#ciu111

In this week, we learned a little about Copyright and Fair use in the creative industry. It’s not an interesting subject at all, but it’s important from out line of work or study, still this has been done before so there’s not much to learn about Copyright.

Examples used in the lesson was music made by Bob Dylan and how similar to older music it is or that it was copied. There were more examples, mostly in the music industry where it appears where the main copyright problem is compared to other industry, since it’s easy to use other parts from other musics or videos and use it in their songs.

It’s impossible for us as human to create something completely new and orginal without drawing out from other sources or inspiration. What we can do is create an idea by being inspired by others and merging other things together to create something new. 

On this week, we learned about Social Media and Your Career. It was mostly about how to use social websites to put yourself out in the world and creative industry. It was mostly about how you can start your freelance career though the internet by posting your works up online and start up a portfolio for others to see your works.

In this week’s class, we on the topic of “Your Income & Your art”. It was about the different ways you can earn from your art and work and this interested me since I’m trying to earn from drawing online.

It was mostly focused on fundraisers websites like Kickstarter, Gofundme and other websites. All of these you start a “campaign” to raise money for your chosen project and/or work, but it depends on those who want to support you if your campaign can be successful. So you mostly if you want to have a successful fundraiser you need to at least need a fanbase or a great idea. Other artists, like myself, would uses websites like Deviantart, Tumblr and Twitter to put out their works as a freelance artist to earn money though commissions , some even take it another step farther by setting up a Patreon where their fans can donate to them monthly and sometimes get a reward in return.

tell me about yourself? - list your skills, education and professional background.

About me:

Aleks Stock, studying Bachelor of Graphic Design, have experience in Animation, Acting, Comic Art, Writing. Working as freelance illustrator, can draw both cartoon/realism. Knows anatomy, perspective, foreshortening. Experienced in Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Paint Tool SAI. I aim to make a living out of what I do.

- if it didn’t come from your own brain, cite it

- create portfolio/cover letter/cv aiming at a real job offer

- make whacked resume

- GD portfolio http://justcreative.com/portfolio/#!prettyPhoto[logo-design-archive]/1/

- job aim https://www.seek.com.au/job/31890040?pos=4&ref=beta&tier=no_tier&type=standout&userqueryid=7fa87813887b8b3a12cad5f4c4f4d234-2092808&whereid=3000 || https://www.seek.com.au/job/31803354?pos=15&ref=beta&tier=no_tier&type=standard&userqueryid=62a89e596876ed2fc9ae464bba7459ac-3936761&whereid=1000

- Make portfolio site for first assignment, set up subdomain (portfolio.aleksstock.com)

- squarespace good website maker?

So this week’s topic is a rather large and possibly controversial one and was about targeting larger audience including increasing accessibility options and designing games for different types/races/genders/disability groups of people. It talked about inclusive designing.

(Taylor, 2016)

In the lecture, they talked about specific disabilities and how to cater for them, with the main ones being vision, hearing and mobility. This included closed-captioning, colour-blindness settings, larger and clearer fonts, making games playable with one hand, allowing wheelchair access at promotions and rather interestingly dyslexic font. 

(“Dyslexie font: The dyslexia font which eases the reading,” n.d.)

You can find this here.

I find this most interesting because I didn’t even know this existed and it is awesome. This font is specifically designed to be easier to read for people with dyslexia and a lot of research went into it (“Dyslexie font: The dyslexia font which eases the reading,” n.d.). It is awesome. I come from a family where dyslexia is common and to find out there’s a font that makes it easier, it surprised me. I quickly passed along the link to everyone, that’s for sure.

(“Now that’s awesome | alien guy,” n.d.)

Another big thing the lecture talked about was when people are racist but don’t realise they are and how this makes itself obvious in creative media industries. Things like the “black sidekick/best friend” trope where people want to prove they’re not racist by being racist  (“Black best friend,” n.d. “Black people as scenery,” 1995). Or putting someone who looks like they are from eastern asia as the nerd or martial art expert (“Asian and nerdy,” n.d.). A way to prevent this is to get a more multicultural team working on the production or to put more than just one character of each stereotypical ‘race’ so that one character isn’t trying to represent millions or even billions of people.

(“Snap out of it get your head back in the game |…,” n.d.)

The last big thing they talked about was gender and sexuality. Sexuality is poorly represented as like with race. There’d be one character who isn’t straight to try and add diversity but it falls short pretty fast. Shows like “Orange is the New Black” is improving this, by showing more than just one stereotypical ‘not-straight’ person and showing a diverse group of characters.

I think one of the most surprising things I learnt about gender-inclusiveness was that studies showed that a majority of women prefer competitive games that you don’t direct exert violence against another player. This shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was but I had never really thought about that much. An example of this is the gender divide in mobiles games such as Clash of the Clans versus Bejeweled Blitz.

