Long Project 7: TotoGro

• Download English-US transcript (PDF)

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Hi guys. We are team TotoGro. We are Sean and Lucy. And we have one more who dropped out, but Chris made a lot of impact into this project as well. So what is TotoGro? We love animation, we love music, and we also love this Japanese Disney movie called My Neighbor Totoro. I don't know if you guys have seen it. It's from Studio Ghibli. And in it, there is a scene where they grow a tree. If you go to the next clip. This is our website, by the way.

So in our next clip, you can see the different stages. So at first you have Totoro going around a little garden space. And they're actually bowing, they're praying, they're bowing. And as they're bowing, the trees grow. And then as they're bowing even more, the tree grows up into a real tree. And so while we were inspired by Totoro the spirit animal, we also saw some videos online of little kids doing the exact same motion. So we want to show you that.

And so it's a little kid who's watching the video and she gets down. Maybe you can fast forward a little bit. And then so she's actually doing the motion. You can see Totoro actually doing that and his friends bowing as well. So we thought that this was really, really cute. And we said we wanted to be Totoro the spirit animal as well. So what we did was we looked into the three-- you love this video. [LAUGHS] Let's get it back to the web site.

[LAUGHTER]

GUEST SPEAKER 1: So the next one. So what we did was we had a little strategy meeting between the three of us and we thought, what did these kids do in terms of getting the three motions to happen? So the first one is the seed sprouting. So you can see that what they did was they lift their hands up. The second motion was the bowing motion. And then the third one was they flew up to the canopy. Sorry, I had the little thing on. So they're flying up to the canopy.

So we said, what three motions can we do as a team? So we said the easiest thing to do is to sprout a tree by jumping. A second one, instead of having people bow-- or we couldn't do that, actually. So we decided to move the hand instead of bowing. You're moving the hand up and down. So instead of moving your body, you're moving your hand up and down. And the third one instead of flying, we decided to move our hands out to grow the leaf.

So by moving up and down, you're growing the tree. And by moving sideways, you're growing that leaf. And so we went through this. And it took us a really long time to get this going, but we're really excited to show you what we have. And then also the other thing is we took a soundtrack from the movie, legally and illegally, but it was actually a Japanese version of it. But we didn't want to pay for it. So that's why it's Japanese. If we had to pay for it, it would have been in English. But it's in Japanese.

[LAUGHTER]

GUEST SPEAKER 1: So what we also did was we created a start button. And if you hover over the start game, it changes color. Cool.

[LAUGHTER]

GUEST SPEAKER 1: And then this wasn't supposed to show up, but you're supposed to press goal and it's supposed to hug a tree. And then these three buttons, they currently are the exact same three buttons which goes to the project. So click on the button.

AUDIENCE: Are you demonstrating it?

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Yeah.

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: Good.

GUEST SPEAKER 1: And so I hope the sound is on. Oh, it's right here. Sorry. OK, so the first thing you do is you jump.

AUDIENCE: Mind picking up the microphone?

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Sorry. First thing you do is you jump. First thing you do is you jump.

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: Where's the connector located?

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Right here.

AUDIENCE: Wait, is it plugged in?

AUDIENCE: Oh, right.

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: I forgot to plug it in. Sorry guys.

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Darn it.

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: Sorry, we getting at the [INAUDIBLE]?

[LAUGHTER]

GUEST SPEAKER 1: I hope the sound's on.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. I've got sound. It was playing during my video.

GUEST SPEAKER 1: If it was in English, I would have karaoke this whole song for you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[LAUGHTER]

AUDIENCE: Here we go.

AUDIENCE: Can you grow into infinity?

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Yes it can, but we didn't have the camera track it. Do you see the shadows? See the shadow growing?

AUDIENCE: Do your hand motions affect how it grows?

GUEST SPEAKER 1: What?

AUDIENCE: Do your hand motions affect how it grows?

[APPLAUSE]

GUEST SPEAKER 1: That's the next step, for sure.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Yeah, this is kind of like a crazy.

GUEST SPEAKER 2: Yeah, some of the [INAUDIBLE]. That's all-- Chris made this main planting. So we had this idea that maybe the plant could grow sideways, [INAUDIBLE] sideways. And then it would go different ways.

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Yeah, but we didn't get that far.

GUEST SPEAKER 2: There were some peculiarities. We used a cue and we just scaled it to grow. And the thing is, when you scale it, it grows at both sides. So when you do that, you need to move to transform at the same time when you scale it. And [INAUDIBLE] growing.

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Sorry, I love it so much I'm playing it again.

GUEST SPEAKER 2: So [INAUDIBLE] as well. So you have to move the transform as it's scaling. And [INAUDIBLE] get stuck on the topmost stem as well. Yeah, there were some more different things as well. So that's why we didn't go further. So we angle for the [INAUDIBLE] jet out the plant [INAUDIBLE] So we just went [INAUDIBLE]. That's TotoGro.

GUEST SPEAKER 1: That's TotoGro.

[APPLAUSE]

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Any questions? Yes?

AUDIENCE: So I was curious if you [INAUDIBLE] rotate it around. [INAUDIBLE] was it like random rotate?

GUEST SPEAKER 2: Yeah, I randomly rotated the [INAUDIBLE] start growing. This looks like this. You can't tilt it.

AUDIENCE: So you swapped from a single cube, a [INAUDIBLE] cube, so that a set amount grows?

GUEST SPEAKER 2: Yeah. The first way is if you make your leaf so the length-- beyond this length we start a new one. Or if you grow it so then-- there's two ways for it. It's kind of experimental. We don't really have instructions. So a newcomer coming here was not knowing what to do. And we explain with the hands. And see [INAUDIBLE]. We know, so we have it.

AUDIENCE: Any other questions?

GUEST SPEAKER 1: Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Free Downloads

Video

• Internet Archive (MP4 - 21MB)