scotty's blog :)

blog moved.

2010-02-22T14:51:00.000-08:00

to jamesrobinscott.com. follow the links to "follow james"

Campaign Intro page.

2009-11-05T02:43:00.001-08:00

This is my example however the original design was found from (CHIN2OFF - Deviant Art) and interpreted for my project. It was exactly what I was looking for, so it makes sense to recycle it to suit my needs. I give the guy credit! Took ages to make! - will be better with the interactivity and kinetic movement though.

The intro page will use the above question mark, which is built up of facts and consequences of downloading. After greater research into the area, I found that interactive text has more of an effect on the users Long Term Memory, meaning next time they go to download, perhaps this will trigger a memory of the website. The question mark is only in JPEG format at this time, but I am currently in the process of exporting into After Effects to begin the kinetic stage of development. I hope to have this completed by the end of this week, and then a final layout page.

Next week I'm off to take photographs for the Homepage background. The homepage will be built up of tiny images of teenagers holding up their favourite song, film or Television title, as though a photograph for a criminal. I feel this will get across the importance of the matter to my desired market. If you'd like to see a site which uses a similar (not exact) idea see here: but ignore the sexy old man! http://www.workingelement.com/#/site/our-work/still

PRP. were I'm at.

2009-10-20T05:34:00.000-07:00

Looking forward to this weeks PRP sessions, just to nail down what I'm actually going to do about wording the project I have in mind. He's an overview of my plans so far.

I'd like to consider the ways in which interactivity has improved (if it has) in schools and how students find working with interactive educational products in their academic studies. What subjects is it used in? What does the government put in for funding interactive products in schools? what products are used? How are they used? are there stronger products developed for specific subjects and is this having an effect on that subjects results?

I'd like to know where these developers are and whether they use online services or software type products in their work.

Possible title for PRP:

Can interactive products aid the education of primary school students?

I'd like to create and test artefacts within a school environment, both my own and others product development.

The site - what it needs and what to think about.

2009-10-20T04:45:00.000-07:00

Content:

The Copyright Protection Society is starting a public information campaign that illustrates and explains what file sharing is, when and why it is illegal and also the consequences of being involved with this illegal activity. - need to ensure this is ALL included in content. Perhaps a page per item? Aimed at public, so needs to have a clear and understandable set of info for all.

Produce a micro-website that consists of five distinct pages and includes wellformed accessible WC3 validating css/xhtml and includes at least one interactive
element. - interactive element, could be really clever here and create something which really involves and attracts the user. I've already considered some kinetic typography for the first page to capture the viewer, because admitedly, its not something which enthrals a viewer reading stacks of text.

My new Favourite site:

http://www.incredibox.fr/

For the site, I would like to use a character (or two) to represent the average downloader. This may invoke a more positive response to the awareness, and make the site more fun for a range of ages.

Broadband to blame?

2009-10-19T03:36:00.000-07:00

Been thinking somewhat over the weekend. We all love the effects of having fast broadband speeds, but surely there have been poor effects as well. Broadband must have made companies millions of pounds and saved excessive amounts of time over the past several years, however it also means that files can be transferred much faster, resulting in loss of sales due to the fact that music, television can be downloaded much faster than driving to the nearest town.

"Shared content on one network was worth about £12 billion per year according to the research commissioned by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP)."

"Creative industries provide about 8% of British GDP. Digital copying of their products resulted in the estimated loss of 4,000 jobs in 2004."

"It claimed that 70% of those aged 15 to 24 do not feel guilt about downloading music for free from the Internet and 61% of the age group do not feel they should have to pay for the music they listen to, according to a recent survey." -

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Illegal_downloading_costing_UK_%A312bn-a-year&in_article_id=675323&in_page_id=34

Perhaps the last quote is one which catches my attention for this project. We have not been given an age group to aim the site at, perhaps on a whole? However, I feel the most important are those aged between 15-24. Attitude towards file sharing and its effects on peoples lives is clearly not something that one thinks about when illegal downloading. But it is effecting jobs and careers everywhere, and this is something that needs to change and be made clear to those guilty.

P2P taking over downloads....

2009-10-19T02:58:00.000-07:00

http://torrentfreak.com/p2p-statistics-080426/

Just found an article on the site above, stating that from 2007 - 2008 the total downloads of download software such as Limewire, moved towards torrent software, because of the more advanced searching capabilities, safety from viruses and speed.

"Unsurprisingly, P2P applications are more frequently installed on home computers versus PCs at the workplace. Nevertheless, almost one out of five PCs at work (18%) have at least one P2P application installed. For home computer this is little over 1 in three (36%)"

It is clear that there is competition between these developers to become the hosts for these illegal downloads. Of course it is not anything to do with these companies, because they only create the software and don't offer downloads themselves, just the ability to download these hosted torrents, however there continuous updates, must trouble the people concerned with law enforcing illegal downloads :

"Up until today, LimeWire’s BitTorrent functionality has been rather limited, especially compared to the full-featured BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent, Transmission and Vuze. However, this is all about to change according to the LimeWire team.

LimeWire’s lead developer Sam Berlin told TorrentFreak that they’ve done a complete overhaul of their BitTorrent implementation. The newest release is already available in Beta and now uses Arvid Norberg’s Libtorrent under the hood, which is a significant improvement."

CASE:

"STOCKHOLM — A Swedish appeals court on Tuesday overturned a landmark file sharing ruling that forced an Internet service provider to reveal an Internet user's identity to five publishers.
The ruling was the first one to be rendered on the basis of Sweden's new so-called "Ipred" law, which came into effect April 1 and gives copyright holders the right to require Internet service providers to reveal details of users who share files, paving the way for legal action.
The five publishers had sued the Ephone Internet service provider in order to obtain the IP address of a server which stocked 27 audio books to which they held the rights.
The Stockholm court of appeals said in its ruling that it had not been proven that the server was accessible to the public at large.
The court's chief judge had to intervene for the decision to be rendered because the court's four other judges were split on the affair.
In June, a lower court had ordered Ephone to reveal the identity of the person whose computer was connected to the IP address concerned.
Swedish Internet users have significantly cut down on illegal downloading since the Ipred law came into effect. The practice was so widespread that overall Internet traffic has plunged by 30 to 40 percent since the law came into force.
Ipred has been lauded by the music, film and video games industries but staunchly criticised by the Pirate Party, which wants to legalise Internet file sharing and beef up web privacy." -http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gHgZHQUJAgcIYNuG3OEOmCw4r-7Q

Sweden's approach to scaring the community with court cases and real life situations into punishment seems to have an effect.

The Independent, who released and article found here : http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/illegal-downloading-what-happens-if-youre-caught-1736013.html, describes the effects of illegal downloading and how it can effect you legally. Some good points:

- "distributing unauthorised files is a fine of up to £5,000 or six months' imprisonment"
- "Crown Court, which has the power to impose an unlimited fine and up to 10 years' imprisonment."
- "In some US states the online infringement of copyrighted music can be punished by up to three years' jail and £150,000 in fines."
- "You wouldn't go into a record shop and run off with a bag of CDs, the executives complain."

The British version appears to be called "digital britain", and is set up to crack down and protect the entertainment economy.

"While this debate has run back and forth for years, the Government has done little more than keep a watching brief, neither coming to the rescue of the music and film business by enforcing sanctions against illegal downloaders nor offering an amnesty to the guilty. That changed last month with a report from Digital Britain, an organisation set up by the Government to ensure that the nation exploits the internet to its full economic capacity. Launched last year, its aim was to establish a pattern for digital growth in the UK economy.

One of the biggest challenges Digital Britain had to look at was how to balance the interests of the internet user and the industries. The Government now promises to crack down on illegal file-sharing and supports sending warning letters to those making illegal downloads of music and films. Ofcom will also be allowed to release the identities of serial infringers to make it easier for music and film companies to sue them. Lord Carter, the communications minister, said: "We think online piracy is wrong. Creative companies, rights owners and individuals have a right to protection. We wish to put in place a legal framework that provides those protections."

Copyright project.

2009-10-18T05:45:00.000-07:00

I've been unwell for the most of this last week, but I've had a look around at some interesting articles to build an understanding of where to go with this project into copyright. Because it's becoming such a serious matter does this mean the content will have to be directed formally towards an audience to achieve a desired effect? Well lets find out. The video above takes on some interesting points about how copyright is becoming more and more strict.

Now the project itself is directed towards the area of file sharing, something the government has decided it will be cracking down on (funnily enough since the recession came), copyrighted material being transfered peer to peer, or file shared. I find some interesting articles on the front of one of these sites that supply material on their server.

I found an article here (http://isohunt.com/ - Sunday 18th October 2009) describing, in full, a new torrent and file sharing system, developed by this highly illegal file sharing site.

"With a short review at Torrentfreak and a mention in my interview with BBC, I'm excited to finally announcing a public preview of our spinoff project Hexagon.cc ! We have spent 2 years developing this, and I assure you this will change the way you think of a BitTorrent site and file sharing.

How is Hexagon different? The biggest conceptual change is everything is shared within groups you can join and create yourself. These groups can be public, based on interests or made by independent bands, film makers, game studios, etc. for promotional purposes. They can also be made private, so you can very easily and comfortably invite your friends to a private group for sharing your private videos and such. You can do this on Youtube and similar sites, but with BitTorrent, you can share any type of file and not only video, and there's no restriction on file format or size (as much as you can seed). In Hexagon groups, you can also share both torrents as well as flash videos so you get the best of both worlds. This blend of BT and flash video sharing is an unique first.

Another big feature of Hexagon is organization. We've seen through the rise of sharing on BitTorrent, volume of spam rises with its popularity. We've addressed this on isoHunt with comments and rating powered by you, but on Hexagon we've taken organization and spam control to a whole new level technically. Hexagon is (currently) invite only, so if a spammer gets in somehow and start inviting other spammers and creating other accounts, we can chain ban such with relative ease. Hexagon have also taken a very sophisticated approach to files organization. Besides tags now commonly found on many sites, Hexagon did away with the traditional "Videos", "Audio", etc. general categorization and instead, you can label or link your torrent posts with Semantic Web resources. For example, a firefox 3.5 torrent should associate to the Firefox resource, and under the Firefox resource you can easily browse all torrents in association for different versions of Firefox. This is a definite first for any social media site, and goes a long way in organizing the huge volume of torrents being shared.

Hexagon.cc is currently open for more users to stress test the system. We would very much appreciate your feedback as we continue to add new features and improve the site!"

From the bold points outlined, Hexagon appears to be a legal and intellectual way of sharing LEGAL files over the Internet. My worry is, through the recent court cases of its sister site and route of this article Isohunt, there may be another file sharing site on its way which has more powerful capabilities, meaning the Government will again have to update their systems to tackle - resulting in more tax consuming technology.

If you want to check out more on isohunt and there cases look on there twitter - http://twitter.com/isohunt

Also we were required to visit the site Piratebay and find out about how they have been cracked down upon since the stricter regime on filesharing.

"A trial began in Norway on Monday in which the entertainment industry wants a major service provider to block access to The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine.

Norwegian operator Telenor refused to block access to the site in June after it received a petition for a temporary injunction from a group of copyright holders, including the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

Telenor maintains it will preserve access to The Pirate Bay barring a court order. Under Norwegian law, a service provider is not responsible for illegal activities enabled by providing Internet access, Telenor contends. The trial, in the district court for Asker and Bærum, is expected to last five days, according to a court official.

The Pirate Bay is a search engine and tracker for torrents, which are small files that enable the download of data from multiple sources on a peer-to-peer file-sharing system. The content is not stored by The Pirate Bay but instead on individual users' PCs around the world.

After legal trouble in its home country of Sweden, The Pirate Bay's operators have now distributed the servers that run the site around the world, although ISPs are easily able to block access to the domain.

The Pirate Bay -- one of the most popular BitTorrent sites -- has been a frequent target for the entertainment industry, with lawsuits filed other countries such as Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands.

In Denmark, some operators block The Pirate Bay while others don't, while in Italy efforts to block the site failed. A Netherlands court recently fined three men associated with The Pirate Bay for failing to block access to the site, but the case is on appeal.

(Mikael Ricknäs in Stockholm contributed to this report)" - http://www.pcworld.com/article/173468/in_norway_group_takes_the_pirate_bay_to_court.html

CLIENT PROJECT WORK!

2009-04-24T06:41:00.001-07:00

check out nottsmedia@blogger.com for out client project stuff for this year.

Thanks :)

Final Flash game!!!

2009-03-20T04:42:00.000-07:00

Finally, my Flash game is finished. The design is as I wanted and I'm well happy with the rotation. However, there are some problems with coin collection ann impact whenb under platforms! O well I'm well happy with it:)

You'll have to visit maeda to see it becuase the upload thing wont work again. Argh.

The game was designed to act as a Flash version of the popular I Phone App, Rolando.

Flash Game Evaluation.

Roller is a platform game designed at anyone who wishes to play around with an interesting and attractive interface. The aim of the game is to collect the coins and destroy the enemies, before making your way to the end of the platforms.

The game idea routed from a platform game on the I Phone, Rolando, which involves the user controlling characters towards a goal. I basically wanted to try and recreate a version that could be used on a basic computer, hence the use of Flash. I’ve always been interested in games that brag beautifully considered design, so Roller is designed to look good as well as work well. There were problems on the way to achieving this though.

