Pressure Project: Leaves

Posted: October 7, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave a comment »

The goal of this project was to make a self generating patch in 5 hours using touch designer. My personal goal was to learn something new and challenge myself. With the goal of challenging myself I wanted the patch to include sound and then coloring to go along with the sound.

I have never had such a time constraint for an assignment let alone one for a program I didn’t know how to use. To conquer this I came up with a simple idea and looked up tutorials on how to achieve it. The original plan was a patch that was a sliding screen with different shapes moving and changing color to the sound of people around or a song. Difficulties kept arising so I complexly changed my idea to something simpler. I wanted to represent a song with particles and have an almost speaker look to a shape. I wanted to add more shapes and have them moving but time was running out and nothing would move or do what I needed. That is why I stuck to one shape. The particles was something new but that was my challenge, I was happy that the particles were automatically leaves because of all the problems I kept running into not having to change something helped me.

The final part was the sound, I wanted a more fall feel and sound so I choose a song to match. When importing the sound I encountered the issue of separating the sounds so I could have different things react to it. Due to the nature of the song some of the levels were very low and required a few more steps. I thought that idea was going to be trashed as well because the sound at one point decided it would not play. After the sound was working I wanted a viewer to not only hear it but see the sound and almost feel it. I included the leaves moving to the base of the sound but it was more of them falling and regenerating instead of just staying in the center and moving to the sound. After trial and error I left the leaves to fall for the sack of time and to have something that actually worked. During this process I kept being surprised by the amount of little adjustments that would break the entire project. I ended at a point of what can I get to work and still have an engaging project because of the amount of issues. However I am very happy with what come out of this. The best thing to come out of this is I know I can create something in a short time span and still get my main goal completed.

TouchcDesigner Look

Final Video

AI Expert: AI vs Caraval

Posted: September 7, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: | Leave a comment »

My Background

For most of my life I have enjoyed reading. The genre I read the most is fantasy because it allows me to escape reality for a little while. Over the years I have read several books of varying stories and types of writings. I have also read best sellers and books that no one else has even heard of. Out of all the series I have read my favorite has been Caraval by Stephanie Garber released in 2017. I revisit this book every so often because it has intrigued me. It is a trilogy but the first book has its own story line. Everytime I reread it I discover something new. The book has a mystery to it and at first I couldn’t figure it out but now when I go back through I find new clues hidden inside. Since I discover something new everytime I am not 100% an expert but I can tell you everything that happens in the book, all the details and different clues I’ve picked up on after reading the book 5 times. After the first time reading I was able to read it more slowly to really engage with the reading. I always read books fast the first time because I’m too excited to know what happens. The book entails two sisters trapped in a normal for the time tough situation of being married off to god knows who and not having much say because they are women. Due to the younger sisters disobedience the sisters go off with a man on the wonderful adventure of Caraval where twists and turns change their whole world but in the end allow them to find love and happiness away from their controlling father. 

The material is important to me because a part of the story relates to my own life with sisterly love and troubled home problems, but the fantasia of the story allows me to be fully engulfed in another’s journey of a downfall and reawakening. For the most part I feel resonant with the main character Scarlett and her journey to protect her sister but living out her dream of seeing Caraval like her grandmother wanted. That is why I love rereading this book and why I chose it for Ai to analyze. 

Ai Right/Wrong

While listening to the podcast the two “people” get a really good base of the sisters’ relationship and what drives Scarlet through the whole book. They really talk about how Scarlet’s home life of a prison she tries to trade for another prison with “softer bars” and how it affects her. It also talks extremely of the similarities in the sisters home life “torture” and how Caraval puts her in the same mental state of having to protect her sister. The podcast constantly brings up the sisters’ love for each other which is the best thing it could do. The sister’s love is the one thing in this book that drives every decision. Especially at first, Scarlett will literally do anything to protect her sister and make sure she is ok. The last thing they beautifully bring up is Scarlett’s relationship with the character Julian. At first he was just the guide but he turns into so much more. This really starts to impact Scarlett’s decisions at the end of the book and her mental state especially when he dies which the podcast talked about. The biggest thing the podcast got right was Donatella’s role(Scarlet’s sister), she was the true mastermind behind everything. Donatella worked alongside Legend(the game master) to plan the whole adventure. Donatella had been writing legend for years to orchestrate the whole thing to save her sister and allow her to live her dream at Caraval. 

While the podcast was very well done and touched on so many important themes of the book I feel as if some topics were only barely touched and should have been pushed further. At the beginning of the podcast they mention their grandmother and how she told them stories of Caraval, but their grandmother had such a larger part to play than that. She didn’t just tell the girls stories she wished they could see Caraval as well, the grandmother also wished for the girls to be happy. Throughout the book the grandmother is brought up, Scarlet constantly talks about her in her inner monologues and sometimes her grandmother’s stories influence Scarlett’s decision so I feel this is one thing that needed more attention. Another thing it failed to bring up was Legends’ role, it may have all been Donatella’s idea but legend did so much more than anticipated, which the podcast didn’t talk about at all. The Ai did a good job of telling the story and most themes but for someone who hasten read the book at all or only once or twice wouldn’t pick up on all the little things it missed. 

The_Deadly_Cost_of_Tella’s_Secret_Game.m4a 

I was very surprised with the mind map, I would have thought that the AI would have shortened it more. The fact that it covers pretty much all the things you would need from the story makes me happy. I personally would have made a very similar mind map so I have some hope for Ai nit all being slop. 

Finally the infographic was the most exciting thing, I love the visualization it gives. Overall the Ai did a decent job of describing all of the main points in the story and had some good image representations. The voices didn’t sound fake, the infographic you can tell is Ai but I personally like the way it looks. Overall I would tell others to just read the book. You miss so much by just using Ai to learn about things like this. Plus by using Ai you are learning the vast majority of opinions and insights instead of what you could discover yourself.