Work so far Wednesday 7th 9:20

So far I have managed to get the majority of my paperwork started the main part of that that I need to work on is the essay and complete some other stuff. Today I will be working on the graphics for my animation so far I have made the road scene and started making the limo that justin will be sat in.

Flash animations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbtajSJHAfA

This is a very simple animation the storyline is almost none existent and it’s not made to be a funny or interesting video. The further in you get to the animation the more complicated the design becomes which adds more depth to the video even though it is simple. As complicated as the design and effort in to it goes its not all that interesting and doesn’t hold your attention very well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksJ-d9OPU6c&feature=related

Similar to the flash animation shown before you can see that from the use of shadows more depth has been added to them. This is another very simple animation but due to the fact that it is kept extremely short it doesn’t lose your attention.

Animator vs animation has the opposite effect to the first two examples that I have given, it has been made with the sole intention of keeping your interest and instead decided to use really simple drawings rather that fussing over adding too much detail.

Flash Bone Tool

Today we have been using the flash bone tool on action script 3, by following one of Julians online tutorials we were all able to easily follow what we had to do and learn simpily. It was an interesting this to do which was pretty simple, but not without its problems that gave an interesting effect to moving objects. The majority of the time we spent on it was used making the graphics that we were going to use rather than using the actual bone tool, the thing that the bone tool is really doing is attatching movie clips to each other.

Christmas Animation

We have handed in our completed games and as it is getting close to Christmas and we haven't really used photoshop lately we have been working on some small Christmas animations ready for Alex. I decided to keep it simple and Christmas-y  by finding a picture for the background and putting a snow frosted window over the top. The next thing I needed to do was find snowflakes as I thought they would look nicer than using white blobs, it was difficult to find snowflakes that I could use as they were very detailed and photoshop found it hard to pick out the bits from between the snowflake so I had to find simple ones. Finally I imported them to flash and animated them so that they fell from one side of the screen to the other to look like snow falling. This proved to be more time consuming than I thought because it was difficult to time them perfectly and so that they fell consistently rather than in thick lumps. I'm happy with the outcome but when i publish the animation there is a line on the screen that looks like it is something that I missed on photoshop but as many times as I check it isn't there on the flash document until I publish it or on the photoshop image.

Last lesson on Drag and Drop game

Today was our last lesson before the half term after which we will be handing in all the work we have done for it, I have already managed to make sure that the game is working completely and now runs all the way to the end screen whereas at the begining of the week there was an error and the game didn't link to the last level. I have also completed all the written work for the project meaning that rather than having to worry and rush today to get it all done all I need to do is keep looking over and editing everything.

Drag and Drop game

So far in my game I am happy with the progress I have made, the first three levels have be designed and function properly and although I am facing problems with the code to lead on to the forth and make it function I know what I need to do. I have also managed to get a fair amount of the written work done all I need to start is the essay on flash.

Notes on todays lesson

Knowing your target audience is an important part of briefing, without knowing who your target audience is you will have difficulty making it appeal to people. There are several important things that you need to know in order to correctly appeal to your audience.

·         Age

·         Gender

·         Class

·         Culture

·         Amount of money they have

Once you know who your target audience are you need to make sure you research them and find out with things appeal to them. This can be done thorough questionnaires but due to the popularity of the internet is often done as online polls. At lot of large companies don’t do the research themselves as it is possible to buy the relevant information off of companies who collect the information. The three main things that have to be taken in to account when researching your target audience are:

·         Interests

·         Trends

·         Opinion

Trends, due to new things rising there are often themes that appeal to certain audiences and will often be able to be used in advertising and such to appeal to them. Opinion is what they think of the idea or product which will give the company an idea of whether or not it would appeal to others like them and whether it would sell the product successfully.

Budget is something that differs with every project. The budget you are given has to cover everything that needs to be included in the product that you are making and make sure that you are able to make a profit from it. You will need to make sure you can afford to hire or buy the equipment, along with any traveling so it’s important that it is calculated so that the free lancer makes money for the time spent on it. Different free lancers charge different amounts of money per hour worked, this ranges from 35 to 80 pounds.

The time scale, is something that has to be agreed to between the employer and the free lancer along with a schedule of what is being done every day that they are paying you to work. Included in the time scale is the deadline that is very important that you plan with extra time to go over the work or encase something takes longer than expected otherwise you could run over the deadline which may cause problems for the employer and in the long run if they have planned a showing of it you could be charged for the expenses.

These two things are what make up most of the contract as you have to come to an agreement with the company about what you are going to need in terms of money and they’re going to want to make sure that you are working the hours that they pay you for.  

Drop and drag game

http://vectorgame.com/drag-drop

The is a simple drag and drop game that was made on flash, the look of it is simple yet the game get progressively harder. Some of the levels have invisible balls and some that grow, whilst one that has arrows that shoot at the cursor when you get close to them.

Graphics, they are simple block colours and the style is something that can easily be achieved without too much effort yet the complexity of the game takes away from the boring graphics as due to the difficulty of it you are concentrating on the game.

Levels, there are 15 levels, you start off with the easiest game and some simpler ones but once you get to a certain level they are all pretty difficult and take several attempts to complete. It is listed under 5 minute games but due to how difficult the levels get the game lasts much longer.

Brief

The Product- A new clothes produced by an up and coming popular clothing company that are planning on expanding to the internet for a more global sales market. The company are very successful and want something that shops can go to and order large quantities of the clothes for sales in their shop.

The audience- The audience are both male and females in between the ages of 13-20. We want something that will reflect the age group and style of the clothes but still appeal to the large shops that want to purchase the clothes.

The Website- The main product we want produced is a website so that the sales can be done over the internet and advertises the companies’ clothes to potential customers.

·         The pages labelled have to be produced

·         Bright eye catching colours have to be used to catch the user’s attention.