The initial scripting came from tutorials online, most of which were found on Mr Sun Studios. This gave me the detailed coding experience to allow me to see what was happening throughout my code and how I could amend this to create a game which met all the standards I set out to achieve. The first problem developed when I created a Photoshop background to act as the stage. I needed the background to move along the opposite way to the character, so it appeared as though it was leaving this part of the level behind. Simply placing the background on the page meant that the only thing I could achieve was the background moving along with the character. I solved this by converting the background to a movie clip and then adding the following to my code:

if(leftKeyDown){
lvlHolder.x += mainSpeed;
bck.x -= mainSpeed*-1;
mcMain.rotation-=30;

}
if(rightKeyDown){
lvlHolder.x -= mainSpeed;
bck.x += mainSpeed*-1;
mcMain.rotation+=30;

and later in the code:

mcMain.x += mainMove;
lvlHolder.x += mainMove;
bgHolder.x = 0;
bck.x = -860;

I found that -860 was the precise value for the background to move left and right accurately and remain in the same static position. If this value hadn’t been precise, the background components such as the houses would move position on the stage and would’nt be on platforms like I wanted.

Towards the end of the project, I felt very frustrated that I had not been able to make the character rotate like I had originally planned at the start of my project. With some help, I was able to create a rotation which runs perfectly. This was achieved by adding the following code:

if(leftKeyDown){
lvlHolder.x += mainSpeed;
bck.x -= mainSpeed*-1;
mcMain.rotation-=30;

}
if(rightKeyDown){
lvlHolder.x -= mainSpeed;
bck.x += mainSpeed*-1;
mcMain.rotation+=30;

However, by setting the value high to run smoothly, it meant that the coins were difficult to collect. I have been unable to figure out how to change this, and so disappointed at the final piece’s function.

When comparing the Flash idea I had at the beginning of the project, I’m very happy with the final result. The design and appearance of the final piece looks and feels professional. The functionabilty however, could use some improvement so that the coins can be collected more freely, and the glitchy jumps become smoother.

Sorted:)

2009-03-17T03:26:00.000-07:00

maeda.ads.ntu.ac.uk -----> Midland Musicians!

Here's the final designs for my Midland Musicians pages, which will change slightly towards the end of the project. I now need help creating my sessions, as I'm having difficulty logging on to the users individual pages. Seeing Simon about this later. But anyway heres the pages:

Login page.
The login page will take the user directly to the Homepage, which will hold the script for showing the users profiles. The user then can route off from these areas to the other peoples profiles to view their images, comments and information.

Home Page.
As you can see there is no data in here at the moment, as the sessions page needs to be changed for the info to be shown. The links are fine, but I'm just having trouble showing the data in a way I want it to display :)

Members, Bands and Venues Pages.
These are all the same, displaying information about all of the desired topics. So all my members are shown with details I have chosen to dsiplay in the php.

Current game, without rotation of character :(

2009-03-17T03:20:00.000-07:00

visit the link below to play :

http://www.swfupload.com/view/119466.htm

Game reviews.

2009-03-17T03:14:00.000-07:00

Red Beard.

Graphics
The graphics used on this game are simple yet effective, using bright, vivid colours. The character lacks detail, however the simplicity and changing forms when the user directs him or jumps, is a clever way of varying the interaction.

Game play
The game itself involves the character collecting coloured orbs, to allow the platforms to move. This may be something I consider when creating my game, making the environment interactive; to allow the user to change the way they interact with the different elements. A weakness of the game is that there are no enemies to destroy, it’s simply a “get to the goal” styled game.

Sound
The game has a range of sounds. The music in the background is typical of a game like this, and the interaction sounds i.e. when the user collects an orb or enters the water are similar to platform games I’ve played on previous occasions.

Animation
Aside from the interaction there are also a number of animated graphics. The orbs bounce, the waves sway and the clouds move across the sky. This seems a good way to develop the game more professionally.

Overall
I think the game has potential, and could be interesting with some small changes to the environmental and game play aspects. The lack of enemies and difficulty is something which needs to be amended, as it’s really hard to get killed, unless under water for over five seconds. Something’s I’d like to use in my game are the animated aspects, which clearly offer the user with a more exciting and developed looking game.

Indiana Jones.

Graphics
In comparison to the last game, the graphics are of a similar standard. The character itself is simple and uses a basic animation to move the legs as the user presses keys on the keyboard. The interface is clearly designed to flow through the levels with a clear understanding. The stone walls and floors, and Egyptian images, show the theme of the game successfully.

Game Play
The aim of the game is again to reach the goal. This is done by changing the environment, and so uses a similar way of programming as the previous game. There are problems though, when the bricks move up and down, even if they are up and safe, any contact will result in the user being hurt and loosing lives. The same is evident with the spikes, which are hard to avoid when falling through small gaps (shown above).

Sound
Because it’s a licensed game, the creator has used the theme music from the Indiana Jones game. The other sounds are when the user hits an object which is fatal to the character.

Animation
The animation in this game isn’t as exciting as you may expect. The lever is the only real object that the user can interact with, something which may be considered in future development. There is a good animation when the user hits a fatal object, where the screen changes colour.

Overall
The game is dull and boring, lacking in the parts of Flash game that we have come to love, such as animated backgrounds. The interface and game play are simple, but the user knows exactly what to do. Some of the levels are poor and there appears to be no change in the difficulty of levels.

Idea for Davids Interactive Game project.

2009-01-27T01:08:00.000-08:00

Right then, I've been thinking over the weekend about some possible ideas for an interactice Flash game.

The original idea that I came up with was to create a Flash game similar to the concepts of a wii fit board, but using the mouse as the controller. This would be useful for a game such as slope skiing or a football heading game similar to those found on the wii console.

However, I have now changed this to link in with a specific themed approach. I will use the event of London 2012 olympics and create multiple events using different control techniques. This will include the 100m, long jump, swimming and javelin. This way the user will have a range of different options for the type of event they would like to do. The game could have daily high scores, which will allow the user to gain points for the medals they are awarded.

Restaurant Project. (Jass Cafe.)

2009-01-24T07:15:00.000-08:00

So, I have the restaurant, and have just quickly drafted a logo which I will use for the site. I'm looking to achieve a contemporary and simple style to the page, to portray the type of setting and food the restaurant bases itself upon.

Hive Opportunity.

2008-12-09T05:23:00.000-08:00

I have a meeting today with Phil Clarke at the Hive, regarding my idea for the fashion website I have completed for this terms module/project. This is a great opportunity, as well as being hihgly useful for content in my SPP2 essay which will be finished in just a couple of days.

This may be the start of my path into networking as it could open up new contacts and faces in the world of Multimedia design.

Glad I emailed now :)

Interface Design Principles

2008-12-09T04:56:00.000-08:00

The simplicity principle

My site has a structured, well thought out navigational process in which the user is directed from page to page, in a simple manner. A weakness perhaps, is that currently the navigation can only be achieved through interaction with Flash buttons, with no consideration to those who perhaps have no access to a Flash system. An alternative to this may be to create a seperate HTML page, which uses only HTML based navigation so that the user can easily direct from page to page without using the Flash process.

The site has attempted to show users a range of products from a range of brands, so the navigation to these sites vitally needs to be considered. This has been done using simple clicks which take the user to the route site of the product.

The visibility principle

Visually the site has been well thought out for Flash users, with some interesting, different ways of displaying pages and directing users onto alternative pages. Careful consideration has been taken regarding colour and typography, and this flows from page to page within my designs.

The feedback principle

Information is given at all times when possible about how to direct users through the different pages of the website. This is through text, animations and interactivity.

The tolerance principle

All pages pop-up, which could be viewed as a weakness. However, when I personally visit a site, I like to close down the content I've already viewed, so that I can go back to the previous pages. This way the animations continue to flow whilst I'm viewing further content. My site is very heirachical in this way, as it goes through a series of stages before reaching the large .SWF files.

Some sketchbook photos

2008-12-08T11:39:00.001-08:00

Find more photos like this on OEP

Initial evaluation points.

2008-12-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

Evaluation

Having completed the project in which I set out to create a three page website, I feel I have understood and learnt a range of new skills and techniques regarding web design. This is particularly in the areas of publishing, embedding and accessibility for a range of audiences.

I began with researching into the area of web design, directly towards the theme I had chosen to base my site upon. By doing this, I was able to find out some interesting ways in which the current markets have chosen to display their products, and follow some similar design techniques. I was also critical with these designs, and looked at aspects that were weaker, and so became beneficial in the later stages of the design.

I then went on to begin simply sketching and thinking about ideas which would become the content within the site. I wanted the content to have a beneficial aim and purpose, so that when I created my site, it could be used as a tool. The content was based upon an idea I have had for a while, where a collaboration of different High Street brands products where displayed in one easy to use web space. I felt the idea had potential and alongside my original theme of fashion, began thinking how I could tie this in with the current project. My initial idea was to create a large manqué in which users could drag and drop different items onto this, to mix and match different products from different shops. This is one of my test designs, and can be seen as a sketch in my sketchbook. I did several more of these and considered them critically before going on to my final design stages.

I chose a design which I felt was simple, yet challenging to develop, whilst providing the user with an interesting, interactive environment, as set by the brief. I began the final Home page design, by taking my sketch and implementing this into a Dreamweaver document using a table with two sections, one with a Flash slideshow of my own images, and the other with a description about the site, a logo and two Flash buttons which would direct the user to the Male and Female pages.

This is where my first problem arose, and with some critical feedback I was able to change this. The font used on the main text with the description about the site, was difficult to read, and I didn’t pick this up until I was given critique on this part of the page. I changed this to a simpler font, so that as a large batch of text it was easier to read for the user. You can see the changes in my blog post, with screenshots of how the page changed from the feedback given.

Later on in the project, I was also given feedback that the links on the bottom of the page, lacked a contrast to the background, and it was difficult to tell that these directed the user to the separate pages. Therefore, I used Flash Eff (a component available to add onto Flash which saves time with standard coding techniques such as Go To and Stop. It also provides animation tools.), to make these buttons animated and clearer to see that these directed to separate pages.

The three pages also proved difficult to use on different resolutions of screen, and someone found that on their laptop screen, they needed to zoom out of the page they were on to see the whole content (which is abit of a pain), so I am currently attempting to gather some code that will recognise the size of the screen being used and change the site to suit this.

To create the two content pages, i.e. the male and female pages, I used a piece of Flash I bought a couple of months back, and was interested in using. Admittedly, the coding is not created by me, but I implemented and changed the content and the coding to suit my needs. I also understand now how the coding has been structured, and how I have changed it to suit the way I had designed my page to look, and I personally like the page a lot.
Another interesting comment I received was;
“I like the roll over highlight for 'Men’s' and 'Women’s', however, how do you interact with the website or even know what the site is about when FLASH is not available? If 'not appropriate' then why is it not appropriate for site that is trying to sell item?” – David Downes
I have tried my hardest in the little time I had left to create a simpler HTML page, for those who cannot access Flash. This is extremely simple, because I had not considered this before, something that I am very disappointed about. In my continuing work on this site, I hope to develop a page that combines Flash and non-Flash attributes, so that if a user doesn’t have Flash, they can access all the content that those who have Flash can, but without the interactivity. This would perhaps be done by having JPEG images present if Flash was rejected by a machine.
I had a couple of little problems, mainly due to a lack of web design publishing experience, such as naming files correctly, (one example being P.U.S.html instead of PUS.html). I also came across problems such as invalid fonts, which would not display unless the machine had the font installed. Little problems like this have helped me understand that bit more about the difficulty in creating a fully functional site, with no validation problems.

I will make changes to my evaluation, when I recieve peer feedback and comments on Wednesday. Until then I will start testing the website, on the University server, to ensure everything is to the standards set out by the brief. I will also begin planning my presentation for Friday.

Essay planning and research.

2008-12-02T02:33:00.000-08:00

Strengths

To identify my Strengths in my current position of networking could be challenging, because I am currently at the bottom of the networking heirachy. However, this is a stage where many of my personal skills will pay off, such as communication. I am a good listener and talker, and like to invlove myself in other peoples work by expressing my opinion on a certain aspect or idea. Because of this, I have a benefit over those who may be more technically developed than myself, because I am more developed in social and teamworking activities.

I am also a leader, and like to collabarate ideas from a range of sources to create my ideas. This could be good in networking, because I take initiative to talk to those higher than me in the heirachy and make myself known to people that are perhaps opportunities to students like myself.

I need to ensure that in my essay my strengths towards the networking side of my University experience are clearly outlined and evidenced, some are shown below, and I will think of more as I begin to develop my essay plan.

- Communication; listening, teamwork, talking, opinions, learning, presenting.
- Ideas: Always happy to express ideas to others and take positive and negative critique. In networking this may be a good point, because I will need to show I can come up with ideas, on the spot.
- Knowledge of industry; may not have had much work experieince, but I am fully aware of what the industry can offer to me as a Multimedia practicioner and that those opportunities are avaiable to take.
- Organised; Always punctual and on time, as well as having the necessary resources to suit the day ahead. Good for first impressions to networking opportunities.

Weaknesses

I may be well developed as a communicater and generally confident person, however I need to think about becoming more technically developed. By this, I dont mean that I'm not a wizz on a computer, but I could do with learning what specific web based language means, so when someone says "Scotty go sort that PHP out on the blablabla website" I will know what to do.

I also need to start finding some companies and to get invloved in projects and organisations in and around Nottingham that activly involve Multimedia. This means finding companies (something I will do during the duration of this project), and looking at how these can give me opportunities for personal networking development.

I will write about my opportunities and threats, when this section of my essay comes closer, but firstly I will come up with a draft which has both S and W's within.

Multimedia companies I have found below, which I will check out later today;

Alternative Focus Media
www.junomedia.co.uk/
www.dunedesign.co.uk/
Soula
Media Design Studio Ltd
Facterne
Eventure Internet Limited
WebAlert Web Services
WebCatch
Getoninter.net
Getoninter.net

Some good web design companies here too.

Some background pattern ideas.

