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

Film Showing

Today we went to the Broadway Cinema in town to watch each groups videos on the big screen. Seeing our own video with everyone elses made me pick out lots of things that were wrong with it, such as sound syncronisation, clip length and speed, etc.

Some of the other videos were very impressive and made good use of music, humour etc, especially two videos which were quite similar, the life of a post-it note and one about a rejected pair of trainers, both showin inanimate objects falling in love. Our video did use humor slightly as the cubical walls closed in on our character, but this didn't come across as succeful to the audience as parts of some of the other videos.

There were some other interesting styles used such as still drawings/animated drawings, a comic book style video and a couple which were shot in first person. Each video had its own interesting parts and it was enjoyable seeing what everyone had created.

Ere be dragons

We had what I thought was a really interesting seminar today. A woman had come in who used to go to Nottingham Trent Uni who started a company with her friends and are currently creating an interactive game called Ere be dragons which uses a mobile device (currently PDA but lookin into smart phones now) with a GPS adaptor to show movement and mapping out a world with different scenery of which the appearance changes depending on the heart rate of the player (measured using a plug in heartbeat sensor.

Although I thought some imporvement were needed to the game (such as improved graphics and sound) I thought it was a very good idea and got me thinking of games in a new way relating it to real life and got me thinking of different ways similar technology could be used and is something I find very interesting and would enjoy looking further into and possibly working with in the future.

I think a good direction to take such a project into would be to make the game more cartoony to appeal to kids more and this would help getting younger people out and about instead of sat infront of the TV or computer screen all day. The game could use elements from games such as pokemon and other games where some sort of collecting takes place to collect different objects/find different characters by exploring parts of the real world and finding characters in the virtual world.

The Role Play Game style of random battles would work very well in this sort of interactive game. You walk around in the real world until you face a battle in the game and must win that battle to continue. This is an interesting new way of looking at computer games integrated with every day life.

Flash Animation Basics

I have made a few very basic animations. The first one simply shows a ball falling, squashing, unsquashing and bouncing back up, easing in and out to make the ball faster the nearer it is to the ground. LINK

The second animation is the same as the first but the lighting changes as though a light is shining from the centre of the left hand side of the screen. This is done by using the gradient tool and moving it differently to the movement of the ball. LINK

The third example shows the ball bouncing towards the screen, getting larger and then disapearing. LINK

Finishing Things

Been another week or so without doing this blog! I keep forgetting. I have mostly been finishing things off, such as bringing the narrative project to an end, completing my interactive narrative (though I'd pretty much finished this in my last post) and writing up a report on the Narrative Project.

I have also been creating a range of basic flash animations using the shape tween tool which I had not used before our lecture. I will keep creating these animations, gradually making them more complex to help myself learn further skills in flash.

Variousness

I havn't posted anything on my blog this week which isn't very good so I thought it best I wrote and showed what I've been doing.

This week I have worked on my Interactive Narrative project as well as helping edit my groups Narrative video and creating some flash animation for it. Since I was ill on the monday and tuesday I couldn't get in to work on my Interactive Narrative so I started it again from home using drawn graphics and photographs. My website seems to be down at the moment but when its up the project should be accessable at http://www.guiblin.com/gibbo/uni/IN/hallway.html

The flash animation I created for the computer screen is also on my website so hopefully it will be back up soon! The address for that is http://beta.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=35738175

Last week I also created a quick animation on flash which I uploaded onto YouTube.

This doesn't include any sound yet but here it is anyway.



I also uploaded a different animation which I made last year which is a very silly simple animation (again without sound).

Interactive Narrative Production

With the photos I had previous taken for this project, I have been able to produce a quick walkthrough website which links between different pages. This gives the impression that the user is walking around the given space giving it an element of interactivity.

I have used hotspots on different areas of the different photographs to allow the user to click different places on each image to take the user to a different page depending on their decisions.

Here is an example of the html code which makes up the hotspot, giving the co-ordinates of the hotspot and linking it to the page '3.html' when clicked.

Video Editing

Today we have learnt about file types, codecs and different standards of video which should be taken into concideration when creating videos in Adobe Premier and other video editing software.

We have also briefly covered transitions and how to cut parts to get only the required shots.

Interactive Media

Interactive Media Photographs
For the intereactive media project I have taken a range of photographs to create a walkthrough game like application using javascript. Here are the photographs I have taken for use in the project.

Tommorrow I will code the script to put these photographs together as the first part of the project.

Storyboard Idea 2

Storyboard Idea 2
As a group we came up with the idea of a story set in an office of a guy who has been given more and more work and as he works harder his life is taken over by the work, pushing family away and feeling more closed off from the world. I have created a quick storyboard to show my basic interpritation of the story and as a group we will meet up again tomorrow to discuss our ideas and to decide the final full storyline before we each start work on drawing up the finished storyboard.

A more complete version of the storyboard (05/11/06)

Javascript

JavaScript
Last week we learned to use javascript to practise interactive website design for use in the project we have been set to create an interactive walkthrough of somewhere that means something to us in Nottingham.

This screenshot shows the selected areas of an image that will be interactive. This is using an image map to create the selected area.

This first piece of javascript code is placed within the head of the website, which runs before any of the rest of the site loads.


I have placed a form with a text box at the bottom of the page which the code will manipulate depending on what the user does. In this quick example the user can either click on Bush or Tony.

Code will then be used to change what happens when the user clicks on Tony or Blair. Here is the code I have used to change what Blair says, using the talkToMe command which was set in the 'head' code.

onmouseout = "talkToMe('')" onmouseover = "talkToMe('Bush Says: Why thank you')

As seen on the next picture, the text box changes to say "Bush Says: Why thank you" when the user points at Bush. The 'onmouseover' function is used for what happens when the user points at the object, and 'onmouseout' for when the user moves away from the object.

Storyboard Idea

This is a storyboard for an idea for the team project of creating a video on the subject of hierarchy. It is showing the heirarchy in a school, of governers, the head teacher, the teachers, the "cool" or older pupils and the less "cool" or younger pupils. The person or people in each scene who hold the power will be shown wearing suits representing their power, where as the people with less power will be shown wearing normal clothing. Black clothing on the picture = suit white = normal clothing