Week Four: Fantastic Beasts and How to Make Them

This week's guest presenter is environmental scientist Tim Rumage.  Last week we talked about the physical systems involved in worldbuilding. This week Tim will introduce the life systems that are involved in planetary habitation. Fantastic creature are not built on pure imagination, they are created out of understanding of natural systems. This week we will study some of those systems and their possibilities.

Assignment: You should have constructed your planet skin for today using the pixel dimensions from last week's assignment (see below). Also, create a title slide with your name and the name of your planet.

This week we will be constructing the second image, a panoramic landscape on your planet that will contain some of the life forms you create. In constructing your landscape you should include planetary life that is the product of the various patterns and circumstances of ecological systems that you have set into motion on your planet when you created it. 

Once you have completed your images, record a wav file in which you tell us your planet's name and a description of its defining characterisics.  When you have your four elements ready

1. A title slide 2048 X 4096 pixels with your name and planet name. Make sure you name this file in the following naming convention (in which "studentname" will be replaced with your name): studentname_title.png  Make sure you save your file to .png format.
2. A planet skin 4096 X 8192 pixels. Make sure you name this file in the following naming convention (in which "studentname" will be replaced with your name):  studentname_planettexture.png  
3. A panorama in the image ratio of 8:1, width to height. A resolution of 32,768 X 4,096 is a suggestion.  Adapt as you need remember to use a transparent canvas and to make the image seamless. Small differences will be really blown up at this size so match the ends of your image as exactly as you can.  You should name this file:  studentname_panorama.png
4. And finally your sound file in .wav format should be named: studentname_audio.wav

Notice the file names are all lower case and include an "underscore" character.

Put all these files in a Google Docs folder folder and send an invitation to access your folder to: Howard Hochhalter the manager of the planetarium at the following email, HHochhalter@bishopscience.org  

The submission deadline is Friday Sept 20th please submit them to Howard by then.

Field Trip:  Next week our class meeting will be a field trip to the Bishop Planetarium located in the South Florida Museum in Bradenton.  You need to find your own transportation to the museum and a number of students in the class have room in their cars for riders. Please make sure you have a ride and clear arrangements as to where you will meet your ride to get to the planetarium.  We will start projecting images at 9:00 a.m. please try to arrive before that time at the planetarium door which faces the street in front of the museum. Free parking is available around the museum but watch the time limits which are usually 2 hours.  We will be finished before 11:00 in order for you to have time to get back to school for afternoon classes.

You can find a map and directions to the museum on the museum's home page, Bishop Museum of Science and Nature.