Thematic Project: Stage 3

Random Word Association

Association:

Pop – Pop art design

Pop – Using pop out animation

Explode – Using explosive comic dialogue box

Hot – Using some array of sunlight as the background

Cinema/Theatre – Using image of celebrities

Shape – Using halftone design that looks like popcorn shape

Paper box – Using old paper effects as the background to create the vintage look

Paper box – Using a big box to contain all the criteria of creativity

Uneven color – Using uneven color for the background

Fun fair – Using happy song as the background music

Thematic Project: Stage 2

Essay

Multimedia University, the Sweet Wonderland of Creativity

Once upon a time, right above the sky, the birds have their second home. A wonderland full with vast amount of sweets. We call it, Multimedia University, the Sweet Wonderland of Creativity. There was a group of youngsters, Pink, Red, Yellow, Purple and Blue. They leave their home sweet home to further their study in this Sweet Wonderland and experience their lives independently. They took a flying bus to the Sweet Wonderland. While in the flying bus, this is where Pink, Red, Yellow, Purple, and Blue met each other for the first time. All of them share the same sweet dream of getting a better life, expensive cars, big houses, and the most important of all, earning big money in the future. And they choose our sweet MMU to continue their sweet dreams. Then they become best friends forever.

Each of them have different personality, Pink is the sweet talker. Because of that, she is very popular among the students and always the apple in the eye of the lecturers in MMU. Well the actual reason that Pink likes to have a lot of friends around her is to gather information. For example, she will always get a lot of assignment answers from all of her friends so that she can compare all the answers and modify it and make it as her own work. Besides, as she is the favorite student of the lecturers, she never has any problem getting exam tips from the lecturers. Therefore, Pink is always the top student in class.

And now here we come to Red. Red is very well known guy among all the lecturers and students because he loves to eat a lot especially sweet things. He spend his whole day eating, in class, while walking, while sleeping he will munch chewing gums, and even in bathroom! People used to think that he is a dull obese person and look down to him because he is fat. But they make a HUGE mistake, he is actually a very smart person and the reason of him being smart is because of the sweet things that he eats. Red thinks that by eating sweet stuff will release his stress and always feel happy. Therefore he can always think clearly and his brain is able to generate more new ideas than others. He had been helpful in every brainstorming session due to his creativity.

Talk about sky, and ocean. We think of blue. Blue is a thinker. He likes to live in his fantasy world. Blue’s imaginations are just like the sky and ocean, wide and unlimited. He always imagines of him sitting on the flying elephant travel around the world or fighting with some big monsters to save the princess in the far away kingdom. His thinking is so different than others that people treat him as a freak. But he does not care about what others think about him. Due to his hobby of loving to day dream, Blue always ends up having his sweet dreams in class. Surprisingly, every time when he wakes up, he will come out with more outrages ideas. As a result Blue becomes a great inventor, the flying bus is one of his great inventions.

Here we go to the sweet couple, Yellow and Purple. They fell in love with each other at the first sight when they first met in the flying bus. Since then, they have been together forever. Yellow is good in logic and numbers while Purple is good in colors and shapes. They always discuss together and get opinions from their sweetheart while solving problems. Because both of them are superior in different field, they always learn from each other to beautify t hey imperfections. Yellow and Purple were just nobody before they know each other but now they are the most perfect couple in the world.

This group of friends, with their different type of personality, makes the most powerful combination in this Sweet Wonderland of Creativity. They all are the criteria of being creative. It is a misconception that some people are not creative. The brain has a million brain cells, and has huge powers of creativity. Many people are just not trained to tap into their brain's creative potential. To be creative, we just need to follow some steps. First, Pink, the sweet talker, she gathers information to achieve her goals. To be creative, first you have to know and understand what your aim is. Then you have to gather as much information as possible by using any possible ways.