2008-11-30T15:10:00.000-08:00

Been to B and Q today to pick up some patterned wallpaper examples which might be useful for use as a background for my final piece, rather than a plain black background. I will check these out and see if they give a better feel to the pages than a plain black background, if so I will use them, if not, there was no harm in trying a few things!

Will post the designs with wallpaper tomorrow with an evaluation of how they look, its also the start of the main Flash pieces so wish me luck with those.

Final Design, Home page (with test screenshots)

2008-11-29T06:58:00.000-08:00

The first screenshot, shows the basic starting point I had, which I asked people about on Tuesday. I got comments about the difficulty the design presented with reading the text. This was solved by creating a design which had complex text for the logo, but when it came to content, a more improved, easier to read text was used. Looking at the design though, I felt like I had taken out the aesthetically pleasing values of the design by making the text almost more boring to view. So I created yet another design with the text in a box surrounded by holly, to create a more pleasing approach to the design. I finally added the "Autumn/Winter" collection text which combined both previous text colours. I feel I have learnt alot about Typography on the web by getting a hands on approach by consideing it in my designs. I am now happy with both the Flash content and Typography of my designs, as well as colour schemes and navigation. All of which are important in Homepage designs.

Typography

2008-11-27T03:52:00.000-08:00

Typography is an important part of webdesign. By selecting a particular style, size or colour, a users interpretation of the site as a whole can be changed dramatically. Clearly then, it is vital that I choose a style of font which clearly links in with the type of site I am creating. Because I am keeping the site simple, I want a fancy, signiture styled font to contrast with the plain background. This will allow the user a clear sense of the design I have aimed to achieve from this part of the project. Some fonts are shown below, which I will consider during the final design process.

Something like the below font would be a good example of the fancy style I will be looking to achieve. This will be also used for the logo. (Examples found at http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/Detail.htm?pid=203351)

These two fonts have styles which I hope to have on the Homepage, for the descrpitions about the site content, as well as the logo and Mens/Womens links.

For the two content pages (i.e. Mens and Womens), I hope to use a more simple font, perhaps Verdana, which is easily read. This font will be used on the details about content on the site, links to other sites and the navigation information. It will also be used at the bottom of the page in the footer.

Some example fonts of these are also shown below:

So there we have it :)

Perfect web design page from .NET.

2008-11-26T03:00:00.001-08:00

Loving the idea of using post it notes to plan out projects like that. Off to Tesco then I feel (Y) :)

Evaluations. More....

2008-11-26T02:34:00.000-08:00

Individual Evaluations:
Design 1: The first design, my favourite of the seven, has much of the content that I had thought about during lectures and seminars. It uses some interesting Flash techniques, which will certainly challenge me to build. However, with some research into typography, colour schemes and general web based ideals, I feel this design will be both individual and interesting for the user. The only weakness I can see up to now is that it bends the brief slightly by using larger Flash based content. I will try and negotiate this though, as I’m really excited about creating this large .SWF piece.
Design 2: Design two uses a type of Flash, which I have been greatly, interesting in, and experimenting with throughout the year, Drag and Drop functions. Again, the page uses a Flash slideshow on the Homepage, which overlaps the navigation bar with an opacity layer. The design is landscape, so navigation and resolution could be a problem with this type of page.
Design 3: The third design uses a type of Flash, which I tried last year, 360-degree rotation. The clothes are displayed on a rail and the user can spin this to select the clothing type they wish to be navigated to. The main page is much more simple, to compensate for the technical Flash pages. A weakness I can see already is keeping the vast amount of content within three pages as stated by the brief. If this design were to be chosen, I would have to consider using some more in depth content Flash to embed objects deeper into the page and to appear only when clicked upon.
Design 4: More HTML based content, with discreet use of Flash, example for the navigation bar and information boxes. Design four would be interesting because it would give me the opportunity to combine Flash pages with PHP, something I believe will be helpful in the near future. However, at this current time, I feel that technically I wouldn’t be developed enough in this area to complete a site with this level of difficulty.
Design 5: The fifth design is inspired by a site I found on the FWA website for a T-shirt company, in which users can rotate models at the bottom of the page, and look all around the products they are wearing. When clicked on the models became larger, with more detailed information about the products they were wearing. This is a clever way to show the user around products, however it would be difficult in my project, because of the availability of the products I am showing, and the time in which I have to take such in depth photographs. Therefore, I reject using such time consuming ideas, however useful this one may be.
Design 6: This design breaks away from the stereotypical male and female page, combining them together in the information page, and then using the remaining page as a model page, in which the user can drag their selected clothing from the information page, onto the model to see how the clothing looks together. As well as being highly interactive, I feel that the design has an element of fun, which will keep the user interested throughout their time on the site.
Design 7: This page was designed to be minimalistic in its appearance. The design is split into a clothing page and shoes page, in which the user scrolls across a range of images, and when they like one, click upon this to take them directly to the site which it comes from e.g. Shoes from Topman. I have rejected the idea, but taken the linking to other sites aspect to my final design stages, as I feel it will be a useful function.

Screenshots of final design (Homepage):

Smashing Magazine

2008-11-25T09:42:00.000-08:00

Really recommend checking this one out. Website has some interesting info on CSS and HTML, but I found it due to the free fonts and typography it has to offer. Check it out you wont be disapointed.

Evaluation of designs (from sketchbook).

2008-11-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

I began with some initial sketches of design ideas in lecures, seminars and free time in which I had a pen and paper available. These ideas became exciting and as you can see I have rooted off from these into my seven design proposals, all of which have a range of different Flash aspects, Styles, Sizes, Images and Multimedia. I have tried with my proposals to create a site which meets the brief given at the start of the project. This includes the following;

- A theme in which I can base my ideas upon: This theme for me is fashion. The site will be a collabaration of different high street branded products, packed into one site. The site will act as almost a personal University shop assistant, advising students on the top fashion styles currently in high street shops. These shops will be decided during the final design process.

- Three Flash elements: As you can see from my designs I have managed to design a range of different Flash ideas which will be both interesting to the user and useful in providing interesting content. The designs include drag and drop functions, photo slideshows, interactive scrollbars and animated buttons. The Flash elements will form a basis for my final design. All will be in .swf format for simple exportation.

- Three pages: The design ideas use three pages of content. All have an introduction page, with a loading bar, and then route off to the Mens and Womens pages.

- Maximum size 10mb. The size of the site will clearly be found when I create the final piece, but I am confident that it will not exceed the restricted amount.

With all these considerations in mind I have decided that my favoured design is the first I sketched out. The page begins with a loading bar, which takes the user directly to a page with a large photo slideshow to the left of the page, and a description of what the site is all about to the right of the page. For this page, I will use text which is in a handwritten style as if written by myself. The background will be dark, contrasting with the bright vivid colours of the slideshow images, and the text white. More information on this page will be given later on in my final design process.

Under the information about the site, I will have two animated links which take the user to the desired page, whether male or female. These two pages, will give advice on specific items which are currently popular in the world of fashion. However, this will be done in a clever, different manner to the average site. The clothes will be presented across the page inside a long JPEG image, which the user can scroll across the page to view. This will mean that these pages will be very long to compensate for the content. The JPEG image, will be sorted by the time of the day, for example morning clothes will clearly be loungers or pjs, whereas evening dress is clearly shirts or dresses. This will flow from the left (morning) to the right (evening) with links to different stages to the left of the page. By clicking on these links the user will jump to the different stages of the JPEG image. The interactivity of the JPEG image will invlove the user hovering over a specific part of the JPEG, and a small pop-up box appearing on the image to give information on that specific item of clothing.

I feel that my final design meets the brief given, as well as challenging me to create a piece which is complax yet highly interesting.

.

Just to show that the work is flowing nicely.

2008-11-19T02:27:00.000-08:00

>

Its hard to show work online from an A3 Sketchbook, but heres some stuff I've been doing towards the PUS project (Shauns stuff).

Completed sections of work:

Research

Design Ideas (7 so far)

I'm now in the process of evaluating the finished designs as well as starting to design my final piece. The current aspect I'm working on is the XML photo Slideshow which will be presented on the Homepage. I've also developed a signiture style logo, which will be displayed on all three pages of the site.

My final idea is to create a Homepage with a slideshow and information about content on the site. This will be a personal page to the user, in which they can select then, whether to be taken to the Male or Female part of the site. These two pages will have Flash across the centre which stretches out of the boundaries of the browser, but can be navigated using a set of Flash buttons to get from one side of the site to another. I will put some screenshots of my Photo slideshow up later today, to show how I developed the final piece. The script I have developed for this is shown below.

stop();

var myTimer:Timer = new Timer(6000);
myTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, timerF);
myTimer.start();
function timerF(e:TimerEvent):void{

nextFrame();

}

This will allow the photos to have a delay for six seconds (hence the new Timer(6000) syntax), and then move to the next frame. I will also be adding some transitions between the photos, to make a more professional overall effect.

The next stage of my sketchbook development is to evaluate the seven designs I have drawn up and considered. As you can tell I have already chosen one of these, so this will be the favoured design in my design analysis, however there are aspects of the six other designs that I plan to incorporate into the final design, such as the typography. I am also yet to create my time action plan, which will allow me to ensure I keep on track with the work and not spend too much time on a specific section. This will also include validating and testing sections to my work, as these will be important towards the overall evaluation.

Finally, I will create a Site Plan, which will show aspects of navigation through a flow chart. This way I can ensure that the user can get to any three pages through the page they are on.

This is todays tasks, but in the next few days, I hope to have added a loading bar to my site, as well as begun the Flash piece for displaying the clothing across the Male and Female pages.

Hope everyones projects are going great and I look forward to posting another update in the next few days (sorry again for the delay on this one).

Flash codes for enbedding into Dreamweaver.

2008-11-13T02:08:00.000-08:00

src="INSERT URL SOURCE FILE HERE" width="300" height="300"
pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" />
Alternative content

- For embedding web URL's only, for Flash from desktop etc. use alternative code below:

data="INSERT HERE" width="300" height="120">

Evaluation for Mini project

2008-11-10T14:14:00.000-08:00

All in all I'm happy with the outcome of the project David gave us this time, it has allowed me to openly explore the concepts of Flash based web design whilst introducing the vitality of thought processed design and varation.

Although my designs were eventually combined to create one final design, I feel I have met the outlined brief given. I could have perhaps been more concerned with the design process, but again got sucked into the project straight away and tried all of the ideas that came to me, something which I cant do during the major project this term, however I am happy that I have actually LEARNT a number of Flash techniques throughout the duration of this piece.

I feel that my content is well structured and meets the idea of an audience well, as it splits into three sections with content relevant for the specific age groups. These being child, teen and adult. I wish though, I had planned my project more thouroughly so that I could have used the ideas, as well as coming up with more detailed variations not just as sketches but also in my Flash piece.

Also, I feel that I have learnt a great deal of AS3 by carrying out tutorials relevant to the ideas I have had. These tutorials have lead me to gaining a basic understanding of using Flash to make things happen. My previous state in Flash left much to be desired, but with these improvements I was able to expand and become more creative with my piece.

I feel that my interactivity has stretched my previuos ability in a way which hasnt entirely flown over my head, but instead made me appreciate the difficulty with some AS3 techniques, however Im sure I will pick up on these as the projects go on. I am particularly happy with the use of Drag and Drop in a more technical and narrative manner in the project. I also like the way I have used the slideshow of injuries, however hope that I can learn more advanced ways of creating these, as this one wasnt as aethetically successful as I may have wished.

Design Exercise 2 - Interaction Design

2008-11-04T02:26:00.000-08:00

For our second project to introduce us to the BA side of Multimedia, we have been asked to create a Flash piece based on the safety of fireworks. I'm currently putting alot of time into my other project on the Fashion website, so this side project has shook me up slightly. But I suppose in the world of Multimedia nothings simple and easy, and work is money. Lets try and have abit of fun with this and gain some further experience using Flash AS3. Below are my intial ideas on the projects content as well as what I plan to achieeve from working on the project.

(interesting to base my designs upon).

Who will the audience be?

I have decided to aim my banner at either Adult's keeping their children safe at Firework displays, specifically garden displays. This will be if I decided to go for my first design idea, of creating a small child character and using movement of objects such as gloves to place on the JPEG image as if protecting the character. This will include sparkler safety.

If I decide to do one aimed at teens then I will take a different approach to design perhaps more harshly orientated through video or images. This will appeal more to this type of audience as it will show the concequaences of not using fireworks safely.

It is important throughout to be aware of how the content will affect different audiences and so I will need to outline and concentrate on just one of these.

What are the designs for the visual appearance?

1) Design one is aimed at children and their parents. It will basically be a child character in the centre of the screen, and use a range of different protective objects, such as a bucket for putting out spparklers or gloves for using them. This design will be easy to impliment to the project, because of its similarity to the last project and how it uses identical aspects. I'd like to go on and try this idea as an experiment, due to its game like approach to teaching children important rules in using fireworks.

2 Variations will be used for this design.

2) The second idea takes a different approach due to the differece in audiences. This time I will create a piece aimed at teens, so the content will have to be different and more harsh due to the fact teens are more likely to use fireworks irresponsibly. My idea is to show a video, created by myself, of teenagers buying fireworks, using them, and a negative result of irresponsibly using fireworks. This way will allow more freedom for content such as language and text, due to the fact I am aiming it at a more mature audience. The design will use narrative and move through a day of a teenager before his life is ruined by using fireworks stupidly.

2 Variations will be used for this design.

3) The final design idea is to use a slideshow of images for adult viewers, showing injuries and deaths resulting from inproper use of fireworks. The images will be combined with text to inform the user about events (I will make them up or perhaps research them if I get time), that have resulted from firework displays gone wrong. The images will not be suitable for children under the age of 18, so I will need to figure out a way to stop users under age looking at the content.