·         The logo has to be used on the main page.

·         Interactive pop outs that keep the users interest.

Pages

·         Home Page

·         Gallery/catalogue of clothes and products

·         Contacts page and shop locations

·         Orders page/checkout

Website Menu- The menu has to be easy to locate on the site with a similar font to the one used in the logo, it has to have bright colours that easily stand out from the background colour and a roll over effect.

The Catalogue- Pictures will be provided but it will be necessary to display them in an interesting fashion but with simple navigation. 

Mock ups- Up to 5 hours of working time expected to have to be done within the first week will have to be spent on making mock ups. We expect them to be sent to us or presented to the company so that the ideas can be discussed and the overall view of the mock ups be assessed before the work on the site starts.

Time Scale- We’re expecting the product to span across 20-48 hours of working time done within one month of the starting date.

Budget- Up to 7,000 any other further costs are negotiable.

Intellectual Property

Copy right is something that says that a piece of work belongs to one person; this stops other people using the work as their own. Copyright doesn’t last forever it lasts 70 years after the person that owns it has died. A good example of this is the classic books; all of these are cheap and can be published by several different printing companies as the original authors died more than 70 years ago.

This can be easily understood using the three moral rights; the first is the right of attribution this states that the creator of the work has the right to be identified as it, it means that if you do use their work you have to give them the correct acknowledgement for it. Second is the right of integrity this stops you being able to alter anything without the permission of the original creator. Lastly is false attribution, this states that you are notable to take the piece of work and say it is your own.

Copyright is an important thing when it comes to using technology; this is because most things have access to the internet where you can easily find a piece of work. With the interactive media we will face a lot of problems with copy right as it’s inevitable with the kind of work we have decided to do. This could be with images that we want to use on a site or work that we want to use as examples for our own, it is easy enough to make references but it’s easy enough to forget. Also when it comes to using our blogs we have used whatever images we need and also edited some for work we need to do, it’s alright in college but if we go to a work area we will have more problems with copyright than we are used to.

Regarding the topic of downloading people’s products off of sites like pirate bay I’m undecided. It’s simple enough to understand why they are illegal as the companies that originally made the product are losing out on money if people can get it from somewhere else for free. But none of the sites are claiming the work as their own; the original creators are given the rightful acknowledgement as the creators. But soon the companies are going to stop making the application and such because they aren’t making any profit off of it. This will mean that eventually we will have to cope with what we have and nothing new will become available. As a person that is studying interactive media this means that soon there won’t be any jobs for us to go into as the companies won’t make the money from the products that they need to employ people.

Creative commons are a company that deal with issues that arise from copyright, as soon as that thing becomes ours although its copyrighted we might not mind if people want to use it, their main example of this was a base guitarist adding a base over music that didn’t already have one. The group that originally performed the song didn’t mind him doing this and when they met gave him their permission to continue doing so. Due to this he is not affected by the copyright law as he was given the exception, creative commons are trying to make it so people with a copyright can still allow other people to use their work. This is done with different symbols that make it possible to use these works on for different things meaning the main person will still have some control over it.

Personally I believe that we need copyright protection, without it people would be able to more freely plagiarise work that other people have put the effort into making. With copyright protection in place people think twice about what they are doing, also if someone is stealing some else’s work and calling it their own the person that originally did the work in the first place will not bother continuing to do the work if it isn’t recognised at theirs.

This image was found using google images and requested that they find an image for creative commons that had a creative commons licence so that I could redistribute it.

Original Owner: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://irudiak.argazkiak.org/dd86e7c48c5b08890dd69d775e2ca4e7_c.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.argazkiak.org/photo/creative-commons/&usg=__e9c8raBHskBpxf1tffFhwFtSeaI=&h=350&w=350&sz=18&hl=en&start=3&sig2=DQqceM8Rg-vwZDxo-Dtd_Q&zoom=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=V8dGRgZk9xPh9M:&tbnh=120&tbnw=120&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dcreative%2Bcommons%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1900%26bih%3D922%26as_st%3Dy%26ndsp%3D21%26tbs%3Diur:fc%26tbm%3Disch&ei=IknmTbK9AY6whQftyoXCCg

Privacy Issues on the internet

Privacy has become a big issues when it comes to the internet as people are able to publish stuff anonymously this means people no longer have to worry about the law chasing them us on what they said. There are several examples of this; the first is injunctions and super injunctions.

Injunctions stop people being able to talk about what a person has done; this means the newspapers are able to talk about someone taking out an injunction but not to talk about what the injunction is about. Whereas the next step is a super injunction this stops people being able to talk about any information regarding it and even the fact that it exists. This further protects the person that it involved being mentioned, a recent thing where this has happened with a football player shows that with a lot of money you will be able to take one out whereas the other person involved in it was unable to do this so it was still made public. Furthermore when the other person involved it confronted about it they are unable to say anything regarding the matter otherwise they will be breaking the super injunction. In a case where this has happened the person involved can face going to prison, this leads us on to how the internet has caused problems for this.

On the internet people are able to create accounts without using their real identity as you can easily make an email address for someone that doesn’t exist and further go on to sign up to other sites using this address. An example of this is when someone anonymously started accusing a British writer of having a super injunction (gagging order),this supposed gagging order is allegedly so that intimate photo’s will not be able to be published . The person that started these rumours has managed to keep their identity a secret by doing it anonymously but in a serious case police can try to trace them but things like internet cafes will make it a difficult job for them.

In the above case the internet has cause problems but other ways the internet is able to do so is by publishing private information. The Star Wars Kid was a boy who posted a video on youtube that got millions of views, it also lead to him being bullied online and probably by those who know him. Due to the popularity newspapers we happy to state his name which would undoubtedly go on to cause more problems for him, but Wikipedia decided that they weren’t going to publish his name after requested by his parents. Newspapers are something that go to pass but what is up on the internet will stay up and can be found by anyone and at anytime.

