Interactive Design - Flash Game

I have mainly been working on my Interactive Design game in flash. I originally intended to create the game in ActionScript 3.0 but quickly realised it was going to take me a LOT longer to work out how to program it in the new language as oposed to 2.0.

There are a lotttt of problems with the game which I think I will try and sort out because I em enjoying making the game and I quite like the style of it. All the images I have snatched from other projects I have done in the last few years, and Cavey has made a return from the e4 ident I did last year.

I started the game using a a tutorial on kirupa.com (click here for link) but spent hours changing bits here and there, completely changed the graphics and re-wrote most of the code. I think I have learnt quite a lot from this tutorial.

Hopefully a lot of what I have learnt from this tutorial and the project will be useful for other projects in flash, including ones where I do actually move on to Action Script 3.0. I think I would like to re-create this game in AS3.0, making improvements and tweaking bits here and there as I go.

Anyway here are a list of problems I have found while playing the game.

Speed - I have only played it on my computer but it seems quite slow. My computer/internet is realyl quite laggy so this could have something to do with it.

Jumping - For some reason I couldn't get the jump to animate, something to do with howthe code is written I think, and havn't been able to find a way around it yet, so I have just used the one frame for the jump.

Jumping 2 - The gravity doesn't feel right, as though he is floating about a bit. I have played around a little bit with this but havn't got it right yet. More playing about to do.

Jumping 3 - When jumping across gaps in the ground it is often possible to land half way in the grass on the other side. I tried making the sides of the jump walls so that the character cannot move in that way, but I havn't fully implimented and tested that yet so it still doesn't work properly. Also, when landing from a platform, the character does not land completely on top of the ground, landing slighty further down than he should be. I think this may be to do with the amount the character is falling, or it could be to do with problems using the hittest function or from using randomly placed platforms which do not keep to a predefined grid.

Hidden Stars/Hidden Platform - These two hidden things, both activated by switches do not work correctly, in that although the stars are invisible, they are still collected when the character walks through them. The same with the hidden platform, the character is still able to walk on it although it is invisible. This is probably due to the fact of using visibility instead of actually placing and removing objects.

Gameover/End - When you get game over or complete the level, at the score screen, if you press the arrow keys the screen still moves from side to side. If you then press space to start again, the screen will have moved to the side where you moved at the gameover score.
This moves the star counter as well as putting the character in the wrong place. This is simply because I havn't taken out the character movement controls and will be easy to fix.

Cloud Animation - Doesn't loop properly and the clouds stop, leaving some of the sky with still clouds and the rest with a clear blue background.

Lives - No life system implimented yet. Easy enough to do just havn't added yet.

Music - Doesn't loop. Too long a gap at the start (I just grabbed the music I used for my e4 Ident project last year so it isn't created for this and is just a filler. I will edit the music to fit the game more later.

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So yes, I have quite a lot of work to do on this game. I would also like to start it from scratch and make it so that the game is created completely by code at runtime as oposed to designing the levels at design time. This will make the game run faster and smoother and will allow me to use arrays which should make creating the game a lot faster.

Oh and the link to the game is here: PLAY

Maya Animation Rigging

I don't think I have actually put anything Maya/3D related on this blog since the stuff I put on at the end of last year.  I have been doing a lot of experinmenting but because nothing I have done has felt finished or good enough I havn't put anything on here.

Anyway, I have been trying to rig a skeleton on characters in Maya, which I thought I got the general idea of but apparently not from the failed attempts I have produced.

Because I have nothing working or even anything that looks nice to put on here I will instead put my failed attempts on, at least to show I tried and failed, and will hopefully be able to work it out by playing about/animation lectures and seminars.

.....and because blogger/my computer is being rubbish and won't let me upload any images to this blog I will instead put nothing on here. Oh well.

Mario Galaxy

Since I am taking the Games pathway in multimedia this year I thought I should actually write something in here games related.  It wasnt until I bought Mario Galaxy today however that I have actually felt inspired to write much about games.