(Mason, 2013)

Clash of the Clans is a game where people directly verse other players to earn rewards to better their own clan/community whereas Bejeweled Blitz you verse a leaderboard of best scores made up of other players and the competition is not as direct. 

While games with the less direct competition are on the rise in mobile gaming, they are still lacking in other consoles. Games designed for females specifically are generally quite lacking and there isn’t enough on the market, considering nearly half the demographic of gamers are female (Lofgren, 2016). The issue appears to be that while nearly half of those playing games are female, less than a quarter of game developers are actually female (Lofgren, 2016). There seems to be a lot of biased in the game developer world and even computing in general against females. 

I think this stuck out the most to me, given that this refers to me and will be important to understand. I never put much thought into how games designed for females would differ from games designed for males because to me they are all games and each individual prefers particular genres. I grew up in a family where it didn’t make a difference. Link gaming PlayStation Ones to play Command and Conquer was something we did every other weekend and games like Need for Speed which could be played split screen were some of my favourite video games. Cluedo, monopoly and uno were also extremely popular in our household. I don’t have any problem playing one-on-one games, with or without violence. It never occurred to me that these games aren’t very female orientated because I don’t really see games as gender orientated. This could be what’s happening in the industry, where people make games that they would like but because the majority of the industry is male, these games turn out male-orientated. Personally, I care very little if the main character is male or female because it doesn’t bother me. I’m there for the gaming experience not the gender of the character. That being said, Saints Row the Third and Four (I haven’t played one or two) do gender diversity costume wise, really well. Clothing can typically go on either gender of the character and it is really amusing.

References

Asian and nerdy. Retrieved July 10, 2016, from TV Trope, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsianAndNerdyBlack best friend. Retrieved July 10, 2016, from TV Trope, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackBestFriend

Black people as scenery. (1995, December ). Retrieved July 10, 2016, from Ethical Spectical, http://www.spectacle.org/1295/blacks.html

Dyslexie font: The dyslexia font which eases the reading. Retrieved July 10, 2016, from Dyslexie Font, https://www.dyslexiefont.com/

Lofgren, K. (2016, July 1). 2015 video game statistics & trends who’s playing what & why? | big fish Blog. Retrieved July 6, 2016, from Big Fish, http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2015-global-video-game-stats-whos-playing-what-and-why/

Mason, M. (2013). Demographic breakdown of mobile Gamers. Retrieved July 6, 2016, from M Dev, http://developers.magmic.com/demographic-breakdown-casual-mid-core-hard-core-mobile-gamers/

Now that’s awesome | alien guy. Retrieved July 10, 2016, from https://memegenerator.net/instance/59730520

Snap out of it get your head back in the game |…. Retrieved July 10, 2016, from Meme Generator, https://memegenerator.net/instance/56204915

This week’s lecture and discussion was about secret interview techniques and about how the interview process works.

(memefort, 2015)

The lecture explained how there’s usually a phone call first before a “face-to-face” interview and the standard questions an interviewer may ask. It also explained that interviewers may ask questions which have no wrong or right answer but it is how you answer them is what they are looking for. Or to be put more clearly, the answer to the questions are how your logic process works. An example of this are Microsofts’ “Process thinking questions” (Microsoft, 2016). Questions like these may be “How would you weigh a plane without scales?” or “How many times do a clock’s hands overlap in a day?” which might seem simple until you actually think properly about it (SAE_CIU_OverviewofIndustry & Institute, 2015).

(“Tricky funny quotes,” n.d.)

In  the class discussion we talked about how to dress to an interview in the creative industry so as to not overdress. We also discussed what kind of questions we would give if we were an interviewer, made a list and then asked someone else these questions to see how they would answer. The answers were then summarised into pros and cons. 

(“Tricky question,” n.d.)

While I have actually been to interviews and in fact completed a phone interview to attend SAE, this was enlightening. I was unaware you could be overdressed, although now I think about it, that makes sense. I also learnt to always ask a question at the end of the interview when the interviewer asks because that question might make you that bit more memorable.

(“Am I ready for this interview? False. The questio…,” n.d.)

References

Am I ready for this interview? False. The questio…. Retrieved June 30, 2016, from Meme Generator, https://memegenerator.net/instance/55472907memefort. (2015, September 25). 

Getting mentally psyched up for a phone interview.. Retrieved June 30, 2016, from Memes, http://memefort.com/getting-mentally-psyched-up-for-a-phone-interview/

Microsoft (2016). Microsoft careers: Interview prep. Microsoft Careers. Retrieved from https://careers.microsoft.com/help/studentinterviewSAE_CIU_OverviewofIndustry, & Institute, S. C. (2015, March 26). 

Week 4: Secret interview techniques — self-directed practitioners. Retrieved June 30, 2016, from https://medium.com/self-directed-practitioners/week-8-secret-interview-techniques-8cdd5b225eee#.m6aayunfb

Tricky funny quotes. Retrieved June 30, 2016, from http://quotesgram.com/tricky-funny-quotes/