The second important step to be creative is to make your brain stress-free just like what Red did. When you are under pressure, your brain will never function in a proper way. Therefore, you have to be happy and stress less in order to come out with different ideas. Next criteria of being creative are “thinks out of box”. Blue always fantasizes and because of that he can become a great inventor. You have to think differently than other people in order to be creative. Never ever care what people thinks about you and never let them stop you just like what Blue did. You should think of possible out of impossible.

Besides, having dreams is another method of being creative. Don’t believe it? Dreams can actually create new ideas through the generation of random thought mutations. Some of these may be rejected by the mind as useless, while others may be seen as valuable and retained. Blenchner, an American psychologist and psychoanalyst, calls this the theory of “Oneiric Darwinism.” That is the reason why every time when Blue wakes up from his sweet dreams, he will get more outrages ideas.

Lastly, it is another misconception that creativity is purely right-brained. The left brain tends to deal with words, logic, numbers and the right brain tends to deal with colors, shapes and rhythm. Actually the real creativity involves both sides of the brain. Just like the sweet combination of Yellow and Purple, the combination of imperfections make perfect. Once again, follow the steps and everybody can be creative just like Pink, Red, Blue, Yellow and Purple. When this five colors combine together, you will get a color that is beyond your imagination.

Thematic Project: Stage 1

Mr.Radzi had briefly talk about the group assignment that named as Thematic Project in last week class hour session. It’s a combination of what we had learned the whole semester, so we need to do a lot of step which is association mind-map, logical mind-map, random word association, and we need to come with one animation clip and 800words of essay. Each of us was stunned after Mr.Radzi showed us one of the fcm’s senior works!! It’s was very amazing for us and we were worried that we don’t have such idea to complete it. But very luckily that our topic isn’t difficult as we thought which is “Creativity in the context of Multimedia University”. And we do have a lot of consultation hour with Mr.Radzi and Mr.Halim.

Each of us comes out with a lot of ideas to complete the first mind-map which is association mind-map. We keep discussing about the context of MMU but which have to relate to the creativity as well. So we basically start with stereotypes to complete it which is “branch, people, environment, faculties, culture”.

This is the logical mind-map we had done after all :

Yes! What we choose is SWEET!

It sounds like not creativity and a little bit far away from the main topic at the started.

But in the 1st consultation, Mr.Radzi said it's a good idea and thanks to my group members whom make this work!

So, we continue with the another focus mind-map and here is it :

Random Association

Situation/Problem

To create "Scary Image or Object" that will instill fear among the people through out the ages

Random Words

Kitten

scary eyes

sharp claw

smelly shit

mice enemy

Association

Scary Eyes: Place a lot of fake scary eyes around the area to scare the people away and make them think that there are a lot of people looking at them.

Sharp Claw: Create a wall which is full with sharp torn to surround the area.

Smelly Shit: Create one kind of liquid that will produce great smell that human will not be able to tolerate

Mice Enemy: Put some human enemy such as bear or tiger behind the fence that surround the area to guard that area.

Linking with Unrelated Subject

In this activity, we are asked to relate Man, Love, Life, Happiness, and Pain with something totally unrelated. These are a few of the results of me working on relating Man, Love, Life, Happiness, and Pain with unrelated subjects.

1. Describe Love by using Chili

Love makes you feel warm, brings tears, excitement, and sweat just like chili.

2. Describe Life by using Oil Lamp

The lighting oil lamp

age old

yet new and inspiring

lighting up the dark

with its soft dim light;

just watching the familiar flame

dance on the candle wick

Life,

everyday is new and inspiring

as you travel though it

the light will guide you,

determination will get you there,

and love will provide the greatest scenery of all.

3. Describe Pain by using Ice-cream

You have to feel the pain before you taste the sweetness of life,

just like eating ice-cream.

4. Describe Happiness by using Time

Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile,

because happiness doesn't matter when or where

5. Describe Man by using Mortar and Pestle

Men are just like the mortar and pestle, they are so common that women might forgot about them, but they are so important in womens lives.

