Flipbook

There's An App for That!

A while back I saw a Tweet by some milennial that said something along the lines of "I wish there was an app like texting but that you could just talk instead." It was girls like her that give the rest of us milennials on social media a bad name but I always thought, what if someone did make that app? They'd make so much money because people wouldn't even think twice about their phone being a phone- used to make calls. Thus, my ridiculous product is born.

Introducing "Talxting"! All the impersonality of texting with the immediacy of talking! For just $3.99/month you get a subscription to the great app that lets you communicate with your loved ones over your phones, without tap-tap-tapping away at your phone screen! And you'll finally have a use for that hashtag that isn't a hashtag! Maybe now you'll know why it exists on old phones even though Twitter wasn't invented until 2006. Could old people see into the future? Maybe! Text "TALXT" to 33606 now to start your subscription!

Or... just click this on your phone:     

Llllllllet's Play!

Since senior year of high school, I have watched a YouTube channel called RoosterTeeth and I have been completely obsessed with them. Their subcompany called Achievement Hunter has a series of Minecraft Let's Plays that I thought were stupid at first, but have since become my favorite videos to watch on YouTube. The game Minecraft is extremely popular and over spring break, I started playing it with some of my friends from home. The dirt block is one of the most abundant and easiest blocks to use making it a very big symbol of the game. 

Since the entire game is made up of blocks and is basically a whole grid, it seemed like a great idea for the grid project. The basic idea was to make each face of the block 16x16 but once I started gluing the beads on, it was apparent that I did not have the space for that, so I couldn't follow the real dirt blocks anymore. Nonetheless, I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, even if it's only two faces covered.

Little Bunny FooFoo

     When I was younger, before I went to sleep, my mom would tuck me in and then have shadow puppet shows on the wall. Little Bunny FooFoo was my favorite which is probably the reason I named one of my pet rabbits FooFoo. These shadow puppets were never great- just holding up a peace sign and bouncing it across the wall- but I still loved them and hope that my children will too. Even though I grew up watching movies in live-action and animation, making shadow puppets was my first experience with making moving pictures on a screen. I knew that the bunny was just my mom's hand and a light source behind it, but it was still so much fun to watch.

      Since those days, I have gotten into photography and filmmaking, and I have a large appreciation for animation. The way that these media have evolved from shadows and storytelling blows my mind when I really stop to think about it and it makes me wonder how much of the science fiction that we read will be real in the next few years. I wonder what my kids will be using on a daily basis and how obsolete shadow puppets will be. Photography- real photography- has pretty much phased out completely by now, so they may not even learn about my favorite medium. Hopefully they'd still like to learn from me though.

Vesti La Giubba

       My idea for this game was a simple horror game, much like Slender or Among the Sleep. The gameplay is mostly wandering and interacting with your surroundings until you reach a cutscene/important scene that progresses the story. The plot line closely follows that of the opera but can have a different ending depending on what you do during the first time you have to make a choice- how much you have to drink at the tavern. From there, the game will still have a tragic ending and Canio will still lose his love, but in two different ways. The above drawing is a minimalist doodle for the game and what I imagine would be the main game poster, with text on it as far as the name of the game and some reviews or other things along those lines. 

     The driving force for this idea was the idea that the poster is basically what Pagliaccio looks like, which the player will only see once he sees his reflection at the end of the game. It is what Pagliaccio looks like in the opera, but is a bit sharper and darker, reflecting the Batman villain, the Joker, whom is based heavily on Pagliaccio and whom is one of my favorite villains. Canio does not exactly go insane as the Joker has, but instead goes through an alcohol-induced insanity. 

Broadway, Vaudeville, and other Stage Shows

I've been a fan of Broadway and musicals since I was young. I loved Disney movies and pretending to be the princesses. I watched Roger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella with Brandy and Paolo Montalban every night and I acted out the movie. My mom has home videos of me singing to myself in the mirror and then turning to look at the camera, and continuing to sing. It was my dream to be in theater when I was young. Since then, I've become more awkward and abandoned that dream, but I still love watching the live shows. The only Broadway show I have seen so far is Wicked, but I absolutely loved it. I love seeing all other live shows too however. Live concerts are one of my favorite things to see as well as just amateur open mic nights. And though vaudeville, burlesque, and cabaret are quite outdated now, I'd love to find a good club to go to that puts on these shows in the way that they were meant to be. Nowadays they can be a bit raunchier than they used to be, but I think there is a great art quality to the old shows.

Ridi, Pagliaccio. Sul Tuo Amore Infranto.

The opera that I am basing my video game off of is Pagliacci. Pagliacci is a drama about a traveling comedy troupe and the actors in the troupe. Canio, the main character, is married to Nedda. Tonio wants Nedda and gets rejected but when he finds out that Silvio is having an affair with Nedda, tells Canio. The real life of the characters is reflected in the play that they perform for the townspeople and leads to the tragic ending. I chose this because I saw Pagliacci live in the 8th grade and I think that a video game about a crazed clown is perfect.