Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Unit 71 - Soundtrack
With permission from Marjin De Bont himself, I was allowed to remix and use (personally) his song that he made.
The things I changed were the length, the fading and I also slowed down the song (to about half speed) to make it more chilling and ery. I think the song (after the remix) would've fit the trailer quite well - it had a mysterious and ambient aspect about it and still kept fairly close to the original.
Above I have linked the original and the remix I have done.
Thursday, 31 March 2011
U66 - LO3 3D Studio Max environment - incomplete
At the same time or in the process of creating and generating the facility and the environment that surrounds it, we used and analysed a wide range of techniques, methods and software. File formats were the first thing we covered, although fairly basic it grew into more complexities it showed the importance of each file format. The main file types I used throughout the project were psd, gif, jpg, bmp, 3ds, mp3, ppt and docx. All these different file formats provide different advantages and disadvantages and are all optimised to their forte.
.
.
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Renders of my environment

I've decided to add A LOT more foilage to my environment and turned shadows on for trees to create a dark and wry environment. I like the way the facility is well covered by the trees and doesn't stand out (this was intentional as it needs to be hidden.
Monday, 7 March 2011
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Texturing and modelling in 3D Studio Max
Today I added a skybox an omnibox (taking away the direct light) changed the plane texture and added foilage. Here is a screeny of my goings on :3
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
Overall, how do you feel the presentation went?
I feel the presentation went rather well regardless of a few hiccups. Each person knew when it was their time to speak, what order they were going to talk about stuff and the back story of what their era was. Everyone felt like they were going to 'freeze up' but thankfully no one did and everyone overcame their nerves. :)
How long did your team take?
Our team took 26 minutes out of the maxiumum 30 to present our 'History of Storytelling' - the most out of all 3 teams. Although we took the longest time, I think we used this time efficiently and to the best of our advantage.
Was everyone prepared? (comment on all)
Everyone was fully prepared and knew what their era was and what they were doing. One person struggled a bit, but that was due to abscence in previous weeks. Everyone in our team tried to help them out, which seemed to at least help the situation. :)
How did your audience react?
Our audience seemed to listen to what we were saying and contributed by asking questions related to our presentation, which showed they were interested in what we were talking about.
Were they positive? Distracting? Encouraging?
Most were positive, although some were slightly distracting (this was countered by simply looking somewhere else when talking).
Comments on you whilst doing the presentation?
I thought I presented pretty well, although I think I could have projected my voice a bit more and stuttered less (I think the stuttering was down to nerves more than anything else).
Were you prepared? Were you nervous?
I was both prepared and slightly nervous - although I do think if I prepared better I would've been less nervous. The stuttering and 'going blank' thing was probably a side effect of being nervous, but when I got into the flow of things the nerves seemed to go away.
What can you do in the future to improve this?
To improve this I need to prepare better in the future, like reading through my work time and time again so I can have a few main points I can expand on.
Generally - what did you learn from doing this presentation? What can you take from your research to use in your team game trailer?
I learnt quite a bit about Ancient Egypt that I didn't know before, as well as my strengths and weaknesses. I would say that remembering key points is one of my main strengths, where as not projected my voice enough is a weakness. I could use the mummification idea that the Ancient Egyptians used to create some creepy goings on in the trailer as well as the use of a cursed Tomb/Pyramid.
*NOTE: THE TEAM LOGO HAS CHANGED, SO IT IS EASIER ON THE EYE (see above image)*
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Lighting and all that
Today in 3D Studio Max, we learnt about lighting and atmospherics. We first started off with the very simple design of a sphere on a plane - followed by putting a target spot on to the selected area. We then could modify the lighting to our liking so I added shadowing, inverse decay, hotspot and falloff. To finish it off, I made the sphere a yellow colour (to look warm) and the plane a blue colouring (to look cold) and topped it off with a turbosmoothing on the sphere to make it look even more lifelike.
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Constraints
What problems have I/will I
encounter? - There have been a few problems I've already encountered in
the planning and discussing stages, such as team members not pulling their
weight, glitches in programs that we were using to discuss ideas (3D Studio Max
especially).
I'm sure we will encounter more
problems on the road to victory, so I shall keep updating this post. :)
How will the team work together/or not? - We will work together by spreading the load between us as: an environment, 3 characters, a car, sound, a research facility, aztec building and a camp all need to be built. We decided the best way to about this is by trying to spread it as evenly as possible but also spread it so everyone is doing something that they are 'better' at. This will ensure that the trailer is done to the best of our ability. ^.^
Organisation, who is doing what and when for the client? - I'm doing the research facility, a main character (either Steven or Ella) and most of the sound. Kieron is doing 313 (little girl), the surrounding forest, and aztec temple. Scott is doing the car, the road and a character. Yousaf is doing the camp site and is also a level editor. Ricky is the Quality Assurance guy who see's if everything works and isn't broke and stuff :D
Financial/budgets, How much would a project like this cost to produce? – A project like this could cost anything from a few thousand pounds to a few million pounds.