How Mergers Go Wrong

In this class activity, my lecturer want us to merge two random animal which is the most impossible to survive in this world.

The 1st combination that I did was buffalo head + fish body and the 2nd combination was giraffe head + butterfly wings. Anyway, my lecturer, Mr. Radzi said that both of that still got the possibility to survive. He did review the answer to us after this activity. Guess what is the answer?

Well, the correct answer is fish head + bird's body.

It really do look ridiculous right? This creature will not be able to survive either on the dry land or in the water. And this is how mergers go wrong.

Analogy Advertisement

All these advertisements are using the analogy way to send out the message. As you can see from all the picture up there, all the furniture, television or even a refrigerator is placing the other way round. All these advertisements are to promote the Durex Lubricant and the message that they trying to send out is "Enjoy the other side".

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition refers to the stimulation of creativity in problem solving, design or other creative pursuit by confronting two unrelated concepts of objects , usually the goal or problem to be solved on one hand and a randomly selected object or concept on the other.

For example,

Step 1:

Flower Head

Lighting Rain

Ice Wood

Light Tree

Fire Spider

Duck Root

Dog Mountain

Oil Wind

Leave Rock

Fly Water

Step 2:

Choose 3 pairs of numbers from 00-99

And I chose 13, 89, 00.

Step 3:

1 Flower 0 Head

2 Lighting 9 Rain

3 Ice 8 Wood

4 Light 7 Tree

5 Fire 6 Spider

6 Duck 5 Root

7 Dog 4 Mountain

8 Oil 3 Wind

9 Leave 2 Rock

0 Fly 1 Water

Step 4:

13 = Flower + Wind

89 = Oil + Rain

00 = Fly + Head

Exercise 1:

Create a sentence by using the two random words

1. The flower drop from the plant because of the wind.

2. I was carrying the cooking oil while running in the rain.

3. The paper fly over my head.

Exercise 2:

1. The flower drop from the plant because of the wind.

2. I was carrying the cooking oil while running in the rain.

3. The paper fly over my head.

Exercise 3:

1. flowerwind

2. oilrain

3. flyhead

Mind Mapping: Associates Mindmapping

Associates Mindmapping is different than Logical Mindmapping. Associates Mindmapping can make people more creative in terms of their thinking and ideation. Associates Mindmapping will link the main subject to a entire new idea that are totally not connected to stereotypes and might be not logical.

For example, in class my lecturer want us to link Mortar and Pestle with a few subjects that is totally not related. Among the subjects I chose Power, Hair/Fashion, and Devil.

POWER

People use the mortar and pestle to choose their leader. Whoever is able to break the mortar by using the pestle is believed to have special power and will be elected to become the leader of the community.

HAIR/FASHION

Girls or even some boys are using the mortar and pestle as the accessories on their hair. This is the latest fashion that favor by most of the teenagers. They put the mortar on their head and use it like a hat, and curl their hair with the pestle.

DEVIL

Some people use the mortar and pestle to kill or chase the devil away. In their religion, they believe that by using the mortar to trap the devil in it and the pestle to hit on the floor around the mortar will send the devil back to hell.

This is how I link these unrelated subjects with mortar and pestle. And this is how a Associates Mindmapping works.

Mind Mapping: Logical Mindmapping

This is the Logical Mindmapping that I did. It is titled as "What is in a Girl's Mind?". As you can see from the picture a girl's mind contain a few important subjects for them such as fashion, gossip, rival, boys, BFF, sales. But for those words that have a red cross across them are those subjects that are not in a girl's mind such as games, sense of direction, sex, securerity, IT sense and cars.

Logical Mind Map is always connected with stereotypes. A stereotype is a commonly held public belief about specific social groups, or types of individuals. The rules of Logical Mindmapping is to always have your subject in the center of the page. The characteristics of the Logical Mindmapping are non-emotive words and image, logical and make sense, serious, linearity and analysis.

