Golden X Awards Nomination

I nominate Sustainability Man's "Episode 2" for the Golden X Awards.

Sam animated a couple of videos which both contained a strong message but his character joined forces with mine in the second episode to defeat the Evil Dr Bright Lights which was a good example of collaborating with other characters to generate content.

The episode carries a strong message about the importance of saving energy by turning the lights off as you leave a room and Sam created wormholes to the videos by creating posters containing a QR code which he posted all around campus. These posters obviously worked because Sam received a spike in traffic after he put the posters up which means that people were accessing his content on at least two different platforms.

Reflective Blog

Character

MC Sustain is a good character fighting to create awareness of sustainability issues on UC. His heart is in the right place but he gets frustrated with the poor attitudes of the students and the delivery of his message can be a bit blunt. He raps in the style of a gangster rapper which is a style that is meant to be abrasive, confronting and rub people up the wrong way but the idea was that people would get that it was meant to be a joke and wouldn't take it too seriously.

This character was designed to attract to the concert going crowd at UC and those that frequent the bar areas on campus. My intention was to create music that was actually good and contained lyrics that drew attention to people's unsustainable practices and poked fun at them in a clichéd gangster rapper kind of way. By doing this I was hoping that people would notice things about their behaviour that they previously hadn't  and start to think about their habits a bit more.

Platforms

My character has profiles on both Facebook and Soundcloud but Facebook was his main way of communicating. I think that Facebook is a great way to reach an audience as everybody uses it and it's easy to upload a variety of content on there such as images, videos and sounds and instantly get them out to your audience. I didn't get to use Soundcloud as I'd hoped because it was harder to create music than I had anticipated and the music I did create couldn't be uploaded onto Soundcloud as it was already hosted on its own website and couldn't be exported.

You can find his Facebook here, and his Soundcloud page here

Rabbit hole

To get people interested in MC Sustain and act as the rabbit hole to Facebook and Soundcloud I created a couple of posters which I posted up around campus. The posters were made to look like Hip Hop gig posters and had information and phrases on them encouraging students to clean up after themselves and not leave litter everywhere. Littering is MC Sustains pet peeve and he doesn't like what he sees around the campus.

This is my favourite poster. It was fun to make and I think it gets MC Sustain's attitude across nicely. He doesn't mince his words, he just tells it how he sees it.

I put the posters up locations where I thought they would naturally attract the eye as people walked past them. There are posters all over the place at UC and I think most people (myself included) have learned to block them out and don't really pay them much attention on their travels around campus. With this in mind I tried to place my posters in places were you can't help but look at them such as on doors or on the wall above the urinal in the men's toilet in Building 7.

On the window of the Coop Bookshop

Near the bins outside the Refectory

Near the bins outside the Refectory

On the lower doors going into Building 9

On the wall outside the Library

On the wall outside the Library

On the signage outside the library

On the doors to building 7

On the doors to building 7

The men's contemplation area in building 7

The men's contemplation area in building 7

Outside the GD Labs in Building 7

On the doors to the GD labs in Building 7

I shortened my Facebook web address with bit.ly but I was disappointed to see that I didn't receive any visits to my page through those links, not one! 

I think I should try using a QR code next time as even though bit.ly shortened the web address, it still looked like this http://on.fb.me/14J3BaV which is pretty much impossible to remember so unless people actually stood there and type the web address into their phones straight away there was no way they'd be able to remember it later on. With a QR code they could've quickly and painlessly accessed the link so that's something I'll definitely bear in mind if I ever do an exercise like this again.

Music

As far as actual rapping goes, I didn't really create much content and I really regretted my character choice as the unit progressed but by then it was too late to change it. I think the biggest thing that hampered me in the creation of raps is that I felt like a complete idiot every time I tried to rap and most of the tools I tried didn't work out like I had hoped or required me to invest much more time than I had available to produce acceptable results.

The best example I made was created with the assistance of the Autorap app on my iPhone which you can listen to here

Working with other characters

I worked with Sam Bartlett on an animation for his Sustainability Man character which was probably the best bit of content my character was involved in. Sam was responsible for all of the animation but I worked with him to record the audio and provided the beats for my character to rap over in the episode. It was good fun and it turned out really well.

Check out the video:

Observations and Learnings

If I was to do this exercise again, the first thing I would do is choose another character where I could work within an area I was familiar with instead of trying to branch out into something I didn't really know anything about. I felt like I wasted too much time trying to get to grips with new technology only to fail because I couldn't get the results I was after.

