A Service Beyond Hours

My Senior year of high school was a busy one... The classes demand your attention and truly prepare you for the real world. That being said, I've had to finish up my service hours that I didn't fully complete back earlier on in 2016. Specifically, I completed a multitude of service hours at local libraries and even a few back at GCE. Finding the time and managing said time to get all my service hours was a bit tough but with perseverance, I managed to optimize my weekends to spend on work and the hours equally. Tasks such as organizing shelfs, files, papers, or cleaning up some sections to tidy up the children's area.

Helping out the staff actually made me realize that no matter how many employee's you may have, there's never going to be a moment where you're 100% perfect or out of work. The realization came to me as even professionals needing help some times, as no one can manage to keep everything in check. And considering that, I think it's a good reminder to myself, to know that it's ok to ask for help.

Live & Learn - The Starting Line

So a new term has come and with that, I'm writing a blog for the first Action Project of my Humanities course called Endurance. This first unit, Morpheus, we focused around The Hero's Journey and endured our our physical challenges, focusing mainly on increasing our own strength. An FE we went own featured us doing a bootcamp style exercise, which had ourselves pushing past our own limits. So this unit was to see how far we can go and how far we're willing to go beyond that breaking point. The Action Project for this class is to write out an autobiography and talk about my childhood but speak about the future of where I see myself in a few dozen years, as if it had already happened.

Chapter 1: Timid to Tenacious

When I was young, I didn't have much of a childhood. Things like holidays didn't necessarily exist and my dad was more than busy working to support this family of 4. The 6 year gap between me and my brother was actually something that kept us rather distant, and my memories of my mother consist of her being stressed by my brother. On that note, I was the exact opposite. I was shy, never really spoke out, and whilst I loved being social, I don't think I ever really went out of my way to be social. I had a few nice friends until I was transferred to different schools all around the city, whether the was because of me or because of my brother always depended on the situation. I have fond memories of my 2nd grade, 5th grade, and middle school life because they were when I actually wasn't being constantly bullied or when I learned how to make those kinds of people stop with such judgmental and scrutinizing behavior. However that didn't come without its struggles. That means for the other 4-5 years of my childhood, I had to try and keep myself up when I was constantly pushed down, which was without a doubt a mental challenge for my kiddie brain. I was taught that life was black and white, right and wrong, which couldn't be any more presumptuous than most stereotypes. Slowly I grew to understand that it was the refusal of humility that made me kept being bullied. If I went along with some teases or made it a competition of sorts to exchange insults, I wasn't nearly as ostracized as I was if I just went to being frustrated or upset. This was actually quite the good lesson to keep me charismatic and social, impacting my public speaking skills and allowing me to gain confidence towards who I am because I started caring less about what people saw just by looking at me.

Now the challenge of pushing through the barrage of hurtful words which would sometimes be said at home was what definitely drove my passion of art to its fullest. My escape from reality back then was cartoons, TV shows, and other fictional works that would distract me from my heavy worries. While sometimes they would distract me from responsibilities too, the main benefit of being ever so heavily immersed in oh so many communities of fans when I was a kid and even a teenager made it so that I always felt welcomed somewhere, even if it was a place that didn't have any real people. My mother, being a brazilian immigrant, clearly couldn't communicate with me properly in English as well as a parent probably should. Me as an American raised in English speaking schools means that I had very limited knowledge of Portuguese and couldn't communicate with my mother all too well when I was young either, but that also came from the hesitation caused by fear. I don't think saying the way I was parented was abusive is corrected, but it used fear to the fullest. Ironically, I have... Not so fond memories of my mother questioning my intense fear or hesitation to speak during these moments of her intimidating me, and whether or not it was necessarily sarcasm or even ever on purpose is something I still don't know... So in other words, me being bullied and having no practical (or productive) escape from said stress —an always tense atmosphere at home, being isolated through a majority of elementary school— was like Aron Ralston cutting off his own arm to free himself from the boulder that crushed his hand. Me immersing myself extensively in fiction took a couple of tolls on my academic productivity, so but alleviated me the stress that would block my creativity or thought process to even complete any school assignments. It was a double-edge sword, and just like Ralston, I had to hurt myself in order to progress further in my life, or else I would have just been stuck where I was. That mental challenge of trying to bring a balance between immediate necessity and long term needs was definitely one of the aspects of my life that molded me into who I am today, the internationally recognized manga artist.

