Animated Life Lessons

P1T2 Distance Challenges Friendship from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

New project update!! Our new project here in G.T. class is about creating a video that has humorous digital animation using all teammates’ puppet warp characters to exaggerate their personal traits & idiosyncrasies while telling a relatable story with embedded life lessons that is easy for an audience of your peers to understand. So my group has three people; Meagan, Jasmine, and myself. So each of us has our own personal traits; Meagans' character trait is laughability because she laughs easily and makes others laugh as well, Jasmines' character trait is funniness because she makes humorous comments, and my character trait according to my teammates is Glamorous because I'm a fashionista that loves shopping.

We used humor by saying things we thought were funny. Our characters also did some things that weren't "normal".

Music Video Finale

P1T7 Oui from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Our final project of our middle school lives is music video! We will be going to high school! So our music video is the song "Oui" by Jeremih and our storyline relates with our lyrics because our storyline shows how these two people need each just how the song says it. 

In our music video, we don't really have a fast edit sequence. So really I don't have a favorite fast edit. Though I like our storyline in our music video. Also this music video shows us having fun and not always being serious and uptight, instead we are chill and having fun. 

Our last music video of our 8th grade year doesn't really showcase our best work to be honest because our communication was poor and Jasmine was absent most of the time because she was sick, so its a little understandable. 

Character Development

Do people ask you what kind of a person you are? I get asked quit a lot, and usually I really don't know what to say, and yes I know to some people that may seem like a weird question. But anyway I am the type of person that is nice when I meet you but when you get to know me well I become weird and mean at times. Humorous or relatable imperfections that me and you might have is...

While animating myself, I plan for the character traits to be just like me, maybe even a little more exaggerated. So the character traits that the animation will have is nice, weird, mean.

The steps in making this GIF animated character can be simple or it can be difficult. Step one is to get a photo of yourself in a certain pose. The second step is to go into photoshop and make a cut out that separates you from the background and once you have that you save it and then you also make another copy of it, the reason you make a copy of the cut out is because if you mess up on the first one at least you have a back up. Once you made the copy you are gonna want to crop it to a smaller size, the reason is because if you are working in a big size than photoshop may slow down and it won't turn out great. The third step is to go to edit >puppet warp > place pins. Then to make an animation go to window > animation > drop down menu. Then select all frames and change to 0.1 second. Now you have your animation. In my opinion I'm not in favor of making this GIF animated character of myself 

.MOV Film Festival

  P1T6 Demon Possesses Sisters from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.



Hooray!! We are filming to be entered in the 2nd Annual .MOV Film Festival. Keywords? Our keywords are horror, spoof, and comedy. I think these words connect with our audience because whenever people make a horror movie cliche people always think "oh,its a horror movie remake, horror, spoof, and comedy." Right....right.


Our overall message is letting people know its okay to have a sense of humor at a hard time. Our message is this because a lot of people are always uptight and don't really have a bright side to whenever things happen bad. There is always a positive side to a negative



Our biggest challenge is filming a middle school girl driving,why? bc we are not legally able to drive until 15 1/2. Also some other challenges we faced were being able to film other than one day because we all had other things planned, some expected some unexpected.

Tiny Spherical Worlds

Spherical 

Is one picture enough for you? For me one picture is not enough, when I take pictures even if it's of one specific thing I still take multiple. The reason one picture isn't enough is because what if the picture is blurry or something else. When breaking up a panorama you need to composite your images, what I mean by this is when you want a panorama but can't get one you make multiple shots while slightly moving the camera  

Is there a difference between polar and spherical panos? Yes there is a big difference, for a polar pano it's taking a panoramic landscape including defined horizon lines manipulated to create a circular planet like image and a spherical pano is taking a circular shape with content that is formed on the surface or inside. Also when creating these two amazing images there is only one step different and that is when creating your spherical you don't rotate the image you distort it.

What makes my tiny worlds convincing is my shadows and the fact that it doesn't look as if I'm a cut out. Also the way that I made my images look like my own little world and my own future seeing globe. Also I tried my very best for this project and I made it as convincing as possible with hiding the lines. Hiding where the panorama started and where is ended was difficult, but I used the stamp tool to hide that and did the best I could.

Hockney Style Joiners

David Hockney's photomontages are different from mines because first thing first David Hockney is a professional and I am just a beginner, though with a lot of practice I can become like David Hockney. Also since David Hockney has done with for many years he knows what he is doing.