I wouldn't call myself a hard core gamer, but I have always been interested in computer games, mainly the ones which do something different and keep you excited.  For this reason, I think, I never really got into the whole playstation craze.  I owned a PS2 quite late on in its life (I got one a couple of christmas's ago, with a load of games second hand) and I enjoyed the games enough, but nothing really struck me like 'wow this is cool'.

That said, neither did anything on the Game Cube particually, which was the first games console I owned after the Megadrive.  However there were a lot of games on there I did really enjoy.

It wasnt until I started hearing about the Wii that I started getting excited about games again.  This sounded something completely new and different, and it was from Nintendo, who I wanted to do well, since they dared to try new things instead of coming out with the same type of games over and over.

The first thing I played on the Wii was Sonic: Secret rings or whatever its called.  I've hardly picked it up again since and I was sort of disapointed with it, but interested at the same time.  I like the controls and see how it would be fun, but it didn't really do it for me.  However, for some reason, I usually always buy the latest sonic game, hoping for it to be more like the games I played when I was younger, but each time the games seem to steer further and further away, and draw me in less and less each time.

Mario was something I did not grow up playing.  The SNES was the lesser console as far as I was concerned.  All my friends had Megadrives, and SNES's always looked uncool and tacky.  Mario looked boring compared to Sonic, so I never played it and it wasn't until Mario 64 that I was reintroduced to Mario, but only breifly.

I played a demo of mario 64 in a toys R us store and thought it was great, controling this character in 3D, which was pretty new at the time.  I thought it looked great, and it seemed exciting, and I did plan on getting a nintendo 64 for a while.  For some reason I didn't bother though and ended up just playing games on the PC for the gap between when they stopped making megadrive games and until the Game Cube was released.

I enjoyed Mario Sunshine, though it was probably not the best Mario game to be properly reintroduced to.  I was taken in by the graphics I think mainly, which made the game more interesting to me.  However, playing Mario Galaxy today has completely over shadowed Mario Sunshine which seems like a pathetic game in comparison.  

I'm not going to review the game as I really can't be bothered going through everything thats in the game.  I have only got 10 stars so far, but for me to sit down and play a game for more than an hour or so at a time requires a LOT from the game to keep me interested.  Galaxy definetly did this for me.  At every step there seemed to be something innovative but with a familiar mario style.  My favourite part so far is the wreckage in space where there are bits of rockets and other junk floating around.  Two parts of this level reminded me of the classic sonic games.

The first bit is the part where platforms appear slightly ahead of you while you walk, like in Marble Hill Zone in the first Sonic the Hedgehog game.  The cool thing in Galaxy though is the speed they drop down in and how they disapear again as you move away from them.

The second thing which reminded me of the Sonic games a boss on the level. It is a big robot which it bigger than the planet/moon which it is stood on.  This reminded me of one of robotnik's huge robots found at the end of Sonic 2/3/Sonic & Knuckles.

There is loads of other cool stuff in the game, most noticably the physics of the gravity as mario walks around different planets and flies off between them.  Using the Wii remote to collect the stars and firing them at enemies also feels a bit different, and yet easy to pick up and rewarding at the same time.

The game is the first game on the Wii which has actually lived up to if not been better than I had expected, possibly with exception to Wii Tennis on Wii Sports.  But even with Wii Tennis there are times where it feels unfair slightly disapointing.  Zelda Twilight Princess, although very enjoyable, and works well with the Wii controls, doesn't make as much use of the Wii Remote for sword fighting as I had hoped for.  Then again, Twilight Priness was of course a Game Cube game with added Wii control support, and not made specificly with the Wii in mind.  Mario galaxy is the first game I have played for the Wii that seems to work perfectly, and is the most exciting game I have played in a long time.

