Vote for Buzz Wearable!

Hi guys! I don’t usually ask for people to vote for things, but in this case I really would love if you did!

Two weeks ago I helped co-found Buzz Wearable in a crazy Startup Weekend Battle. We created this company in 54 hours and placed third in our local competition! We’re creating a wearable that helps passively monitor your blood alcohol content and syncs with your phone to help keep you safe. As a result of winning 3rd we have continued into the Global Startup Battle!

We need votes for each of the tracks we entered. You can watch our 90 second pitch video there and vote for us to win!

Please vote at each of the tracks we have entered below. You can vote once each day from November 26th – December 4th.

Please note that each page looks the same, but they’re all DIFFERENT tracks and will need a vote every day.

Championship Track: https://app.reviewr.com/gsb/pitch?evtid=1305517&group=1305626&subid=1341056

Great in the Making Track:https://app.reviewr.com/gsb/pitch?evtid=1305517&group=1328726&subid=1344942

Startup Women Track:https://app.reviewr.com/gsb/pitch?evtid=1305517&group=1328730&subid=1344948

The Innovators Track:https://app.reviewr.com/gsb/pitch?evtid=1305517&group=1328727&subid=1344971

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If you need help figuring out how to vote here’s a few photos.

1. Go to one of our links above. The page will look like this:

2. Click on the ‘Click Here to Vote’

3. Login or Register

4. Vote by clicking on the grey thumb.

5. If you’re vote has been received it’ll now look like this.

6. Repeat for each of the tracks you haven’t already voted for.

Championship Track: https://app.reviewr.com/gsb/pitch?evtid=1305517&group=1305626&subid=1341056

Great in the Making Track:https://app.reviewr.com/gsb/pitch?evtid=1305517&group=1328726&subid=1344942

Startup Women Track:https://app.reviewr.com/gsb/pitch?evtid=1305517&group=1328730&subid=1344948

The Innovators Track: https://app.reviewr.com/gsb/pitch?evtid=1305517&group=1328727&subid=1344971

Ello, Startup Week, & Graduation

Hello,

So I did that thing called graduate from college with a BFA in Advertising & Graphic Design. And now I’m sitting around my house trying to figure out what I want to do with this degree.

Obviously I want to work in Graphic Design, the problem is figuring out what part of design that I want to work in. There’s so many possibilities that I every time I try to narrow it down I end up with more options and more ideas. For now until I find a job, I’ve just decided that I’m gonna blog about it.

The week after graduation I jumped straight into the job search. I left on Sunday from Columbus to Boulder, CO. Monday was a lazy day of trying to grasp the fact that I have no more school to look forward to and that I need to find a job. It involved TV watching and sleeping a lot. Not much excitement there.

Tuesday was a different story. I had added the Meet Ups app to my phone right before bed and was scrolling through all the different events going on. Lo and Behold, Startup Week Boulder. An entire week dedicated to Startups, and right on Tuesday was a job fair. So Tuesday morning I rallied together my portfolio, some resumes, and the little left of my business cards (10 total) and went to the event. I can say that I officially flung myself out of my comfort zone. Seriously met so many amazing people and went to a ton of different events through out the week.

Some highlights were seeing some of the cofounders of Ello, which I didn’t even realize was a Boulder Startup. I’ve been following Berger & Fohr’s website for awhile, but somehow missed that they had started Ello. Guess I wasn’t paying attention. I also went to the Boulder Crawl and met people there. Ran all over the mall and ended up making some new friends along the way.

Wednesday, there were a few events that I went to related to Advertising. I felt like I went to a nicer presentation and condensed version of my Advanced Branding class. Beautiful graphics and an amazing presentation that I wanted to learn more about. After that I went to a presentation on Empowering the Student Entrepreneur. I liked that one ’cause, even though I’ve graduated, I still related to it. It helped remind me to look at the core of what I want to do with my graphic design skills and the idea of empowering myself.

Thursday was a lot of fun. I went down for the Internship panel which was helpful in giving tips. Following that I went to Mondo Robot Design Happy Hour and talked to a few people there. I love going to that place. Everyone is so interesting and I love the work that they do. It’s one of the places that inspired me to go into Graphic Design. From there I went to Hack the Dot. I joined a team and we built a website, or as much of one as we could, in a two hour period. It was so fast and so much fun! It was great to work with Kim & Stuart to create Geeklife.Social as a cool website.

Friday the panels I went to was Technology & Startups. It was very interesting to talk learn about the different websites used to help build these companies. From there I went to Boomtown Demo Day. OMG I WANT TO BE THE DESIGNER FOR ALL THESE STARTUP’S PRESENTATIONS. One of the things I really enjoyed during my time at school was creating presentations. There was something about that which always focused my mind and helped me figure out what I wanted to get done. Seeing the presentations at Boomtown made me so excited and I felt so mesmerized. I know they probably used Indesign & After Effects, but I’m still amazed at everything that goes into it. I want to learn more about that. Seriously, I really do love presentation design and would enjoy getting a job putting information in a more concise and beautiful way. After Boomtown Demo Day I went to the closing party and met some people. Fun music & people to talk with.

That was Boulder Startup Week.

Long recap, so I’m gonna keep the rest of my Life after Graduation Adventures for another post. I’ll be going to some conventions and other meet ups in the next few weeks as I hunt for a job.

Ciao for now,

Kendall

Thesis Show

Got into the show! Since I don’t have time to get a proper update right now here are a few photos my aunt took. Proper update later.  I had a great time and really enjoyed seeing everyone play my game!
  

  

    

 

 

UI Work In Progress

Here’s the screens for my game. The elements will be reused in some poster designs as well. For now here’s the progress!