We see images everywhere we go, no matter if its on social media or in a magazine or a simple photo taken by yourself. But what message do you get from those photos? Are they positive messages or negative? I'll give you an example of a positive message, lets say you saw an image of flowers blossoming, the message you could get from that is "there is always a new beginning" or anything that you can imply. An example of a negative message is seeing a photo of your friends or someone very close to you starting to feel like they don't belong,a message someone might get from that image is thinking that they just want attention or they have nothing better to do then make people feel bad.

Photomontages have messages and people get different messages from different pictures. For my photomontage there will be a lot of different messages that people will get, the reason I say that is because my photomontage is my makeup. For guys I intend the message to be makeup is part of a girls life no matter what, even if it's just mascara. The message I intend girls to have is

2016 Aspirations

It's 2016 New Year, new me wait no never mind its just a new year. But everyone has their goals that they want to achieve. So my 5 goals that I would like to achieve are number 1 spending more time with friends not just in school but outside school as well, my reason is because I always have to be with my family and I never have time with friends, my family is very protective so they don't really let me go anywhere unless it's something for school or an adult is with me. My second goal is to prepare myself for high school and not get anymore C's, I mostly just want to get A's, my reason is because my whole future depends on my grades and to reach my future goals my grades need to be A's. My third goal is to stop being late to school or meeting or anything important, which is mostly everything. I want to stop being late because when I get older being late is not a good thing, especially if it's important. My fourth goal is to cook more for my family, not just rice or something you can bake, but mostly like cooking a full dinner or lunch, so basically frying, making soups, etc. Finally my fifth goal is to grow my nails long and to not have them chip or break, I want to grow my nails long because I really can't handle having my nails short and also long nails are really nice when you paint them and get french tips without using fake nails.

My one main goal, well I actually have two not one but two main goals. Those two main goals is preparing myself for high school and not getting any C's but mostly A's and very few B's. My other goal is spending more time with my friends. These two main goals are both my number 1 goal because I rarely spend time with friends outside of school and lately my grades have been slipping. Also high school is just around the corner and that's when everything counts, if I have one C just one my dream college is down the drain. But I can't always focus on my studies,I also need a little freedom here and there. Hopefully I can achieve these two main goals in the coming year.

The steps I will take to ensure success is to get myself organized and prepared for everything. So I don't get any C's I will study whenever I must study and put my best effort in all my work, even if I don't have the effort too, I will. To spend more time with friends I must get all work done, including school work, house work, and farm work. After all if you want something you must work for it. 

Scratch Game Design

User experience influenced my game because I wanted the player to be interested in the game and that they would experience what a mouse experiences when it's getting chased by a cat,because though it wants to get away its limited to its space. I've done coding before and it seems really fun and all but sometimes it can be challenging. When I see other people's game i'm very impressed especially since it's code, because it comes naturally to them.

Each game so far has been similar because it's either running from something, or it's chasing something. With my scratch game the player is the mouse and the player needs to get away from the cat. So every time the cat gets the mouse it says "dang"and loses 1 point,but if the mouse stays away from the cat long enough the mouse earns a point and every so often the background changes because in reality the cat chases the mouse where ever it goes even if the mouse goes to the park. To me this game is as simple as I can keep it. With my second game it's known as a platform game I kept it as simple as I could and it is simple but there is some glitches. My platform game is basically your ordinary monkey goes after banana. So with my platform game the monkey has to get the banana twice, but unfortunately the monkey can only get the banana once due to glitches and other stuff.

My best code for me would be the code that I wrote for my chase game. To some people my code may seem simple and easy,but for me this is my best by far and hopefully when I get more familiar with code I will have more challenging codes. My most difficult bugs were the ones in my platform game, though I haven't quit overcame this certain bug fix. So I guess another bug fix would be how my chase game and so the difficult bug fix that I overcame for my chase game is that the cat would be going directly at the move and it didn't quit "chase" the mouse,so with the help of the internet and Mr.Sanderl, I overcame that bug fix and my game works smoothly.

best code

Invention Commercial

P1T3_Invention from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

My teams main goal was to create a real life app that anyone can download on the app store. The apps main purpose is to have all your clothing on the app and then you can choose a style you like or put whatever emotion your feeling, then the app chooses a perfect outfit.

The best "team moment" during production was when we wore different clothing such as the 80's,modern, and trending. Another best "team moment" was when we got to film going into the closet and throwing the clothes and making a mess. These two were the best "team moments" because we were focused during those times and we had a lot of fun,unlike the other times we were just taking breaks and on our phones.

Editing was done by both me and Jasmine, at first I was editing and then I showed Jasmine and she made changes that was needed and that is what you see in the commercial. The commercial was filmed and edited within a short amount of time because me and Jasmine weren't able to meet up a lot due to personal reasons. We filmed the day before the commercial was due and edited on the day the commercial was due. When editing we had to make sure that what was being said was being seen. For example if the commercial is saying 80's but it's showing modern it doesn't make sense. So hopefully you like our commercial.

