Our fourth project was meant to be an expression of ourselves similar to the glasses that we had made previously, but more in depth. The assignment was to find (or in my case, create) a container and decorate and fill it with things that describe you as a person. It could be an overall synopsis of your being, or it could focus on a specific "turning point" in your life.
As usual, I was pretty much at a loss at the beginning of the project because I'm wholly convinced that I haven't really done anything special in life, save for graduating as the Valedictorian of my class, and studying abroad in China for a month. Other than those, I'm a typical (or perhaps even atypically boring) person. I like technology and music, but who doesn't? I tend to keep to myself and enjoy video games. With all my utterly unique (that's sarcasm, by the way) attributes simply piling up in front of me, I went with them.
My first problem was getting an appropriate container and I really, once again, had no idea where to start. I thought about significant boxes and whatnot in some of my favorite games until I discovered the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube® from Portal! Portal is a puzzle/platforming game where you have to use two inter-dimensional portals that you fire from a special gun onto a surface to move these cubes onto Aperture Science Super-Colliding Super Buttons® to open doors so that you may move on to the next test chamber all under the watchful eyes of the sentient computer system, GLaDOS.
As you can see, it's a bit on the complicated side, so I got some help from the good old internet. (Portal fans almost have a cult status, so it's quite easy to find a how-to in building one of these.) I found a blog where someone had dressed up as the main character from the game for Halloween and made a cube to carry around as part of her costume, and she explained exactly how she made it. More importantly, she provided a template for the crazy corner pieces. I was able to print them out on cardstock and fold them into the right shape. However, I needed a base cube shape to which to attach them. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a large (actually twice as large as needed) sheet of foam board and measured out squares to make a perfect 1 foot cube. My dad helped me measure to account for the thickness of the board. Once I had all the pieces cut out and marked, I joined them with half toothpicks as nails and jaggedly cut one of the corners out.
I had originally planned to leave the corner out and open, but my dad suggested that I put it together as well and use it as a sort of lid. It worked out much better than I thought it would, because the jagged way I cut it out in the first place really made it so it had a good grip. I also decided to forgo the small parts on the edge of the cube between the corner pieces, but if I ever make another one, they will be included.
I finished putting the cube together except for the top, so I could have access to the interior to decorate it. Then I fastened the corner pieces to the removable corner and the bottom four corners while I thought of things to put inside. I knew I wanted to include my trip to China and also pay homage to some of my other favorite games, but I needed to describe the more personal side of me as well.
I actually did include a number of personal things, but despite the outpouring of personal information from others in the class, I was still too chicken to point them out. However, I will do so in this post, because I think I should try to be more open.
I needed to add color to the inside of the cube, but I didn't want to go
through the hassle of mixing different paint colors, painting
carefully, and waiting for it to dry, so I enlarged some images on my
computer and printed them out to work as wallpaper basically. The
interior walls are simply a wall texture from Portal 2 and it was mainly
just to break the monotony of pure white. The ceiling is a picture of
the Milky Way, our own galaxy, because I am fascinated by space and
what's out there. The floor is sort of one of the personal things, but it was included in jest of myself. There is a meme on the internet known as Socially Awkward Penguin
that makes fun of the odd and embarrassing things that people with poor
social skills do, and will sometimes focus on how said person acts
around girls. I'll admit, I have a crush on a particular girl, but I
have trouble bringing myself to talk to her. Therefore, I could be
called socially awkward, but as I said, it's something I just make fun
of myself for. I was going to find a small penguin figure to put in the
center, actually, but that would have just been weird, so I just used
the colored background. Also, I have no idea what a penguin has to do with social awkwardness.
As you can see, these pictures were taken once it was all complete (It was incredibly difficult to position my hand to take pictures inside.) I think the best way to explain the significance of everything is once you can see it. Please forgive me if the explanations seem sporadic because the creation was just as sporadic. In fact, the aged photos and the hand print were spur of the moment "that sounds cool" ideas. I included the VIP pass for a Coheed and Cambria concert in the back corner because, as I've said a number of times, they are definitely my favorite band. The Chinese characters in the middle two pictures are the two main cities we stayed in while in China: Tianjin and Beijing respectively, but we definitely spent most of our time in Tianjin. The gears on the chain are called "COG Tags" and they are from the hyper-violent shooter game Gears of War, one of my favorites. The aged photos, as I said, were a last minute addition. I scoured my computer and Facebook for fond memories that I had. The first picture is of my first Coheed and Cambria concert, the second is of my friends, Kyle and Jared, and I sitting at another friends house getting ready to play video games all together, and the last picture is of my parents and I with our snowman that we built on the first white Christmas in my life. I aged them in Photoshop because whenever I think of old sepia toned photographs, it makes me think that they must be of fond memories to have been kept so long. The hand print is meant to be my artistic side, because it has a pencil, pencil sharpener, and calligraphy brush - that I was given by a student in China when she was teaching us calligraphy - all in its palm. The roll of paper was given to my graduating class at the "Senior Pep Rally" and it represents my education; one of the few things that I'm actually proud of.