Jesus' Son

Not being able to sleep I watched a film I found on my computer I had gotten ages ago called 'Jesus's Son' which I think I downloaded because it had Jack Black in. Just finished watching it and I thought it was really quite good, was very interesting and seemed to be a lot about it, there were a lot of quotes and stuff that made me think. Basicly its about a drug addict trying to be a good guy and understand about life and death and the difference between them.
As he says in one part of the film "will we even know the difference" or something like that.

Another good quote I thought was "No more pretending for him. He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile, the rest of us go on pretending to each other." about a mental patient completely out of his head.

This has nothing to do with any project or anything with my course but it's still multimedia related and anything related to weird, philosophical stuff is right up my street. It also has quite a bit of humour in it, as seen in another quote I'll leave:

E.R. Nurse: Patient complains of knife in head.
FH: Stabbing headache?

made me laugh anyway!

stuff

Ok this is the flash game I was working on before that I havn't touched since.  I have kind of left if because it was frustrating me and I just got distracted by other stuff.  IT doesnt't do anything except speed up and randomly change the ball's colour.  Anyway try it if you want.  I have learnt a bit of Actionscript through creating this which should help wme with later projects.

Link: Rainbox Paintbox Game

I have started a second flash game as a project for my Interactive Design classes.  This is pretty much just a concept at the moment as I havn't got round to creating much on flash at all for it yet.  The concept is a cannon which rotates around a point in the centre and you just press fire to fire it at the correct time to hit enemies/avoid good guys.

3D Max/Maya wise I havn't got too far, I have been messing around and experimenting a lot with different tools but not much to show.  Nothing rendered yet but I'm starting to learn my way around both programs better now.

And finally with the games side I think I have sorted my game pretty much how I want it to be and it seems to work ok (though this is only based on one play).  I have made some changes already based on this first play through, such as lowering the amount of different cards.

Rainbow Paint Box (Flash Game)

I sort of lost interest/forgot about blogging for a while but a few days ago I decided to make a quick game in flash. It's really quite simple so far but I hope to be able to work on it more to get it to play how I want it to.

So far this game has very basic graphics, which I will most likely change later on. You use the left and right arrow keys to move the block and collect the falling green circles, which add to your score and increase the speed of the game. You have three lives and once these are gone it's game over.

Creating this helped me to learn about how actionscript handles object collision, etc.

The finished game will hopefully have different coloured balls falling down, which change the colour of the block which the player controls to create a certain colour and amount of that colour to progress to the next level. But for now here is the first basic version of the game. Oh actually meh can't find a way to upload flash directly and ftp not set up on server. will upload later :)

Comics

I have spent quite a while uploading some of my comics onto a blogger page. These are comics I made when I was in year 10 (aged 15), based on events that took place with me and my friend Henry (as you will tell if you read them, very little ever happened to us). I have uploaded 30 of them so far but there are quite a few more yet, just I couln't be bothered sitting here doing that all day, and blogger has been annoying me.

Anywayyyy the link is here if you're interested; Gibbo Comics

Cheers

Flash Games

Oooo I'm actually getting into the habit of posting on here now! Woo!

Anyway I have played a couple of flash games which a friend showed me online, both of them on the site mini clip, I have included the links to the two games at the end of this blog.  

The first game "Bloxors" is a simple game where you have to move a block around with the arrow keys and is pretty addictive.

The second game, "Feed Me!" is a simple and fun game where you click around the level to make the plant eat insects or grab onto walls/floors/platforms to help it move about.  I really like the graphics on this game, which look similar to the graphics of the old 2D retro Mario games and other old 8-bit/16 bit games on the older games consoles.

The name of the second game, "Feed Me!" and the look of the plant also remind me of the film "Little Shop of Horrors", which I went to see a play version of last week, which my sister sang in, which was quite humorous (the play, not my sister singing)

The bright colours and simplistic graphical style is one of the styles I would wish to work on and use in my work throughout my course and in other projects I work on through the duration of my course, and other projects I work on outside of university.