Composition Scavenger Hunt

P1T3_Composition_2015 from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

The composition that I think is the most important is rule of thirds (subject). My reason is because when people take pictures they often always have theirselves either centered or just a little to the left or right, but they never have theirselves in the rule of thirds area.  Also rule of thirds is important even if its not with a subject, but with landscape. So with rule of thirds (scenery) people often tend to just take a picture without thinking what their focus point is. I would know because I often did that with rule of thirds scenery, I just thought it was a nice picture and took it, with out thinking where is my focus point.

So the most difficult for our class was leading lines and flat angle. But for me I think the most difficult is rule of thirds subject and scenery because I can never seem to image the lines on the screen for rule of thirds. How can I use rule of thirds more?  Lets see I can use rule of thirds whenever I take amazing pictures of myself and friends and also when I take pictures of the ocean or any beautiful landscape.

My teammates for this mini project was Jasmine Laplante and Nahele Keale. For the scavenger hunt I did leading lines, parts of a whole,repetition of shapes, and rule of thirds scenery. Jasmine did rule of thirds,contrast in content. Nahele did framing, unusual angles, extreme close-up. All together we did grouping shots.

Cracking the Code

Do you think everyone should learn code? I personally do think everyone should learn code. The reason being is because if they love computers and technology, then they can possibly program any technology they wanted to if they learn code. Also people should learn code even if they aren't interesting because lets be real coding is part of our everyday life, we just don't realize it. There is coding in our technologies from our parents car keys to our Iphones or computers. So basically anything that needs a chip.

My first experience with programming or coding was in 7th grade, it was in Mr.Newbill's Period 7 class. Many people in that 7th period class thought it would be cool to learn coding or programming. At first I thought it was gonna be cool,we watched a video and did some lessons, after a while I began to not be interested. Though once in a while I like to do coding or programming because it gives me a refresh on our technology and how they are programed. But sometimes programming can be a little frustrating,but I guess you can just keep trying.


If I could design any program or game, I would create a program that can scan your eye and tell you what your vision is. It will also tell you if you need to get glasses. So you can scan your eye, then go to the eye doctor and they can prescribe your glasses, but if your unsure about the program you can check with your eye doctor just to be sure. 

My Humorous Monologue

BartonD_comedy from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

So far I have learned that trying to be funny isn't easy, It takes a lot of thinking and planning. People think comedians have an easy life, not really because they need to know what makes things funny, those are some of the things I learned. But there is more, I've also learned that when putting b-roll over a-roll its challenging, it's not like you can just snap your fingers and poof it's done,nope thats not at all how it works. Even though I have done this before it's still a challenge because you need to remember all the steps and tricks, I mean sure it's easy for some people, but not everyone. I have also learned that when you tell a funny story that already happen, its not easy to recreate.

Ever heard of padding your videos? I never did till now, so padding is when you add extra second at the beginning and ending of a video. Padding your clips is crucial because if you don't wait for those extra (at least 5) seconds then you could cut off some of the words that you are saying at the beginning or ending. So when recording you say "rolling" count 5 seconds then say "action", then the person would start speaking. Then when you finish your recording you say "cut" then wait 5 seconds and stop the video.

For this comedy project I had many weaknesses, some of which was recreating me putting cake on my priest and vice versa. Another one of my weaknesses was getting footage of the first birthday party, though my priest moved mountains for me to get that footage. My priest Ryan Newman was a great help, also other church members, such as Uncle David Murray, and Anna Yu. My strength was being able to adjust all the footage I had to match my monologue, though for one of my b-roll, I wasn't able to get a footage of the church. Some ways I feel I could improve is by having prepared and plan better.

Comedy Writing

Has anyone ever told you,you have a great sense of humor? Sometimes people tell me that,but not a lot. If you have a great sense of humor you are always positive and happy and cheerful. It all depends on how the day is. So why is sense of humor an important trait?, I feel its an important trait, because when you are funny you tend to make other peoples days better. For example if someone is all sad because a family member died, you could be funny and make that person feel like that person never left, they just became their guardian angel. I can really relate to that example because when my grandmother passed on Valentines, one of my many uncles said at least grandma and grandpa are together,he is probably walking her to the heaven gate right now. But having sense of humor is a great character trait to have.

