FuXi

A descriptive narration of a project to create a 3-D computer animated film, FuXi. The story is set around the time of the Qin dynasty in China. This era in China was full of mystery stories or myths. There are an emperor and a Taoist in the story, and both of them are trying to find a way to become immortal

Animators of Atlanta: Layering Authenticity in the Creative Industries

This dissertation explores post-authentic neoliberal animation production culture, tracing the ways authenticity is used as a resource to garner professional autonomy and security during precarious times. Animators engage in two modes of production, the first in creating animated content, and the other in constructing a professional identity. Analyzing animator discourse allows for a nuanced exploration of how these processes interact and congeal into common sense. The use of digital software impacts the animator’s capacity to legitimize themselves as creatives and experts, traditional tools become vital for signifying creative authenticity in a professional environment. The practice of decorating one’s desk functions as a tactic to layer creative authenticity, but the meaning of this ritual is changing now that studios shift to open spaces while many animators work from home. Layering authenticity on-screen often requires blending techniques from classical Hollywood cinema into animated performance, concomitant with a bid to legitimate the role of the authentic interlocutor for the character. Increasingly animators feel pressure to layer authenticity online, establishing an audience as a means to hedge against precarity. The recombined self must balance the many methods for layering creative and professional authenticity with the constraints and affordances of their tools, along with the demands of the studio, to yield cultural capital vital for an animator’s survival in an industry defined at once by its limitless expressive potential and economic uncertainty

Digital Storytelling Intervention on Prosocial Behavior Improvement among Early Childhood

The prosocial behavior in childhood needs to develop because it is associated with favorable developmental outcomes in later hood. Digital storytelling is a method that assumed can help in encouraging and improving social behavior. It is combined digital media, including text, images, music and video. Digital storytelling can effectively improve prosocial behavior as opposed to the traditional storytelling approach. This study aims to examine and explore the effect of digital storytelling intervention methods on children’s prosocial behavior. The research subjects were 11 preschool children ranged from 5-7 years old. This study uses a randomized experiments research design with the program is carried out consecutively in five days, consists of 1 session each day before class begins. Measurement was done by using an observation checklist which developed from five aspects (sharing, cooperating, helping, donating, honesty) of prosocial behavior. Results of Friedman test showed that there was a significant difference of prosocial behavior in each session. This finding indicates that there are differences in the value of prosocial behavior in each session after the child gets a digital storytelling program.

Formal requirements modeling with executable use cases and Coloured Petri Nets

This paper presents executable use cases (EUCs), which constitute a model-based approach to requirements engineering. EUCs may be used as a supplement to model-driven development (MDD) and can describe and link user-level requirements and more technical software specifications. In MDD, user-level requirements are not always explicitly described, since usually it is sufficient that one provides a specification, or platform-independent model, of the software that is to be developed. Therefore, a combination of EUCs and MDD may have potential to cover the path from user-level requirements via specifications to implementations of computer-based systems

Program and Algorithm Visualization in Engineering and Physics

AbstractWe report here on our experiences using a program animation tool, the Teaching Machine, for program and algorithm visualization for engineering and physics students at two universities: Memorial University, where it has been used since 1999 for teaching engineering students, and the University of Athens, where it was adopted in 2005 to teach physics students

Curricular noticing: A comprehensive framework to describe teachers’ interactions with curriculum materials

Building on the work of Professional Noticing of Children’s Mathematical Thinking, we introduce the Curricular Noticing Framework to describe how teachers recognize opportunities within curriculum materials, understand their affordances and limitations, and use strategies to act on them. This framework builds on Remillard’s (2005) notion of participation with curriculum materials, connects with and broadens existing research on the relationship between teachers and written curriculum, and highlights new are as for research. We argue that once mathematics educators better understand the strategic curricular practices that support ambitious teaching, which we refer to as professional curricular noticing, then this knowledge can lead to recommendations for how to support the curricular work of teachers, particularly novice teachers

What is the Avatar? Fiction and Embodiment in Avatar-Based Singleplayer Computer Games: Revised and Commented Edition

