after a test fit everything was perfect and I attatched the box to the installation and painted it black and seamless
Finishing the beamer mount
I made a spot for the computer and I attached a black blanket with velcro to cover the back. I also made sure the stand won’t fall forward.
Thom’s Reflection
The Project
I have never worked this way before. I have done projects, I have done group projects, but never full time and never of this scale. I enjoyed it for the most part. I enjoyed working with my team. I enjoyed engaging with the teachers in feedback sessions, even though I didn’t always agree with their feedback, but that’s just the stubborn ass that I am sometimes. I also enjoyed the nature of the work most of the times and I am happy with our finished product. In the end I wish we would have started to power work earlier on. This might be a trap everyone falls into, and it might be the fact that we are still students, but we could’ve saved ourselves a lot of stress. So if I look back at this project and would change something, it would be that.
My Own Learning Experience
I learned a lot this project. Not just about the learning goals I set out to do. But about myself and working in a team. Mostly a team with people I don’t know that well and with very different cultural backgrounds. I have experience with guiding a big group of people to and end product. I used to lead a cabaret group/show for 3 years. However this experience was very different. I learned a lot about myself as a team player as well as a ‘leader’ even though I was not really a leader but a scrum master. I did try to take my role seriously and tried to guide and manage our group wherever I could. In the end we got it done, and I like to believe that my involvement as scrum master had something to do with it. I hope I did a good job, but that is not just for me to decide.
I set out to learn more about storytelling, design and concepting. Unfortunately, even though I did a lot of it this project, I didn’t learn much new about design and storytelling (apart from some more experience with drawing, poster and web design). I did learn a lot about concepting however. I learned to kill my darlings and make compromises. Neither have I engaged in sponsorship deals with store owners before, which was a very new and interesting experience for me. This project has been good for my personal development and skills, and of that I am glad.
My Team
I really like my team. Never before have I worked with a team of such diversity. It was difficult at times, but mostly very interesting and invigorating. Of course there were the usual tensions and annoyances sometimes. But you cannot get rid of that in a full time project with students of different character. We had some communication issues and got distracted a lot in the beginning. This was not good for productivity, but very good for team building. We also went out to get a drink or something to eat with multiple group members sometimes, which was nice. Once we noticed our frequent distractions and joking around was getting in the way of our project, we adjusted. With help of the teachers and some good planning we made it work in the end. Every now and again I got annoyed, I had to get annoyed with some people and people with me to get something done. Not everyone was a good communicator or team player at all times, but we always found a way to get around that eventually. The most satisfying thing about this team, and the experiences I’ve had with them over the couple of weeks, is that when I look back at the blog posts and all the pictures I get a smile on my face. And that for me says it all. I enjoyed working with this team, and on the project. We are and forever will be: Team Girlpower.
Scrum
We used scrum exclusively for the first 3 sprints. And the beginning of the 4th, but when we where heading for the end it didn’t work out. In the first 3 weeks we used it as planning and overview on who did what. This worked to an extend but not always as good. We got distracted during the standups and communication wasn’t always that good. We improved over the weeks however. In the beginning of the 4th sprint we started out with a scrum page. I altered it a couple of times and devised a system. However over time this became more of a nuisance than a help, so I started to make custom planning pages and made sure I knew what everyone was working on. We still had meetings to talk about our tasks, what still needs to happen and such, but in the last few days we haven’t used the vivivy board at all. I don’t really mind since I think this worked better for the last few days. I had a good overview and everyone did what they were supposed to do. The installation works and we have achieved a lot these last days. I am proud of myself @uselessmarkies and my team members. @burdetiadrian8 @izabelatyprowicz @appleflapjc @oyvindknustadgmailcom @vasil1hristov
Link to the scrum page: https://app.vivifyscrum.com/boards/61742
Reflection – Jay-Cee
A short reflection about the entire project.
This was a really fun project, we had a lot of fun as a team and I think the installation turned out to be very fun as well. Firstly, working with people from different countries is very interesting. Sometimes a little too interesting that it took our attention away from the project and started to talk a lot about culture.
We all are interested in the project and that really helped with the drive of our team.
But we started building and realizing our concept too late. We had to pressure cook ourselves these last two weeks and work extra hard to get things done.
Other than that I think the last two weeks were very well planned for me.
This project I worked on a lot of different stuff. I worked together with Thom on the Stylesheet and created a nice colorful styling for our installation with a lot of personality. I have also used my animation skills to assist in some videos, but mainly to create the interface and bring it to life. I had some specific challenges to make the animation fit the weird spherical screen right but I figured it out and it turned out great!
I wasn’t as much a speciality guy in this project. I took more task upon me than the tasks were I was comfortable with. Which is not a problem to be honest, I learned a lot from it. For instance I worked a lot on soldering and hardware.
What I really liked this project was working together with Thom to communicate with sponsors and the client. This was very useful to me because this is something where I wanted to learn more of.
I think I have also improved in teamwork and communication, when there is miscommunication I try to backtrack to see what was wrong and try to not make the same mistake again.
I haven’t done as much animating as I’d like to. There were still elements that I wanted to animate for the promotional videos but there wasn’t enough time, or it was rather poorly planned. But at least I’d animated all the cutscenes on the installation itself, which was a unique and new experience.
