We've been tasked with writing about some contextual influences involving ancient cultures.
I've decided to choose to write about the Aztecs of Mexico.
The Aztecs were a very powerful species of people, They became quite feared as well, They originally came from a place called Aztian, and found themselves to be outsiders until they claimed to of found a "sign" from their god who was known by the name of Huitzilopochtli, and then they then started to build their society and their city known as Tinochitlan. They became quite a feared culture because anybody that was captured by them ended up being sacrificed to their god. They also became quite well known for their ability to predict events with a great accuracy, which lead allot of people to feel worried with the " end of the world " scenario in 2012.
There weren't that many specific events in aztec history apart from that they were able to predict the weather and the night and day cycles with great accuracy, their events consisted of attacking and taking over other tribes, using their powerful military force at the time, unfortunately due to the amount of people they sacrificed and the amount of hate they generated due to relentless killing, they met their end when the Spanish invaded and attacked them, during this time some of the nearby tribes joined the Spanish in exterminating the Aztecs. Surviving their war effort with a significantly reduced population, they also caught smallpox which was transmitted most likely during the battles with rival army's from Spain, this quickly spread through the aztec population wiping out more than 25% of what was left of them this helped lead them to extinction, as they didn't know what it was, or how to treat it. this also effected the hierarchy killing aztec leaders which left the chain of command in ruins.
The Aztec religion was a complex interaction of gods, dates, directions and colours, according to ancient aztec religion it took the aztec gods 5 attempts to try and create humanity, but they failed to do so due to fighting and arguing amongst themselves, soon enough they became unable to do so, and the only thing they could do to create humanity was to sacrifice themselves to become the elements, one of the main gods becoming the sun. The Aztec's believed that due to the gods sacrificing themselves to become the elements of life for humanity, that they must sacrifice humans or " human blood " in return to pay back the debt of life, they felt they had to try to create balance in each of the elements, and keep their sun god happy to prevent natural disasters like floods and so on.
They had several god figures, including one being called " the feather serpent " which eventually sacrificed himself to become the element of wind, While another, unusually had became a jaguar, which was why it was considered to be a bad omen if Aztec's killed Jaguars.
Their rituals consisted of mainly sacrificing prisoners they had captured, cutting out their heart and showing it to the sun, which was supposedly their god, the body would be disposed of in various ways, either being fed to animals in Zoo's or hanging it up on sticks for decoration and symbolism, this also included hanging the head up on a spike as well.
Clothing was of a prestige based system, where depending on what you wore showed how high you were in the social climate, their were primarily 4 social ranks, which consisted of " the common people ", " The Upper class ", " The Merchants " and the " Military ".
The common people and slaves would wear very little clothing which consisted of loincloth, sometimes if they had a little more social power they would have braids on their loincloth, but most of the common people consisted of wearing basic loincloth.
the Upper class had clothing which was more adorned, consisting of various necklaces and jewelry, with brightly coloured clothing with patterns and symbols on their clothes to signify their social authority, even the priests and various other high class figures wore similar clothing, to show their authority.
The Merchants had a entirely different class of their own, and often wore completely different clothing from the other 3 social classes, their class often were allowed to wear more elaborate clothes, with no interference or problems from other classes.
The military had their own set of clothing depending on what group they belonged to which consisted of either the eagle or the Jaguar, even for basic warrior classes there was a hierarchy which reflected how adorned their costumes were, often if they were more skilled and much better at their job, they were often allowed to wear more jewelry and decorations. War Heroes and chief's had signature headdress which acted as helmets, some of the chief''s and war heroes even war layers of gold to symbolise their rank and abilities.
Task 2
All of this was in favour of creating a comic using ideas in a group, we briefly discussed samurai's and aztec's and as a group decided to go with the idea of making a comic strip for aztecs.
We've also taken another of my fellow students on in our group called Jake, myself and Jake will be working on creating and researching background scenery for the aztecs during the 1519 period while Amy and Tom will be working on characters.
During this period the spaniards started to invade mexico, I had found that due to the spaniards being so advanced, the aztecs tried to do a peace treaty with the spanish, shortly after this the spanish had gone to the captial city of the aztecs, killing a tribe of people on the way who they found to be hostile.
discovering the nature of the aztecs, the people they had killed through sacrafice and so on, cortez had realized that his men and himself were in serious danger, so he devised a cunning plan to kidnap the emperor of the aztecs, which had worked successfully using threats and bribery. he left a battalion of men in his place to keep the city, but due to an invading force from cuba, things went badly and upon return to mexico, cortez and his men had to retake the capital city of the aztecs, it was briefly after this that the aztec empire had hit extinction due to death, disease and chaos.
Using this information and research we can create some brilliant scenery of this time period for the aztecs.
I have now re-created some scenery and concept art for our comic book, which I will take into photoshop at some point, and work on having it coloured and drawn over.
Jake Loveridge, one of our group members had been tasked with creating background images for the storyboard, ideally battlescenes, and as a bit of extra work created an Aztec Pyramid in 3DS Max. All Credit to him for this image, a well designed and in depth Model.
Work in Progress -
we were also tasked with doing a shortly feedback assessment for each of our presentations, I decided to do Matt Boorer's, Ryan Holder's and Jack Challoner's.
What did you like about my approach/presentation?
Very good Approach, all round well presented, but the lack of teamwork held back the potential.
Did it Flow and make sense to you?
Yes, nothing else to say.
Could you hear me, what was my body language like, what was my eye contact like?
Could hear rather well from ryan, however ryan had carried Matt and Jack through the entire presentation, which I didn't find impressive.
Did the idea make sense?
To a degree, the story was well made, and put together well, although maybe slightly overdone/over-complicated for a storyboard.
Did you learn anything?
No, I didn't catch any research or knowledge on romans.
Any other comments?
Text was quite small, which required zoom on main slides, potentially over complicated.
Reached
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
M1
Unreached
M2
D1
D2
Pass - The lack of comprehensive research, coherant opinions for drawn examples, and expressing judgement I feel was not able to reach Merit and/or Distinction.
Task 5
Creating a business card