How to write a humorous narrative. Well for starters,your asking the wrong person,just kidding I do know how to write a humorous narrative. Number one, its all in the voice. When telling a joke,you need to have a straight face and a professional voice. You can't giggle or chuckle in between telling your joke. Number two,comparing your joke becomes your best friend. Comparing jokes are the easiest, because there can be unexpected metaphors. Also comedy is really hard, so this is your next best option. Number three, if you say something that you think isn't funny,but its funny to your friends, write it down so you can remember it for something else, its called stealing from yourself. Number four, do you love surprises, well thats tip number four. Humor is all in the surprise,it needs to be unexpected for it to be funny. Finally number five humor isn't for everyone, it depends on who the person your telling the joke to is. So always remember humor isn't for everyone.

My comedic monologue is about me putting cake on my priest face. It's funny because normally you don't expect people to put cake on a person, who runs a church, especially on church grounds. But technically the priest started it, I just finished it. But to be honest, my priest still acts like he is a teenager,which is sometimes fun,but not always. So I think my monologue is funny because, I'm a 13 year old girl, putting cake frosting on her priest face, when other people are around. Also I think it's funny because it all started with a little 1 year getting frosting on her face, and then it comes to a 13 year old,and ends with the priest, who is in his 30's. But anyway,thats why I think my monologue is funny. Tell me what you think, when I post the video. 

Motivational Poster

There are a lot of projects this year, but for now this project is our Motivational Poster. The requirements for our motivational posters are for all our layers we must have a total of 4 images, 3 in which symbols that represent us and 1 portrait image of ourself. For our text layer, we must have a total of 2 text layers; one is our manifesto and the other is our personal quotes. The expectations for our design is all text must be kerned, so it can fit across the entire page, they must not be any blank spaces or holes. Another expectation is that we must have a triadic color scheme meaning 1 dominant and 2 harmonious accent colors. Also blending options for text,we can't forget those, so we needed drop shadow,stroke, outer glow, bevel, and emboss. Our final requirement is adjustment layers for our images, our main requirement for this is the color balance, other things like levels,curves, and exposure were optional.

So the first step to creating this motivational poster is thinking of personal quotes and your own manifesto. It is also about thinking what symbols represent you, oh and I almost forgot you also need a picture of yourself (Selfie). The second step is to upload your pictures into your computer, third is to create a file in photoshop. So first you can start with either your personal quotes or manifesto, its your choice. Also maybe type your personal quotes or manifesto on a google document before typing it in photoshop because photoshop doesn't have auto-correct. After this you can arrange your personal quotes or manifesto whatever way you prefer, I just chose to put my personal quotes on top and my manifesto on the bottom. Once you have your words arrange, you have to kern your words so its looks amazing, you can look on the internet to see how other people kerned their manifestos. After this you open up your photos into photoshop,then use the move tool to drag and drop you images onto the same document with your words. Turn off your words and arrange your pictures to your style. Also if you need to arrange the image size remember to hold down shift, so your image doesn't look wonky. Lastly you add effects to your words and images, to make the image look great, you must have color balance, its where you have 1 dominant and 2 harmonious accent colors. So after all this is done, you should have an amazing poster. Have fun in making this.

My biggest challenge was kerning the words perfectly. I tried everything,I resized the words, re-kerned the words over and over, but somehow I wasn't able to make my words go from one end of the page to the other. How I would improve this is probably to think of more words, but I wasn't able to think of anything else. So I worked with what I had,I kept resizing, re-kerning, and then I just did the best I could do, with what I had. So i guess that was just my biggest challenge, it was the words.

Personal Manifesto

5 interesting or unique facts about my current self is one I love to play soccer.  Two when it comes to school work, I become a workaholic, I will work till I meet my own expectations. Three I'm often quite when I meet someone I'm not very familiar with. Four I help my grandparents with farm work, every Monday and Friday from 3pm-7pm we have a market and all the produce is fresh from the farm.  Five, when I have a challenge I'm not afraid to take on the challenge,even if it gets too difficult.

My manifesto this year is...Be myself, Control my own life, Make good choices, Don't let others bring you down, Be original, Don't be afraid to speak my mind, Do it don't just say it.

My manifesto applies to my readers because for some people (including me) other people control their lives and other people shouldn't control your life. Also people think it's fun to bring other people down and it's not, so if someone brings you down, don't let them just stand up tall and smile. Another way my manifesto applies to my readers is sometimes people think its fun to try and be someone they aren't, you should't be anyone but yourself "you were born as an original, don't die as a copy"-unknown.

Lyrical Livelihood

I have a lot of song that are my favorite, but out of all my #1 favorite is Count Me In by Dove Cameron. This song really stand out because it reminds me of all the best friends that I have and how I can always count on them no matter what. Count Me In is also my #1 song because when I'm sad, I can just listen to that song and sing along, then I become really cheerful. Some of the lyrics are "If I'm the sun then your the moon, if your the words then I'm the tune, yeah". Just those first two sentence really speak to me.