I’m happy how the installation has turned out. I talked a lot with Margit about the experience of the installation and I really tried to push it, which was a succes in my opinion. It’s colorful, bold and loud (if you want it to be). The music added bring a lot of atmosphere and wonder to the story Thom wrote. The planet designs of Andre really looked cool and the promotional videos of Øyvind really tied the story together.
Other than that the concept is also technically very sturdy thanks to Iza.
And Vasil was like the gluten that holds the entire installation together with concept drawings, building and 3D stuff.
Next time there are a lot of things we have to do better, but most things are all connected to one main thing: Planning. Only after many, many conversations with the scrum teacher we slowly got to the point that our planning was on point. He also helped us a lot with our communication issues. When the planning and communication got better we really started to work hard. (But also the deadline was just two weeks from then so we had to). But that isn’t just a team problem, I personally struggle to get my own planning right and I definitely learned a lot about myself and planning this project.
Written by Jay-Cee,
@appleflapjc
Installation Manual
I made an installation manual , I didn’t bother making it pretty cause there is no point in doing that.
Reflection – Andrei Burdeti
I want to start by saying that it was a very awesome experience working with my team. Since the beginning of the project everyone was very open about idea sharing and we all found a common interest in music which started the whole Planets Of Sound concept.
This project made me better understand the steps you have to take to create content. It also highlighted for me the importance of time. You need time to “bake” ideas and sharing them with your team can transform them even further. I learned a lot of things from what my team shared with me because we all have different interests and skills. I learned how to work better in a team and to plan my work in advance.
During the project I first worked on concept creation together with my team. Using brainstorming techniques and doing research on technologies, materials and online marketing. Those steps tought me a lot about what kind of technologies can be combined and to what effect.
Afterwards I worked on creating 2d concepts of the planet location that we are representing in the game, creating 5 of the 7 planets. From this I learned a lot about graphic design. I later used the design to create the 7 posters for our installation. Our posters have QR codes that connect them to our website which shows info about the music locations of Enschede. During the creation of the posters I did some research on QR codes and how to implement them in designs. To my surprise they are very versatile and can be modified and used in a lot of creative ways.
Together with Vasil I also worked on the body of the installation, buying materials and assembling them During this I painted the installation following Jay-cee’s exterior design
Before I started this project my team skills were bad but this project helped me realize the importance of following a plan and working in good communication with your team. I tried to focus on graphic design creating the one pagers, posters and concepts but also practiced my indesign skills in creating the design document. This helped me learn the program better than before.
n the end I think our team did a very good job and more than that we had fun while doing it. This created the perfect ground for creativity to flow. Bringing our concept from just some words and sketches on a piece of paper to a full blown physical product that works.
Big Poster
Final thoughts – Izabela
Project FAT
Sadly, this is going to be my last post here. I would like to thank everyone for bringing their knowledge and talents to the project FAT. I wouldn’t have made it without these guys. They are great and I’m going to miss them. Before we say goodbyes I would like to run you down through my final thoughts on this.
This project was a really big opportunity for me to learn a lot – and I did – in ways I didn’t expect. Let me start by saying that not only this kind of teamwork was new and challenging for me, but the cultural aspect of it was very fresh for me and I had to get used to it – but that’s a great experience which really develops you in new ways.
This was one of the most intense projects ever. First few weeks were pretty normal, having fun & chilling. I think that we started to build and implement our prototypes quite late, which caused me some fears. However, as you can see, deadlines and comments from our teachers work very well for us, because we were able to motivate and finish everything.
While this project has been stressful and unexpected sometimes, I have enjoyed my tasks in the team.
The Team
All team members come from different countries, have different skills, interests, their own ideas and point of thinking, so there was a lot of talking, brainstorming and testing.
I like them, they are a bit weird (which is positive), you can talk to them about everything and keep joking. And they have a lot of knowledge on topics that I don’t know! I could learn from them. Sometimes we were too relaxed – it caused some dissipation and focusing not on the project, but anyway I prefer a more relaxed atmosphere than a more serious and tense one. What’s more – we have finished everything, even being distracted!
Teamwork also maximizes shared knowledge in the workplace and helps me learn new skills I can use for the rest of my career. And in-between all of this, you’re working on your own personal learning goals, which is great in my opinion.
I think everyone did their job well. Everyone had different skills and I’m happy with my team members.
Personal goals
I learned the things that I set as a goal. I did some things related to graphics and visualizations. But the main goal was programming. I really learned a lot in this area. I’ve learned a lot of things related to software and hardware. My task was to program and I am glad that I succeeded. And in addition, I had the opportunity to explore more Unity and Arduino. There were some difficult moments but I managed it, I’m still alive and I have a lot of new knowledge and experience.
I have learned a lot, including tons of small things such as things related to the promotion, conversations with the client/teachers, creating the profile of our project as best as possible, responsibility AND OF COURSE, communication, seriously.
Guys have pointed out that I don’t speak too much, even when you can see that I want to. Well, this is one of my terrible disadvantages and now I have had the opportunity to fix it. This project really makes me a better man.
I am so glad I participated in this, get to know great people and making awesome stuff together which I couldn’t have if I did it on my own. I also understood that not everything can be done alone and it is also worth working in a group because you can learn a lot of new things from others.
I’m really happy that I had the pleasure of going to school here for half a year and that I now have such a great team. I’m sure it will give me a lot for the future.
Overall, I think this project has been extremely satisfying and productive, even though it had its ups and downs, both regarding the team and the installation but hey – I will remember it as a very valuable experience and lesson for the future.
Izabela
Project Fat 