I'd also get together with a group of other students instead of working on my own. I think that in order for a transmedia project to work you need to be in a group of at least 3-4 people who bring a varied yet overlapping set of skills to the table. I think it would be ideal if you had enough people to collaborate to develop a story arc with depth while enabling you to work within your area of expertise to generate content instead of trying to fumble your way through an area you're not familiar with. Trying to rap and make beats when I've never done it before is a mistake I wouldn't repeat again.

If I had more funding and the opportunity to develop my character further I would definitely seek out somebody who was able to produce quality tunes and somebody to help me animate a cartoon series and comic strip with MC Sustain as the star. All the episodes would be based around ways to combat pollution and wastage  and would contain raps on the subject that would be available in their entirety on Soundcloud and iTunes to stream and purchase.

Thoughts on the Design Challenge 

Do I think we succeeded in creating a culture of sustainability at UC? No, definitely not. As explained above I think we definitely need to be working in groups containing a variety of different skills for transmedia to work effectively. Doing it on your own is just too hard and the subject material while important, just doesn't have enough meat to it to create any sort of engaging storyline unless you are working in a group that can put their heads together to create content. I think that the UC community are just as apathetic as they were before and only a handful would've noticed the extra amount of posters cluttering the walls around campus and even fewer still would've been bothered to actually go down the rabbit holes to see what it was all about.  For this kind of campaign to work it needs to be much more in your face so there's no way you can escape the message. It needs a captive audience and a really high quality of work to get people interested and unfortunately I just don't think it's possible to get the average person to care about the environment until it's too late.

Working With Sustainability Man

Earlier on in the semester me and Sam Bartlett did a bit of thinking about a character we could use to get the message of sustainability across at UC. Sam had already thought up the idea of Sustainability Man and we threw a few ideas back and forth about the media platforms we could use and different aspects of his character and background. This was before we had the in class exercise to come up with our own characters and for some reason I decided to go solo with MC Sustain, while Sam continued on with Sustainability Man. One of the platforms we had discussed was using Motion to create some animations which we could then upload onto You tube. Sam had already created an episode for his character and invited my character to make an appearance as a waste fighting accomplice in episode two.



Sam did all the animation but I made worked with him to record the audio and came up with the beats for this episode.

More Poster Action

Did another poster today. I styled it like it's a Hip Hop gig poster but used the text to get some of MC Sustain's message across. I like this better than my last one. I think it's eye catching enough to get people to want to have a closer look but then surprise by containing a message instead of just gig details.

The message might be a little bit blunt but I think it's effective.

Poster Action

I had a bit of fun in Photoshop today and came up with this:

I'll be visiting the green print centre in the next day or so and get some of these posted up.

The Rabbit Hole

To get our characters out into the public eye to create interest and get them to see our character on different media platforms we need to create a "Rabbit Hole". A Rabbit Hole is a piece of media that provides either a direct link or clues about the existence of another media platform which the audience can access to learn more about our characters and their story's. Stephen has a great idea for his character, "The Hipsta Barista" where he has placed coffee cup lids lids with a meme and a link to his meme site which should be great to create some interest in his character amongst the UC community.

Here's a quick poster I created in class today.

It's a bit boring so far and doesn't have a link to his Facebook or Soundcloud pages yet so I'll work on it a bit more before I post is up anywhere. I think the best idea for my character would be a hip hop gig style poster containing some messages about sustainability and a link to his Facebook and Soundcloud pages. I'll put them up around the refectory and Zierholz where the drinkers hang out to hopefully drum up a bit of interest. 

Some Beats

So I'm starting to regret my choice of character a little. The idea of a rapper seemed fun at first but the reality of making tunes isn't quite as fun as I hoped it would be and I haven't been getting the results I was hoping for .
iMaschine is a great app and is really quite powerful and has the potential to be used to create some really high quality beats but I just don't have the time to get to use it properly so I'll have to put that one on the back burner and possibly come back to it later on.

Cipher was the other one I had high hopes for and it's really easy to use and has a great library of tunes to rap to but the final product is actually pretty crappy because the sound levels are so low when you play it back that you can barely hear it, even with the phone on full volume. I even tried plugging it into my stereo with the volume cranked but it still sounds like crap and isn't worthy of uploading anywhere. The music is nice and loud when you're recording the rap so I don't know what the issue is with the exported sound levels. Very disappointing.

Autorap on the other hand has been pretty fun to play with and I've had some pretty good results with it so far. I've uploaded the best one onto the MC Sustain Facebook page here and the link to it on the app's website can be found here While Autorap is easy to use, it's very limited in what you're able to create so I'll keep trying to come up with something a bit more legit.