Edited Blog Template

I have been for the last few hours editing the look of my blog to try and make it fit the style and colour scheme of my website. I have mostly succeeded in doing this but there are still some bits that aren't quite right and it needs more playing about with. It is, however, light out now, which is not a good sign! So I think that's a job for another day! Anyway comment me to tell me what you think of the template if you want!

Cheers

Website & Variousness

Right, I have finished (for now) what I want my site to generally look like. I say that, but already I think it should be different in quite a lot of places but at least theres something there which I can work on and build upon when I want to instead of full on working on it all the time which I have been doing lately.

Unfortunatly the site doesn't actually appear to work :S. Since it is running from our home server I can't just access it from here to see if it appearing for the outside world, which, apparently it isn't. Anyway the link is http://www.guiblin.com/chris/

Feel free to try anyway! It will probably be up and working soon! If it is conciderable amount of time after this has been posted then please comment and tell me it's still not working! Thanks very much!

As I said, my website is pretty much all I have been working on multimedia wise lately. I have been continuing with Maya stuff a little bit and created a quick space ship flying through some tubes thingy which I will upload shortly. I need to do more work on lighting and textures and things to make everything look more realistic but for now I am just concentrating on object movement and stuff.

I have also been researching multimedia such as playing games, watching videos and films and such (i.e. living daily life). I watched the anime 'Howl's Moving Castle' from the makers of Spirited Away (which is an amazing film) recomended by a friend tonight which I enjoyed, I love the japanese cartoon fantasy weirdness.

I also watched this video of someone playing a stupidly hard mario hack, which I found strangely hillarious!







Warning: Quite a lot of swearing in this video! So don't watch if easily offended!

It's quite worrying how I managed to watch through all 20 odd minutes of this without getting bored!

I think I will do some editing of my blog to make it a little more personalized!

The Adventures of Mark Twain Claymation

While exploring YouTube I found a video clip which really interested me.  It is a clip from a film called 'The Adventures of Mark Twain' and is a claymation based on some of his stories. Although I am not particually interested in the creation of claymation/stopanimation, narrativly and visually this video is very inspiring.

I am very interested in surreal, religious/mythalogical, fantasy worlds and narratives. The 'Satan' character is depicted very well in a scary, surreal way which I love, especially how his expressions and the texture/shape of his head changes throughout the scene.

Looking further into the story I found this part of the film is based on one of Mark Twain's story, 'The Mysterious Stranger', which is available to read online here

The video is here (if it doesn't work then search for 'The Adventures of Mark Twain Claymation' on You Tube.




There are a couple of other videos from this film I came across on YouTube, an Adam and Eve story (in three parts) which is a quite humorous, alternative take on the Adam and Eve story.







And then lastly is a video about someone going up to heaven, but it being the wrong heaven.



I am trying now to get hold of the full version of this film as what I have seen from this seems amazing and very inspiring. Visualisations of Heaven, The Devil, and retelling of historical or biblical stories as is done here, in a humorous and eerie way are something I would like to encorporate with any work I do into narrative.


Other stuff:

I am currently working on a website to put all the stuff I create on to, but this has not yet been completed! but will be shortly, hopefully!

Maya

I decided to get my hands on Maya 8 and I have been creating some basic animations to get used to the software and the tools available. The seminars and lectures on 3D Studio Max were useful as the methods are quite similar though some stuff was quite tricky to do and I am still learning how to use the software but I am really enjoyingusing it and will continue experimenting with it over the summer and will hopefully help me out when creating 3D animations next year and the final year in game design which I have chosen to take up.

Work update

Done lots of work since last update, just not got around to updating this.

Finished identity project.  Due to my server being weird I can't upload this onto there at the moment.

