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Individuals' conceptual knowledge of contemporary biological issues influences ethical attitudes and life decisions around health, as evidenced by the recent worldwide debate on vaccinations. The reasons for which the public opinion is so critically divided can be partially explained from the didactic approaches used in biology education. In view of the rapid evolution of Virtual Reality (VR) as well as the increasing interest that youths have shown toward Escape Rooms (ER), an unexplored research and development avenue is identified. In this experimental study, we present the design and development steps as well as the evaluation of a VRER dedicated to biology education. For comparison purposes, an educational instructional video utilising the storytelling technique was also prepared. Both approaches were examined in the upper secondary education context with participants (N = 50) emerging from the Applied Sciences academic path. The key-findings suggest that the active learning approach leads to increased knowledge acquisition, in the short term, as opposed to the passive learning approach but no significant differences were identified in the long term (knowledge retention) across the methods. Based on the instructional decisions made and the key-findings emerged we provide implications and guidelines for the design, development, and integration of VRER in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how undergraduates with disabilities responded to virtual learning through a 3D virtual story. Students with learning disabilities (e.g., ADHD, dyslexia) could easily become overwhelmed or find it challenging to stay focused on traditional text-based readings. Students with physical disabilities need to be emerged in a real-life problem-based setting to understand how a system works. A 3D virtual story was developed with computer animations via machinima technology to provide an alternative learning experience to promote learning. Ten undergraduates with disabilities and twenty-five regular undergraduates were recruited from an urban public university to participate in a 3D virtual story-based study on the topic of strokes. A mixed-method study reports the attitudes of the participants toward such a virtual learning experience. It demonstrates that students with disabilities appreciated the virtual learning opportunities as an alternative to traditional text-based learning, but they performed significantly worse than regular students in cognitive assessment in the form of multiple-choice questions. The students' responses toward such a virtual learning environment help suggest principles of software design for students with disabilities. Investigating the cognitive learning knowledge formats and the perceived value helps guide future cognitive task design. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed to inform future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many research efforts in the international literature have been conducted to investigate various fundamental issues associated with communication skills cultivation of students with developmental dyslexia. However, little is known when it comes to the impact that 'immersive technologies', such as three-dimensional virtual worlds, without considering any exploration of their impact to assist boys and girls with developmental dyslexia cultivate communication skills. Motivated by this inadequacy in the literature, the purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of the machinima approach, created via OpenSimulator and Scratch4SL, for students with developmental dyslexia in vocabulary learning and practicing. This embedded mixed-methods research was conducted over a four-week timetable in-class course, with forty students (n = 40) aged 10–12 years old. All students were equally separated into two groups in line with their gender. Boys and girls were encouraged to unfold the communication skills developed (i.e., spelling, writing, reading) by creating their own stories, after viewing educational videos and machinima scenes, before and after the treatment. The results indicate that machinima positively affected students' learning outcomes and achievements. Machinima can improve immediate knowledge gains in boys compared to girls to purposefully translate their cognitive thinking into storytelling, when problem-solving situations through simulated realism are considered. This study also offers insights for educational implications and design guidelines for machinima creation, providing empirical evidence on its effect on the participants' linguistics understanding and communication skills for language learning in girls and boys with developmental dyslexia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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En esta investigación se propone una convergencia entre el campo del machinima, la posfotografía y la posanimación, que son disciplinas distantes pero afines en factores y claves por haberse desarrollado en el ámbito de la red. A partir del rol de intermediación entre disciplinas que juega el machinima, y tomando de la metodología cualitativa el estudio de casos desde la triangulación teórica, planteamos un estudio comparativo cuya hipótesis propone una secuencia formada por la posfotografía, el machinima y la posanimación hasta llegar a la real-time animation. Establecidas las claves principales sobre autoría, automatización y apropiación (donde la mediación y la autorreferencialidad son determinantes) inscritas en «Por un manifiesto post-fotográfico», vamos a extraer una serie de claves «post» que nos van a guiar en el análisis de estas disciplinas, para así generar una taxonomía cruzada. Taxonomía que pretende poner en valor el machinima en relación con la animación más avanzada y conectarla con la animación en tiempo real. Todo ello con el objetivo de reflexionar sobre la consideración de la real-time animation como la posanimación, lo que implica, primero, señalar el paralelismo entre estas disciplinas que se han ido estableciendo en la creación audiovisual; y, segundo, presupone una convergencia entre medios propiciada por una posible condición «post». El resultado es una serie de claves «post» A y B; una taxonomía cruzada con las que tratamos de entender cómo la implantación de lenguajes híbridos crea correspondencias interdisciplinares.