2 Variations will be used for this design.

By designing ideas for three seperate audiences and giving two variations for each, I will be able to meet Davids requirements of 6 individual designs. This will also allow me a range of different interaction ideas. All designs will also be linked to the "safer-fireworks" website, so that the user can gain more information from other sources, if needed.

Panasonic Design Museum. - SOTD.

2008-10-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

Panasonic Design Museum.

The new Panasonic website is, as we spoke about earlier in seminar, a simplistic creation in which the designer has clearly considered colour and space choicefully. The Homepage uses an interesting Flash piece on three objects. When clicked upon the year of the certain object, for example the first MP3 player is bought forward and displayed along with stacks of information on the product, like who designed it, why it was designed in that way etc.

The site also has a really nice pop-up naviagation bar on the right of the page, which can take the user to areas related to products such as a timeline or the names of the designers responsible for Panasonics success.

My particular attraction to this site, came with its appearence. I love the bright vivid colours of the old products, contrasting with the grey and darker tones much like what Joel said in the interview we analysed earlier this week. I also like the reflections of the products, as if on a shiny new surface, showing that old and new can come together in perfect alliance.

Finally, I feel that the main reason this site got SOTD on FWA is due to its ease of use. The navigation for the site is perfect and the accessibility has been extremelly well considered in the construction of the site.

Well done Panasonic :)

Jools Journal Task 2 - Personal contact

2008-10-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

Using your own personal experience write a few lines to describe how a personal contact has provided a creative opportunity for you...

I have a number of occasions where opportunities have arisen from simply just talking to people about my University course and explaining what it invloves. I remember in the summer break, some bloke came into my work (the co-op) and we started to talk about jobs, Uni and general interests. It turned out that he works in a media building right next to my place of work, so I have applied for work experience in the Christmas break, as well as making a new contact in the world of Multimedia.

Opportunities have also come to me through general talk with friends about my course. I helped my friend Rob create a website to advertise his band, helped a collegue at work advertise her new gym over the Internet and even recieved permission from my Dads work to create a website for their furniture company. So opportunities, however simple they may seem or however boring at first, are really good opportunities to get client experieince as well as more to add to our portfolios.

Referencing Jim Shorthoses book, Fish, Horses and other animals, I can now see why its important to get into contact with as many different species of animal in the ecological cycle of Multimedia as possible, because it is important that we networking with a range of different people, big or small, successful or unsuccessful. These are still learning days.

P.U.S. Personal University Shopper.

2008-10-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

P.U.S is a side project I hope to carry on throughout the year, which allows students to browse a range of different clothing brands, including Topman, Burton, River island, All saints etc. all within one site. The site will "mix and match" a range of styles and brands to show students possible ideas for wearing at University or on nights up town.

I feel this idea has sprung from the intial thoughts on creating a fashion site for my current module. However, I'd like to leave that idea for personal use so I can experiment with creating a site set out with my ideas in mind. I'm also on the look out for possible client projects to add to my portfolio, so this site could be a step to networking and advertising myself to the world of Multimedia.

I've already began thinking about content, and some basic ideas about what Flash elements may be included. I will also attempt to feed news of sale updates and new stock from the high street shops into my side using a feed if possible.

Davids work....reposted.

2008-10-27T16:32:00.001-07:00

For some reason my post attempt didnt work on Friday so here it is:

(1) Read and comment on the following content in your on-line journal:
Dan Saffer: 'Interaction design is an applied art' August 13, 2008
http://www.designinterviews.com/interviews/interaction-design-is-an-applied-art
Joel Schafer: 'I'm into minimalistic clean design' January 15, 2008
http://www.designinterviews.com/interviews/599

Dan Saffer's article clearly shows the value of understanding how life experiences can change our overall perception and ideas into the world of interaction design. Certainly an inspired concept which will be interesting when developing my ideas over the next few years. The idea of bringing something into my work which reflects a personal feeling or life event, could be classified as a trademark of an artist, and individual way of stamping a sign on each piece of work I take on. A particlar segment of the interview struck me as relevant, in that you need a "master", or someone more advanced in the field that we are currently studying to watch us work on certain types of work. For example David's experience in Flash, or Shauns experience with art, will greatly aid us in future work. Saffers thoughts on creating a variety of work and not just sticking to a certain piece, perhaps because you have become attached to it because it was your first "good" idea, is clever and shows us that we should explore Multimedia in a more full process, before jumping into a big designers mistake of impulse creation.

The main feature I took from Joel Schafer's interview was his tips to people like us at the learning stage of life. He basically tells us to explore further into Multimdeia by reading on the field, partucalrly arty mags, look at award sites for ideas on what the market currently has to offer and to always have a plan before starting work, perhaps due to the fact the best of us tend to drift into things we didnt draft at the beginning!

(2) Spend sometime browsing the websites of IDEO, Sony, Apple and our own NOW online workspace. Do not just look at the design (though that is useful); Look at the products and/or services they are talking about or providing and the philosophy of the design approach.

Think about a range of issues about the sites that include:

What does it look like?

Apple: Simple easy to use website with an immediately recognisable interface.
Sony: Not as aethetically pleasing as the apple website but again simple and easily recognised. Could do with better navigation bars!

How easy is it to use?

Apple: I often visit the Apple website as it has updates on products daily and I find it extremelly simple to use.
Sony: Good aold simple and old fashioned web design with navigation bars down the side and at the top. Easy to naviagte.

How relevant is the content of the site?

Apple: Very.
Sony: Very.

How clearly is the content organised?

Apple: Simple and clear enough for the user to know exactly where to go and when to go there. Only problem I ever had was finding the student discount prices! :)
Sony: Categories make it extremelly simple for the user to find what their after.

Provide comments in your online journal based on the above.

(3) For 2 websites with FLASH content from http://www.thefwa.com/ discuss them in your online journal using the same criteria as above.

Farcry 2:

What does it look like?
Begins with a video of game footage, streams slowly even on a strong broadband connection. After a short while when the footage is complete, the user is given a realistic choice game based on two options. If the option is the wrong one, then the user fails. Very good graphically, but again slow streaming and loading times.

How easy is it to use?
Simple to use with single click options on Flash components in the site. The use of hotspots helps the user navigate through the more vital aspects of the site.

How relevant is the content of the site?
Very, gives the user a full insight to the content and directness of the game. Good graphics and sound help to make the experience that bit better.

How clearly is the content organised?
So so, I didnt know what was going on when the video was playing at first, however after waiting a short while and concentrating I realised that this was actually an introduction to the game and bait to lure the user into buying this new game.

www.pullandbear.com:

What does it look like?
Nice and simple innovative ideas which give the user, again a good chance to see some really effective use of animation. I especially like the way that the user can select a character which he or she wants to use on the site.

How easy is it to use?
Very simple. Clear hotspots, instructions and highlighted areas make it easy for the user to ecperience the site effectively.

How relevant is the content of the site?
Well to say its almost a charity website, not very, however the use of a bear, with clear indications of the content of the site does reflect a certain amount of relecvance towards the user.

How clearly is the content organised?
Well. The site uses a navigation bar at the summit of the page which easily guides the user to different areas of the site in an interactive flow.

(4) Have a look and go at the FLASH tutorial available for FLASH CS3, via a link in top right hand widget on the Exploring Multimedia homepage, do this before the seminar in Week 14 28/10/08.

Some interesting Flash tutorials:

NAE. cheers Craig

2008-10-27T04:35:00.000-07:00

Find more photos like this on ONLINE ENVIRONMENTS 2008-9

Last weeks visit to the new art exchange made me realise just how easily art buildings can be found in Nottingham and how it can help us to create some more artisit and inspired work. Clever as.

I love thinking....Idea for this terms project.

2008-10-27T03:11:00.000-07:00

Shaun asked us this week to consider something for the content of our work which would inspire us to create a piece more artistic than last years work. I've done some thinking and I've decided, if Shaun agree's with my idea, I'd like to create an artistic Fashion website, aimed at Universtiy students. This would both meet his requirements for creating an artistic piece we would be interested in and would allow me to explore some exciting Flash components and applications. It would also allow me a wide range of researching opportunities to see how websites are developed for this purpose.

Site's Im checking out today....

http://www.hilfigerdenim.com/

http://www.vogue.co.uk/

www.allsaints.co.uk

Great success (Y) :))).

Test 1

2008-10-22T11:11:00.001-07:00

Testing Testing...

Climbing aboard my network train....

2008-10-21T05:04:00.001-07:00

I've started researching some companies in and around Nottingham which could possibly be the start of some work experience opportunities. I will put the mind map up tommorow of the companies I have found.

I have also decided to start a database of contacts in the area of Multimedia which I can openly check and update to see if I've had any previous contact with the company or if they are a new fresh opportunity.

I have also visited a number of sites that Linda informed us of and found that the skillsset.org page offers some interesting opportuniteis and ideas for me to explore.

Happy networking everyone!

Nottingham - thenewartexchange.

2008-10-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

I've just checked out the newartexchange website and it looks really exciting. Its great to have such opportunities so close to the Universtiy, and I think ideas like this should be more regularly organised.

I'm looking forward to the visit with Uni, but also the events that the place has to offer. I think that it will be interesting to see how the building develops over the years, and I hope to see some of the exciting events it has to offer.

Networking - Social or business?

2008-10-21T04:31:00.000-07:00

Jools touched upon a point and asked us in his previous SPP lecture to explore the idea of whether business has blemished its way into the redefining the new era of networking. Networking to me is a word which has a number of meanings, non of which I'm entirely sure are genuine. When I think of networking these days I think Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, sites which have explored a new definitive way of creating social structure within our society.

However, when thought about more deeply I can see where business has taken on board the importance of networking. Its important these days for one to have a number of contacts within the similar field of work as yourself. For example freelance web designers will have a number of clients perhaps who have had work done in the past for a discounted rate, with the promise that the name of the web designer is the shown on the website or if someone asks where they had the site done they advertise the designers name.

It is becoming clearer to me that networking is a combination of self broadcasting of ones work and contacts with businesses around a particular type of network.

Moving back to the point Jools arose in his lecture for us to discuss, I feel that yes, human contact must be present to have networks developing. Companies for example will have people employed to expand their network and advertise their services to other compnaies or organisations. This is where the idea that businesses have explored networking and are starting to exploit it as their own.

In Linda's lecture, she described how networking involves meeting new people and sharing ideas is beneficial. Of course this will greatly help me at this moment in time, because I need to start building a portfolio of ideas as well as contacts already in the industry of Multimedia, so it will be easier after University for me to obtain a job and begin on the long path of my career.

Therefore, I feel that networking is a combination of both social and career bound ideas. We can basically network for any reason if we want to become more known in the industry we have chosen. I personally hope to begin networking with a series of work experience and small project based jobs which will help me develop soft skills vital in my area of Multimedia.

Nottingham Artists.

2008-10-16T03:28:00.000-07:00

From Shauns lecture I have decided to branch off and check out some artists in and around Nottingham. Artists these days range from musicians to painters, web designers to sketches, achitects to writers.

The first designer I have to say is an inspiration to me and should be to others to is Paul Smith. Paul Smith is a fashion designer with a unique style developed over years of hard work and effort in his area of expertese. His signiture designs and individual clothing ranges are a result of finding a style that represents him successfully as a designer. When I walk into a shop which sells a range of branded fashion labels, a Paul Smith shirt will stick out clearly from the others because of its individuality in design and style.

With reference to his website, Pauls style developed completely by accident in a life changing event. His career plans at the age of 16 were undecided and his main passion in life was to become a professional racing cyclist. However, after an accident and a spell in hospital, Paul met some friends with a distinctive taste for art, including Warhol, Mondrian and the Rolling Stones. If I were to compare Paul Smiths work in the fashion industry with other artists, I would find the most vibrant and royal looking images, print them off and throw them to the floor in a pattern of colour and vividness, because Pauls ideas and designs are clearly founded in an era which set out the idea of individuality and difference.

Pauls story is an inspiring one, taking a small teenage idea into something which becomes a life changing career opportunity. His worj should inspire us all and show us that by creating something a little different in life which noone has ever seen or heard of, can become something which is huge and we all depend upon.

Shaun's Opening Lecture.

2008-10-16T02:31:00.000-07:00

Back!.

Been a while since the last blog and I apologise. We all have times in our lives where we are confused as to what we want from our education and it took me some time to consider if Multimedia was the direction in which my career is going. Thankfully it is.

Yesterday Shaun gave us an interesting lecture on his section of online environments, web design. His introduction gave me the impression that a major goal for all of us in this second year is to find our creative and artistic sides to combine our technical abilities at making quality results with a more arty twist. In my opinion he hit the nail on the head. My work last year lacked depth and I felt like I was always behind those who had explored their more creative sides.

Shauns fine art, I'm sure will allow us to make some changes to the way we work for the better.

This year I aim to bring some of my stregths to the modules as well as expanding on some of my weaknesses. This would mean exploiting my artistic abilities using photography and improving such work as my Flash skills and drawing.

Shaun asked us to think of an artist who may have a style or artistic flair which I admire. I have chosen Jeff Ascough, a wedding photographer local to me. His photography is a breath of fresh air in the area. By trying a range of different photographic perspectives and techniques, Jeff has developed a style which I wish I could develop myself. This is similar to what Shaun said about finding a "wacky" or different side to our work.

I will certainly this year find myself within Multimedia, something I feel I struggled with last year. Some of Jeff Ascoughs work can be seen below, and I recommend visiting his website, as it uses some fantastic Flash features.

One of my favourite features, the Flash loading bar. The contemporary style used on the page may be something I would like to explore. The simple, yet eye-catching style will be something I want to push into my work this year and perhaps find my style of work to build a portfolio where my work is easily recognised.

anyway.