I've completed my report on this project. That was up here but I have taken it down because it was taking up too much room and going on for too long, I will upload it along with the extended 'what I did and why' version on my site once it is up.

woops

hmm i didnt realise it was so long ago i updated my blog. eek.  Anyway  its not that I havn't done any work, just that i havn't got round to writing about it.

Same But Different


We had a few lectures and seminars on this which resulted in a group project made up of the same group as our last group project (Stella Rimington) minus a few people.  In this project we took photographs of apples and catelogued them in a website which allowed the apples to be searched by colour, where they were bought, and the name of the apple.  We designed a minimalistic site which was effective.  Unfortunatly when showing it to the rest of the seminar group, it did not show on the projector.

e4 Indentity Project

I have been working on this on and off throughout the easter holiday and have so far done:

• Animation - 85/90%  -  I actually restarted my animation from scratch but realised I prefered the original when I looked back so I am now just tweaking the original, incorporating some of the changes from my newer version.  An old version is available on my website, I will add a link here some time when i find the link
  

• Website - 15/20%?  -  I have kept restarting this as at first I was slowly working my way through learning CSS, but the designs I was coming up with were too basic and finding it too complicated to make what I visualized in that way.  I then started a flash only website which I found a lot quicker to make but looked quite unproffessional.  I then started creating a third website which would use html/CSS but with bits of flash incorporated within it.  I created a side menu for this in flash and placed it in a website, but I have changed my idea of how it should look slightly.  I edited the existing e4 logo for my page, which I quite like and think works well.  I have an screenshot showing this page (I used the logo again as a filler background).  I am using this logo for my new design but the sidebar as it looks in the picture is not how it will look in my final site.

• 

• Leaflet - 0% - A lot of this will be reusing images from the website and animation so this should not take long.

I plan on having all three of these nearing completion by the end of the easter holidays.  I have been working on and off on these, but towards the end of the easter will be working more solidly to finish off these projects.  

I will upload the flash only site as well as provide links to my animation and provide screen shots as my work develops.

Web Accessibility

WEB ACCESSIBILITY


In our web accessibility seminar, in order to see how differnet types of users, for example blind users, users just using a keyboard or users using different web browsers we have downloaded the text only web browser 'lynx'.




This web browser is still used even though graphical browsers have been available for a long time. Mainly these users are fully or partially blind and have there computers connected up to a screen reader (which reads out the text on the screen) or a ALVA which converts the text on the screen to a series of pins which can be read by brail users.




Here is a screenshot of the lynx browser in use, having used it to do an image search in google for 'cats'.

The search was carried out successfully! 1,420,000 results for cat images. Obviously these cannot be displayed on the text only browser, but shows that it is able to display any website, though obviously with some limitations!

Next I have gone onto playmonday.com, a lottery site, where we have been asked to try to get to the button 'play monday now'. Although once used to using tab/shift tab to move forwards and backwards between items on the screen it does become easy to navigate between a site, unfortunatly, it means pressing tab 16 times before you actually get to the button, taking a lot longer than it would for a none disabled user.

Once the button has been 'pressed' by hitting the enter key when the button is selected, the site then opens a new page, where tab must be used again to navigate to the game before pressing enter again to activate the control. Once the control is activated the direction keys can be used to move between the different numbered balls that can be selected. However, the game is not programmed in a way which supports the use of the keyboard successfully, often moving diagonally between balls instead of a simple up, down, left and right which would be expected.

This shows poor programming and an unsuccessful means of making a fully accessible website.

Identity

IDENTITY PROJECT

Branding

Introduction to branding – history, why it is important, successful brands
What makes a good logo/brand, what stands out? Use of characters/celebrities endorsement/emotion

Should be:
· Simple
· Timeless
· Universal
· Scalable
· Unique

Try different things, experiment, and mimic to see what works and what doesn’t in artistic sense and for the specification. Try different thicknesses, styles, angles etc.

Analyse existing logos/adverts/characters.
Think about the name e4 and what can be represented done with these two characters.

