#-eh

When I first came to UF, I was adamant about not being an English major. I didn’t want stuffy professors to make me read stuffy books and articles by stuffy authors and then write equally stuffy articles about such readings. I had a minor existential crisis that led me to add the English major at the last minute, which is why I’m taking two English classes in one summer semester, right before my final year at UF. I was stuck somewhere between dreading the idea of taking an advanced exposition because I hate writing essays and being nervous about taking a makeademia class because I am neither a tech nor art person. I have to say though, I absolutely love this class. I tell everyone about it. I have been excited to do almost every project. English is about so much more than just reading books by dead white guys (or reading books in general), and this class was both a reminder and proof of that. 

Our textbook taught me so many things that I knew (yes, I wrote that correctly). The writing tips seemed simple and obvious: put your subject in the beginning and get to the point when writing. I had heard some variation of the information at some point. However, seeing all of that information written out in front of me with examples and practice problems made me really pay attention to the words. This was great for my own writing. For reading other people’s writings, though? It kind of ruined me. I can barely read those stuffy academic texts anymore, and it’s not like I had such a great time doing it before. The lessons of the textbook were so real that I have become an even stronger critic of academic writing. Again, this is a good news/bad news scenario. 

I also loved how much I learned about UF itself. I complain about this school a lot (because let’s face it, the school messes up a lot), but learning about all the awesome things they make available to the students…well, it didn’t change my mind but it certainly did give me a newfound appreciation for parts of the university. My absolute favorite thing I learned about/project we completed was 3D printing. I genuinely called Marston three times through the renting process to double-triple-quadruple check that this process was entirely free because it was unbelievable to me. I brought a 3D printer to my apartment and printed whatever on Earth I wanted. I printed three keychains and a cake topper. Because I could. And I absolutely plan on renting a printer out again. Literally just because I can.

A gif of my puppy!

A bouncing ball, a person waving, and it starting to  rain

RAYMAN LEGENDS: AN ANALYSIS

Hello! My name is Elanna, and this is my vlog.

Today, I am going to be talking about the music used in Rayman Legends. For those of you who do not know, Rayman Legends is the fifth video game in the Rayman series, and it is created by Ubisoft. The game has different worlds that you can enter by jumping through the painting, like this.

Once you enter the world, there are different levels and side games for you to beat. It is really fun because levels are not unlocked one after another once you beat the one before; they are  unlocked based on the number of Teensies you save (which you do within each level). So you are able to jump around in the levels and worlds a bit. So if one level is really getting to you and you just can not for the life of you figure out how to beat it, you get to move on for a bit instead of having to stop playing the  game because you aree frustrated and ready to give up. You get to take a breather, rebuild your confidence on a different level, and then go back to that level, which I love.

Now, in the games, there is always music playing. It is in the background when you are picking a world, picking a level, or playing through a level. It is actually the music I have playing in the background of this video; that is the Rayman Legends soundtrack just going. I am no music expert, but I absolutely love the soundtrack to this game, and the music fits each level so well. But that is not what we are going to be looking at.

At the end of each world is a music level; before you even play one you can tell the level is special because the painting for it is shaped differently than the other level’s paintings.

So in these levels, they not only play a song over the level, but also, you have to play the game to the music. You have to punch, kick, and jump to the beat. They are so unbelievably fun, especially if you are playing with a friend who cannot keep a beat to save their life. While playing through the game, these were always my absolute favorite levels; they are super creative and just really enjoyable. They really incorporate each song into the level so that you almost can’t even play without the music turned up.

But this isn’t even all they do for music levels! The creators went real hard when they made this game, and so the final world is entirely made up of musical levels. And I don’t mean that they created new musical levels for funsies – they took the music levels from the end of every other world, and just totally screwed around with it, both the music and the animation.

Some of the music they turned into 8-bit, as for the animation, they did anything they could to make it nearly impossible to see. There’s “screen fuzz” for lack of a better term; they put up multiple screens at the same time, so much so that you can’t even see what’s happening; they use the fisheye effect; they pixelate the images; and they turn the screen upside down. Sometimes they do more than one effect at once. The music also becomes distorted since they turn it into 8-bit versions of itself; this both harkens back to the old video game style of 8-bit animation and music, thus adding a layer of nostalgia, while also adding to the sense of distortion. If a player isn’t super familiar with 8-bit music style, then the music is just “off”, just like the visuals are.

This is the first musical level, and I like that it starts silent and then the music begins because the player doesn’t know that this level is going to revolve around the music. It’s also unique because the characters are dancing and singing along which is a really cool way to incorporate the song into gameplay besides you having to move to the music.

I’m not going to show every single musical level, but I just particularly love the way your character moves to the beat of the music, especially with the drums and the strings.

Now for the fun part! I’m just going to show a little bit of the first level just so you can get a nice, exact comparison of these levels because the next one I’m going to show, I didn’t show the original version of.

So this level shows that sometimes when you kick, punch, jump, or something, the visuals change. This level makes you rely on the music a lot more than the other levels. It even gets to the point where you can’t even see what you’re doing, you just have to rely on the beat of the music to know when to perform an action.

EH and KT

What first came to mind for me when I began reading this article is the cheap, sometimes cardboard, VR headsets that people can buy for anywhere between $2 and $20.  While it is not specifically tied to the music genre, it plays into the same ideas of accessibility that the article discussed: the more accessible technology and art are, the more that can be accomplished using it.

I love that this article brought up a “tendency to become attached to ‘inefficient’ technologies.” Over the last 40 to 50 years, the technology to listen to music has advanced exponentially. From records to cassettes to CDs to files on computers that can hold essentially an infinite number of songs and be hooked up to the highest quality speakers known to man, we’ve come quite a long way. However, especially in the past five years, there has been a resurgence in these older, less efficient modes of listening. People are buying records so much that new record stores are opening up and modern bands and shows are releasing their albums not only online and on CDs, but also on records. It is the least portable listening device; not only that, but the way you listen to one, with a record player, is expensive and can serve no other purpose. Computers and phones can do much more and go many more places, and yet people are still attached to this “’inefficient’ technolog[y].”

1. Do you believe the idea that accessibility leads to avant-garde creations is true in every field, or just in “art-y” fields like music?

2. What is an “inefficient” technology that you still use and absolutely stand by and would never “upgrade”?