative version of this program could be if there were more students from different fields and they are put into one class. They are told that they all are from different schools but your goal is to keep your study field secret and get as good grades as you can from all different courses. Who gets the highest points wins the prize. There will be art, mathematics, chemistry, building cars etc...

Again you can study or cheat. Main point is you can't reveal your real study field or get caught at cheating. This makes it interesting. Imagine situation where student desperately needs more points from a test and it happens to be from his real study field. If he nails the test he gets more points and bigger chance to win, but if that is only subject where he is succeeding he might get exposed by others.
And if you are found out it's game over. So it would be interesting to see how people try to be equally bad and good so their real study field isn't found out.

Dear radio, please no more

Like I mentioned before radio is one of my favourite media platforms. I would like to say that it's perfect background noise to keep you awake and make you feel like you are not alone. But lately it hasn't been like that.

Since they have only voice to use when making advertising through radio it feels like they don't care how horrible songs they are making. Only thing that matters is to make sure people remember it. But is that really such a good thing? I wouldn't buy something that makes me feel annoyed.
And it doesn't end with horrible songs. They are just tip of the iceberg. There are bad puns, word plays and stories. Don't forget voice acting which is always poorly done!

I have found only one good solution for this problem. Oh, right now you might be thinking that maybe I should be using Spotify? No! That's not what I want! I want to use this huge horrible looking thing which is older than earth itself to listen music.

See picture below.

But yes! Back to my solution. Answer is the night. They play much less advertisement when people are sleeping and usually the music is also better. So I'm getting ready to say goodbye to our dear sun. I shall embrace the night and forget light. From what I know there are less people around night anyway so it's pretty much win-win situation.

Music with videos and videos with music

First, watch this music video from Madonna and then watch this music video from David Bowie.

We were told to analyze how gender influence the representation of the artist and are were likely to discuss about these artists in the same terms?

Of course the gender influences a lot how the artists are represented but I think the music genre matters even more. Even if David Bowie was still hot and in good shape I wouldn't want to see him rolling on his back on the floor or dancing if the music is like that. We live in a world were pop songs include ether sex or super cuteness. Number one rule is you have to be attractive. 

I can't think even one female artists that is ugly. That may be because I'm not that into music but for some reason I doupt there are too many of them. I don't think Madonna and David Bowie are discussed in same terms, after all the music is different and they represents different things. I don't know what Davie Bowie is about but Madonna is pretty much some kind of Pop Queen? Pop Icon? 

For my textual analysis I chose Franz Ferdinand's song "Evil eye". I honestly don't know what genre that is. Wikipedia told me that they are Scottish rock band? Their genres include : Indie Rock, post-punk revival(whatever that is), dance-rock, dance-punk and art rock? Let's believe Wikipedia on this one. I would have said Rock-pop since that's my answer to everything.

What kind of world view this video is giving? My head is pretty confused at the moment. Before this task I had never seen the music video. I never imagined it would be like that. When I just listened to the song I thought it was about how sometimes you get mad with people and they manage to bring the worst out of you. And sometimes some people just hate you for what you are but that's life and better take other people down before they destroy you down. Instead of believing in higher power we just have to live with our shitty lives. I didn't imagine worms with popcorn or bloody murders and other violent stuff.


Uh, some people get a freak out of me
Some people can see that I can see
Some people want to see what I see
Some people put an evil eye on me


What I think these lyrics mean is that there are always some people who won't understand you and then there are people who think alike with you and are similar. Some people are just jealous and want what you have or then they just hate you. To me the song has always been about different kind of people and what they bring out of you. There are lot of things you can decode out of this song but I like to keep it simple. So yes, it's about people and how sometimes there is no other way than to get mad at them so you can survive.

Who is rescuing cinema?

This week we got to read this article about how lately older people have been going to cinemas more than before. In fact, I quote: " In Britain, the proportion of over-45s among regular film goers rose from 14% in 1997 to 30% in 2008. These figures reflect a sharp behavioral change."

Honestly I wouldn't call 16% rise in 9 years that large difference. It makes sense if you ask me. People are living longer than before so of course there are more people to go and watch movies. Whole article seemed quite narrow minded to me. It said that when they were trying to get young people to see movies they just added more special effects and action in to it. And now that young people are "stealing" movies from internet they are not going to see movies anymore. 