I will look at the e4 logo as well as logos for other tv channels and related companies. I will experiment with different colours and shapes to see how the logo looks in different styles as well as ways the logo can be animated.

1. Advertisement (eSting)
   
   Look at different animations, short animations, cartoons etc. What looks good, look at small part of animation and see how things (characters, props, backgrounds) move.
   
   Make sure look and feel reflects what the company (e4) is about. Communicates a young, fun theme.
   
2. Website
   
   This must be informative and interesting as well as attractive and grab the attention of the visitor as well as making visitors want to return.
   
   This should use characters, colours and themes based on the eSting I will create to give some familiarity and continuity and gives a more recognisable identity to the company.
   
3. Poster/leaflet
   
   Like the website and animation, bright colours and characters familiar to the different mediums (animation, website etc) will be used to make it interesting and attractive. This will obviously be a still, none interactive design but will have to grab peoples attention and make people interested in finding out more about the company and watching the channel.

Stella Rimington Performance

Yesterday we performed the Stella Rimington presentation that Richard and myself had written. The presentation was shown on a projector using a file I had created in flash with buttons to move between the different animations, images, text and sound which made up the presentation. A script was read out and acting was done mainly by Richard and Ben which added more depth to the production and allowed facts to be read out and presented to the audience verbally.

I think the presentation went quite well, especially concidering the limited time we had to create the whole thing. I am quite pleased with the animations I created as well as the overal presentation and script which I worked a lot on and feel it was quite successful. We were also able to make about £17 for charity (Breast Cancer) and the audience seemed to find it amusing.

Stella Rimmington Script

Narrator: Hello and welcome to our (production?) on Stella Rimington and other women in power over the past 20 years. We are MI6 from Nottingham Trent University Multimedia course. I am agent Chris The other agents here today are agents Richard, Emily, Adam and Ben.
As you may be aware, Stella Rimington attended this high school in 19?? untill 19?? and went on to eventually become the Director General of MI5 in 1992.
We have Agent Rimington herself with us today to tell you in more detail about her life and acheivements.
(Mission Impossible music plays. "Stella" walks on stage)
Narrator: Stella Rimington was born in South London in may 1935.Stella: I was born in 1935Narrator: Rimington moved with her family to Essex in 1939 due to the dangers of living in London during the second world war.Stella: When I was 4 we moved to EssexNarrator: ...before moving to cumbria and then to the Midlands when her fatehr got a job in Derbyshire.Stella: I attended Nottingham High School for Girls where I got a very sound, broad-based education. I particually enjoyed english which I went on to study at University.Narrator: Stella attended the University of Edinburgh where she met her future husband, John Rimington (who she had known from Nottingham).
Stella: Finishing my degree I studied archive administration at the University of Liverpool and began work as an archivist at the County Record Office in Worcester in 1959.Narrator: Stella married John Rimington in 1961 and moved back to London where she applied for a position at the India Office Library.Stella: I got the job. Then in 1956 John was offered an overseas posting as First Secretary for the British High commision in new delhi, India and we both moved down there in september.
Narrator: Stella was asked to assist one of the First Secretaries at the High Commission with his office work in 1967 after two years in Indea.Stella: I agreedNarrator: When she began she descovered he was the representative in India of the Brish Security Service (Mi5).Stella: I was shocked
Narrator: Stella was inspired by the suffragette movement which gave women the right to vote and led eventually to the possibilities of women having high power jobs such as Stella's.
Stella: I worked in the MI5 office for nearly two years before we returned to London in 1969.Narrator: Back in London Stella applied for a permanent position at MI5Stella: I worked in all three branches of the Security Service between 1969 and 1990; Counter espionage, counter subversion and counter terrorismNarrative: Stella and John seperated in 1984. Stella retained custody of their two daughters.Stella: I was juggling being an MI5 agent as well as being a full time mother!Stella: In 1990 I was promoted to one of the Services two deputy director general positions where i oversaw MI5s moved to Thames house. In 1991 I made a visit to Moscow to make the first friendly contact between the British intelligence services and our old enemies. When I came back I was made director general.