2008-04-23T04:53:00.000-07:00

Heres two design idea things which I did a while back but forgots to blog them. I am now about half way through my final piece, and my design has changed loads. I shall have a Flash piece up later today or early tmoz to show you.

Design 1
Right, I’ve begun my first design stages and as you can see I’ve followed my original idea of panning in from the introduction video to the inside of the cabin. This will allow me to use the video created in the previous project as my AV piece, meaning less work on the interactive side of the project.
In this piece, I have included a range of objects which reflect my identity. These will be interactive so the user can fully experience why I have placed them into my work. I have also included my avatar in this piece as well as a few versions of my band friends, which will have interactive “bio” boxes which appear up above each of their heads.
The design also has a television and radio, in which video clips of film and television and music clips that I enjoy can be seen and listened to. The radio will also act as the mute for the music if the user wishes it to not be playing. There is also a sound on/off button at the bottom of the page.
To bring in the family side to my work, I have used portraits of them on the wall and bio’s similar to those of the avatars in my work. These are positioned each side of the interactive work.
At the back of the stage, I have used a montage of photographs that mean alot to me in life. When clicked on, this opens up an interactive photo album in the foreground. Each image can be clicked on at the bottom of the page to open it in full size.
I also wish to use a small number of animations within my work. This includes on the stage with the band playing, the speakers, the avatar in the foreground waving and my logo.
Finally, I have decided on using a navigation bar at the summit of the page, for easy access to each of the areas I have around the interactive links. This will allow the users to access parts of my work without going through the more complex interactive stages.
Evaluation of Design

I have not yet decided on whether or not to use this design. I was told at my last feedback week to use more than one design idea. Therefore, I have decided that I will complete three or four designs before combining them in a development stage. This basically means that I will take ideas from each of the designs I use and combine them to create a final developed idea. I feel this way I will achieve a better result than when I originally designed my avatar.

Design 2
This design came to me whilst I was at work the other day. I remembered the rope swing at my Grandad’s house and how much time I used to spend here when I was younger. So I began to think how I could incorporate this into my design, in an individual way relevant to how I felt. So I decided it would be effective to use a video of me swinging on the wheel swing with a cardboard box in front of me, which when clicked on took the user to a view inside the box where different things could be viewed.
I feel this idea would be effective as an original piece to show my identity, even though it would be in 2D format, not 3D.
I have again included a navigation bar, which can be used to navigate around the site more effectively. This will be located between the logo and video in the bottom corner. I’m not sure yet how I will use the video at the bottom to my advantage.
Perhaps I could use it as an aid around my site, but I feel that something more abstract would suit the style of this project more effectively.

Evaluation of Design

I really like the appeal of this design. It uses some more advanced techniques, especially with the visual and video technique. It also means I can be more hands on at creating my box, and then use it to my advantage later in the design.
I will certainly be using the videos in my design, as these reflect alot about me as well as showing a more individual take towards the design of this project. I will go on to create two more designs, and then combine the designs to get to the final piece.
I am happy with the progress I am making into the world of design and can’t wait to start creating my final piece.

update...again.

2008-04-07T04:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry about that not sure why it wiped my last update, which is frustrating!. anyway my sketchbook is very nearly complete for my review on Friday, soI will be taking this along with me to show how I have literally gone back tothe drawing board and redeveloped some new ideas. I have alsonearly completed my avatar, and I am much happier with the effort that has been put into this result. I plan now to start to expand the ideas in my current sketchbook to explore the interactives stage. I have already began some very basic sketches on the room I will be using for my idea.

Thanks James x

Sketchbook update.

2008-03-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

Over Easter...

2008-03-16T06:26:00.000-07:00

Right the plan is; the redesign of my avatar from the feedback given during my assessment presentation. I was told that my worked lacked development, so I have decided to purchase a new sketchbook and work on the redesign of a new avatar, using a similar ideas as before, but adding and amending important attributes to reveal more about me as a person. This will be done over Easter, alongside my interactives project which will involve me sketching up some ideas for my cabin design. I have also began developing the avatars which will act as my freinds in my work, and animating these.

My cabin design will be based on an idea that I have thought about over the last few weeks. My intro video (the previous project), ends with the camera panning around the indie of the cabin. This will be cut from the video, and the music will change into some songs that reveal the choice of music I favour. The user will then start outside the door, with the music sounding distant. Although the cabin looks small from the outside, when the user clicks on the door it will open into a large music style venue, where all my friends will greet the avatar the user is in the first person view of (i.e. my avatar). These friend avatar will be similar in design to mine, however, I will use small aspects of their idenitity within their piece. Of course, I wont be spending too much time on this as it is about my identity, but I felt it was a good idea to show the importance and relevance of friends within my work.
When the user is in the cabin, a series of repeated animations, such as dancing avatars, drinking avatars, instrument playing avatars will be shown, until the next click, perhaps a choice of where the user wants to go within the cabin. This could be over to my family, over to my close friends, to get a drink, to watch the band etc. There will also be aspects such as the AV part of this project incorporated into the cabin environment.

My idea for the AV, is to return back to the outside world to reveal some inner parts of my identity. For example, I thought about using the mountains, not only to show my interest in climbing and hiking, but also to show my aspirations in life, such as career goals. So as the avatar climbs, the opacity of the video increases whilst a flashes of these goals are shown perhaps?

Alot of work to be done, but im thoroughly looking forward to the challenge. I will be blogging regurlaly so keep checking out my progress into the second part of the identities project. Leave any comments you feel could help my work.

Thanks Scotty x

final video:)

2008-03-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

video first draft, one seperate render to be added

2008-03-07T06:26:00.000-08:00

this is the first draft of the video, which will bring the user into my box from the environment. There is still one section of video to add, where the camera sweeps across the environment, and to the small cabin that will represent my box. This will be where the piece becomes interactive, and navigation is given to the user. The video also includes the audio, that was finished yesterday with my friend from confetti music college.

Crazy....

2008-03-05T11:05:00.001-08:00

Took just under 6 hours to render, but here is the first flythrough of my environment, created using 3Dmax and Vue 6. I'm well happy with the progress so far. This video, or a longer version, will be used before I enter a cabin (my box). The cabin will be filled with my idenity and the interactives part of my project. This will include a clutter of objects and images, that reveal things about my identity, as well as some interactive objects that can be played around with using Flash. Basically, the video below is to show the environment I have created for my avatar, before entering the interactive box he will be found within. My next stage will be to create a series of animations for my avatar which can be used around the environment I have created. Really excited about doing this as my avatar should be rather interesting to animate.

Looking at some other guys designs.

2008-03-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

Right, I need to see where I am in relation with some other peoples designs, to make sure I'm hitting the right sort of standards in my work. When I'm bored, I often look through a number of journals on reflective journal, to see how other people are doning with their work. I must say that the first person I always seem to click on is Kane, because he has regular updates, and high standards of work are being produced on his part, which inspires me to do the same. Kane's avatar is based on himself in what I'd class as realistic. His avatar shows him as I would percieve him in the real world.

His props such as his trainers and skateboard, add well to the idenitity of his avatar.

The next blog, I came across today as an update was Will's. His avatar, tells me he is very much into gaming. His use of a game character like design, opens his ideas up so he can create a variety of different idenity aspects within his work. Whilst using this method he has still managed to successfully keep a realistic side to his work.

Finally, Leanne's design, from my tutorial group, shows her creative artistic side. Her character very much resembles how I percieve her in the real world, showing some of her animation and gaming design aspects within her work. This really works well, and I specifically looking forward to seeing the animations in Leanne's work, as I feel her creative side will appear in the personailty of her avatar.

By looking at others work, although my design may not be as visually realistic as these, or even as complex, I have portrayed my idenity in ways similar to the other designs I have seen.

Whey 50th post....and a good one at that

2008-03-03T06:29:00.000-08:00

Done and dusted. My avatar and environment are completed. I finished my avatar last week, but was struggling for ideas on how I would create the environment, what it would include and how I would animate such an area. I began creating a rural area for the project, where my character would have a small house, with some of my 3D objects and possesions inside (my box basically). This will be the next stage of my development, where I will create almost a cabin, where the avatar, interactives and ident will be portrayed.

This will come in after a pan around the environment I have designed my 3D avatar to be situated within. I created the environment, partly using Max, partly using Vue, a 3D enviroment alternative, with the exact interface of Max. This allowed me to create a scene which I am 100% satisfied with, whilst keeping intergration between the two pieces of software perfect. The software also allowed me to create reflections on my materials, and so the environment is fully transferred onto the matt of my avatar. I will finalise the design, by making the area bigger, so that a fly though of the environment can be achieved, until the cabin is reached and entered by the user.

I'm really excited about the next part of the project, and the end result. :)

Some screenshots of my final avatar in the environment:

The beauty is, I can navigate anywhere around the area I have created, meaning that I am able to navigate my idenity through numerous parts of this world. For example, I had the idea that perhaps my achievements and goals could be shown, climbing up the mountains, my fears in the forest etc. Some good oppotunities to further the work.

My identity

2008-02-20T05:18:00.000-08:00

Below is the wall I have created in my room to portray a range of aspects shown within my identity. These will be used to influence the design of my Avatar. I am also currently producing some mood boards which show some of my favoured objects and identity.

Second Life Final Diary

2008-02-20T03:18:00.001-08:00

Second Life.docx

Being connected and century of self

2008-02-20T01:58:00.000-08:00

Last week we had a lecture with Simon, on being connected and the century of self. The lecture was crammed with philosophical points about modernism and post moderism. Now I myself, prefer the idea that we all have different views on different things, and we should have equal opportunity to express these views, something that is becoming more and more recognised as the world we live in develops.

We all have individual ideas, about everything we do, some of these cause disagreements. In terms of art, I haven't seen a piece of work in Multimedia so far that has been identical to that of someone elses, something that shows the importance of individuality and how it effects us as people. Sure, we may take inspiration from one anothers ideas to develop these with our own, but that again surely shows our individuality to be influenced by the type of work that has inspired us. I've never been one for the total and utter views that science can explain everything, and when taking psychology last year, I found science has many leaks and flaws that are taped together by deceptions and twists in the truth. How do we know all these things are correct, JUST because someone tells us. This is why the thoughts of individuality are so important, and we should not loose ourselves with what we think when others say THIS IS RIGHT. Noone is entirely right noone entirely wrong, if so where would creativity be in the world?

With reference to Leannes journal, and the lecture a few weeks back, were we saw the advertisements of women smokers. This bemused me, that people could be sucked out of individuality, by people telling them that something is right, and relating this, in this case, to show that women are equals to men. Such stupidity in my view, but never the less, some clever ass decided it would be funny to make these women tempted by the idea of killing themselves with tar filled sticks. Unbelievable.

The idea of post modernism and moderism to me should be scraped well and truly from todays society. Its dangerous, and the idea that people individual thoughts can be sucked from them with a little propaganda is scary. Our futures could actually depend on some guys ability to advertise. Weird if you ask me.

Prediction time....

2008-02-20T00:54:00.000-08:00

Right, a couple of weeks back, we were asked to predict a piece of technology we felt would improve, or begin to rise within the future. I was walking the other day with my Dad around Kinder Scout (If no-one knows were that is its the highest point in Derbyshire). I was thinking about the way we navigate in these sorts of areas, and how risky it can be, especially when the weather turns nasty.

Navigation systems are becoming more and more advanced by the day. Take the Tom Tom systems for example. I remember the first time we had a built in sat-nav in my Dads car, it was shocking. Turn here, turn around there, basically it was more beneficial to throw the bleeder away or less severe turn it off. Now we own a Tom Tom One, which provides the user with outstanding information about roads, traffic, even speed camera warnings.

Now what I was thinking was, how good would it be to have a photo realism navigation system, which showed where the person was geographically, but in a way which, even if it was night, the user could walk according to the photo directions on the navigation system. Almost as if you were walking in the screen. This way the user would'nt get into any trouble if the weather was poor, or if they were stuck in a remote place at night. Might save a few lives.

The closest we've got to this so far is Navmans new camera navigation system.

Nowhere near as advanced as I was talking about but the ability to take pictures of previous locations and place them on geographical co-ordinates on a map is impressive.

This ones clever also, the new generation of navigation in the USA.

This is basically a small version of a laptiop with awesome features. Realy clever use of information through a multimedia system.

I also like the new use of bluetooth and voice activation used on these systems, and the way these are moulding a path for future systems.

Where I stand in the identity module and SPP1 module so far....

2008-02-19T06:16:00.000-08:00

Well... my diary of an avatar in Second Life was completed last week, so thats out the way and will shortly be posted in Word format to blogger. This includes around a months experience using Second life, including a diary of events, as well as some general aspects I enjoyed and did not enjoy during my experience of the 3d world.

Whilst completing my journal of Second life, I began experimenting with 3d studio max and its interface. I now feel I can produce some results ranging from average to good, and ongoing practice is still be undertaken.

I have now moved on to begin my design ideas for the creation of an avatar in a specific environment, as well as exploring ideas towards my identity. These are being carried out through a range of sketches and articles about myself, to aid me to choose something which best suits my identity, whilst being individual in my choice of design.

My first design idea shown below is well rough, but I used the opportunity to explore the creation of characters within 3d max, and create objects without the use of tutorials. It was done in about 10 mins, and so obviously has little attention to detail so far. I have chosen to do a realistic, semi realistic - semi unrealistic and unrealistic approach to my avatar. Before beginning the module though, I wanted to create something completly different to myself, which would show some aspects of my inner identity.

Finally, whilst this is still going on, I am currently watching a range of films from different directors to try and establish my knowledge in the area of AV, for the essay and choices I will undertake next week. I realise the amount of work there is to be done, and am finding the use of a gantt chart (Roma's suggestion), useful in keeping me in time with work.