This are just a few examples of problems that are being faced, the main thing that people have a problem with is that the super injunction is affecting our freedom of speech.  The worry that most people have regarding the topic of super injunctions is that these many be taken out against important things that we feel we have a right to know, something a lot more serious than someone famous having an affair. With celebrities and their private life it has been argued that it’s not with-in the public interest, although the public are very interested in the gossip they don’t feel that it is something we need to know. Personally I feel that I understand why super injunctions and injunctions exist but its extreme for someone to face going to prison just for talking about something they don’t want them to.

Looking at youtube interactive games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbEei0I3kMQ
This is a popular card game that has also been made interactive, there are many problems with it, the first is that overall its pretty boring and really simple. There are a lot of things that could make it better, the first is if there was better quality, its not very clear when he holds the cards up to the camera, this would improve the experiance. Next I think that sound would make a huge difference, he has some music on in the background but if instead of using the subtitles he actually spoke people might be more interested. On of the good things about it is that it's not stupidly long so the length actually fits what he is showing you and by the time you have gotten bored its comeing to an end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDNjweAX_wI&feature=player_embedded
This interactive game is obviously aimed at teaching younger kids to spell but once again it is pretty boring and for those who arn't that good at spelling its not really going to teach them much because all the words are hard and they don't swap between easy and hard. This adds in something that the last video lacked and that is some one actually communicating with you with that said what they have to say is not very interesting and as much as they are trying to make it fun, they're really doing a bad job of it.

We looked at two videos as a group.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwi21aKySWY
This was different to the two video that I had looked at by myself as it had a lot of long videos and was more of an adventure story. This was a lot more interesting thant the above two and included good sound a quality, the only problem I have with it is the videos are really long and at some point can get boring. The onyl improvements I think can be made to it is if the videos were a bit shorter so as to keep you attention better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDn0ow8EzcU&feature=player_embedded
This video was similar to the one above other than the fact that it has different actors and a different story, this also has very long stories that can often lose your attention. It too has good quality and sound along with general video effects.

Alice In Wonderland Officail site

There are two site that I looked at to compare my website to below is the link to both.
http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/aliceinwonderland/
http://www.disney.com.au/disneyfilms/aliceinwonderland/
The first thing I notice between the two sites is the amazing loading bar (thing) this was something I didn't make with my own but looking at these two I would have probably had something similar. The next page you are taken to is the introduction page which I have found is almost exactly the same as what I have with the idea that it makes it seem like you are entering wonderland. This idea is carried out throughout the website much like mine was made, yet theirs is much much more interactive. Both are really impressive sites that portray the ideas behind Alice in Wonderland really well but having said this there are only small similarities between them.
The Gallery: Both have really impressive galleries but I have to say that I prefer the second one as it is much faster to load than the first and has much more movement in it. With that said I am still impressed with the first one and the style that they show the pictures so that they look older and don't stand out against the background too much. I think that mine is as much as an original idea as these two both are and still fit in well with the Alice in Wonderland theme.
Home Page: Once again some how the two sites are completely different, my site is more like the first as it has one single picture and changes when you change pages. The second site I think is much more impressive, it uses the same picture that I did on my reviews page but rather than using the frame to show the reviews they have used several to link to the different pages, rather than changing pages most of the stuff shows up over the top whilst the background is faded out. And what makes it better I think is the way that you are able to move the mouse to the edge of the screen and the image scrolls rather than having to do what I did and cut some of it off.

As this was my first website I think I did a pretty good job of making it interactive and in the future with more work on flash I think that I may be able to achieve what they did. One of the set backs that I think I faced was the fact that they were able to use the cast to get the stuff they wanted and probably had links to Disney that allowed them to use what they needed in order to make the site good. I had to make do with the resources that I could find on the web but I was able to put most of it to good use.

Downloads Page

Today in order to improve my website I added a downloads page. I decided to use the same style as the gallery and products page but once again changed the image to the white queen. Rather than added a button on to my menu and messing up the layout of the pop up names I decided to add the button at the top of the gallery page, I decided it would make more sense here as it too was just a display of pictures that rather than growning and enlargening for the viewer to look at links to the outside web that display the image they clicked on and allow them to download it to their own computer. I chose four desktop images, some of these I had already used on the site that people would be able to have as the desktop background rather than the small images that wouldn't function very well as a desk top back ground. I was able to make this page easily as I did virtually the same thing with the products page.

More Feed back on website on improvements made

Previously I got some more feedback on my website (http://dcbysophie.blogspot.com/2011/03/finishedlast-minute-changes-and-peoples.html), some feedback from Zoe in order to see what she felt about my improvements and how i could further improve it.

Zoe: I think Sophie has done a really good job on using the feedback she receieved on her site to make it even better. Before she made the changes it was difficult to know what you had to do on the Reviews page without using the help button. Now that Sophie has changed it, as soon as you go on the page you can see a button which says 'show reviews', I think the page is a lot easier to understand with the extra button. I think if we had more time on our websites it would be great if Sophie got a chance to add an Alice in Wonderland game for the users to play.

Web Protocols

Web Protocols are ways in which the internet can convey information to individual computers and visa versa. There are many different protocols and new and up coming improved ones that companies are releasing. The three main ones are (HTML) HyperText Markup Language, (HTTP) HyperText Transfer Protocol and (URL) Uniform Resource Locator. HTML is code that is used to create a website, these are often made up of tables which space out the work, this has now been taken over by flash (.flv) it is an easier and better way in which to make websites but having said this a new HTML being released that is expected to be better than flash. (HTTP) this is how the (HTML) is transferred to the computer and rather than being shown as the code it is transferred to something that we can understand. (URL) this is the address at the top of the screen that we can see this is so that we can find what we are looking for, without these it would be impossible to find anything. Above are the three main protocols that make up the web there are many others that serve important purposes to the way we live.