What Symbolized Me?

Well, this is what my friend, Eddy, thinks that symbolized me. The reason he choose a lighting light bulb to symbolize me because this also symbolize new ideas. He said that I always have a lot of ideas which is different than others. Besides, he also said that light bulb indicates light which light up his life. (well, actually Eddy is my boyfriend just in case you are wondering)

Inventors vs Boundary Breakers

INVENTORS - those who take existing knowledge and create new ideas

Thomas Edison

(1847 - 1931)

Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. With only three months of formal education he became one of the greatest inventors and industrial leaders in history. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.

Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York.

Source from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

BOUNDARY BREAKERS - the rarest group

Leonardo da Vinci

(1452 - 1519)

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".

Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.

Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced and most parodied portrait and religious painting of all time, respectively, their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on everything from the Euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination. Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, comprise a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy,civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Source from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci

What Makes You a Creative Person

Nearly every creative person I know has experienced the question, often asked by someone with a blank, slightly-confused look: why do you do that? Why do you take all those photos, or scribble notes everywhere, or make birthday cards by hand? Why do you knit, or make quilts, or paint with watercolors, or make sculpture from scrap? Why do you want to write a novel or make a film? Some people ask these questions out of innocent curiosity, because they’ve just never experienced such impulses. But from other people, the tone can be vaguely threatening — even menacing.It seems that what they’re really saying is: “What gives you the right? What makes you important enough to do that? Who do you think you are?

What is creativity? Why are creative people often different than others? And what makes you a creative person?

Creative Intelligence is the ability to think in new ways, to be original and where necessary stand apart from the crowd. Creativity is also an attitude: the ability to accept change and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways to improve it. We are socialized into accepting only a small number of permitted or normal things, like chocolate-covered strawberries, for example. The creative person realizes that there are other possibilities, like peanut butter and banana sandwiches, or chocolate-covered prunes.

Creative people work hard and continually to improve ideas and solutions, by making gradual alterations and refinements to their works. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very, very few works of creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of brilliance or in a frenzy of rapid activity. Much closer to the real truth are the stories of companies who had to take the invention away from the inventor in order to market it because the inventor would have kept on tweaking it and fiddling with it, always trying to make it a little better. The creative person knows that there is always room for improvement.

Creativity requires four things-

• Fluency - the speed and ease with which you can "rattle off" new and creative ideas.

• Flexibility - your ability to see things from different angles and from opposite points of view. To take old concepts and rearrange them in new ways and to reverse current ideas. It's also about using your senses i.e. what you see, hear, feel, touch, taste, smell in developing new thinking.

• Originality - being able to produce ideas that are unique, unusual and eccentric or different.

• Expand ideas - being able to build on, develop, embellish and elaborate upon thoughts and concepts.

We all have the ability to be creative by using our right brains but we are also good at blocking it by limiting our thinking and believing there is only one way to look at things, or sometimes we reject ideas outright because we can't see how they will work.

Random word, picture or object

When you are working on a problem, select a random word, picture or object from your office and write down a list of words that spring to mind as you reflect on it's purpose, colour, texture, shape, size, movement and surroundings. Now review what you have written down and see if it generates any new thoughts or ideas that might help with your problem.

Develop your senses

We make sense and communicate through our senses and the more we develop them the more we are able to associate and find connections between apparently unrelated things e.g. a frog and school bus - they both need water to keep them cool and they both have eyes! Add your own!

When you are outside see if you can spot 15 different colours and textures of green. And the next time you listen to a song see if you pick out the instruments and vocalists. You can give your taste buds a test by trying to guess the ingredients of a surprise meal. Close you eyes and imagine you were blind, can you find the things on your desk easily? Give your brain a challenge by wearing your watch on the other hand for just one day. You will be amazed at how it develops your sense of touch and feeling.