Starting my soundtrack for interactives.

2008-02-18T02:27:00.000-08:00

Becuase I am a rather musically orientated kind of guy:), me and my friend from Confetti Studios have begun creating a soundtrack using our acoustic guitars and effects in Logic. The Soundtrack will be basic but looped, so not to take up to much loading time for the project, but also to save time to concentrate on the major aspects of the project. It is based on a short song we wrote a few months ago. The soundtrack will be finished in a few days, so I will be posting this as soon as it is completed.

My own Shane Meadows season.

2008-02-11T04:30:00.000-08:00

This week, I've watched four of the best written and directed films I've seen for some time. My friend leant me the Shane Meadows box set whcih includes TwentyFourSeven, A Room For Romeo Brass, Dead Mans Shoes and This is England. I started the set with Twenty Four Seven, as this was recommended by my friend. The film is Shane Meadow's debut production. Its low-budget black and white content certainly may lack appeal in todays world of film, but the overall effect astonished me, and I found myself hooked to a fanstatic dark comedy.

Twenty Four Seven

The story basically follows some guy who starts a boxing club, to stop drugs and crime in the local area. His hopes and aspires to train a bunch of lads, taken from a rough, lower class council estate, turns into a bunch of friends in a bonding session in the Welsh mountains. Truly fantastic filming without colour. Favourite scene shown below:

haha. makes me laugh everytime:). Fantastic use of the almost fatherly figure Bob Hoskins.

This Is England

The second film I watched was This is England. This film is semi-autobiographical, which I knew before the film so had a greater effect on the way I saw the events portrayed. The film starts with clips of entertainment, news, music, film and fashion in the early eighties. This introduces us into the time frame well and is clearly thought out.

The film uses colour this time, and plenty of it. The vivid blues and greens in the opening scenes combined with some good camera fices on the main characters, create a successful insight into the main characters emotions. Shaun, the main character begins as a lonely figure, no friends and little relations with family. He is an only child, and looks up to the brotherly figures he meets at the beginning of the film. These characters are subtley introduced. Before these guys come along though, I found the loniness well portrayed in the film, as short clips followed Shaun doing things that should ideally be done with the company of friends. For example, riding his bike, playing football or hanging at the park. At this stage of the film, acoustic tracks are played over the footage, to great this sense of secluded isolation.

Later in the film, a major thug character is introduced, whom many of the current friends Shaun has doesnt like. He is a major skinhead, who belives in true British people only. A particular scene stood out, where he is intoroduced, and begins making racial attacks towards Jamaican people, without realising one of Shauns freinds is actually ethenic. As he is saying these things, his voice slowly fades away, and characters are filmed upon individually whilst a soundtrack is played over his speaking. This shows us the uncomfortable state the characters were portrayed as being.

Throughout the film, although we dont find out till the end that Shauns Father died in the Fawklands war, we hear, at numerous stages, radio footage of the events in the war. These are usually when Shaun is on his own, which shows us he is thinking about his Father at these points.

Later in the film, a similar situation is portrayed as earlier, bt the other way around, where the black character is talking about his family and fellow blacks. The thug character this time is the one with music playing over his thoughts.

Finally, as the film draws to a conclusion, we see flicking scenes between Shaun throwing an St. Georges Flag to see with the unity of families with soldiers at the end of the war. Again my favourite scene is shown below (I dont agree with the racism at all, but when you watch the film it is knot portrayed as being a good thing. In fact its portrayed as insanity):

Dead Mans Shoes

Yesterday afternoon after dinner, I sat down to the next in the four films, Dead man's Shoes. This was my favourite of the four films, as it used some fantastic plot twists and filming techniques.

Much like This is England, Dead man's Shoes begins with real life baby footage of the two main characters, Richard and his brother. It flicks between this footage, and the footage of Richard walking through fields with his brother as young men. Like Twenty Four Seven, there is a small amount of narration from the lead character.

Throughout the film, a fantastic use of black and white flashbacks, to reveal what has happened to cause this brothers anger at these men.

These clips above are my favourite, portraying Richard as an aggressive, scary character.

I dont think theres a moment in this film I didnt enjoy, as the characters emotions and fellings are portrayed to give the audience an insight into the world of Richard. Revealed at the end is that his brother was actually killed by these men, and when we see him in earlier stages, he isnt actually there, but is an illusion in Richards mind.

The flashbacks of Anthonys life are shown above. The use of the gas mask is well scary and evokes fear, everytime he is seen.

I also noted about the drug overdose part of the film, where the filming is in chaos cam, and blurred, as if in first person of theose who had been drugged. This is fantastic, using distorted audio and flicking between the sober Richard to these proper gone druggies. He then kills them all :).

A Room For Romeo Brass

Finally, last night I watched the Film a Room For Romeo Brass. Like This is England, the filming was bright, had a pleasent start, but developed from this into a tragic plot of two friends plaing around with a very lonely but violent mid aged male. The same guy who played Richard in Dead mans Shoes (Paddy Considine), plays a very different role in this film as a slow, uncanny character, with a very short temper and no cause for thought. At the start of the film he is really funny, but as he develops an obsession with Romeos sister, he becomes angry and outraged that she doesnt want to get with him.

The use of light and dark filming, creates a mood in which the audience can follow, and also some what of a hatred for the characters in the bad of this film. The relationship between the two original friends is portrayed very successfully, and equal filming of each of their lives, flicking between them, allows us to see both ways of their thinking.

Again brilliant use of audio and soundtrack in this film.

My favourite scene:

Absolutly loved these films!!!!! Watch them...!

Second life. The big blog:)

2008-02-08T03:07:00.000-08:00

Secondlife is a 3-D world, in which any given person who has access to a suitable specified system with a broadband connection can create an avatar which represents however they would wish to look in a second life. Funnily enough, I was watching "Hogan knows best" on MTV, and the advertisement basically showed the way a person could create a character who may not represent their actual self, but how they would want to appear as an avatar.

Now I've been a member of the secondlife society for about a month, and feel I now need to review my time on the site and talk about how I created my avatar and interacted it within the environment.

To start with, I found the site difficult to get used to, partially due to the fact I skipped the tutorial at the start. However, when I got used to the right click facility, used to interact with the objects and environment around me, I began to get used to doing certain tasks. This allowed me to change the appearence of my avatar. I tried to make my avatar appear as much like me as possible, to begin with. This is something I tend to do on all games like this, as a preference, as I enjoy testing the software to see how it copes with making a character look similar to the real-life me. However, when going around the site, I found more and more people had dressed in clothing which was actually humourous. This then tempted me into creating a free appearence to my character, I wanted something different. Hence my current image, of Tuxedo, cigar and a wheelchair, definetly different to the people I had seen previously.

Below I have some screenshots of different avatars I found on the site, which were bizaare, and clearly not a direct image of their owner.

The positive about how secondlife has been developed is that it has taking some inspiration from the real life world, and combined it with ideas from the virtual world, so pretty much anything is psysically possible. When my character had been created, and I had got used to the interface, I decided to search for well known places, landmarks and popular places within Secondlife, and see how these had been incorporated into the virual world. The first was Paris, New York and London, shown below

and finally I visited Amsterdam :) just for the laugh. This place shows me how much secondlife is based on adults rather than the younger generation. Some of its content leaves not alot to the imagination. Bizarre, but again perhaps something some people take serious when using secondlife.

Still have loads more to write, but I'm off to work for a few hours. Toodles x

Car....again

2008-02-07T10:30:00.000-08:00

So heres the mirrored car with a few lights on, which I havent got used to at all yet!:) might take a few tutorials on this section to boost my knowledge. I'd also like to look into a plug-in called V-Ray, which seems to be mentioned in alot of tutorials. I also added a better colour to the model and built a plain for the model to sit within.

The next stage is to add the details such as lights, windows, mirrors etc. I also need to add the bonnet and tyres (already made) to this version of the model and perhaps have a play around at animating it.

Mustang modelling...comtinued

2008-02-07T10:24:00.000-08:00

Been playing with 3Dmax for sometime now, and I'm finally becoming familiar with the interface, tools and ideas that the software can incorporate into our work. I created a bonnet for my Mustang a couple of weeks back, and have been playing for a while now with the side of the car as well as the rear. The results are starting to show. Using the blueprints method, found on a few tutorials, I have managed now to craft most of the bodywork. The results are shown below, however theres still loads of stuff to do on it!. Because this is taking so long, and I've gotten into it so much, I have decided to use this in my interactive box, perhaps animated with my Avatar driving? To show my passion for old American Muscle cars.

I still need to add the previously made bonnet to the car, as well as mirroring the model to merge it to the oposite side, but that should'nt be too hard in the modifiers panel.

Plans for my Friday....!

2008-01-31T15:01:00.000-08:00

Well, Iv decided that tomorrow I will be experimenting with the designs for my Avatars. The first designs will be sketched from a number of views. This will allow me to gather a number of ideas, which will suit my personality, and portray me in the best possible way. This will also set me up for putting my ideas into 3DS Max. As Andy said early..."we need something to look at to sculp a model in 3DS Max."

Philadelphia...

2008-01-31T13:14:00.000-08:00

Directed by Jonathan Demme
Produced by Jonathan Demme
Edward Saxon
Written by Ron Nyswaner
Starring Tom Hanks
Denzel Washington
Jason Robards
Antonio Banderas
Joanne Woodward
Music by Howard Shore
Distributed by TriStar Pictures
Release date(s) December 23, 1993
Running time 125 min.
Language English
Budget $26,000,000 US (est.)

Bit of linkage here. Yet another film Tom Hanks plays the lead role in, but also directed and produced by Jonathon Demme. The film stars another great actor Denzel Washington. Legend.

The story begins with Tom Hanks, a successful worker, whos character develops a serious strain of AIDS. His job is lost, and he seeks help from a homophobic lawyer, who at first refuses to take his case on. The filming is well suited to sympathise for Tom Hank's character, who is portrayed to have suffered greatly from his job loss.

My favourite scene, is the first meet between Mr Beckett (Tom Hanks) and Councilor (Denzel Washington). The use of zooms within the objects the infected Mr Beckett touches, shows Washingtons charaters discomfort in the matter. I also like the scenes in court, where the lawyers talk directly to the jury. The proximity of the characters to the camera and the focus upon single characters, shows thier importance in this specific scene.

The film is inspired by the homophobic behaviour within society not only at the time of the film, but in the past and future years. People against homosexual behaviour may have been opened up to the effects of AIDS on the gay cumminity. A powerful scene shown above, where the sufferer being watched by the initial homophobe, with powerful music, works well to relate the audience to the scene. The red lighting also shows his suffering well.

Prrrrrrrrrropa sad ending. I hate them :)

Images that scream light and colour....

2008-01-30T09:30:00.002-08:00

hmmmm interesting. Well I decided to use one of the photos created using the technique me and a friend use often, known as light art. By turning the shutter on a camera to a long exposure, allows us to create some fantastic and eye grabbing images, that look as if they've come straight out of photoshop. Clever and fun. Some are shown below.

The photos, I think you will agree both incorporate light and colour in their content. I like the first photo best, taken proper late on my loaded friends back garden :). Set the shutter on propa low speed and then ran round like nutters with LED lights, torches and whatever light emiting we could get our hands on. The effect is ace...!

I chose Diana's image to talk about, because it uses a similar method to me, in that the shutter has taken longer because of the removal of Flash. Her use of glow sticks is a mint idea for light art, and I will definetly consider using these in future light art work me and my friends create.

My favourite image found though, would have to be Will's which uses colour amazingly to create a professional, well thought out image. The light in the image jumps from the screen, and the coluors are both vivid and exciting to the eye, giving us plenty to look at, as well as creating a story of events within the picture, something I remember Andy vaguely mentioning during a lecture this term.

Second life...making friends

2008-01-29T15:12:00.000-08:00

Making friends in second life is simple, approach the person you wish to request friendship with, right click on them, send a request and if they accept, you can track these friends down within secondlife.

One of the people I met in secondlife, I attempted to converse with, but found they didnt actually speak a word of English, bizaare on an english game really. But after adding a few friends, I found that my avaitor became increasingly popular, and more people attempted making friendship offers towards me. This allowed a group of us to go out to another area of second life, share drinks, have a dance and do basically what people tend to do in reality. I was amazed at how similar parts actually became.

3d max...blueprints:)

2008-01-29T12:58:00.000-08:00

Been playing around at modelling using blueprints, cars to be precise. I must admit its getting rather fun creating some realistic objects. Some scrrenshots below of some things I've been playing with :)

I've started playing with some blueprints of a ford mustang.:)

I got the blueprints from another source, because i could'nt be bothered to draw them myself, and decided to go straight into 3D max with them, to make it more beneficial:D

Today I started to make a bonnet in 3dmax. doesnt look too good to be fair :), but the use of the blueprints, helped me to make it accurate and in scale with the rest of the car. Using some tutorials online, showed me how to sculp the bonnet, using the editable polygon option. This allowed me to create a shape by editing the specific areas of a cube (the shape I started with). Below are some screenshots of this process:)

This is the final rendered image of the bonnet, along with the blueprints, that I dont want to loose, and havent figured out how to hide in my shot :).

My next 3dmax task....

2008-01-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

I'm currently working on a tutorial, which helps me use blueprints to design 3d objects. Its well good. I shall have a go, might take me a few days but the results should be awesome.

x x x

Second life diary 2

2008-01-25T02:33:00.000-08:00

Over the last few days I've been playing with Second life, and frankly its getting a little draining. It seems theres only so much you can do without investing money to the company, and I certainly dont have the funds to do that. Sop I decided today, to go looking around for different objects, items and interesting things I could interact with.