One of these is SMS this stands for Short Messaging Service which most people use every day; it is a form of written digital communication that is used in text messages and emails. It can be used to communicate across long distances by customers to a certain company that runs it or it can also be used by that same company in order to advertise. They are cheaper, faster and more efficient than sending a letter as not only is it free you are the one sending it and you can be certain that it was received by the intended person.

WAP is another protocol that is often used by many people throughout the day, it stands for Wireless Application Protocol but most people call it the mobile internet. This is because like the name says it allows people to access the internet on their mobile phones, this is efficient as it is convenient and can be viewed where ever you go. The sites can be different to how they are viewed on the internet on a computer as they are made in the most basic form so that the mobile can download it faster to the smaller screen.

FTP is the next protocol, this stands for File Transfer Protocol as the name indicates it is used in order to transfer files from the internet to the computer or from one computer across the internet and to another computer. Sometimes it is also used by the creator of a website; your computer downloads certain files that can't be viewed any other way.

WAN stands for Wide Area Network, this is the protocol that is the internet. It is a connection of smaller networks these can be local area networks (LAN) and Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN). A LAN is a protocol that allows a connection between close working computers these are some likely to be used in a office or school and MAN is what is used in much larger scale places like cities with link all the individual computers to the WAN.

Completed website

Today I managed to patch up some of the last things that I needed to do on my website, since we only have one lesson left of it, rather than wasting my time I will look over the website and make sure that everything is in working order and make any necessary small changes to it. I've tried to work around the feedback that I got from it last time and have changed the reviews page so, I had help from Julian in order to make some true and false statements in order to make some arrows pop up to show the reviews. With this new code I was able to move it on to the reviews as one of the people who gave feedback stated that I should make it so that we didn't have to hold down the button. After doing this I found the problem that all the reviews would show up one over the top of each other if you clicked on the buttons, I attempted to make more true and false variables in order to over ride this but found that this wouldn't work no matter what I tried. In the end we had to convert it to a movie clip and make it so that the button went to one of the frames, each of the frames in the movie clip each displayed a different review.
I have really enjoyed this project and think that the outcome has been pretty good. I think the work I did on the site is pretty simple but because of the theme it looks a lot better than it would with anything else. This project has helped me learn the codes better and realise that although we found stuff hard at frist after all the practise we are able to learn how to do a lot of things. As well as help from Julian on some of the more difficult stuff I was able to look at some of the word we have done in other lessons and adapt it to something that I could use in my site.
One of the best things that I got from this project was the fact that I am able to understand flash better, before I would have had difficulty understanding some of Julians instructions but now when he shows me what I am supposed to do I am able to understand why and transfer it to other parts of the site as well that need it. I felt that this project was challengeing but I enjoyed trying to work things out for myself, it's definately some thing I would enjoy doing again.

Audiences response:Pokemon Project

Personally I believed that there was nothing wrong with pokemon after all they removed almost every small piece of violence and indecency at the dubbing stage. But unsurprisingly due to its popularity people still had to find something wrong with it.
Christians seem to believe that it is dangerous and should be banned as it promotes Satanism of some sort; this thought has risen due to the moves which some of the pokemon use. They in general hate the idea of pokemon having powers of some sort but most of all they detest the pokemon that could be related to Hell or being able to manipulate a person (eg. mindreading) (among these are things like negative energy and inducing sleep on a person). Below is an image of Houndoom which due to the word doom in its name was immediately assumed that this was supposed to be a demon dog and the fact that it's Japanese translation was "Hell Hound" some Christians believe that Nintendo are pushing children to start worshiping Satan.

Some even go as far as saying that Satan is in fact creating pokemon through certain people in order to corrupt children and adults.
The things that I honestly can understand in the Pokemon game and etc is the fact that they are pushing children to want more and more and have made the games insanely addictive. This did cause problems in schools as they had to ban them in order to get kids to stop playing them during their lessons. I can see from this that it is promoting greed from the fact that the theme song repeats "Gotta catch 'em all". Linking in with this is the belief that it promotes gambling and for this reason has been banned in certain countries as winning cards from your opponent, which can be viewed as gambling. Something I also found in the game was that the "games corner tend to look very much like casinos.

Just through the research I have done I have found that pokemon have faced many problems from since they started. One of the problems they had was being accused of Jynx being a racist pokemon, they believed it was Pokemon based on blackface. This was where people used make up to create a stereo type of a back person, this was banned due to being seen as racist it was also compared to the story "Little Black Sambo" which was removed from publication as it too was seen as racist. Since people believed that it resembled this too much they had to later on edit Jynx in order to stop the complaints. Was the product accused of causing harm?
YES, there are several cases in which pokemon have been accused of physically harming people, one of which can be proved that they did, accidently of course.
The first case was the "Denno Senshi Porygon" it was only aired in Japan but it caused several hundred kids to develop illnesses some were even said to have had seizures. This is the only one I will believe because if you watch the episode it shows red and blue flashing, due to this I think there is a possibility that it could have caused epileptic seizures.
The next case was "Lavender Town" people started claiming that the music played whilst in Lavender Town caused people to commit suicide and develop illnesses. Later on the game was remade and the music was removed. This is an interesting case, but I was unable to find anything on it that really convinced me that it was real. There was a peck in suicides around the correct gaming age for pokemon which is what I believe cause people to start saying that it was the music in Lavender Town. In almost all the articles that I have read on Lavender Town people say that it is due to the noises that only undeveloped ears can hear.
The last problem Pokemon faced were the timing of some of their episodes, some were removed from airing in certain countries at certain times due to the problems that country was facing. The main exapmle of this would be after the 9/11 attacks, several episodes were skipped in the running in order to stop complaints, these were all in some way similar to what America had just faced. There were several cases of what is mentioned above but also some episodes were removed due to the fact that they weren't demed appropriate, one example of this is "Beauty and the Beach" in which James wears a swim suit that has an inflatiable chest, firstly this was banned altogether but eventually it was dubbed and the scenes that contained James in the swim suit were removed.
One episode that was banned altogether and never dubbed is "Miniryu no Densetsu" this is once again due to the age group that it was aimed at, during the whole episode there are a lot of scences with people pointing guns.
Although it is clear that the creator and 4kids are trying hard to make sure that the content is for the correct age group it seems that there will always be problems that people find with pokemon.