I'm sure you've noticed the strange markings in the last picture by now and have been wondering what they signify. Well, this is where we get into the things I was afraid to mention... It's a language from a game series called Jak and Daxter just because I like the series. That has nothing to do with the actual words. Each of the little markings corresponds to an English letter and can easily be translated. It's no Klingon from Star Trek or Elvish from Lord of the Rings; it's basically just English in disguise. The word to the left of the VIP pass simply says "Valedictorian," but it is placed high up on the wall because it is something I'm proud of. I used this word to set the precedent of up high being a good thing, and down low being a bad thing.
I cut off the word just above the diploma because this was sent to a friend that knew the origins of the symbols and could figure it out if he wanted. It is lower on the wall so it's something that I'm ashamed of, and I didn't want to say anything about it, but, as I said, I figure I should start being more open. That word says "depression." Now, I haven't actually went to a psychiatrist or anything, it's just a self-diagnosis, but I know for a fact that when you wake up and wish you hadn't that something has to be wrong. (These are very few and far between.) Although, it's not permanent, as of now, I'm quite happy and have been for some time. Maybe I'm just overreacting to not being a morning person or I'm mistaking normal life woes as depression. I don't know; however, if you read this, please don't worry about me. I'm not that bad. It's just something that I've had to deal with.
Now, as emotionally draining as that was, I'm actually more nervous about the word to the right of the VIP Pass, and rightfully so. No one that I know of has ever been threatened for being depressed, but that's kinda part of this one. Whether it's an actual death threat or just the threat of burning in eternal hellfire, someone is going to threaten me eventually and technically already have by default. That's because that word is "Atheist." However, notice that it is high up on the wall. I'm proud to say that I don't believe in a god, but also terrified because of the effect it can have on a person's life. Some people may not hire me in the future. Some of my friends or family may disown me. I may lose relationships. (If I can ever get out of being a penguin, that is.) As stated above, my life may be threatened, and that's kind of a big deal to an atheist; this is the only one we have! There's no, "Oh well, at least I'll get to see grandpa again," or "There's always next time." People have become more tolerant in recent years, and that's definitely a plus, but this is still a majority Christian country, and generally, they don't take too kindly to the ideas of atheists. I understand there are many religious people that are tolerant, but until everyone is cool with everyone else doing their own thing, we will all, not just us atheists, be under threat from someone. That is one of the reasons I am an atheist. This one I am actually okay with people asking about, though. As long as it's in a civilized manner.
That just about covers the references on the inside, and the outside is pretty mild in comparison. Once I got everything on the inside, I put the top on and the remaining 3 corner pieces. I painted the whole thing with gray primer, then mixed a lighter gray for the corner pieces. If you refer WAY back up to the picture of the cube from Portal, you'll see that there is a logo repeated on the faces of the cube. That is the logo for the company Aperture Science. I decided that I would use the six sides to display different logos, however. I created 6 circles with different logos in the middle to print off and glue to the outside.
The back right is the dragonfly logo of Coheed and Cambria. This one was included simply because they are my favorite band. No real meaning or explanation behind this one. The logo itself refers to heroin, because the lead singer's father was addicted to heroin, but that has nothing to do with me personally.
The
back left is from a game called Borderlands where four teammates work
together to find The Vault: a doorway to another dimension that contains a giant demon monster. That symbol marks The Vault, so it seemed
appropriate to mark my box of personal demons with it.
The front right is known as the Keywork. It's one of the logos of Coheed and Cambria. It represents a large solar system comprised of 7 stars - 3 large and 4 small - and 78 planets aligned into a triangle and connected by a beam of energy. Did I mention that the lead singer writes a sci-fi comic book and bases all of the lyrics on the story? So this one can not only be about my favorite band, but also the fact that I'm a mild comic book nerd as well.
The front left is from a video game called Shadow of the Colossus. In this game, you are a young man trying to bring his love back to life, and to do so, he travels to a Forbidden Land where he must slay 16 colossi nothing but a sword, bow and arrow, and his horse. This glyph is the marker for the colossi's weak points. I had to include this, because not only does the glyph look awesome and will likely be my first tattoo, (Appropriate with my size, no?) but the game is literally my favorite game of all time.
Lastly, the bottom relates to my social awkwardness again. The Weighted Storage Cube isn't the only cube in Portal. There is another one that called the Companion Cube that has the Aperture logo replaced with a pink heart. It was meant to keep the test subjects company in the test chambers until they got attached to the cube at which point they were forced to throw the Companion Cube into an incinerator! It's a very silly part of the story of the game. However, I used mine to show that I do want to have a girlfriend that I can spend time with and enjoy the company of, even if I can't really outwardly show it. Hence it being on the bottom hiding directly under the social awkwardness.
I made a few mistakes with the brush when painting the corners, and there was really no way to go back and fix them. I also meant for the dark gray of the logos to match the overall cube and the light gray to match the corners, but that was also a little too difficult to go back and try to fix. Over all, I'm very proud of this and it was a very cathartic experience in simply including my somewhat secretive things. I do regret not actually speaking up and more thoroughly explaining my choices of color and symbolism, but I guess I was just afraid of the reaction I might get...
Wow, Brandon! I loved your explanation!
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