Some of you may even recognize my work, as this is the avatar I used for my early career when I was creating series such as "Clans", "Labs", and a couple other series that seem to have their own animated adaptations... It's really quite fascinating to see how far I've come, like Batman from his first year to his dozenth. My skills once were simply mediocre, and now I've achieved my dream of bringing my creations to life. They're even on the big screen, and even if I didn't direct those adaptations, they've stayed beyond faithful to my original work. I've truly achieved my mission in life... I've gone through troubles and struggles when I was young but had the help of fictional worlds to console me. now I can do the same for others.

"VTR". VG. 2017

But getting this far didn't come naturally. My greatest physical challenge was back some hundred dozen donuts ago... I was young, still in college, looking for employment. The only opportunities I had involved harsh physical labor, so I went for the job for an industry I can support. The food industry. In some twisted and ironic fate, I became a water delivery man, just as my father once was when he was young. The job was supporting my college life but I was lacking back support, and the hours were rough... The delivery of oh so many gallons so frequently actually reared down my back greatly, but I was able to continue my art career in college because of it. The stress of carrying the literal weight of water and the weight of my courses was as heavy as the boulder Sisyphus eternally is pushing up the tall mountain. However enduring through that struggle, I've managed to reach the end goal of my life. Granted I'm not nearly as physically capable as I once was due to long term strain, I did manage to reach my goal. Making comics, illustrating, creating stories. That's my career. I've successfully managed to pull it all off. And my key to success was believing that I could. Despite that sounding cheesier than a pizzeria, I kept myself confident by imagine the end result of my hard work, and the satisfaction is... Well no metaphor there, it's truly indescribable. My childhood wasn't the greatest, and that may have weighed me down or upset me the more I thought about it, but knowing that it does sadden me is exactly why I don't think about it. Perseverance, persuasion, and even being under pressure. That's how I went from some timid child who didn't see much value in himself into someone who's humbled to be love by such a vast number of people just from doing what he loves. However the most priceless diamond of mine is my patience. If I —as narcissistic as it sounds— hadn't been gifted with foresight and the ability to process logic as well as I do, I would most likely by some criminal by now, because I'd just say nothing is worth it. My limits in themselves are limited, but learning the value of humility as a child and understanding that soon enough I'd be free from my job as a young adult, I was able to dial down the input of stress or disbelief that grew in me.

Exit Stage Right

The 2nd and last Action Project for Stage Chemistry, a class all about stages in theatre, is already here. In this project, we focused less about what a general stage using our space would be like, and more about how we can directly add certain details, mechanics, or functions to our now determined and measured space. This unit covered different equations on physics such as how many Joules of work are applied with a certain amount of pounds of force is applied over a set difference, and that directly tied into my pulley system which is one of my major details for this set. In the last post (and project), I wanted to objectively present information about the space, but now I have the opportunity to expand upon telling you how my play would work. As you know, assuming you've read my previous post,  this is a play that is based on The Legend of Zelda. Considering the very large focus Nintendo takes on big wide open adventures for one of their leading franchises, and my dedication to stay true to that concept, my biggest challenge for this project was to create or introduce 2 moving parts of the stage. So then, here you can read through my plans for a low-budget adaptation of The Legend of Zelda!