Finished~Last minute changes and peoples opinions

Today I was able to finish off the site, yesterday I completed the reviews and the products page. Today with some help from Julian with the difficult depths coding I was able to get the pictures working. After that was achieved it was pretty easy to fix where they moved to and how to make it better. Julian suggested that I ask people to test out my website so that I could find out what differences I can make to the website in order to make it better.

Zoe: I think the website is really interesting and will appeal to an older audience not just a younger audience. The loading page shows part of the trailer where Alice is falling down the hole which I think looks really professional. I noticed the the trailer loops but it gives an effect that Alice is continuing to fall down the hole for ages. The text on the homepage has been cleverly done to make the audience feel involved. I think the site has been well thought about and is great as it engages the viewer and allows you to decide what happens (gallery page). I think the product page is good but it will only allow you to buy the products from Amazon. To improve the site I think you should link the website to ebay and some other sites which allow you to purchase Alice in Wonderland items.

Aimee: I think it looks really professional and of a very high standard. its clear and easy to use. I think if anything had to be changed it should be the reveiw page as i wasn't sure on what i was meant to do on the page, but everything else was really good.

Chris: I was impressed with the first page as it grabs your attention with the swirling movie clip. I also like the fact that the border edges overlap the video. I think the overall style is in good keeping with the film. I liked the reviews page with the characters but didn't realise i had to hold mouse button down to keep the text on. I liked the gallery page idea of hovering over the pictures as this was a little different to most gallery pages. Nice design!

Hal: I think it has a very pretty user interface with a unique vibrancy in colour, a great deal of thought has gone in to the production of the site. I very much like how certain objects within the flash movie have to make contact with other objects to display the intended images. Links to other well known websites like amazon up the overall feel of the site and add to the user experience. Psychedelic!

Whilst everyone was testing out my site I was able to find some problems with it, one of the main ones was that due to the change in depth the pictures weren't moving away from the screen when you left to another page. I attempted to work out what was going on but in the end Julian had to help me work it out, it required another new code, this I was able to understand and duplicate it on to the other pictures.

Next lesson I will work on the reviews page and change it so that people are able to find out how to use it better, i think the easiest way would be to make it so that something appears around or points to the tea cups that display the comment, and change it to either a roll over or so that it stays on once you click it.

Alice In Wonderland Website Progression

Today I have been able to make a lot of progress on the Alice in Wonderland website since I started putting it on flash I have been able to get the basic structure of the site. I have used most of the codes I need, today I added in some "Eat Me" and "Drink Me" buttons that the viewer is able to move and drop on the pictures, i also learned hoe to make the buttons return back to their original place. I am happy with the way that the project is going and have come up with a lot of other ideas whilst makeing the project that I would be able to include, the only thing I have to worry about is using some new codes and working out how to make the images expand when the button drops on to them. I still have a fair bit of work to do on the project as most oof the pages are virtually empty but in one of my next lessons I am going to sort out the simple pages like the products page and then the reviews page so that I don't have to worry about working on them and can focus on the gallery page, we still have a few more lessons left before the deadline date and I am confident that I will be able to complete the website by then.

Appealing to the Correct Audience:Pokemon Project

I think that pokemon has several clear ways that it has made itself appeal to their audience, my first point is the graphics.

As the picture shows the graphics are similar to those in Legend of Zelda, which doesn't come as a surprise since the creator of the game worked on that as well. But the main point of the graphics is the simplicity of the layout and areas. All the colours are bright and the monsters are made to look cute. Even the new game releases have better graphics but you can see clear ways in which they have kept it looking the same. They haven't gone over the top with detail and kept everything pretty simple. This is another way this shows that they are aiming at younger children is the fact that they have decided to keep the graphics simple, the older generations are looking towards how good the graphics can be made to look and the realism that can be put into the product, but the bright colours, noises and simplicity that remain in the game are what keep those younger audiences interested.

When fighting the maximum number of moves a Pokemon has is four. This saves complicating things for the children and doesn't give them too much of an option. This isn't relevant for games that are for the older generations as they such as games like Final Fantasy can provide the player with up to a hundred different moves to use. Another way in which the fighting made easier for the relevant audience is the lack of movement, in most beat 'em up games you are given full control of the character which makes a massive effect on whether or not you win, Pokemon has taken the movement element out of the game to leave the player focusing on picking a move to make.
 

The storyline is also a very simple one that makes it possible for the children to follow the game easily, there are no serious parts or tragedies that now occur in almost every game for the older generations. Unlike games made for the older generation there is no in depth story that unravels as you move on, the story is simple, there is a slight story used to move you from place to place but other than that you have got almost complete control over the way it progresses.
Although with this said there are hundreds of Pokemon in existence, this allows people to pick their own the Pokemon level up and when they reach certain levels are able to evolve in to something different. This intrigues people as it means you will most definitely have a different game to everyone else. The number of characters is one of the only things that is complicated about Pokemon but since you don't have to know anything about them in order to play it it doesn't limit the game experience from certain users.