The first thing I was to do was to start using the interaction menu by right clicking on vasrious objects. This allows the user to stand, sit, or interact in a way that suits the object. When walking around one particular site, I found a stage with a drum kit, in whcih the user could interact with each individual drum, something I want to encorporate into my design for the 3d interactive box.

I have also found that pretty much anything in second life can be played around with in some form, which is atonishing with the size of the environment. For example I found a small shack, in which the user could close the doors and open them as they felt sutied what they wished to do, then stay in here for as long as they wanted.

I also found some rather fun stuff to doin this section of second life. For example when travelling up the river, I found some white water rapids, in whcih wou could purchase a rubber ring and ride on them whenever you wished. I did not purchase a ring, but it may have been a fun excersise to interact with.

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Also today, I found a relaxation place, where your second life character could sit and relax on seats and cushions, watching the waves in the sea.:)

I managed also today to find a port, where if paid, your second life characters can take a cruise around the island, stopping at numerous places.

Finally, I found some crazy textured flooring, in an unsecured house today. The flooring was opaque, and bright green, intersting indeed.

Ha ha and almost forgot. I sat on a cows head:D

Sweeney Todd - The demon barber of Fleet Street :D

2008-01-24T14:25:00.000-08:00

Directed by Tim Burton
Produced by Richard D. Zanuck
Walter F. Parkes
Laurie MacDonald
John Logan
Written by Christopher Bond (story)
Stephen Sondheim (lyrics)
Hugh Wheeler (play)
John Logan (script)
Starring Johnny Depp
Helena Bonham Carter
Alan Rickman
Timothy Spall
Jamie Campbell Bower
Ed Sanders
Jayne Wisener
Laura Michelle Kelly
and
Sacha Baron Cohen
Music by Stephen Sondheim
Jonathan Tunick (underscore)
Cinematography Dariusz Wolski
Editing by Chris Lebenzon
Distributed by DreamWorks Pictures(USA)
Warner Bros. (Non-USA)
Release date(s) December 21, 2007 (US)
January 25, 2008 (UK)
Running time 117 min.
Country United States/ United Kingdom
Language English
Budget $50 million

My favourite clip shown above. The fast following camera that traces Sweeney and focuses on him at all times is a clever effect. The camera movement is also linked with the tempo of the music to give the dramatic effect. Sweeneys clothing is brighter, more vivid, so showing that this i a dull community. This can especially be seen when the camera pans out at the end of this scene.

Depp is a legend :)

Another awesome scene, in which we can see the contrast between the rival barbers clothing and hair sheet, compared to Sweeney's. The focus on the rival barber is a clever technique at drawing the attention of the audience and introducing the first of Sweeney's victims in the film.

Notes teken during film.

beautiful start with effects to create running blood don ornaments in Sweeney's barber shop - use of saturated colours with the vivid reds show harshness of blood, as well as the darkness of the killer

very dark when sweeney is around. dark on the boat and in the outskirts of london

clevber use of camera in the shots of london in first person fast tour like fashion

very colourful flashbacks warm tones

additional light when he holds his knives for the first time

light world shown around his daughter, to show she is still bright and gleaming

musical parts, panning camera togive impression of a musical.

Disasterous ending shown very darkly, very vivid reds in the blood

No light, even in the end

second life....

2008-01-23T15:37:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be honest. I'm writing this blog hammered off my face so it may well be abit sketchy like:).

So second life. I began second life a few weeks back, and it became apparent to me that it was a really great piece of online entertainment, in which people could create parraells to their normal selves or change their lives completely to become something wayout from what their ordinary life consited of.

For example, I met some guy that owned £330 of land on second life. Something whcih shocked me as he was only 22 years of age. Money to burn :).

But yeh to be honest i'm not sure where to go from here. I'm some random looking guy, with long hair, a guitar and some rather dashing clothes, of which i've dragged the jeans down and made the shirt a tad tighter. But what do I do now, get a job? I guess so :) lets give it a whirl drunken scotty:)

Heres some screenshots:)

Charlie Wilsons War.

2008-01-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

Directed by Mike Nichols
Produced by Tom Hanks
Written by George Crile (novel)
Aaron Sorkin (screenplay)
Starring Tom Hanks
Julia Roberts
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Amy Adams
Ned Beatty
Music by James Newton Howard
Cinematography Stephen Goldblatt
Editing by John Bloom
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Playtone
Release date(s) December 21, 2007
Running time 100 min.
Country United States
Language English
Dari
Urdu
Budget $75 million

Tonight I went to watch the newly released Charlie Wilson's war, based on a true story of a congressman whom supplies money to the Afghans to fight the Solviet Union in the time of the Cold war.

The film was interesting, as it combined real footage, with the actual film, to give the audience more of a feel for the truth behind the narrative.

Mike Nichols is the director, someone who before this movie, I had not been aware of his work. I remember faintly a film called Closer, released in 2004, which I will be watching sometime later this week to see if I can see a style portrayed in his work. From the film I watched tonight, he is a talented director, who adds something to what could be a grey area in film. For example if there was little humour in this film it would come across too dry for viewing in my opinion.

Narrative: The narrative was well structured throughout the film, however contained alot of political confusion which made it difficult for easy viewing. For example the main narrative in the story seems to be the raising of funds to help the Afghans at war, with help from a rich female anti-communist played by Julia Roberts. The main actor is Tom Hanks, who as always, makes the film brilliant to watch. Without the humour the film would be dull and rather worthless as a piece.

Visual Style: Throughout the film, full vivid colour is used to show this highly succesful man in the light that others percieve him as in the film. Thi works very well in introducing us as an audience to the main character. The style used towards the end of the film is different, and it becomes very clear that this man is actually lonely or perhaps full of pride. At the end the start is played again, and we see why he is standing in front of so many people, being awardfed a prize for his achievement. However, when we see him in tears, we see a darker style being used. The film is mainly scened in the offices of the congressman, as well as hotels, and middle eastern countries. There is a good part of the film where he is standing on a large hill, unsure whether to aid the people of Afghnistan, with the refugee camps filled with thousands of people in the distance. The use of focus on him and those in the background, as well as the use of space shows that seeing the people has a huge effect on his decision.

I feel it important to mention the character played by Phillip seymour Hoffman, as the character is used well to break out the seriousness of the film, to create a sense of humour within it. A clever technique. However, I dont know how the start is relevant where he shouts at his superiour, a rather bizaare introduction to a character I'm sure would be agreed.

3D max....

2008-01-22T09:55:00.000-08:00

Been playing around with this software a fair bit this week, just to familiarise myself with its interface, and build an understanding of what its designed to produce. I found these videos below, that people had made using 3d studio max.I also found a couple of other pieces of software when looking at 3d studio max, including a modelling program called poser. This software, would be highly useful for when I start creating my identity piece, as it would allow me to create a 3d character, which could be interacted with by the user, without takin too much time manually moulding it. Below, is a head, I created using 3DS Max and Mudbox.

The head was designed to have a similar shape to those of the Lloyds TSB advert. After finding some 3d painting software, I will hopefully be able to colour and add features to the 3d object already created. This is good practice for future ideas and research into 3d max and other software.

I have also been on SecondLife, which I will talk about in my next blog as I'm off to the cinema tonight to watch yet another film, which I will also be blogging about :)

Scotty x x x

The silence of the lambs....

2008-01-19T02:29:00.000-08:00

Directed by Jonathan Demme
Produced by Kenneth Utt
Edward Saxon
Ron Bozman
Written by Ted Tally
Starring Jodie Foster
Anthony Hopkins
Scott Glenn
Ted Levine
Music by Howard Shore
Cinematography Tak Fujimoto
Distributed by Orion Pictures
Release date
United Kingdom:
May 31, 1991
Running time 118 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $19,000,000
Preceded by Manhunter (1986)
Followed by Hannibal (2001)

I've made a resolution...to widen my knowledge in the area of Audio visual multimedia, so when it comes to the choice week, I have a full understanding in the area.

I have set my self the task of a director, per week, up until the choice week.

My first is, Jonathon Demme , director of the silence of the lambs. The other films chosen by this director are...

The Agronomist, Married to the Mob and Philadelphia

My first impressions of the silence of the lmabs, was that its a deep, psychological thrilling story, packed with moments of suspense. The acting on Anthony Hopkins part, in my opinion was superb. The difficulty in playing an intelliegent, mid-aged male turned psychopath, must have been a difficult task, however although he is'nt actually the main "villain" in this film, it leads us into the later films. He is in fact only in the film for around 15mins!

I have never read the novel by Thomas Harris, and in ways I'm glad, as the content of the film, in my eyes, reveals enough about the basic plot, to give me insight into how the next films will be shown. It will be interesting to see the difference in each of the films, with different screenwriters, actors and directors.

When considering the film in a more media form, as Bruce Block would perhaps do, we see some good quality filming techniques. Filming from first person, for example when the serial killer Buffalo Bill has the night vision goggles on, helps to create suspense within the audience, as well as a feeling of anxiety.

I feel that some parts of the film, were weak. For example, I really did not enjoy having to listen to the full annoying american accent of Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster. Her acting at some parts was also a little farfetched, mainly in the parts of true suspense, i.e. when she was in the house with Buffalo Bill.

Narrative: Because the narrative ws taken from an extremelly popular book, it was clearly going to be a popular film. The narrative flows well, and although very deep, allows the viewer, to become aquainted with characters and their stories. There are actually two main stories linked into one in this film. First, the escape of hannibal lecture and his aid to the finding of Buffalo Bill. Second, the story of Buffalo Bill as a transexual serial killer, and the tracing down of him.

Visual Style: The visual style of the Silence of the Lambs, is dark and deep. Although a psychopath, the sections with Hanibal Lecture, are considerably light and lively. For example when he kills the two guards in his cage, only after Hannibal has left is darkness portrayed. Another section where lighting is used to effect the mood is when Agent Starling is despereate to get to the killer, and Hannibals body is in the light, but his face is not visible.

Our first view of Hannibal, is shown that he is a rather normal man in appearence. His visual shows an ageing man, intelligent, but deeply disturbed.

Camera: The camera effects used, come across as being very 80's to me. The filming at the beginnning of the movie for example, is very simple and not too enthralling, something which helps me to get into a film straight away. However, the use of first person camera, specifically in the first meeting of Hannibal, as we see him in the eyes if Agent Starling, is an effective one.

The chaos-like camera in the night vision scenes are also well produced and add to the tension and suspense of the film.

Favourite scene:

The screaming of the lambs scene, shows the developed relationship between Hannibal and Clarice. The lighting used on his face when he is in the cage, and the darkness of his face, shows he has got deep into Clarice, and his evil side is beginning to show. All the filming is done from either within or out of the cage, the bars are always visible. The camera comes closer into Hannibals face, as he begins to get into Clarice's thoughts and her mind. The same happens as Clarice's thoughts and story develops. When she is telling the story, Hannibals comments on the story and questions are said without moving the camera to his face. When he has finally got to her, the music kicks in to create suspense and also show Hannibal's clever psychological knowledge. The final zoom, into his finger stroking hers, shows that Hannibal has a sensitive side towards Clarice's character.

Two films I will clearly need to watch to now are Manhunter and Hannibal, as well as the new Hannibal Rising film.

A good website for linking films to filming techniques : http://users.design.ucla.edu/~cariesta/MayaCourseNotes/html/body_ucla160_fx.html

And with some sound.... :)

2007-12-05T12:07:00.000-08:00

Interactive narrative without sound.

2007-12-03T06:10:00.000-08:00

This is the first draft of my interactive narrative. The theme is "interogation" hence the violence involved in getting the truth from the sufferer. I will be adding text and sound shortly, to make the narrative more clear. Currently it needs making smaller so it embeds better but I will do that later too.

Thanks Scotty x

Object....

2007-11-28T14:23:00.000-08:00

Well, I've decided to tell you how beautiful I find my bass guitar (shown below).

The design of my bass is basically a replica version of a fender precision bass guitar. Often I dont just play my guitar, but stroke it lol, as the finish is well beautiful and I dont care that its well bright in colour. I love the contrast between the black scratchplate and vivid pink on the body.

If I ever get bored, I pick up this little fellow and give him a twang. :) This is why I have chosen to talk about my guitar. Some more photos are shown below...

I have now gone on to discuss, why the bass was designed as it is, whats cool about this design and how it differs from other designs.

Personally, I chose the P bass shape, due to its ease of play and functionability. The shape of the body sits nicely when playing, to give the bassist the most comfort and pleasure it can whilst playing. This is both when sat down and stood up. Now there are many shapes of bass, but this particular shape became popular with all musicians in the 50's. My bass may be as aesteticly pleasing as some Fender basses, but the quality is not as advanced as one with the fender badge, due to the size of pickups, quality of electrics and general care taken in the production of each guitar. This is why my bass is more budgeted than say a 1960's vintage precision bass.

Alternative models of bass do not interest me. However, Fender do have a similar bass called the Jazz (shown below) which was also extremelly popular with bassists and has even better pickups than a precision.

There is little difference between these two basses, apart from a slight change in shape and the metal cover for the volume and tone switches.
Below is a bass made by gibson. Gibson are primarily a guitar manufacturer, however make some really impressive basses too. Personally, I dont like the shape of the Thunderbird bass for example, however the sound is so much clearer and crisp than that of a Fender, in my opinion. These guitars are big dollar though.

Finally, is an SG shaped body, again first produced by Gibson. This shape is popular with guitar lovers, however I feel that this shape is far to underproportioned for a bass guitar, and doesnt have the beefy apperence of the Fender Basses.

This is why I would easily choose a Fender bass over others. It is simply down to the beauty and care taken in their craftsmenship. The basses have become a perfectly developed trend over time, and are now seen as the "norm" in the music society. Only now as individuality is becoming everso more popular, do we see that people are moving away from these shapes to those like the SG.