Look for an update soon with how the game looks, there will be a video up. Also I’m working on my gloves and will have some pictures of those soon.

Interview with Adrian Nedelman from Pemberly Digital

I sent an email out to Pemberly Digital asking them a few questions about adaptation a few weeks ago and forgot to post it up here! It was really helpful in me analyzing what I wanted to do with the game. Since I had to funnel down the information from Ready Player One down into something more manageable in the amount of time I had. A big Thank You Adrian for responding to my questions!

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How do you go about choosing which parts of the story should be part of the adaptation? Is there’s a specific process?

There’s no specific process, we always are making it up as we go. In general we start out with an idea – like Elizabeth Bennet as a grad student with a video blog – and then take the book chunk by chunk. Film a month, write a month, film a month etc. But we try to always keep a character driven perspective. So in terms of which parts of the adaptation to keep in, we have to consider where each character starts and where they’re going. Can that character still get where they need to go if we cut out X? If the answer is yes, then we’re probably better off without it. Things get left out if they feel redundant, if we just can’t make them work for the new setting, or if we feel like we’re trying to squeeze something in only as a reference to original text, and not because it serves our character and their story.

Also, as embarrassing as it is to admit, tools like sparknotes have been a big help to us. Not because we don’t read the original text (believe me, we do) but because it’s easy way to understand the commonly accepted ‘big plot points’. This big plot points are the imperatives. You’ll notice that the Pride and Prejudice sparknotes plot summary only mentioned the three Bennet sisters: Elizabeth, Jane and Lydia. This isn’t how we decided to only have the three of them as sisters in the show, but I think it confirms that our instincts were right.

Do you have suggestions on how I should approach rereading my book for the adaptation?

What you’re doing is going to be very different that what we do, I’m afraid. When we read, we’re thinking about what world we’re going to put the book in and what kind of modern people have the same flaws as these fictional people. You’re going to making a game though, I and feel like that probably takes a totally different thought process. I haven’t actually read Ready Player One (I know about it though) but it seems like an interesting choice. Since you’ve already made a decision about your format, just knowing that will help you when you re-read. You can think about all the questions of game design, and also figure out a meta-game strategy. (Since your book focuses on the main character playing games.) You can have a list of questions that you ask yourself when you go in for the reread such as: Is your game going to be in first person or third person? Does the person playing the game take on the role of Wade? If so, how do you lead them towards making the same choices that Wade made and take them through the narrative? How do you make the player feel like they have agency? How do you incorporate Wade’s in-game life and out of game life in your game?

What are some challenges that you face in adapting a book into a series?

Because our shows are vlog style, we always struggle with what to show and what not to show in the main videos. Some important events just don’t make sense within our conceit (everyone asks “why would she be filming right now? why would she put this on the internet?”) so we have to find ways around that using transmedia.

Since your series span multiple mediums how do you focus down which parts go on which platform?

A quote from Bernie: “As for the synergy between the writer’s room and the transmedia team, for LBD the writer’s room went first. Block out the episodes, figure out what’s happening for the next few months, get that locked down, and assign the episodes out. Once that’s done the transmedia team would then work around what’s there. The evolution to present day Emma Approved is that the writing team is actually smaller while the interactive team has grown and is now larger. There was more going on in EA non-video wise on a week by week basis so we’ve grown the team. But since our very rough start of the show interactive wise, I feel there is a lot more synergy because it really is just one big room now. So even though we still block out the episodes by month. Basically, we don’t have writer meetings with transmedia support scrambled together later, we now just have story meetings where we cover everything. So if you get anything from my answer, it’s that. Think of it all as part of the story.”

Game Testing with some Programming

Progress update with some of the coding in place. More to come later on. I have big weekend of everything that I need to get done, so look out for a logo and UI for the game!

COGG & Gloves

Lots going on here, it’s getting crazy. Went to COGG this past Saturday with Jillian and got a ton of help. I had my Makey Makey glove out for testing and everyone was playing it. They helped give me tips on the game play. Some people are also helping me out with music for the game which is awesome! They also helped with coding as well. Here’s some shots of people talking from Saturday!

Here’s an updated version of my game too. Jillian did some work to it and now it has fog and it’s dark and creepy!

So for next update I’ll have the coding finished hopefully and my gloves ready to go. I’m sewing some conductive fabric and string to the fingertips of my gloves to help it work. I did a ton of testing this weekend so I feel confident in the way everything is working out! I also have a meeting with Jillian this Thursday so more to be updated then!

Glove Updates

Some visual on the glove testing for some quick Thursday progress check in. Still a long way to go. I’ve bought some conductive thread and fabric from Adafruit which will be here soon. Will get you more to look at soon!

Torches & Research

I’ve spent most of my time since the last update trying to decide on if I want to continue playing with Makey Makey or if I want to try out FLORA (pictured right) or some other kind of component. In the interest of time I’ve decided that using Makey Makey will be the best of the choices. I’m still tinkering with the process, but will be posting progress within the next week or so for you to see. I want to make sure that I go down all avenues before I commit. I’ve started diagraming the look of the gloves out and will have a scanned picture out for you to see next time.

As for game progress I’m getting there. There’s a lot of components still to add and I’m doing my best to get as much of them done by the time Saturday rolls around. There is another COGG meet up that I’m going to and I want as much done as possible so that I can get feedback. Below is the video of what I’ve updated since last time.

For next week look for updates on game progress and the Makey Makey gloves. Once those two are done I can spend the rest of the time finishing out the trailer and poster designs. I’ll keep you guys updated!

Video Progress Check In

Some quick video of the game play so far.