3D model (STL) Gazebo.VG, 2017

Now when thinking about what I could modify, I realized that the Welles Park Gazebo isn't mine, and of course, it's also open to the public. That said, I didn't want to try and claim that major modifications would be made to the gazebo so my main obstacle was trying to incorporate 2 moving features on my stage that could make up a total of 8 safety hazards for me to review. Once again, public space and being an already established gazebo did not make this task easy, so I had to think very practically, yet also outside of the box. After a while of I came to the conclusion that having a fake horse move on the stage deck would be a perfect decision. But that's still only one of 2 hazards, and what kind of safety rules could I handle or convey. This is low budget after all.
Considering how I wouldn't want to just have another stage deck and call it a day, so I wondered if I could possibly have something inside of the gazebo, which then made me remember that there's a magical floating object with sacred power that often floats in the game, so that encouraged me to think about and utilize a pulley system.

Model & Horse

Now this is the full "stage", the intended focus with a stage left and right on the lines of the path. You may also note the horse present in the picture, which will be a type of prop used during the play as our hero, Link, needs some quick mobility around the land; the horse provides extra immersion and stays faithful in how the games provide transportation.

Moving horse.VG.2017

The horse will be made out of a lightweight material, hollow on the inside, but has some support rods and a bike seat so people may sit on it. Resting on a stage deck, the horse would be probably no more than 25 pounds, and to convert that, one would need to push or pull with a force greater than 112 Newtons to get it moving (as 1 lbs is 4.44822 N, so 25x4.44822 gave me my answer). In person, the horse will measure at 8 feet in length, and 6 feet in height, while the model is 2cm by 1.5cm, as every 1 centimeter equates to 4 feet.

My first though was that this park is public, people may smoke cigarettes, and this horse will more than likely be flammable. So as you can see, there's a no smoking sign that would be a sticker slapped onto the horse itself and it would be nice, large, and most likely on both of the side of the hind legs.

Horse Safety.VG.2017

Another few safety hazards of the horse could be that someone could fall off whilst "riding" it. And if the stage  deck supporting it isn't controlled well, it could become a run away tragedy. To prevent any liabilities like that happening, the horse won't go up any slopes or ramps, and we might have some type of handles for anyone who's riding it to hold on to.

Calculations.VG.2017

Now then, let's talk about the pulley. It's going to only be used for one function at the end, and as you can see, in order to keep the object (known in Zelda lore as the Triforce, which is essentially the combine essence of the goddesses that made the land) stationary in the air, we have a dual pulley system that halves the weight from 8 pounds to just 4. Multiply that by the total distance of the rope and the converter from pounds to Newtons, and you have how many Joules it would take to support the object if the rope had no slack or just was 40 feet long from the pivot point. Now of course, since the rope is so long, we can use picks or counterweights to support the Triforce just out of view with an easier time by simply having the rope used at a closer point. So really, this could have been from a 30 foot mark or as close as it can be to the second and grounded pulley.

Pulley Motion.VG.2017

But what hazards could come from this simple machine? Well if improperly operated, or if someone accidentally releases or allows the rope to slip, that's an 8 pound object traveling at 9.8 m/s across 25ft of distance, assuming it hits the floor of the gazebo. That's about 890N of force, which is definitely not just a tickle to anyone underneath it. So some makeshift signs, bright yellow and bold, would be at the back of the inside of the gazebo, as well as just behind it where the grounded pulley would be. That ensures that anyone working on the play will at least be aware of the possibility.

Pulley Safety.VG.2017

So all in all, I've managed to list just about everything I can for how this open and public space could be dangerous, how each piece brought into the stage can be used, moved, and calculated, as well as provide you all with a scale model to see what it looks like. The ratio of my model (cm) to life (ft) was 1:4 and the height of the gazebo may not be the most precise, but it stands at 28cm on the model. In case you're wondering how I made the 3D model, it was created through Tinkercad an online resource which allows users to make their own STL files, nice and easy for 3D printing. Thanks for reading.

All The World's A Stage

The second Elective term is here, and we're more than ready in this course, focused on the place where all the drama happens. On the stage. Stage Chemistry is a class all about stage design, you know, from theaters and plays. This Action Project challenged us to find and report on an appropriate with some sort of presentation in mind as well. Personally, there's a criteria on the rubric where we're tasked to compare aspects and details, the Goodman Theatre (or any other location as long as you get accurate measurements). Considering the open nature of my space, it was difficult finding direct numbers I could use to calculate and compare. However, I was able to think outside the box and utilize already established or common assets like "windows", even if they're somewhat irrelevant to the play. With that being said, I have a Playbook just down below, in PDF form, that tells you all you need to know about my stage.