Pokemon has been very smart about the way that they release their games, each game is release in at least twos the examples of this are, Red and Green, Emerald and Sapphire and Ruby along with Diamond and Pearl and the latest Black and White. Each of these sets are the same in almost every single way apart from some different pokemon in each, by doing this they have made it so that the fanatics end up buying both and they get twice the amount of money.
One of the things that tend to annoy the older audiences is the way in which it has been culturally changed; this is what once again makes it clear that pokemon are aiming at the younger generations. Those who are older are able to accept the fact that the series was made in Japan and learn about the new culture whereas pokemon has been changed specifically to make it so that the younger generation understand what is going on. The best example of this is the way in which 4kids (the people that dubbed the anime) have edited out the Japanese food like rice balls and changed it for things like sandwiches. This is so as not to confuse them with the food that comes from a different culture that they probably have never seen before.

As a fan of anime myself I know one of the main things in the anime that make it clear who it is aimed at. Anime for the older generation tend to contain a lot of fan service(nudity and lacking outfits), but in the younger generations every trace is removed. Next there is the violence, most animes I have seen do have some violence but through my research I have found that in the dubbing stage every small bit of it was removed, this I think is strange as I would assume the anime was aimed at the same age group in both countries. Lastly the swearing, I have seen other animes dubbed by four kids the best example to use here is Yugioh (GX) (5Ds), anime have in the un dubbed versions a lot of swearing regardless to say although it was toned down Yugioh was not exempt from the cursing, 4kids remove everything that’s a swear word or curse. This has not been done in animes dubbed by others companies that aim at the older generation.

Social Grading in Pokemon:Pokemon Project

The NRS tells us data on the difference in people’s social grade, it is recorded from adults aged 15 and above. People use the information provided by the NRS to  advertise things, this is done by finding out what is the best person to advertise to is and where they are more likely to come across it. A good example of this is in magazines, first the NRS will easily divide them into their different grades these are categorised by A, B, C1, C2, D and E. They will then be asked information such as what magazines they read and this will be shown to advertisers who will be able to tell what the majority of the class read and be able to tell what would be a good place to advertise their product. Pokemon is hard to tell what class pokemon is aimed at as the NRS only record data from those 15 and above, this would prove difficult to for the creators of pokemon to find out any information as it is aimed at those as young as 10. I would assume that it would be aimed at those up to class B down to D, pokemon are released as pretty expensive games to begin with so I wouldn’t expect them to be aimed at anyone lower than D. Also I don't expect them to advertise to anyone above B as it is less likely to appeal to them as pokemon does not provide any intellectual knowledge.
Although Pokemon is aimed at kids this information will be slightly relevant to Nintendo as it allows them to advertise to the parents of the children as well. This means that the adverts they use will have to appeal to the children as well as slightly to the parents, this is also the same for the genders, they need to make it so that both male and female are interested in it.

The Audience:Pokemon Project

It would be best to start by saying that the media companies focus on a specific audience as aiming at everyone is too broad and it is almost impossible to please every person with the project they create. Pokemon for example is aimed at children around the ages 7 to 14, although it can often appeal to those as old as 25 the company do specific things in order to make it appeal to the younger generation, but in order to know what they should do they have to research the existing popular products to that age group.
They use two different types of research these are called quantitative and qualitative; they are both different and useful to the company. Quantitative is research that it done in quantity, meaning it is very simple but there is a lot of it, the easiest way of doing this is by doing questionnaires, the person answering the question will often have a choice of answers in which they have to pick one, the company will put this together on a table which will easily show them what are the most popular answers. This will most probably be done to find out what are the most popular existing products from which the company might be able to base their project on. Next is qualitative it is quality research, rather than having lots of chosen answers they will have the person write up their own answer in detail so that they can possibly find out not just the most popular product but in detail why it is popular, this can also be done in questionnaires but can also be done through people later testing the prototype. Pokemon as an example have been releasing games for years, they would have to use quantitative data to find out the most well liked aspects of their games but they would have to use qualitative data in order to find out what the audience thinks could be improved and why. Through quantitative data they may have found out that girls are playing the game too and through the number of people that are female they may have then decided to improve the game by allowing you to choose a gender at the beginning of the game, the same could be said for the change in age of the character. But only through the qualitative data will they be able to really make a lot of difference to the games, examples of this could be the change in the fighting graphics, people may have specified that they wanted the fighting pokemon to do more than just stand there, which they do in the earlier games but now in the newly released games they do small things like close their eyes when they have been put to sleep and have more detail to the attacks, only through the qualitative data can the most difference be made to the product.