I would like to think that they are not going to see those movies because the tickets cost way too much and producers are underestimating their audience. No matter how cool your explosion is if I see it ten times in one minute. I will start waiting for something else. And when I realize there is nothing new or even partly interesting coming I won't be coming back. Not if the film is from the same production team.

Studios keep spending way too much money on effects and then forgets the script. Sure older people are easy way to get money with just some drama but how about if you made actually a good movie with good characters and a plot? And throw some nice effects in in. That way you could get old and young together. Only thing different with old and young is that old people are not stupid enough to pay money for a movie without story and young people just want to get away for a while. We are not going to bay 12 bucks so we can try to concentrate on some super long speech, at least when you are watching pointless action and explosions it feels like your brains are on vacation.

I think the whole article stereotyped all audiences. Old people are not boring and young are not stupid.

InkTober

I have to tell the truth. Before last Thursday I had never heard about InkTober. I just happened to see how my friend tweeted a picture of her drawing and said. "Hi guys! This year I'm going to try out InkTober!" That got me curious. What exactly is InkTober? Here, I found the answer. Making one ink drawing per day sounds like a fun. I don't know why I get so motivated to draw when I think how people all around the world are learning how to ink. I guess it's easier to learn and do something everyday if you know you are not the only one.

It's quite silly actually. People are drawing all the time. Why that is not motivating me? How can the fact that you post your drawings under the same # with thousands of other people makes you feel so special? I honestly don't know but I'm happy about it. I have never been good at inking and now I have reason and motivation to practice. Even if it is just for a month. This is one of the things I like about Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram. It's so easy to post and tag your drawing even if you don't spent that much time making it. What's important is that you are learning and being part of something. At least that's how I feel.

I keep saying that I don't meddle with social media too much but I think this month is going to chance that. I have to post something everyday! I hope I will success.

Here is my day 3.

Mindtrek day 2.

Today's breakfast was great and afternoon cake even greater. That's all you need to know. 

Today there was Academic track which had more game focused presentations. For example there were people from schools telling about their projects. Timo Nummenmaa from Oasis had this "Deck of Cards - House of colleagues" card game that had 61 characters cards that were based on the workers. Goal of this game was to promote social atmosphere. I think the Idea was fun and it could be useful for many people. For us it could be helpful excuse to socialize with people from other classes.

Later today we went to listen Adrian David Cheok's "Everysense, Everywhere Internet Communication" presentation. It was interesting. I heard about lot of stuff I didn't know existed. Creepy thing he told us about was Huggy pajamas, project he was part of. I find the idea of somebody sending hug virtually very disturbing. Maybe If I didn't need to wear a shirt that looks like a rain coat it wouldn't be too bad. But honestly it wouldn't be the same. Hug isn't just about he feeling. It's also about the smell, sound and what you see. No matter what you feel, if there is nobody standing front of you it's not a hug. 

Even creepier invention was Kissinger. I can not imagine what kind of desperation or madness would make me kiss that creepy ball with plastic lips. Sorry it's just not my cup of tea. There is no way it would feel real. You can taste the plastic and again, you can't see the other person. It think there is still long way to go before we can use touch, smell or taste as everyday communication method. If people would become robots or at least cyborgs it would easier. If you are made of plastic, touch of plastic is so much more natural.

Here is picture of my breakfast, only thing that matters:

Mindtrek Day 1.

I have to say, if you give me free food at the very beginning of the day I won't care what comes next. Free food equals happiness. Second thing I found nice about Mindtrek was comfy chairs. It was hard to decide which programs to watch because the names didn't always tell enough what they were going to be about. Even so, I managed to find first day of Mindtrek pleasant and suprinsingly interesting.

Most of the programs were quite business like and gave professional feeling. There was one that wasn't so serious. Jarmo Puskala kept this presentation about "Iron Sky - Herding Cats - How to work with internet audience". There were lot of funny videos included and I think that made Jarmo's presentation lot different from other's.

He made good point about the fact that working with people through the internet is lot like herding cats. People say and do what they want. And it's actually better if you don't give people money, because when there is money involved greedy ones arrive and all they want is to get as much money as they can with as little work as possible. They let their fans comment and help with production.
Thanks to that 10 prosents of Iron sky budjet was from fan financing. Fans are happy when they can help, for example when they needed to make a fake newspaper for the Iron sky movie, they asked their fans to write articles and people were happy to do so! Imagine if you could write a crazy story and it would be published in fake newspaper?