The play I chose is actually a rendition of The Legend of Zelda. A simple tale of adventure and heroic feats. It's a common tale that's no doubt grown even that much more popular recently, as it is one of Nintendo's leading franchises. I had to thinking of just what kind of stage would appropriately fit the world of Hyrule or at least reenact parts of it. Thinking within a realizable budget that wouldn't make things go overboard, as well as being an accessible location for me to take measurements of, I was determined on having an outdoors location.

VG, Welles Park, March 2017

Then I realized something, Welles Park Gazebo was perfect, or at least for accessibility. I couldn't fit a large audience all the gazebo, considering how limited views would be as soon as the action moved about the audience. And limiting all action to be just inside the gazebo as an arena stage (a stage in which the whole audience surrounds the stage) would also be far too limiting for the actors and wouldn't mimic grand scale that all Zelda games have. I wanted to accommodate for the large open spaces, long travels, and also portray a variety of locations. However, with just one gazebo, that seemed almost impossible without making the theatre the literal entirety of the park.

VG, Welles' Stairs, March 2017

That's when I realized a type of flexible stage (one that can be modified) or proscenium stage (standard layout) would be the best set up. Utilizing the gazebo as a guide for key locations, as the identity of the gazebo changes throughout the acts, and using the peripheral vision of the intended audience location as the boundaries for the wings of the stage. Yet one challenge I still haven't overcome is the struggle of creating a  reliable or consistent backstage or other wings.

VG, Gazebo Floor, March 2017

Welles vs Goodman
-The gazebo and surrounding area 68.75% larger than Goodman's 4000 square foot Albert theatre
-The lobby of Goodman is only 4025 square feet, significantly smaller than the rest of Welles Park (which of course can easily act as a lobby) which is approximately 818,250 square feet large
-The gazebo features about 9 openings or windows that are not for entrances/exits, whilst Goodman only has 6 main windows that stretch across the lobby (each section of the lobby having its own borders for the window panes)

Now just below you can view the actual playbook, in PDF format.

GCE's Lunch - A SWOT Analysis

For the final Action Project of the STEAM course Systems & Models, we were to utilize a SWOT analysis. What's that? Well out 3rd introduce a lot of different concepts, but SWOT is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. I've made a presentation analyzing everything I could about GCE's lunch, the provided food, the off campus,  and even the smaller details. It was challenging to align everything with what we learned during class but I was actually surprised to see how quickly everything else came together. Originally, I was given the freedom to create this entire project out of memes, you know, those immature internet jokes? But I was rather unsatisfied with the result, it looked too rushed and the inaccurate illustrations didn't present the information the way I wanted to. Whilst given that option was an actual opportunity I appreciated, after going over it again, I thought translating it all into a simple slideshow would be much better. With that, I hope you enjoy my SWOT Analysis just below.

#BotLivesMatter

The hybrid course Equality has assigned us students our second Action Project. This time, we head a bit into the future to teach a lesson about equality that relates to race, class, or gender. The goal is to write a news article from 100 years in the future. This unit, named "Herstory" (in contrast to the first unit, which was named history), focused on how equality should be executed. A challenge that initially faced me was the actual inception of what to write about, as nothing seemed to resonate with me and I wanted to do something unique considering it was from the future after all.

Chapter 17: Trayvon Martin

In the STEM course called Equality, we've been served a very unique dish, one that only made us hungry for more. In this Unit named History, we've studied just everything that true equality can impact and whether or not it's here. The Action Project for this unit has us creating our own chapter in a history text book. There were many challenges I personally faced, such as finding an appropriate subject matter that I felt relate to the class, however in the end, I've managed to choose something I  could expand upon greatly, especially considering the impact this event has made to our modern society. Just below you can read though this mock text book, enjoy.