What are the characteristic features of avatar-based singleplayer videogames, from Super Mario Bros. to Grand Theft Auto? The author examines this question with a particular focus on issues of fictionality and realism, and their relation to cinema and Virtual Reality. Through close-up analysis and philosophical discussion, the author argues that avatar-based gaming is a distinctive and dominant form of virtual self-embodiment in digital culture. This book is a revised edition of Rune Klevjer's pioneering work from 2007, featuring a new introduction by the author and afterword by Stephan Günzel, Jörg Sternagel, and Dieter Mersch

Pedagogical documentation as a lens for examining equality in early childhood education

In this paper, we consider pedagogical quality particularly as equal opportunities for participating in decision-making in preschool. Relying on Ferraris' [2013. Documentality: Why it is necessary to leave traces. New York: Fordham University Press] theory of Documentality, we demonstrate how pedagogical documentation can contribute to understanding children's perspectives and discuss how it may help facilitate children's perspectives to become part of their everyday lives at preschool. In addition, we examine, using a multi method approach, how our conceptualizations help critically examine equality in early childhood education (ECE). The study was conducted in Finnish preschools. The data source for this study is composed of the researcher's observation diary, self-documentation conducted by teachers (n = 13), individual ECE plans of 104 2 to 7-year-old children and document-aided interviews with their teachers (n = 13). Finally, we critically discuss the consequences of our findings in terms of documentation, pedagogy and the equality of ECE.Peer reviewe

The Strange Case of the Animated Jekyll and the Online Hyde : a documentary study of Korean youth culture and identity

Robert Louis Stevenson s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is the starting point for my practice-led research project. Stevenson's Victorian novella enables me to identify core themes which are pertinent to a discussion of the construction of contemporary identities in Korean youth culture. These identities are exemplified in the creation of avatars the virtual characters of animated online games such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). My animation practice is developed by addressing how Jekyll and Hyde provides useful critical and creative tools, such as gothic imagery and detective thrillers, for looking at the double . This concept is used to investigate the case of a young Korean boy, addicted to online gaming, who committed violent acts. My animated drama-documentary draws on research into the real and virtual Korean worlds and employs a visual ethnographic methodology to test my research question: in what ways can the construction of 'identity' (based on concepts drawn from 'Jekyll and Hyde') be identified in contemporary 'virtual' media (i.e. 'MMORPGs'/the 'animated' documentary), and how does this facilitate an address of the specific case of 'Korea' and 'Korean-ness'? The thesis is structured into five chapters: The Idea of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Theorising Identities in a Korean Context, Theorising Visual Ethnography, Theorising Animated Drama-Documentary, and A Film Practice as Animated Drama-Documentary in Visual Ethnography. Evidence of the research process and findings is located in a series of appendices. Theories about the construction of identity are discussed from three different perspectives: sociology, psychoanalysis and bio-culturalism. In my film practice, I look for the connection between the anxious self and Korean social issues, such as modernisation and the 1997 IMF economic crisis, to account for Korean youth s identity formation through online gaming. My research shows that many South Korean MMORPG users construct identity within contemporary virtual media and that this contributes to a very complex Korean-ness amongst Korean youth. Online gaming has both positive and negative consequences. Immersion in the virtual world can lead to addiction and to the violence which is at the core of my film narrative. It can also result in close online friendships, offering kinship not available in many broken families, or families inhibited in their communication by social roles and expectations, or the effect of economic failure and loss. My practice criticises young Korean people's narrow and limited social environment and proves that they desire liberal expression and decision-making for themselves, which can be experienced through the embodiment of animated avatars in MMORPGs. Hence, the online Hyde , though assumed to be a negative or destructive force, is actually a vehicle for varied and numerous social identities for youth culture preferable to those available in real Korean society. The research mounts a critique of the meaning of the online Hyde , not as a misrepresentative and negative representation of Korean-ness, but as a revelation of its contemporary meaning which can be articulated though animation, a tool which has applications within visual ethnography

What is the Avatar?

What are the characteristic features of avatar-based singleplayer videogames, from Super Mario Bros. to Grand Theft Auto? Rune Klevjer examines this question with a particular focus on issues of fictionality and realism, and their relation to cinema and Virtual Reality. Through close-up analysis and philosophical discussion, Klevjer argues that avatar-based gaming is a distinctive and dominant form of virtual self-embodiment in digital culture. This book is a revised edition of Rune Klevjer's pioneering work from 2007, featuring a new introduction by the author and afterword by Stephan Günzel, Jörg Sternagel, and Dieter Mersch