I have to confess I didn't know that Iron sky was from the same production team as Star Wreck. But now that I know it explains a lot. His presentation was interesting but it felt he spent a lot of time talking about production of the movies. He didn't go too deep about how you communicate with people through internet but I think that's something we all going to learn sooner or later so it didn't bother me. I was just happy there was some program that was easy to listen.

Now I'm waiting to see what kind breakfast they are serving tomorrow! Here is a picture of fancy water glass they had:

Trash TV you are my muse and inspiration

I watch tv a lot but somehow I manage to miss all the news. So I know nothing. You could say that missing the important information is my superpower. That and the fact I'm always hungry.

I have to come clean and tell you that my guilty pleasure is to watch american top model, or some other country's version of it. Project Runway is a great way to kill my braincells too. When I'm feeling like destroying even the last drop of my sanity I switch channel to MTV.

MTV is the GOD of trash TV. You can hardly remember that mtv used to be about music.

Ex on the beach, Geordie shore, My sweet sixteen... The list could go on forever. All these tv shows are able to destroy your mind and will to live in less than 6 seconds.
After you wake up from that coma those shows put your mind into, you start feeling like maybe there is hope for you. You feel "superior" when compared to those sad little creatures you see on your tv screen. That's why I say it's healthy to watch trash tv. It helps your self-esteem to rise.

You don't need apples to keep a doctor away! Watching how teens get drunk and are miserable is great way to start feeling happy about your own life.
That's my advice to you. :) If somebody get's even more depressed after wathcing those shows I do not take the resbonsibility.

Textual analysis what?!

This week we got to read this article about textual analysis. First I was little confused by the meaning of it. But then I realised that textual analysis just means that you analyse the game by thinking what kind of meaning it is sending, or how it represents for example cultural politics.

Your role as a player in video games can affect the meaning in lot of different ways. Some things may have cultural meaning to others and for somebody else it may be just a pretty statue on background.

Like in every part of media you can find meaning behind everything and since video games are slightly different from for an example fashion ad, there's many new things to analyse.

There is written story, music, enviroment, characters, animation, and effects. All the little details might have some significant meaning. For example do you ever think how the movement of your character affects your opinion of it? I find slowly or heavily moving characters really annoying to play and might not enjoy some game as much as I could because of that.

Batman Arkham Asylum is a game that has very clear theme for me. It's dark and mysterious. From the very first moment it's clear that you are the detective. It's like the game is trying to make you feel like the batman himself. There are lot of objects and side quests you can do, and they have lot more meaning if you know something about Batman series before you play the game.

I think the enviroment, characters and story represent the dark theme pretty well. No matter where you go all you can see is destruction and victims of Joker or some other villain. All villains look like they have run out of asylum, which they actually have.

Here is screenshot from Batman Arkham asylum:

My awkward some skills

Social media is still little bit foreign subject to me. I boycot facebook, I don't follow any youtubers or upload anything anywhere. I have Instagram but I haven't used it for six months. Only social media I do check almost daily is Twitter. Why Twitter? Why not Facebook or something else?

Propably because in Twitter you can't tell your hole story of life, but instead it's about jokes and funny things that happenned to you today. Reading one tweet is easy way to sum up somebody's day and personally I found it relaxing way to check up on my friends.

Tumblr. That's one of the things I should use more as a person who is interested in art and stuff. Deviantart used to be the number one thing for artists to use but lately Tumblr has been taking the lead. I'm still learning to use it, hopefully someday I fill success. Honestly Tv and Radio are still big parts of my life. Brainless tv programs are what give me life at 3am when I'm trying to finnish some project, and radio is all background noise I need when I'm drawing. I quess I'm little behind my time.

I don't now how serious my FoMO is, because there are still times when I just forgot that my phone's battery is dead and I forget it for hours. The reason why I use my phone when there are people around me might be because I'm trying to escape social interaction. "Please I'm busy with my phone, don't talk to me." And that's why I try to use my phone as little as possible when talking with other people.

It's going to be interesting to see how this whole keeping a blog thing is going to work out for me and if it's going to chance my social media habits ?

Very epic first post of my very first blog.

Hi world! I'm alive and here to give you some introduction of myself.

We got this great task to create introduction video of yourself. And here you can hear me talking and see some amazing drawings. I'm deeply sorry to inform you that my face had some serious business to attend so it didn't have time to star this video. (Except in some pictures)