Copyright of Artnodes is the property of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Existen numerosas obras audiovisuales creadas por cineastas y videoartistas que anticipan recursos visuales y propuestas conceptuales aplicados posteriormente al ámbito de los videojuegos. El cine experimental y la videocreación no solo influyen en la implementación de estrategias estéticas y narrativas introducidas en la cultura del videojuego, sino que también son permeables a esta. Así, diversos juegos de ordenadores, máquinas de arcade y videoconsolas sirven como inspiración para realizar piezas videográficas que problematizan los usos y abusos de una industria en auge constante. Reflexionar sobre la idiosincrasia de esta conexión bidireccional es el propósito de un texto que pone en juego el valor de una serie de intercambios perceptibles en ambas disciplinas. De este modo, se estudian los inicios de la creación de imágenes por computadora (CGI) en diálogo con la animación abstracta; el carácter interactivo de los videojuegos en consonancia con videoinstalaciones coetáneas; los juegos de simulación y los first-person shooter (FPS), junto al punto de vista subjetivo en las prácticas fílmicas de vanguardia; el reciclaje de imágenes digitales extraídas de videojuegos de acción en el género de la machinima y la radicalidad de los discursos políticos presentes en los artists’ game mods. Estos son los apartados explorados en un texto que propone un acercamiento transversal al mundo del videojuego, dejando de lado el cine de ficción para concentrarse en el cine experimental y la videocreación. Abordar las similitudes formales e ideológicas que estos últimos tienen con el universo virtual del videojuego son objetivos prioritarios de un artículo que constata el carácter asíncrono de estas influencias. Observar cómo este intercambio incrementa exponencialmente alcanzada la era digital es un signo del fructífero devenir que supone este encuentro.

Pencahayaan merupakan salah satu hal terpenting dalam dunia sinematografi. Ada beberapa parameter yang harus diperhatikan untuk menghasilkan pencahayaan yang baik. Ada begitu banyak permutasi dalam pengaturan pencahayaan ini. Hal ini menyebabkan rumitnya proses tersebut dan tidak ada cara yang cukup mudah untuk melakukan perhitungannya. Kerumitan ini ditambah lagi dengan kenyataan bahwa setiap sutradara memiliki gaya masing-masing dalam pengaturan tata cahaya dalam proses produksi film. Makalah ini mengacu pada tabulasi dari hasil wawancara terhadap tiga sutradara dan kemudian diambil kesamaan dari ketiganya. Pada makalah ini dibangun suatu struktur logika fuzzy dengan lima parameter pengaturan pencahayaan, yaitu situasi dari set, point of view kamera, intensitas cahaya terpasang, posisi dan arah kamera, serta emosi dari karakternya. Uji coba dilakukan menggunakan dua puluh scene film animasi yang dibangun menggunakan Unity. Penilaian hasil keluaran dilakukan secara manual oleh beberapa desainer film animasi. Sebagai hasilnya, desainer menilai bahwa 80% tata cahaya yang dihasilkan sudah sesuai dengan keinginan.

Many research efforts in the international literature have been conducted to investigate various fundamental issues associated with communication skills cultivation of students with developmental dyslexia. However, little is known when it comes to the impact that ‘immersive technologies’, such as three-dimensional virtual worlds, without considering any exploration of their impact to assist boys and girls with developmental dyslexia cultivate communication skills. Motivated by this inadequacy in the literature, the purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of the machinima approach, created via OpenSimulator and Scratch4SL, for students with developmental dyslexia in vocabulary learning and practicing. This embedded mixed-methods research was conducted over a four-week timetable in-class course, with forty students (n = 40) aged 10–12 years old. All students were equally separated into two groups in line with their gender. Boys and girls were encouraged to unfold the communication skills developed (i.e., spelling, writing, reading) by creating their own stories, after viewing educational videos and machinima scenes, before and after the treatment. The results indicate that machinima positively affected students’ learning outcomes and achievements. Machinima can improve immediate knowledge gains in boys compared to girls to purposefully translate their cognitive thinking into storytelling, when problem-solving situations through simulated realism are considered. This study also offers insights for educational implications and design guidelines for machinima creation, providing empirical evidence on its effect on the participants’ linguistics understanding and communication skills for language learning in girls and boys with developmental dyslexia.

