Scratch Game Design

My class has recently been working in a program called Scratch. Scratch lets you create and design games. It is very similar to Code.org, except it's more difficult, and not as straightforward. When I was much younger, I often played games similar to the one I made,and remembering that helped me a little to create it. From playing them, I was able to think about how most of the code would be made, and make it. Over the summer before 6th grade, I took a coding course at a nearby college, and that helped a little bit, even though we did not use Scratch in that course. I also knew that I prefer using W, A, S, and D to move instead of the arrow keys, even though I don't play many video games anymore. Some of my code is on the left.



My game is a very simple, easy one. It does have a few bugs that I attempted to fix, but was (sadly) not able to. In the game, you are a ghost and you must chase a bowl of cheesy puffs. As long as you are touching the cheesy puffs, you are getting points. Therefore, you must get a lot (235) points to win. All of which you must do on the moon, adding to the weirdness of the game. I rarely make anything this strange, but I felt like it this time.

I enjoyed making both of the featured games, but I struggled with both of them. I struggled the most with the first game, because I was new to Scratch. My introduction to Scratch basically felt like this: " Here's this coding program called Scratch, so make an account, it's similar to Code.org, now make a game". I was given help by adults, however. ( Almost all of my help came from my parents and the internet). The most difficult bug for me to fix was one in which when my square in my second game landed, it would wait a fraction of a second, then sink a little bit into the ground. I forget how I fixed it or what I changed, but it took me a long time to figure it out. The one thing in my game that I am proud of, though, is a gravity engine. A gravity engine, as the name suggests, simulates real gravity, because a box jumping from platform to platform is very realistic. I'm actually not sure if it works, but I copied my teachers, gravity engine, so it should work.

Invention Commercial

Our last GT project was making commercial for a product we made up. I worked with the same people I worked with on the composition technique project, Kacie and Adelina. Our main goal was just to make an informative (but fake) commercial for our product. The finished commercial is up above. Our product is a battery powered butter dish called the Butterquick. Personally, I am not happy with how the commercial came out, but I was absent for a day, so I could not influence it at all that day. Below is the plan for the commercial which we  didn't exactly follow. Below THAT, is the results from a poll the class took.

This section of my blog will be about our best "team moment". To be honest, I don't know exactly what "team moment" means. I guess I'll just talk about our most productive moment, since in school projects that is how I would determine if one time working with my team is better than another. I think that the most productive time in our project was when I went to Kacie's house to film. Although Adelina wasn't there, we got a lot of video. In Adelina's place, we used Kacie's brother, Austin. (Not the best actor).

In our teams post-production (editing) time, we had a few difficulties, but overcame them. One problem was the audio. In a few shots, whoever was filming was fairly far away, and we couldn't hear anything. That was a very easy fix, though. All we had to do was adjust the audio to a whatever level we wanted it at. We did the same thing if the audio was too quiet. I was absent for a day, though, so I don't know what happened on that day, other than the project was finished. It probably would have been easier if we had assigned each one of a specific task, but being the geniuses that we are, we obviously didn't, so most of it was mayhem.

Composition Scavenger Hunt

In GT class, we recently did something called a "composition scavenger hunt". The first thing we all did  was form groups of three, each with there own number. Then each group got a laminated paper with examples and descriptions of a bunch of different composition techniques. If a group had the numbers 1 through 10, they had film using certain techniques. If they were 11 through 20, they had to film other techniques. The most important technique, in my opinion, is "high angle". If you couldn't figure out what that is from the name, it an angle in which the camera is higher than the subject and gives the viewer a sense of superiority. I think that it is the most important because it is the main shot used for sports and other large events,to give the audience a good view of what is happening. It can also be used for close-up things like interviews by putting the camera close the speaker but just a little bit above them to give it the high angle perspective.

Now  I will tell you about which technique I think is the most difficult to use, and how I can use more of it. I think that POV, or "point of view", is the most difficult. POV is where you see through the eyes of the subject, or to put it simpler, you see what the subject is seeing. I think that it is the most difficult because of multiple different reasons. First of all, it is an awkward and difficult position to hold a camera in. It is also difficult to make a POV shot look good. POV is also a limited technique, as far as what you can film. For example, if you were to film skateboarding from POV, because the camera can not be placed directly in the skater's eye, (yet), the camera would be a bit in front of the skater's eye, you would not be able to see the board in most instances. The same goes for most sports, excluding, maybe, tennis. I do have an idea about how I can use it more, though. I would like to use it in more basic things, like comedy skits. That way you would be able to see everything you needed to see, and would have an uncommon sense of what the character is feeling, that you normally don't get in videos.

As I mentioned earlier, we all worked in teams of three. I was with two girls named Kacie and Adelina. We didn't really assign one specific job to each person, instead we rotated and switched jobs for each clip. For example, I would film Kacie  or Adelina doing something for one of the techniques, then one of them would film me doing something for another technique. We wanted to make sure our audio was clear, so

what we did is one of us would film very close to someone's mouth while they were describing one of the composition techniques. Then we used iMovie to put the audio over a video showing the technique matching the one in the audio. We used iMovie for all of the editing, and we did so on Kacie's computer.