Next would be best to give you some information on pokemon. Firstly Pokemon is aimed at the younger generation, obviously it was a major hit in Japan, which is hardly a surprise as anime originated from there and pokemon is aimed in that style. I believe this was why they chose to use the anime style of animation, because they were already aware of how popular anime is with out doing the research. Due to the insane amount of pokemon stuff out there it is almost impossible to find out anything to do with how they first started off and the research they did into it. The man who created Pokemon is called Satoshi Tajiri, he was interested in insect collecting and when he saw the game boy decided that he was going to make it possible for the consoles to be linked. This was how he came up with the idea of for pokemon, this idea was pitched to Nintendo. As far as my research will tell me there was hardly an research done into the target audience and their response, but rather they went along with the idea because he had already been involved with the popular legend of Zelda game. The game took six years to make and game freak, the magazine that was made by Tajiri went bankrupt. Even this said he never gave up on the idea.
I believe the thing that makes it seem like he did no research in to the game was because by the time it had been completed there was no way to advertise it as the media believed that the game boy was no longer a popular console. Nintendo released the game and no one expected it to do very well but in the end Nintendo found it among its top franchises people were interested in getting the hidden pokemon Mew and trading with each other.
I think Pokemon is pretty clear who it is aimed at as it's is a very bright and colourful animation along with none serious story lines. The one main thing I found is that when a Pokemon loses a battle they "Faint" instead of "Die" this would make no difference to the older audiences but was obviously made this way to be more child friendly.
However
Most other media companies take care to look in to their target audience to make sure that their product is giving them the things that they want. An example of this is the recent rise in Vampire and Supernatural romance books on sale for teenagers, this all started because of the interest taken into twilight so now there are several hundred books based on this idea. Sometimes companies have to take the risk and introduce something new, Pokemon is an example of this as the idea to link up the game boy consoles was an original idea. Media companies will almost always do as much research in to the product as possible in order to make sure that they can sell it and make lots of money from it, without doing this they risk the possibility of losing money to make it. They have several ways of doing this research, the first they would do would probably be a series of questionnaires in order to find out what most people are interested in this will give them an idea of the type of product they should make or what they should include in it, these will be aimed at the audience they intend to sell to. Once they have decided on it and created a few prototypes of the product they will bring in testers in order to use it, this way they will find out what they think will make the product better and what things they had problems with. The people will often be the type of person that they are aiming at an example of this is if pokemon were to have done this they wouldn't have made any progress by using a group of people over the age of 40 as the game was aimed at a much younger age. With this said they may still try out people that the project isn't aimed at in order to see if they enjoy it and what could be added to it to also attract the attention of other groups.
Once they know one thing is popular they might look in to making something similar but creating it so that it aims at a larger audience, a good example of this is the way that pokemon have changed their characters, they are now slightly older and there are both a boy and girl, this means that they are trying to introduce the older generation to the games and allow girls the possibility of being included. This is one way the marketing company can grow their markets, by aiming at more people but they is also the possibility of creating different items created based on one thing, these will be aimed at the same audience but will provide them with something more to spend  their money on. Pokemon have changed their games for a wider audience but have also developed a lot of franchise. They have cards, cosplays, anime, manga, DS consoles, board games etc. This is the same for many other popular TV programmes, the idea can be developed in to a multitude of different new things that will once again get the company producing it. All the above tend to be done by companies because the whole idea of them producing products is to make money and they are willing to do whatever it takes to make as much money from it as they can, like run an anime on it for 700 episodes, this is the same for most of the popular anime or games, since it's bringing in money they never want to stop showing it (or bringing out new ones) as the other products will also go down in popularity if they stop which will lower the amount of money they get from it.

Work Scope

Last lesson and in my own time i was able to complete the work scope as best I could so in this lesson I will be looking over the existing scope work. The next step is for me to transfer the mock ups on to flash and start making it in to a usable site. I have most of the stuff necessary to start this.

New Project Started

Today we were given a new project in which we had to make a website for a recent movie, I chose Alice In Wonderland by Tim Burton. This was for multiple reasons the first is that obsessed with any thing Alice In Wonderland Related so have been to the cinema to watch it in 3D. The second was that Alice In Wonderland allows you to use many things that are very colourful and interesting, the last is that it had been out long enough to have a lot of images and products online. Firstly I started off by looking at the already existing sites so that I could get an idea of what they had done.
(http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/aliceinwonderland/), this was the kind of site that I want to aim at myself that makes it seem like you are supposed to be in Wonderland. Next I looked up general images of Tim Burton's film and looked at the art work, I was fussy about what images I should use so spent a lot of time getting into my head how the site would look with different images as the background. In the end I settled with
as I wanted an image that focused on the art of wonderland rather than the characters.
My next task was to work out what I was going to use as the buttons so that they stood out from the page, I ended up looking up a lot of things that I thought would be a good idea but it ended up taking me a long time to find something that would stand out from the page but fit in with the theme.
Finally I managed to find some tea pots that stood out and fit in with Alice in Wonderland and then edited some "Drink me" styled labels to show what page each button went to. From this I was easily able to make all the other pages using almost the same format. For both the gallery and the products page I removed the background image and replaced it with a grainy black over which I had the menu title a picture of one of the characters, the reason for this was because I didn't think that placing the information over the top of the picture would be a good idea as that would be too much of a distraction. Similarly I didn't want to add too many characters encase it was too much of a distraction to the viewer. Also I made an entrance page that showed Alice looking down the hole that leads to wonderland to concrete the idea that it was supposed to seem like you are in Wonderland. Lastly I moved on to do some of the written work by starting both the schedule and the work scope.

Addictive Games

I find that the addictive games can either be something insanley fusterating that you wont leave the game until you have completed it or so easy that you wont stop playing because its something that you can.
Pac-Xon
Graphics:10/10, perfect graphic for the type of gaem as you arnt effected by them and really good graphics would not improve the game experiance.
Sound :Simple and almost exactly the same as the sound effects in pacman.
Game Play: 9/10 The levels are short but get increasingly harder, I think that the simplness of the game is good the only problem was you weren't always able to tell what each piece of food does.

Using flash

Today we were able to make our photoshop image into a proper website in flash, we were able to make all the pages we need to and embed a video into the home page along with adding all the pictures to the gallery.

Understanding principles of digital video technology in interactive media

This is an essay to explain how designers use video technology to enhance a user’s interactive experience. The internet is hugely responsible for the change in videos and advertising; due to the huge popularity of it companies are always trying to improve what they can offer to their clients.

The most popular online video player is Youtube; this is one of many sites that have changed our video experience due to the fact that it shows user generated content. This means that anyone can post a video that they have made of anything on to the site for an audience to watch and comment on. This is a huge change since it allows people to express themselves for free as opposed to having to pay to properly produce it. This has also allowed a number of people to get a career through the things that they have posted.  Youtube provides a good interactive experience to users as the video can be watched straight away rather than having to wait for it to download, this is called streaming. This is used in order to allow slow internet users faster buffering but the price for this is the quality of the video.