Nonfiction has proved to be a long-term strategy of Native/First Nations filmmakers and, as this documentary tradition moves across contemporary mediums, one corner of its experimental aesthetics has focalized around animation. This article explores hybrid documentary approaches in Indigenous model animation across techniques and styles, namely digitally-supplemented stop-motion and game-based machinima. It begins by examining three principal characteristics of Indigenous animated documentaries: (1) they engage with the politics of documentary in the context of Indigenous and settler-colonial history; (2) they use animation to record stories and express ideas not authorized by the settler archive; and (3) they communicate via embedded Indigenous aesthetics and cultural protocols. A material analysis of Indigenous animation then accounts for how three Native artists centre re-mediation and re-embodiment in their work. These artists adapt new techniques in animation to documentary as a process of decolonization, precipitating a distinct hybrid aesthetics that travels across forms to question the veracity of settler documentary. Each reconstructs histories of settler colonialism – which has always chosen to record and authorize as 'history' some images and narratives and not others – with model animation practices and new media platforms. Indigenous animation expresses slippages between nonfiction and fiction by creating imagined documents, which strike at the legitimacy of settler institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teknologi komputer telah banyak digunakan di tidak hanya untuk tujuan penelitian dan pendidikan saja tetapi juga di dunia hiburan. Salah satu hiburan berbasis komputer adalah permainan komputer dan animasi. Salah satu komponen pendukungnya adalah machinima. Machima adalah teknologi yang akan menempatkan sebuah komponen sinematik dalam dunia virtual. Salah satu komponen yang dapat dikontrol adalah penempatan posisi kamera. Seorang sutradara bisa dibedakan gaya penyutradaraannya, salah satunya berdasarkan penempatan posisi kamera. Dengan menerapkan suatu gaya penyutradaraan pada sebuah permainan atau animasi bisa mendapatkan suasana yang berbeda. Penelitian ini akan mencoba melakukan profiling terhadap gaya seorang sutradara berdasarkan kebiasaan penempatan posisi kamera. Pendekatan yang dilakukan berbasis logika fuzzy. Penelitian ini akan menggunakan 19 variabel input yang berasal dari hasil ektraksi data simulasi dan 5 variabel output untuk melakukan profiling terhadap dua buah gaya sutradara yang berbeda dengan pendekatan logika fuzzy. Akan dihasilkan diagram area dan histogram sehingga mempermudah pembacaan dalam membedakan gaya sutradara dan berhasil dibedakan berdasarkan modus hasil analisa terhadap diagram histogram.

Penempatan posisi kamera secara manual membutuhkan proses dan perhitungan yang berulang-ulang untuk sebuah adegan, tentu saja hal ini akan membutuhkan banyak waktu dan biaya. Oleh karena itu dibuat sebuah sistem penempatan posisi kamera secara otomatis dalam lingkungan virtual yang sesuai dengan kaidah sinematografi. Sistem akan menangani pengaturan kamera untuk mendapat sudut, jarak dan ketinggian yang cocok untuk setiap adegan. Penelitian ini akan menggunakan simulasi permainan komputer dengan beberapa aksi dengan dua macam gaya penempatan posisi kamera yaitu kamera statis dan kamera dinamis. Metode yang digunakan adalah logika fuzzy dengan metode mamdani. Terdapat 3 tahapan yang dilakukan yaitu tahap masukan dari pengguna berupa kombinasi penekanan tombol untuk melakukan sebuah aksi. Tahap kedua adalah sistem inferensi fuzzy yang akan mengolah input menjadi output. Tahap terakhir adalah perekaman aksi berdasarkan posisi kamera yang telah ditentukan. Selain itu dalam simulasi permainan ini akan dipasang modul event selector untuk validasi aksi dan modul state director untuk operator transisi kamera virtual. Uji coba dilakukan dengan cara merekam 7 macam aksi dan akan divalidasi berdasarkan profiling dan responden. Dari uji coba didapatkan nilai 3.66 untuk kamera statis dan 4.08 untuk kamera dinamis. Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa sistem yang dibangun mampu melakukan penempatan posisi kamera sesuai kaidah sinematografi.

This research paper reports on the development of oral presentation skills in a 3D virtual world called Moviestorm machinima, in contrast with real-life videos. In this way, the implementation of both types of videos sought to promote the improvement of oral communication skills, specifically oral presentations in a foreign language, as well as promoting collaborative work. The study involved 60 students from different semesters of a private Colombian university from the schools of electronic engineering, computer science, and law, focusing on English for specific purposes. The results showed how students from different faculties worked collaboratively to achieve one goal: improve their oral presentation skills.