Legal, copyright, IP's, Patents? – You have to take into consideration copyright and legality. You cannot use someone else’s work in your own without permission, and even then you may need to require a sample and/or give credit to its owner.
Deadlines - We don't have a set deadline, but we are aiming to finish at around the end of April/'beginning on June so we have enough time at the end of it to fix any hiccups. :)
Resources Available – You will need programs such as 3D Studio Max, Adobe Photoshop, Cubase, Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas Pro. You will also need substantial amounts of fast-render capable computers, unless time is not of the essence.
How will the team work together/or not? - We will work together by spreading the load between us as: an environment, 3 characters, a car, sound, a research facility, aztec building and a camp all need to be built. We decided the best way to about this is by trying to spread it as evenly as possible but also spread it so everyone is doing something that they are 'better' at. This will ensure that the trailer is done to the best of our ability. ^.^
Organisation, who is doing what and when for the client? - I'm doing the research facility, a main character (either Steven or Ella) and most of the sound. Kieron is doing 313 (little girl), the surrounding forest, and aztec temple. Scott is doing the car, the road and a character. Yousaf is doing the camp site and is also a level editor. Ricky is the Quality Assurance guy who see's if everything works and isn't broke and stuff :D
Financial/budgets, How much would a project like this cost to produce? – A project like this could cost anything from a few thousand pounds to a few million pounds.
Legal, copyright, IP's, Patents? – You have to take into consideration copyright and legality. You cannot use someone else’s work in your own without permission, and even then you may need to require a sample and/or give credit to its owner.
Deadlines - We don't have a set deadline, but we are aiming to finish at around the end of April/'beginning on June so we have enough time at the end of it to fix any hiccups. :)
Resources Available – You will need programs such as 3D Studio Max, Adobe Photoshop, Cubase, Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas Pro. You will also need substantial amounts of fast-render capable computers, unless time is not of the essence.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
So, just to recap...
STATIC LOGO: would be placed on the box art, posters, etc. Anything that is a solid print would use this logo as it is unanimatable. No, that's not a real word, I made it up. (maybe inanimate would be a better choice?)
ANIMATED LOGO: this logo would be used in anything animated, such as the trailer itself. It would start with a black screen with the 'Visual Flare' bit fading in - followed by the smoke moving around and all that :)
RESPONSIBILITIES: (click to enlarge image)
ROLES:
Members:
Kieron
Scott
Dom
Richard
Yousaf
Strength:
Dom: Concept Artist, Sound, Organisation
Scott: 3D Production, Organisation, Sound,
Animation
Kieron: 3D Production, Texturing and shading,
Organisation, Animation.
Richard: Photoshop, organisation, Concept art
Yousaf: Photoshop, Concept Art, 3D
Production
Weaknesses:
Dom: 3D
Scott: Concept Art
Kieron: Concept Art, sound
Richard: 3D
Yousaf: Sound
Group Leader:
Kieron
Holmes
Why roles were picked:
Kieron - was picked because he works efficiently and takes the work seriously as well as I have good skills at organising
Dom – Good at drawing, sound because he has experience
with working at a radio station.
Scott - I was picked for 3D production as
I have picked up certain skills and abilities and I will be doing environment
and modelling.
Kieron – I was picked for 3D production as
I have adapted to specific commands and controls and I am also efficient in making
textures and modelling.
Richard – Has experience with Photoshop.
Creative with ideas and has unique ideas to approach any graphic work.
Yousaf – Picked for Photoshop as he is not
afraid to experiment with ideas. Also creative with designs and visual effects
also skilled at drawing.
Roles and Responsibilities:
Kieron: 3D (modelling, environment,
texturing, animation) and organisation.
Scott: 3D (modelling, environment,
texturing, animation) and sound engineering.
Dom: Concept artist (Photoshop) and sound
engineering.
Richard: Concept artist (Photoshop)
Yousaf: Concept artist (Photoshop),
texturing.
Logo Creation:
The concept artists for this project will be
Dom, Richard and Yousaf.
Tada.
Monday, 29 November 2010
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Final final logo :o
After much discussion, we decided that the first logo would be good to use in the actual trailer as the smoke could be animated (or something similar). The blue and red logo may need to be used instead of white text as this better represents the company.
The second logo is that that will be used as a static image (i.e. - it will be placed on the box cover, t-shirts, etc.) I definitely prefer this logo as it is more attractive and more appealing to the eye. I went with a blue and red scheme as this represents 3D (or 3D as it started off) so this can represent technological advances. I think the colours go well together. (I also chose blue and red as the background, although transparent, will probably be seen on a white background so this represents us coming from the United Kingdom. :))
Delta Oscar Mike,
Over and out.
