Category: Weekly Blog

This week started with us going to the branding critique. We got some great feedback and decided to change our poster, half sheet, and logo. We went through a few iterations, but this is what they look like officially.

 

By Tuesday we started brainstorming possible ideas for a story and interactions. We came up with three ideas:

• The squirrel is the guardian of the pillow tree and bestows the Wish Child a pillow of sweet dreams
• The squirrel is a trickster who has hid the pillow and it is up to the Wish Child to find it
• The squirrel is a merchant who makes the pillow special for the Wish Child

We met with faculty who advised us to try to keep it as fun and silly as possible, which lead us to wanting our story to not have any major takeaways, but rather, just be a fun lighthearted experience for the Wish Kids and their families.

We also decided on a name.

 

Randy.

 

Or at least that is what we are calling the squirrel for the time being. We asked Give Kids The World if there were any special names that they would like to honor the squirrel with, and so the name is subject to change.

We began making concept art for us to playtest with for the design of Randy.

 

On Saturday we went to the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum and began playtesting for squirrel concept.

The top choices were:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, we started prepping for quarters next week. We’re really excited to show the faculty what we have done so far, and all the helpful feedback they can give us.

 

Next week after quarters, we hope to start on script and begin getting the final concept for Randy.

This week started early.

3:30AM to be exact.

Our team met during a snowstorm to head over to the airport for our 5:55AM flight to sunny, 70F, Orlando.

Once we landed, we did some good ol’ fashion team bonding and spent the day at Disney World since we ended up getting there a day early.

On Tuesday we visited the Give Kids The World Village. We met Abby who we had been contacting via email before, and had a wonderful time touring and learning more about how Give Kids The World got it’s start and the past/current attraction there. When we got to the Castle Of Miracles (where the star program is located) we saw the past ETC projects that worked with the Star Tower and Star Fairy. We also visited the Pillow Tree and noticed that it had been a while since it had been updated.

Abby also shared with us some of their upcoming plans to relocate the spa in order to make room for a Star Observatory in order to expand on the star program.

After returning to Pittsburgh later that day, we got an email listing some of the projects that we their top priority. On the top of the list was the Pillow Tree, which had been an ETC project back in 2007 (Project Sweet Dreams). Followed by the Star Observatory that will replace the spa. They left it up to us on what we wanted to focus on.

 

Our team met a lot about what we wanted to focus on. On the one hand, we were never quite sure what we were going to work on, but we always assumed it was building off of the previous star program projects. However, be began to get more and more ideas on how we could improve on the Pillow Tree vs. how we could help design the Star Observatory.

 

We met with Ricardo and Brenda and decided to focus mainly on the Pillow Tree while doing design documentation for the Star Observatory on the side.

 

Once this was decided, there was a lot of work we needed to get started on. For starters, since we are planning to create a new animation, we needed to get started on the character design and development. We decided to start drawing concepts for squirrels, creating a new color scheme, and extensively researching the project Sweet Dreams.

 

Some ideas that we have already for the pillow tree:

• Reincorporate the shakers in leaves
• Use DMX lighting
• Change the plot so that it makes more since for the pillow to appear in the tree trunk next to the attraction
• Change the character to something more energetic
• Change the physical aspect of the tree to fit the theme of the castle more
• LED lights in the tree to represent stars
• Shadow play
• Non-tech interactions (like jumping up and down or spinning around)

 

Some ideas we have for the Star Observatory design:

• Use chips for easy input into the computer and finding where the star goes
• Create a galaxy on the wall, which to guests looks like just a painting, but to staff is a grid for where stars are

 

Lastly, we completed our first drafts of our logo and poster for the critique next week. At the moment this is what we have.

 

Next week we will be critiquing and modifying our poster and logo, doing concept for both the animation and the area, playtesting, and getting ready for quarters.

This week we created our concept board and brought it to a concept board workshop on Monday.

We got some great feedback on some things that we could do to improve or add tech to the star program. One of the biggest challenges we had with this was that we still were not completely sure which project we were working on or what technology we would have access to.

We also took our team photo, which we decided to look like a Star Wars poster because it was something that our team all had a common interest in and bonded over. We are planning to add more elements to it that relate to our project after we visit and get more information on it.

Lastly, we made a list of questions that we could ask during our upcoming trip to the village. We met with Brenda and Ricardo to go over these questions, and fortunately they could answer some of them for us already. We are so excited to visit the Give Kids The Village next week and find out more about our upcoming project.

 

Week one was a great startup week. We had Monday off for MLK day and started the week off on Tuesday.

On Tuesday we got the keys to our project room and set up our desks and computers. Kacey, Pradnesh and Jason had a quick informal meeting with Brenda about the project and began setting dates to visit the Give Kids The World Village. We also started brainstorming name ideas for the project while following the tradition from past projects working on the star project to have the word ‘star’ in the name. We also began doing research and reading about the previous star projects.

 

On Wednesday we had a team meeting at 10AM and decided on the name Stargazer. We then continued to do research on the previous star projects, mostly focussing on project Starscape since they are the most recent project to work on the Star Tower in the Give Kids The World Village.  We still are not sure of the specifics of the project, but we hope to prepare ourselves for the time being for when we get more details after visiting the Village.

 

On Thursday we met with Ricardo and got some great advice for when we go to visit the village. We began to brainstorm questions to ask when we go, as well as deciding how we are taking pictures and videos.

 

Lastly, on Friday we finished our self assessments and turned them in and began working on the composition box for Monday’s playtesting workshop.