Lighting is one of the very important things in cinematography. Lighting in cinematography is used not only to illuminate the objects, but it has many important roles such as to make the object looks sharper, has tone, depth and separation, and so on. There are some parameters that affect the lighting result, such as light source type that is used, its colour, intensity, position, and direction. Unfortunately, lighting has so many permutations and variations and there is more than one right way to light the scene. In this research, a designer designs some scenes that will be used as inputs. In this study, the authors found that lighting set is strongly influenced by five important things, which are: the situation of the scene, Point-of-View, the intensity of the attached light sources, camera position, and emotion of the characters, that we called as the SPICE system that is the abbreviation from situation, PoV, intensity, camera, and emotion. some additional light sources will be added into the scene automatically according to the scenario and director’s behaviour using the SPICE system that we propose. The SPICE framework has two fuzzy inference systems in calculating the intensity of light that hits an object and some additional light sources that are added to the scene automatically to make it looks much better. This research will make a calculation to gain the best scenes as an output. There are 20 scenes used in this research. As the final result, designers assess 80% outputs have been as expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Synergies Europe is the property of GERFLINT (Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches pour le Francais Langue Internationale) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Numerous studies show the positive effects of introducing video games into learning contexts. These instruments help develop twenty-first-century skills, such as creativity, from a dual perspective: (i) the students' perspective, since they develop skills and competencies that allow them to find innovative solutions to the challenges posed by games, and to become digital culture producers; and (ii) the education professionals' perspective, to use these instruments in schools and thereby change the way students learn. Using a sample of 85 first-year secondary school students, this study aims to provide empirical evidence about the development of creativity through the introduction of video games in the classroom. To do this, an eight-week pedagogical workshop was developed in which the Minecraft video game was introduced in the subject of technology. To assess the results of the workshop, the participants' creativity was analysed using a pre-test/post-test design through the CREA Creative Intelligence Test, as well as the evaluation of the students' machinima productions by their teachers. Results show a significant increase in creativity and high scores for machinima productions, highlighting the opportunity to introduce these tools in classrooms in order to develop innovative educational contexts where creative processes and products are the protagonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machinima is a relatively new animation production technique that has become popular among independent animators. It is also used by installation artists to create installation artefacts in a digital space. As a form of remix and fandom culture, machinima can be appropriated for the production of readymade and found arts. However, its exact contribution to this art form has not been clearly defined, as the knowledge generated within the machinima community is usually fragmented, incomplete and poorly documented. This article examines machinima production practices and installation art with the aim of determining how machinima components can be considered as “found art” within an animation. The outcome will be of interest to both animators and installation artists who want to use machinima in their works. It also provides a lens for further study of machinima and digital installations that use videogames.

In this article, based on our ethnographic research conducted in a 3D virtual world, we discuss the production of erotic machinima as a form of altporn. Machinima is a technique that allows the production of films in digital platforms such as games and 3D virtual worlds. We argue that erotic machinimas, understood as parody of pornography itself, establish a critique of mainstream pornography.

Social interactions in the digital world, analyzed through its mediation by screens, opens the theatrum mundi to virtual spaces. The complexity of virtual-social roles is a reflection on the avatar-oriented conversion of the network society. This orientation plays the role of a utter mask and is the basis for the performing simulations of the internet society. In this context, we discuss the machinima as a digital-puppet theatre phenomenon mediated primarily by video games and spreaded through the network tools.

Copyright of Profile: Issues in Teachers' Professional Development is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Machinima is a computer imaging technology typically used in games and animation. It prints all movie cast properties into a virtual environment by means of a camera positioning. Since cinematography is complementary to Machinima, it is possible to simulate a director’s style via various camera placements in this environment. In a gaming application, the director’s style is one of the most impressive cinematic factors, where a whole different gaming experience can be obtained using different styles applied to the same scene. This paper describes a system capable of automatically profile a director’s style using fuzzy logic. We employed 19 output variables and 15 other calculated variables from the animation extraction data to profile two different directors’ styles from five scenes. Area plots and histograms were generated, and, by analyzing the histograms, different director’s styles could be subsequently classified.

The last decade has witnessed the emergence and aesthetic maturation of amateur multimedia on an unprecedented scale, from video podcasts to machinima, and Flash animations to user-created metaverses. Today, especially in academic circles, this pop culture phenomenon is little recognized and even less understood. This paper explores creativity in amateur multimedia using three theorizations of creativity—those of HCI, postructuralism, and technological determinism. These theorizations frame a semiotic analysis of numerous commonly used multimedia authoring platforms, which demonstrates a deep convergence of multimedia authoring tool strategies that collectively project a conceptualization and practice of digital creativity. This conceptualization of digital creativity in authoring tools is then compared with hundreds of amateur-created artifacts. These analyses reveal relationships among emerging amateur multimedia aesthetics, common software authoring tools, and the three theorizations of creativity discussed.