Group Work

We have a few weeks left untill the deadline date, there has been a lot of progress made to the project and we have achieved a lot in the amount of time we have had so far. The paper
work is mostly completed there are a few bits that need to be changed or edited, a lot of the graphics have been made (there are still a few left) and the game is in the progress of being programmed.

Group Work

We have started to accumulate a clear idea of the game as a group, a lot of the paper work has been done but needs to be expanded on, we have also started creating mock-ups of the game so that we can all agree on a style of graphics.

3ds renders

Above are two renders of my 3dsmax room/house so far I still have a few small things that I might change but for now this is pretty much finished and will be what my final piece will look like.

High render 3ds max house so far

This is the first render that I have done of my house this is the main section that has the most objects in and is complete there are a few things that will probably be done to the other parts of my house over the next three weeks that we have left. The one difference will be that for some reason the texture on the sofa is different to what it should have been so that will be changed. I have started my essay but next week I will try and spend more time on the written work as we didn't have the breif when we started so we were doing work throughs together whereas I would have normally done the written work first. I am happy with the progress that I have made with 3ds max and the project and feel confident that I will be able finish in time for the deadline which is before we break up for the easter holidays.

The History of 2D Animation

2d animation has been around longer than a lot of other existing things the first sign of them can be dated back to paleolithic cave paintings. With this said the pictures that were found in caves are as shown below meaning that the image wasn’t able to be viewed in motion and are just drawn in a line with slight differences to each image in the sequence. This is why the drawings are only acknowledged as attempts at 2d animation as if given the correct equipment that was later on developed to show the animations it would run as one.

The first animation device was created by Ting Huan around 180AD this was called the The Pipe Which Makes Fantasies Appear he used convection (hot air rising) in order to turn vanes that had images on the end, when the device was made to spin at a certain the speed it looked like the images were moving. This device was late remade in 1836 by William George Horner who called it the Daedalum which can be translated in to “The Wheel of the Devil” but it is speculated that it was named after the Daedalus a craftsman used in ancient Greek myths. The Daedalum rose to popularity in the 1860’s and was made in to a children’s toy by William F. Lincoln and the name was changed to Zoetrope meaning “wheel of life”.

Many other devices were created to animate things these were all very similar to the Zoetrope but with improvements and different variations that were made in different countries. Most used the technique of looking through a small slit at an image and spinning the device so that the images appeared to move, the slits that were looked through stopped the images being blurred in to one this was known as the phenakistoscope meaning to deceive. The next was the praxinoscope (action viewer) which incorporated the use of mirrors took away the need to use a slit as it reflected one stationary image which later on allowed the device to be changed to allow large audiences to view the same animation.

There are a few devices that were made to a more original design made more for children than all the other devices. The first is a flipbook something that is still being used today, it is much less complicated than the Daedalum and phenakistoscope as all you have to do in order to make it work is to flick through the pages fast enough that the images start to look like they move. The second although it isn’t quite 2d animation is a thaumatrope which consists of a disk with an image on either side attached to the sting, when you flick twist the string the disk spins and the image appears to combine in to one this is due to what is known as the phi phenomenon.

The Phi phenomenon is the reason that animation works, the Phi phenomenon is where our eye perceives movement from still images; this is done through the speed at which the images are changing and our eyes are receiving information that isn’t there in order to make the picture’s flow together into an animation.

The first animated films were created by Emile Reynaud called “Pauvre Pierrot”, “Le Clown et ses chiens” and “Un bon bock” which were all shown in 1892 on the praxinoscope to a large audience. All of the animations used individually painted images that range from 300 to 700 per animation, each was made to last about 15 minutes. The next step for animation was the creation of character personalities this was first achieved in the animation “Gertie the Dinosaur” made by Winsor McCay in which there was interaction with the animation which allowed a personality to be portrayed. This was the film that set the standard that would be followed by Walt Disney films that would be coming in the future.

Following these small animated sequences the next step was for films to be developed the first ever to be created was made by Quirino Christiani who went on to animate other animated films one of which was the first to use synchronized sound. These like a lot of other animated films created many years ago were lost. The first film with a sound track was “My Old Kentucky Home” in 1926 with this said the music was badly fitted to the film and didn’t synchronize accurately, Disney moved this on to the next stage with their animation “Steamboat Willie” by using a click track so that the music could be synchronized to the animation.

Another form of animation that was first used in 1899 is called stop motion that use pictures of real life objects rather than painted images; this requires the slightest difference to be made in each picture that is taken. This would have been used in many popular animations one form that is used is known as clay animation the main example for this is Wallace and Gromit where everything would have been created from a changeable substance such as clay and pictures taken of each slight change to give the impression of movement.

Lastly the final form of animation is CGI which stands for computer generated imagery meaning that everything was created completely using computers, the first ever film to do this was Disney’s Toy Story. Creators are further trying to improve CGI graphics to a more realistic level examples of this are the final fantasy films that use realistic looking humans as opposed to cartoon looking people, there are so few films like this because there is a lot more work that has to go into making it in order for it to look convincing.

Animation has come a long way since the days of the cave men and is further continuing to develop it to more realistic levels with the use of more detail and 3D technology.

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.