Capstone Changes 3

Because of circumstances that are neither the fault of myself or Charles we are no longer working together unfortunately. Which means my idea of an independent study doing a card game is out the window as well. It sucks but fortunately my capstone did not rely heavily on that card game. And it gives me more of a chance to work on writing the actual story that the website I'm working on is hosting. I'd still like to do a kind of character cards as a sort of "give away" at the capstone presentation but we'll see what happens.

Also because I'm no longer doing the card game, and need the illustrations next semester, I know have time to commission someone I know to do some work. I was reluctant to do so before because I was afraid of how long it would take for her to finish them, and if they would get finished on time. It'll be expensive (about $30 per stand alone person) but its good quality and I can use them for the give away bio cards and possible a cut out (which will cost me more I'm sure).

Capstone Timeline

Doing my timeline was a bit tricky because my capstone isn't going to be until the next fall, I took this class a semester early. So I figured that during the rest of this semester I would try to get many of the story elements of my website done, such as profiles, descriptions, character maps and such. I also would like to secure my capstone mentor early which, depending on their advice on how to structure and code my website, might change the last couple of weeks of my timeline for this semester.

The next semester is focusing almost solely on doing a major part of my, and my partner Charles', capstone which is a card game. Through advice from Beth I'm doing it as an independent study so I had to make a timeline for it anyway. Its possible that during the winter break I might do most of my research on other card games, which will give me an idea of where to go with this one since I'm not a big player of card games.  By doing this I can bump up my independent study schedule by one to two weeks.

Capstone Changes 2

The major fear I had for the moment when it came to working with someone else on this has been realized! There was a bit of miscommunication between myself and Charles about when the other was going to graduate. He will be doing his capstone in the spring. I won't until next fall.

Luckily it seems that using the content of someone elses capstone isn't frowned upon as long as you have permission and do something yourself, not just take theirs and say its yours too. So after talking to Beth I have a course of action! Next semester I'm going to do an independent study with her, focusing mostly on getting the card game together but also maybe dabbling in a small website and possibly making some tweaks to my story.

I love this idea because not only does it give me a sorely needed 400 lvl class but it also takes the stress of figuring all that out off of Charles. I was going to help of course but having this as a "class" gives me the time to focus on it instead of just helping, so now he can just focus mostly on the art he wants to draw. I don't know much about card games but I guess I'm going to learn!

Capstone Changes

Over the past couple of days I've made some big changes to my capstone. Following the advice of Beth I've teamed up with Charles Morgan, who will now be doing most if not all of the artwork needed for the website. Also, based on a comment left on an earlier blog about bribing people to our station, we first thought that character cards would be a cool idea. But then that evolved to doing a card game! And possibly a cutout after seeing how awesome the ones Power showed were. So the capstone, which I had first thought wouldn't be that expensive, now suddenly got a big budget! I don't mind though, it all sounds awesome and I'm glad to be working with Charles.

Because of the addition of the card game, and the pages it will add to the webiste, its possible that I'll strike the idea of putting videos on the profiles and descriptions all together. It seems a little unnecessary now because of the extras going into it but if I have the time they still might make it in there.

Capstone support group

My capstone fits under the category of web development.

The things I'm going to use are HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, JQuery mobile, and possibly After Effects for some video work.

If I can't handle coding everything myself I might use Wordpress.

Looking at the big picture

I thought the class discussion with another person was interesting. I was partnered up with Stephanie Hii, who quite frankly put my idea to absolute shame XD. What I got out of the activity was that I need to figure out a better way of explaining and promoting my capstone. Even though she said she was interested I easily noticed the difference between how much information she gave me and how little I gave her.

Capstone Ideas

My idea for my capstone is a website to host a story that my friend and I have been working on for quite awhile. There isn't enough of the story done to put it on the website so at the moment its going to be more for introducing the main characters, the back stories of them and the world the story takes place in, and just enough information to give people a kick start in interest in the story. I'm hoping sooner or later it will host the actual story, be it in either written word or comic form.

My hope for this capstone can be broken down into two major things:
1.) build a website that has both a mobile and tablet version
2.) get profiles, back stories, and descriptions done of all the main characters and hopefully some of the minor ones

All in all there are three main characters for both me and my friend, with a varying , but pretty big, amount of more minor characters. My friend is not a part of IUPUI and I'm not sure she'll be able to complete that much on her characters but since I've come up with most of the major components on the world and such, I should be able to provide more than enough to flesh out the website.

I'm going to try to code it all myself using HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, and JQuery. The only thing my friend will provide is information on her own characters and drawings of the characters because I cannot draw a thing. I also have illustrations from a few more of my friends that I might use but will do so with their permission and give them due credit on the website.

Upon giving it more thought (and a conversation with Beth) I've realized that this capstone, the way it is at the moment, will require a lot of reading. Which most people won't want to do. So I thought about adding a visual and/or audio component to it. Something that will sum up the contents of the page on certain ones that have a lot of text, such as descriptions of various races or forces, that will give the user the basic gist of it all and if they wish they can read the full description.

These videos will mostly comprise of me, or someone that has a better voice that would like to do it, "summing" things up a bit with pictures done by some of my friends (who are so much better at drawing than I will ever be) in the background that correspond with the information. This makes me realize I'll either be using Final Cut or probably more After Effects to do this and might possibly need a headset with microphone. Also my friends that provide me the drawings will be credited at the end of the video.

I would also like to add some "functionality" to it, something to make it a bit more interesting. I thought I could do that by adding a bit of a "make your own" kind of deal to it. Does this sound like a good idea? I would love anyone's opinion on anything I've said.

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