Latest and final stop-start animation

2007-11-26T13:42:00.000-08:00

Single-shot, all scenes unedited

2007-11-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

Here are all the scenes, unedited, raw, and down right silly on occasions :) lol

Audio recording for single-shot film

2007-11-20T11:06:00.000-08:00

Today we recorded the audio content for our one-shot film. We decided to record the whispered thoughts of our character, as this meant we could portray the narrative that bit more, and suggest that there were events that happened before that of the one-shot video.

With much help from John (a propa pedigree legend), we found a quiet room to do our audio recording. However, if we were to do this again no doubt we would use the recording booths for this task, but as of yet we have not been instructed on how to use these.

One-shot video evaluation

2007-11-19T02:50:00.000-08:00

So the video is completed and shown below. We still have whispering to add at the start of the video, which will be recorded very soon. All in all the video has given us a positive output towards the brief, showing the effect you can gain by shooting in one-shot as well as the focus involved to get the end result. I feel using the sunrise almost aided the work produced, as we were on a set time in which the film needed to be completed, before the sunrise was lost.

We had two rehearsals before it was time to shoot the actual shot, and experimented with different angles and ways of presenting the shot, before actually filming the final one. These can be seen above on my next blog.
The use of natural lighting really gives our video somewhat of a professional look, without us putting to much into the consideration of studio lighting. I must admit though I would have liked to have done some studio work, but there is plenty of time for that in the future :).
The next step is to gather feedback on the one-shot video produced, to see what improvements can be made to make the video more appealing or more suited to the brief.

I have decided to blog a short diary of what I and the group did, and when we did it:

Day 1:

The first day was talking about some ideas we had within the Waverley building. We came up with several ideas, including a scene in an office where the character is bored and passes the time by doing amusing things to entertain theirselves. We rejected this idea due to the lack of props to create a successful scene in which we could film in.
The second idea, and the one we took and improved was to shoot a surreal female in the moors or on some steps in a rural area. This was then expanded to perhaps a chase which resulted in a male figure following the female. We then came to the conclusion that this was clearly going into Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice territory, and used this to create a love scene, which gets the audince thinking into the past events, as well as what is to happen next.

Day 2: We visited the location, took some photographs (shown below) of the location and decided the position in which the sun would rise as well as where the camera would be placed and how we would film the characters.

We then returned home for tea and buscuits :):):)

Day 3: We woke at around 4 o clock in the morning to catch the sunrise. Having checked the weather forcast, we realised that this would be the best day, as it was a fresh, clear morning. Filming began and we caught some really clever shots. We left at around 9 o clock and returned to the Waverely building to edit the video.

Day 4: The video was completed using Premeire, music was added.

Day5: The video was posted on my blog and youtube.

Single Shot Video

2007-11-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

So heres the video :)

x x x

Scotty

Pixelation; influences to my design, how I went about the ideas, and possible improvements.

2007-11-14T14:48:00.000-08:00

During the creation of my pixleation, I began to think what I actually wanted to do, and started to research an area which had struck me as interesting, reversing video or animation to make an effective end result. This started to get me thinking, that it would be easy to do this also with pixelation. Of course it was a hard task changing all of the file names to suit the order I wished them to play in, but it works effectively, particularly with the flower petals. Below is one of the videos which inspired the way in which movement can be presented backwards.

"ESREVER" Backwards Video - The top video clips of the week are here

I did several other draft pixelations before my completed pixelation, and have found that some of my ideas worked better than others. For example, I took shots of a dandelion, well one of those things were all the seeds can be blown off, and reversed this. It worked fairly well but I needed something more professional and more smooth for my final piece, hence the groups work with the petal picking.

A major problem with my pixelation is the lack of narrative, which I am fully aware of. I clearly need to add some form of story to the ideas, whether an account of events or even a more individual idea of creating some written work to play along with the pixelation, perhaps a short poem for example. But I am currently undergoing work into this, as I can see that it will need improving to suite the brief.

Another technique I attempted to use during my pixelation work was timing between audio and visual aspects of the design. The movement linked to audio was something that Andy mentioned in an early seminar, and attracted my attention to the possibilities when exploring this further. A good example of this can be found in the music video for The White Stripes "The Hardest Button To Button" shown below.

In my video I attempted to do this at the stage where I jump backwards over the fence, as well as where my group move around the circular flower bed in the arboretum. This works well in my pixelation, however I could have used clearer, more defined movements within the pixelation to emphasise that I had attempted to do this.

Where do I go from here?

Right, so I finished the pixelation, but below are the improvements I will undergo before presenting the final piece to my peers and course leaders.

1) Firstly, I will consider and apply some form of narrative, most likely a short story or poem that adds to my pixelation to meet the brief.
2) Secondly, I will attempt to emphasise the link between audio and movement in my work by precisely applying the two together on the timeline in Premiere
3) Finally, I will put together all drafts, as well as the final piece to show that I have experimented with different ideas, and chose those I, and others felt where the strongest.

Thanks,

Scotty x x x x :)

Today's single shot film...Tiring as it was :)

2007-11-14T11:22:00.000-08:00

Hello. :) Today Me and the gang woke up literally at the crack of dawn to go take some cool sunrising film. Well the whole narrative to our film basically consists of a female (played by Diana) running from something in the moorlands in Beeley. The audience at first has no idea of what is happening and the narrative opens interest into past events before the film, something we hope to achieve, and also leads the audience into their own ideas/opinions on what has happened in the lead up. After a short time of running through the Heather and moorland vegetation, a male figure (played by myself) appears in the distance, the character then falls to the graound anf the male approaches her, picks her up and generally gives her a nice cuddle and makes sure she's ok :) The narrative does lack some realism and we could probably have improved on our acting skills, but the result, thanks to some fantastic sunrisen lighting this morning means we did'nt regret setting our alarms rather early on. Kirsty, was on the camera today and did some awesome zooms in and out of characters, and Stef with some rather abrupt directing and compromising costumes means our end result will certainly avoid being branded student-like by critics. At the moment of course this is just the basic, raw video with no editing at all, so when some slow-mo's are added and some nifty tricks in premiere, we may well end up with the perfect result.

The next stage we have decided to take is to carry out some approaches towards the audio of our video, for example one idea yesterday was to use whispers, as hints to what is going on in the film, perhaps with revealing messages to the audience.

Okay, we admit its cheesy, but its well different in my opinion, and deserves credit for how early we awoke to achieve it!!! :)

Laters x x x

Scotty

Single-shot film examples

2007-11-07T04:32:00.000-08:00

Films shown from www.Single-Shot.co.uk Automotive action painting by George Barber Here is the first Single-Shot video I have decided to look at. The film uses a view from a birdseye position, which adds to the effect of the idea. The idea itself is very clever and uses some interesting sound and visual aspects. Clearly the film was well thought about and planned, and a fair amount of people involved. The film also has an aspect of humour involved, as it uses some rather clever what appears to be non-intentional cars.Suprise by Ken Dodd A clever little video which uses a range of camera angles and techniques to put across the visual narration of the film. As with my pixelation project the creator has focused on the idea of making things go backwards. The video also uses very little in colour and high amounts of saturation to show the dramatic edge to the story.

Idea's for AV short single-shot film

2007-11-05T06:24:00.000-08:00

Well today was'nt too productive, and ideas weren't coming all that naturally. However, we did decide that we wanted to use a location that would be far from student-like and allow us to carry out some form of surreal shot. A well cheesy movie but awesome in my opinion, Pride and Predudice uses some awesome shots in a really beautiful location of Chatsworth. We talked about choosing a location similar to this for our film, as it will cool to boast some shots using natural lighting and effects. The shot is shown below from Pride and Predudice, so skip to just near the end where the sun is rising :) This scene always gets me thinking to what the light represents as an inner meaning to the film, for example a "new start" or "fresh relationship".

The theme of a surreal female figure also cropped up in our ideas, which could be used really well in a location which is natural. I also know a rather talented piano player :) might come in useful.

We now need to consider who's doing what. Job wise I mean. So we will sort that no doubt when we meet up next :) and also explore other ideas which may give us options to the narration of our scene.

Books for tutorial.

2007-10-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

This week I have visited the library and taken out a couple of books I thought might proove useful for my course. I also read through one of my books, purchased for a hobby of mine, photography. This book is called "Digital photographers Handbook", and is written by Tom Ang. The other two books, one I have got through the library and the other as an ebook are both relevant to the subject of Multimedia.

Digital Photography Handbook - Tom Ang

Tom Ang is a developed photographer who has been around the world taking pretty much every type of photograph. The thing I like most about this book is the fact it goes into loads of details in improving the quality of the images taken by any standard of photographer. This book is useful in my course, as it combines taking photographs, displaying the end result in an attractive, appealing way, as well as showing us basic skills on how to create pieces of artwork, or alternative methods of using photographs.

One section of the book for example goes into much detail on the way we can output out work, considering all problems and aspects of this task. Such things as copyright are discussed.

The book has certainly aided me in the past with my A-level work in Applied ICT and no doubt will help me when developing images for any area of my Multimedia course.

The Photograph As Contemporary Art - Charlotte Cotton

This book, taken out from the Boots Library, shows how previous photographers and artists gathered unique ideas for the development of their work. The book has a range of photographs, which cant help but raise a smile on the readers face when seeing them, but when read about allow the reader to take a more serious approach to evaluating the true meaning behind the images or artwork.

One particular section has caught my eye when reading this book. The second chapter explores ways in which different photographers have explored surreal and fairytale like situations in their work. I found an image called "insomnia" and when reading through the VLP the other day realised this is highly relevant to the next stage of our narratives unit. The book shows a male character curled up in a ball in a rather dadgy looking kitchen. The objects around the male character suggest things which have possibly happened before this point, and the angles of the furnishings allow us to consider narrative and reflect on the events which may have happenend. Something to consider for the next section of the narrative unit I'm sure :).

Although I could not find books from the reading list, I have realised just how useful some of these texts could be in my modules for this year.

Thanks Scotty :)

Final Pixelation

2007-10-29T17:17:00.001-07:00

Today...

2007-10-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

yes today I've been messing with my animation and made something rather bizaare. I wish you could see it on my comp as the quality is so much better. Thats the Mothers eye that I used to apply my previous stop-motion animation to. I have found whilst carrying out my pixelation, I have a thing about making things going backwards, which can be seen in my design. I will continue to play around with my pixelation, and with some comments, will be able to change the animation to not just my preferences but others too.

Thanks Scotty :) x x x

Next bit...

2007-10-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

First Draft part 2

2007-10-26T06:44:00.000-07:00

Well I've completed a first draft of my stop motion pixelation animation. I have used Adobe Premeire CS3 for the production of my work. Because I have never used premiere before, I started by familiarise myself with the software, and below is the result. Today I have practised combining the audio with the movement of the images, and tried to combine them as one piece. I would like people to comment on this draft to see what could be done to improve upon my first draft ideas,

Thanks Scotty:)x x

First draft of pixelation

2007-10-26T06:33:00.000-07:00

Motion still images

2007-10-23T06:44:00.001-07:00

Right, All our images are sorted i.e. taken, and now its time to edit them to the correct sizes and preferences. Andy taught us a nifty trick on photoshop, using the "action" tool, making it simple to edit all of the images to the same specifications. I have used this method on my section of the images, to change the sizes of each image. It could also have been used for things such as desaturation, hue and colour modifications, however because I have specific areas in my images which need editing, I chose to do this individually. I have now put all the images together to form my section of the 30 second stop motion animation, all thats left now is to add audio and organise the sections accordingly.

Some ideas for animation...

2007-10-13T06:18:00.000-07:00

Our pixelation animation has begun and we have some good ideas. We now need to move into different locations as all our work has currently been undergone in one location. We will be doing this on Wednesday afternoon

Now we've started experimenting with ideas, to move from one scene to another scene, we could perhaps use a character throwing the chair and another catching the chair in another location.
Different views and perspectives would be cool. Using some Matrix type sounds as the camera images rotate around a character would work well.
Some tricks and effects such as balancing the chair on our noses would be clever, this could be done well in a low area with someone holding the chair from an elevated position.
Add some humour to the project :)
Do some stuff around the arbortum

:) James :)

Some of my photographs :)

2007-10-12T06:11:00.000-07:00

Here are some photo's I have taken over the last year. Looks like everyone else is banging things on so I thought id join in :)

First tutorial, Start of project, Introduction to pixelation

2007-10-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

Learnt some good stuff today. Firstly I began with my tutorial leson with Jooles. Sorted out linking this blog to the ntu bloggers webspace, as well as meeting the people who would be in my tutorial classes this year. After this I attended my first seminar with Andy on pixelation, where he summed up an interesting history of animation. This was informative and helped build a backbone to the type of work we were expected to produce this year. Finally, me, ollie, Kirsty, Katie and Craig were split into a group to carry out our first year module on animation. We began some basic ideas with moving chairs, with some pretty effective results :) We will be carrying on with this Wednesday which will be a fun day no doubt :) o yeh and I went up Notts for Georginas birthday. Happy Birthday!

Thanks, Scotty

Second Blog, Started Multimedia

2007-10-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

For some reason my first attempt at making a blog failed so here we go again. Last week I met fellow students and staff of my Multimedia course. Throughout the week we were set tasks such as creating a pin-hole camera from a used beer can (not hard to find) and also producing a whiteboard animation. These tasks were awesome, helping introduce lots of new people and making new friends. The whiteboard animation can be shown below, ours is the non-detailed one, by myself Scotty, Ollie, Kane and Craig, who were really fun to work with. To create the animation were had to draw whatever we wished on the whiteboard, and then redraw it in a slightly different way, each time a shot was taken to create an animated series of images, much like someone flicking through a note pad reeeeealy fast, as on the new Orange advert.