Stella Idea Development

I have started writing out a script for our Stella Rimington production. With the help of my group member Richard I have written a plan of ideas to break up the script so it is not just a boring timeline.

1. Pictures of Stella repeat on projection screen
2. Introduction animation plays
   
3. Narrator walks on stage
4. Narrator Introduces the group
5. Narrator Introduces Stella
6. Stella walks on stage in a secret agent way
7. Introduces herself (repeating Narrator - humor)
8. Born in war - inspired by suffragettes
   
9. Went to Nottingham Highschool for girl - got great education, especially in english and inspired her to go to university to continue her education, allowing her to progress in life to eventually become director general of MI5.
10. Juggling being full time mum (super mum) and DG of MI5 (animation reflecting this - humor)
11. Phone call, banter between father about picking children up.
12. Once she felt she had completed her duties as DG of MI5 she left.
13. M&S/BG group
14. Didn't want to resign to a stereotypical boring house wife after the excitement of MI5.
15. Successful writing carreer, two novels about female secret agents and an autobiography.
16. Other successful women in power - margerette thatcher. "M" character in Bond movies being played by female character after Rimington becoing DG of MI5.
17. Whats next for women of the future? When Stella was at school, female figures of power were unheard of. Just imagine what you young women could acheive in the future.
    

FrameForge 3D

We were introduced to a new piece of software called FrameForge which I found very interesting. This software is used for creating 3D storyboards and features many pre-built models (characters, props and walls, all fully customizable) in a simple drag drop environment which saves a lot of time and effort. It allows you to create a working storyboard which portrays what you want to happen in your finished movie or video in minutes.

I was very impressed with how easy it was to pick up and use and is a good introduction to 3D animation, using movable cameras which can be used to tween shots together similar to in 3d Animation software such as Maya and 3D Max.

The software features great detail in customability of every aspect of the 3D world. Facial expressions, body parts, skin colour and

clothing/accesories can all be changed, every little detail such as eye position, finger movement, weight and age could be manipulated. There are also many built in textures to give walls and objects a more realistic appearance.

Obviously this software is for pre-production design to give an idea of what will be filmed and would be very useful for the planning stage and visualization of what the finished film will look like.

Stella Rimington Animation

Here is the start to an animation for the introduction of our location specific performance. I have made changes since but this is the most recent version I have exported to a flash file. The animation uses themes of dectectives, secret agents etc to send across the secretive MI5 lifestyle of Stella which will play a big part in our production.

LINK: http://www.guiblin.com/chris/uni/stella%20rimington/stella1.swf

Stella Rimington Project

We have been set a new group project of creating a live performance piece on the theme of a person with a connection with Nottingham and we were given Stella Rimington. From research we have found some useful information about her life, she attended Nottingham High School for girls and went on to become the director general of MI5 in 1990.

Since her tie with Nottingham is her attending the girl's highschool we dicided this would be a perfect place for the performance to take place and so took a visit down there to see if this would be possible and have emailed the school with our proposal and are awaiting a response.

We have each got different tasks to work on for the project and I am working on some animation/cartoon graphics work which will be displayed on a projector screen at different parts of the performance. I will also be narrating the piece and providing a lot of input of ideas and helping organise the

group and our tasks. We are also each working on our own version of a brief script for friday where we will get together and collaberate on a final script, perfecting it and getting all our individual parts ready for monday spending the rest of the week practicing for the date we will perform on (Monday 29th).

Some of the images I have created for the project can be seen on this plog post. I am currently working on an animation that will be used at the start of the presentation to introduce Stella Rimington very briefly and introduce the secret agent/MI5 theme of our production.

Images ©Chris Guiblin 2007
http://www.guiblin.com/chris