The music video song my team and I chose is See You Again by Wiz Khalifa. We chose this song because we love the Furious series and Paul Walker was a big part in the movies. We also chose this song in tribute to Paul Walker and though he may be gone, he lives on forever in our hearts. We also chose this song because we all had similar feelings about the song.

The visual story that our music video will show is that though you could be gone, you can live forever. Our visuals will also relate to the lyrics of course. An example would be if the lyric is "That I'll be standing right here talking to you", then it will show two people standing or sitting and talking to each other. Then the medium is one person comforting the sad person, then the close up is their lips moving.

Our Animation Story

P3T3 Farmers Support Community from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.

Our story is about farmers supporting their community. It's about farmers and the process they do to farm. Also its how regular people can make a difference just by farming and supporting their community. We chose to do my story because it shows that a farmer like myself and the challenges they face. My group also chose to do my story because they wanted to see the process of farming.

The lesson my audience will learn is that hard work has a great reward. Also it shows the audience where some of their food is coming from. The audience will also learn that sometimes taking on the challenge of doing something such as chores or anything similar that allows you to earn money isn't that bad. They should also learn that don't just stay in the box, step out of the box and experience new things.

1 of our best moments is that we got enough images to create and meet the animation requirements. 1 of our worst moments is that we got stressed out a lot because we were never able to meet up and we didn't want to leave all the responsibilities to one person. My team and I tried the best we could to plan and meet up when needed. But when worst came to worst some of us just did the best we could, which was to take the pictures and get it done.

Animation Outtakes

This is a GIF

Our new project is an animation project,where we create an animation about one of our teammats life or life experience. My teammate are Michael Gremse, Cara Griffin  and Zephan Kaneakua. Michael moved to Hawaii from Florida, Cara is a soccer player, and Zephen plays football and other sports.

Stop-motion animation is an animation technique that makes an object or person appear to move on its own. So when played continuously it creates the illusion of movement. A GIF (aka Graphic Interchange Format) is a continuously played image. As shown to the right, the image doesn't stop. Unlike stop-motion it will stop.

The story we are telling is my story. The focus statement is farmers supporting the community. We should care because without people farming on this island all of our food would come from the mainland. Also people should care about this because the produce that we provide is all organic, no pesticides are used. We also chose to do a story about farmers supporting the community because we wanted to show how to take care of plants and the whole process each and every farmer goes through.

Typography Images

Typography is a style and appearance on a printed matter. You can use typography in images that you want to have words over it. You can take an image of a person and you can overlay the words that describes them.


My biggest challenge in this project was understanding how to make the words look good on the portrait like the examples that we have on the focus wall. I overcame that issue by asking my classmates for help and going to the website that gave us the instructions. I also listening to my teacher Mr.Sanderl .

The first typography image was about Marie Curie, I would have to say that it was the toughest of them all, the reason being is that I didn't really understand how to make the words look the way it is in the image. I was able to make it that way due to some help from my classmates such as Meagan, and Tessa. The second image is my science and social studies teacher Mr.Newbill. This image was also challenging because we had to make a stamp and we also had to make the words readable. I got some help from another classmates and they are Dylan, and Loren. My final image was an image about myself, I would have to say that doing when I was making my own typography picture it was quit easy. But in the end I got a little help from Kyler. Out of the 3 images I would have to say that doing myself of the typography image was my favorite.

Double Exposed Portraits

Portrait Photography is a photo of a person or group of people that display their expression,personality,and or mood. With portrait photography it's the persons whole face, unlike profile which is the side view of the face.Also with having a silhouette the image is completely featureless, but even if it is completely plain you can still tell its a person because of the outline. 

Double exposure is created in photoshop by taking 3 photos profile, and 2 symbolic images that represent you,then opening photoshop and clicking file>script>load files into stack.You then outline the shape of the portrait, so around the face is where you should outline first, once you finish outlining the face, make the rest of the background completely white. Then crop your image to be 8.5" x 11" or any size you would like. Then take the 2 images that you took and change it to screen mode. You then can explore and change it to what you like. Such as clicking Layer>New  adjustment Layer>Curves or Exposure.

The 2 photos I took is my book that I am currently reading called Cress and the other photo is a flower that I drew. I chose these 2 photos because I love to read books especially one that seems interesting and the flower because I love to be creative and draw whatever comes to my mind or I draw something that inspires me. I think I could improve my image by moving the picture of the book a little so that you could see the full title of the book