Learning to be Creative

Much of the thinking done in formal education emphasizes the skills of analysis--teaching students how to understand claims, follow or create a logical argument, figure out the answer, eliminate the incorrect paths and focus on the correct one. However, there is another kind of thinking, one that focuses on exploring ideas, generating possibilities, looking for many right answers rather than just one which is creative thinking.

Explorers tend to have difficulty with organizing, and to be good at creative thinking. So let's spend a small part of our time working at getting somewhat organized, and a large part of our time practicing being very creative.

Some people are just creative – they don’t train themselves to think like they do and they often don’t even know that they are any different from the rest of us – it’s just who they are. However I believe that we can all enhance our ability to be creative over time. If you want to be more creative in everything you do, you need to know these three important concepts namely seeing things differently, Incubating and silencing the inner critic. Knowing these concepts will help you to come up with new ideas and solutions which in turn will gain more respect and admiration from your peers.

The first requirement to improve your creativity is to see what others are not seeing or at least to make an attempt to see things from a different perspective. Average people who face problems stop when they can't come up with a known fix from top of their heads but creative people go beyond that and force their brains to think about alternate ways.

This constant practice of forcing their brains helps them to make new connections with often unrelated subjects. It also helps them to come up with what others often call 'brilliant' ideas.

Most of these creative people knowingly or unknowingly follow a technique called 'incubation'. After they have sufficiently tried to exercise their brains to come up with solutions they forget about it and do something else.

An outside observer may think they just gave up since they couldn't think of any better ideas. But a person who knows how the brain works will tell you that they did not give up but simply handed over the problem to their loyal servant - the sub-conscious mind. The sub-conscious mind works vigorously at the back of their minds when their conscious mind is involved in something else.

Once the sub-conscious mind has worked out a solution. It then passes the ideas to the conscious mind and that's when these people have those 'light bulb' moments. Another important requirement to improve your creativity, is to silence the inner critic. This guy sits in your brain so to speak and is ready to jump at the first chance to tell you "why something won't work" or "how no one has tried that before".

Before you rule out any idea as impossible take some time to find ways to make it possible. Often times we do the exact opposite we rule out an idea and think about reasons to justify our decisions. If we only concentrate more rather than act mechanically we can solve a lot of problems and come up with good ideas. So, the next time when you want to think creatively ask these 3 questions: 1. Am I seeing things from a different angle? 2. Am I incubating for ideas? and finally 3. Have I asked the inner critic to be quiet for sometime?.

By following this simple procedure you can come up with some good ideas in future.

If You Think You Can, You Can

Some people think, well maybe the problem can be solved by some expert, but not by me because I'm not (a) smart enough, (b) an engineer, or (c) a blank (whether educated, expert, etc.) Again, though, look at the history of problem solving.

Who were the Wright brothers that they could invent an airplane? Aviation engineers? No, they were bicycle mechanics. The ball point pen was invented by a printer's proofreader, Ladislao Biro, not a mechanical engineer. Major advances in submarine design were made by English clergyman G. W. Garrett and by Irish schoolmaster John P. Holland. The cotton gin was invented by that well known attorney and tutor, Eli Whitney. The fire extinguisher was invented by a captain of militia, George Manby.

And so on. In fact, a major point made by recent writers about corporate excellence is that innovations in industry almost always come from individuals (not research groups) outside of the area of the invention. General Motors invented Freon, the refrigeration chemical, and tetraethyl lead, the gasoline additive. Kodachrome was invented by two musicians. The continuous steel casting process was invented by a watchmaker (fooling around with brass casting). Soap making chemists turned down the problem of inventing synthetic detergents: those detergents were invented by dye making chemists.

In a nutshell, a good mind with a positive attitude and some good problem solving skills will go far in solving any problem. Interest in and commitment to the problem are the keys. Motivation--a willingness to expend the effort--is more important than laboratory apparatus. And remember that you can always do something. Even if you cannot totally eradicate the problem from the face of the earth, you can always do something to make the situation better.