The one main problem that this has caused is copyrighting work.

Some of the users on Youtube like to record videos, these could be from the TV or they could have been downloaded from the internet. This is a problem for Youtube as certain videos are protected by the Digital Rights Management System; it stops the illegal distribution of copyrighted data meaning that they have to find a way to stop you uploading things that you do not have the right to upload. They state when you sign up for an account “Uploading materials that you do not own is a copyright violation and against the law. If you upload material you do not own, your account will be deleted.” (See ‘http://www.youtube.com/create_account?feature=idx_promo_std&next=’)  This is used to deter users from uploading copyrighted data but if they do, they encourage other users to report them. This is all down to the Digital Rights Management System that is in place, sometimes data is encrypted so that it can only be viewed by those that are allowed and can also be encrypted so that no one can claim for work that isn’t theirs. Also another method that has become popular on sites with professional photographers or those that put a lot of effort in to their work like to use a water mark so that others cannot steal their work. This is also occasionally used on Youtube since it is much easier to take someone’s work and re-upload it as your own the users have watermarked them so that other users can clearly see that someone else made it.

Something that can affect the quality of the video is whether the file is compressed or not.

Often videos can be huge file size so they have to be compressed to reduce the size, this can be done in two different ways, the first is called lossy and is the most popular because it allows the files to be reduced in file size by losing some of the data and reducing the quality but the thing that makes it so popular is that you have to take away a lot of information before the video losses quality. The other form of file compression is lossless which makes sure that it is kept to a much higher quality because of the quality they are maintaining the file size doesn’t become much smaller which is why it is used less than lossy.

 Although Youtube is free you are often forced to watch an advert if the video you decided to watch is popular enough, which leads me on to my next topic.

Adverts have been developed to use digital video technology, normally unless you were watching an advert on TV it would be a still picture but now using video, companies have been able to catch a viewers attention better. Adverts will often now be small video clips that catch the user’s eye more effectively than with still pictures. Added audio is probably the most annoying but effective thing about these adverts, your forced to find the source of the noise to turn it off or you’ll have to wait for it to finish, it may be annoying but the companies achieved what they were trying to do and that was get your attention.  The company will have to have paid out a fair bit of money to get a good high quality video that the user will be drawn to, if the video wasn’t clear the user wouldn’t pay much attention to it and not take notice of the message that they are tying to put across.

Youtube uses adverts as its form of income so although users don’t have to pay they are watching the videos that make Youtube money. What Youtube does is called Direct advertising the advert that they play has relevance to the video, for example they might advertise a certain genre of music they may advertise another artist of the same genre.

Another way that companies can make money through their users is by using them for viral marketing. This can also be known as “Word of Mouth” the company creates a message that can be passed along by others across the internet. This was the way that hotmail decided to advertise themselves, every time someone used hotmail to send a message at the bottom of the email they would have a link to their site. This is also relevant to videos, “Viral videos can best be described as short video clips with unusually shocking or humorous themes” (see http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-viral-videos.htm) they are normally found through Facebook or other socialising sites . Facebook games are probably the most likely as when you play them you have to send invites to your friends in order to get something out of the game, they are then able to post on your friends page advertising their game to them and who ever looks on it. Another thing that uses the internet in order to advertise itself are places that allow virtual tours, these are videos of an area that allow you to “look” around an area, the effectiveness of this is that it lets you experience better what the area is going to be like, videos are much better to use than pictures because they are more believable, both can be edited but by making everything continue the viewer feels like they are there whereas still image are not able to provide the same experience that videos can, they lack movement, noise and authenticity.

Companies are always trying to out do each other in forms of quality. A clear example of this is video players; some of these are flash player and Quicktime who are always making newer versions of their players to make them better. They advertise themselves by talking about increasing higher quality user experience. Flash says “Flash Player 10.1 is optimized for high performance” (see http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/) and Quicktime similarly say “Whether it’s on the web or on your desktop, QuickTime Player brings your digital media brilliantly to life” (see http://www.apple.com/quicktime/). By looking at these two companies you can see that everyone is trying to outdo each other in terms of what they can offer but they are all trying to improve the same things.

Many things still have a lot of ways to improve technologies, one thing that has risen in popularity recently is internet access on mobile phones, the internet is a lot slower because it is wireless and does not have a cable. The data transfer rate is much slower than if it were a computer with an internet cable access meaning the videos take a lot longer to buffer and the mobile isn’t always able to handle how much it would have to download from the site to run effectively. This is evidently going to be something that companies are going to look into improving as it would be more convenient for users to be able to view videos with a faster buffering rate anywhere much like the internet connection we are able to have at home.

Everything is starting to look towards the benefits that high quality video can have on viewers experience from the video. Due to the increasing in quality it is now preferable to watch a video online as it saves you from having to wait for it to come on the TV. Now designers have also to make sure that there are ways of protecting copyrighted data from being used and to make sure that nothing can be viewed by people that shouldn’t be seeing it. These examples all show how digital video technology is being used to increase every user’s interactive experience. Companies are tying to thoroughly improve the quality of the videos online and decrease the of amount file size as these are the main things that users are looking for. Another thing that is improving their works to fit with the rising demand of high quality is Youtube, they have gone from just videos to let you view them in HD so it’s pretty clear due to the popularity of the site that it will continue to broaden it horizons to new demands. “YouTube is currently testing out the idea of 3D videos by offering a few 3D View Style options” (see http://www.gearlive.com/news/article/q309-youtube-3d-videos/) this function is already available to keep up with the popularity that 3D movies have brought to the cinema screen but has yet to really take off as it is expensive for the users to make as a 3D camera is needed. There are a few existing 3D videos but it looks like that in a few years that 3D will be as normal as HD on the Youtube channel.