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Which logo we chose and why - Unit 4 and 5
1) Dom's (mine)
2) Yousaf's
3) Keiron's
4) Scott's
1) This design is our final team logo, so I've made a lot of changes to the one that won, but the team agreed on everything I changed and agree that it looks better. I like the blue and red clashing together, as they are contrasts but create a hectic smoke 'flare' effect. I also like the 2 fonts I used, the 'Visual' one leaning more towards an artistic approach, and the 'Flare' one leaning more towards a eye catching, sharp and glowing effect to burst through the smoke.
One thing I would like to change however, would be the black background -- I would prefer this to be a transparent background (played around with that feature, but for displaying the logo as a static, black is best - transparent would be best for when/if we animate it later on).
2) I like this logo because it is red on white on black, which works really well - the white seems to define the outlines of the red and black so that the colours don't bleed into each other. I like the way the brush he's used has interacted with the lettering in some way, as it adds a nice touch. One thing I would change however, would be the font, but that may be personal taste.
3) I really like this logo's colour choice as the white really brings out the yellow, red and black. I think that if it was on a black background (and the black 'wave' thingy was white) it wouldn't be as effective, so I think he made a really good decision there. I (personally) would have gone with a different font - but that might just be me.
4) This logo is the most colourful, and I think it works rather well. He's used different brushes to really make the logo stand out from the background. On this, I would again, change the font (as personal preference) but with the different colours mixed together, the font actually goes rather well with it.
Development of my team logo - Unit 4 and 5
Here is a brainstorm of how I went through my ideas to get to the final logo design.
The first logo was just a rough drawing of what it could have been, but I liked the idea behind the ‘flare’ and the emphasis behind it. I then started to explore different fonts and decided I needed 2 different fonts to stress more emphasis on both words.
I was trying to find fonts that looked like the words, i.e. – ‘Visual’ needed to be artistic, and ‘Flare’ needed to be bright, sharp and eye catching.
The font I used for ‘Visual’ worked well in the first trial, so I decided to keep it throughout. It looks rather artistic and sticks with the criteria above. One would say it is rather fancy.
The font I used for ‘Flare’ works well because it too, also sticks to the criteria as it is bright (after adding a glow effect to it), sharp and catches the eye.
I then started to fiddle around with smoke brushes and effects, and decided that contrast is best – going for a black background, a white font, and blue and red smoke (to emphasise on technology as the first 3D glasses used red and blue spectacles.
My second logo was me using the smoke effects and getting a vague idea about what I want to do, and the third logo explored it further. On the second logo, the smoke overlapped some of the text, which actually made the logo unclear and clashed. In the third logo I resolved this by flipping the colours, and rubbing out any smoke that overlapped the text. I then added more smoke, as it looked a little empty, which then led me to my fourth and final logo (which is now the team logo).
I centred the text as I felt that if it was kept at the bottom then it would look imbalanced and not be as effective at marketing. This then led to the crisis in which the smoke overlapped the team name again, so I rubbed out any smoke that clashed, and added even more smoke which erased the problem of it looking a little empty. The smoke then looked too dark, so I added a whiten filter and a slight glow, which seemed to really bring on the colours. I finally added a glow effect to ‘Flare’ as I thought it would work rather well with the word to make it stand out and actually make it look like a flare (there was also the problem that after the whitener and slight glow, that ‘flare’ didn’t stand out as much as ‘visual’ did).
Monday, 8 November 2010
Experimenting with 3D Environments Unit 66
There are many different types of environment one could experiment with and use - Gothic, ancient, Tudor, Victorian, futuristic, Space, natural, and even barbaric. The point is that you need to use the right environment(s) to get the right effect.
The plot behind the game we're designing is that based around strange happenings and wild factors -- the facility we're building is placed in an abandoned forest, but needs to be something of a futuristic disposition, as this will reflect on the barbarity of the gameplay.
The insides of the building are similar to the outside - the offices are clean, crisp, and futuristic, but yet there is something weary about them. Deep underground lay the testing chambers which are dirty, gritty, and much like an abandoned asylum.
Unearthed at night will be the spire which is the core power source to the asylum, gaining power from the moon which is then used in the test labs.
The plot behind the game we're designing is that based around strange happenings and wild factors -- the facility we're building is placed in an abandoned forest, but needs to be something of a futuristic disposition, as this will reflect on the barbarity of the gameplay.
The insides of the building are similar to the outside - the offices are clean, crisp, and futuristic, but yet there is something weary about them. Deep underground lay the testing chambers which are dirty, gritty, and much like an abandoned asylum.
Unearthed at night will be the spire which is the core power source to the asylum, gaining power from the moon which is then used in the test labs.
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Architectural design research :o
The last image would work well for the spire, and the first image (of the London Olympics Stadium) would be good for the structured wall, as well as for holding the offices and testing labs.
This architectural stadium would be a great idea to use as the wall structure for the facility, as well as a secure holding for the offices and testing labs.
This dome shape could appear on top of the facility walls when it is day time to hide the emergence of the spire, then when day becomes night, it could open up and the spire could arise.
This spire is better suited to a more industrial and metallic building, but the shape itself could be something used in the final build. Definately something to consider.
I definitely consider this one as the best choice for a spire as it seems to overlook the landscape with its bewildering and futuristic appeal. Out of all the spires, this is the one I would most prefer to use at the centre of facility.
Thursday, 21 October 2010
Visual Flare - Game Trailer environments
The environment we're constructing for our Game Trailer is based around an abandoned camp site. The frame of the story (it may be slightly changed in places) that we've planned is that 2 people/a group of people on a road-trip come across an abandoned camp (for which we have no idea why at the moment, we need to figure that one out). Its quiet (as you'd expect) but something wry in the atmosphere sets this location into a dark and depressing monument. The pack head inside to investigate and end up inside a log cabin (I think we may have established that they may be at this camp to find a phone or something) to be greeted on their exit with a shadowy figure of a little girl. Stood there, with her head down. They try to light a conversation up with her, but she just stands there. :(
She lifts her head up slightly, and stares at the figures in front of her. Her red eyes beaming with demonocities and death. More to ensure.
From the dilute above, we are going for an atmospheric survival horror game (think Left 4 Dead, but not Zombies). There will be 'ring leaders' to each 'squadron' of children (one 'squad' will be about 20 'grunts' (children) 4 higher powers, and 1 commander).
Shadows will be used to great effect to stress the importance of light, and to strain the point that anything can be lurking in the shadows.
Over and out.
She lifts her head up slightly, and stares at the figures in front of her. Her red eyes beaming with demonocities and death. More to ensure.
From the dilute above, we are going for an atmospheric survival horror game (think Left 4 Dead, but not Zombies). There will be 'ring leaders' to each 'squadron' of children (one 'squad' will be about 20 'grunts' (children) 4 higher powers, and 1 commander).
Shadows will be used to great effect to stress the importance of light, and to strain the point that anything can be lurking in the shadows.
Over and out.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
3D Max Skybox - 3D environments
Today we developed off what we learnt last week, but learnt how to create a skybox. Its pretty much the same process as before, but on a sphere, rather than a plane. I built a sphere around my plane and deleted the bottom half of it - I then flipped the 'normals' and put a sky texture on the sphere. When inside the sphere, you got the illusion you were in a world.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
3D Studio Max environment texturing and landscaping
In today's lesson with Chris, we were taught the basics and fundamentals of creating an environment - starting with landscaping by applying a texture we created in photoshop. We first created a greyscale image with black being the 'low' ground, and white being the 'high' ground. Starting off with the landscape as black, and gradually working through the greys to get a white, I managed to create a birdseye view of what I wanted my landscape to be set out like. I then smudged the whites and blacks together to get indentations in the 'raised land' (which I will now refer to as mountains. :))
I then created a plane in 3D Studio Max, changed the segments to 200 (so it looked alot smoother and less 'blocky') and placed a displacement modifier on the plane. I imported the texture that I created earlier into 3D Studio Max and used the strengthen tool to raise the land, which the transformed the landscape into a mountainous landscape. I used the smoother to make sure it looked as authentic as I could.
To create an actual texture for the mountains and the valley, I kept the original version of the greyscale texture, and modified it slightly. Where the 'valley' was (the black bit) I sprayed it green and then changed the blending mode into something suitable, added noise, multiply, and then added a white disolve layer that would look like snow. I then imported it and it looks lush. <3
To import a background I simply went to rendering > environment and imported it. :)
[less than three]
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
BLARGH!
The storyboard I have produced very much reflects my original intentions. I wanted to produce something that wasn't offensive to anyone, had some classic Spongebob humour in it and I think I've done that perfectly. There are no weapons or offensive words/images that could discriminate any age, race or gender and I feel I have done enough to captivate the audience.
Compared to a professional piece, I think my comic strip puts up good competition. It has a clean and well thought out template, a decent plot, the typical comic fonts and appeal to it, and generally looks professionally done (although I believe there are a few area's where I could improve).
I think I could improve on the plot a little, and make it a longer strip as it seems like its been forced onto one page, and I could've pushed it onto two. I think I did well in the template, layout and dialogue areas though :D
Compared to a professional piece, I think my comic strip puts up good competition. It has a clean and well thought out template, a decent plot, the typical comic fonts and appeal to it, and generally looks professionally done (although I believe there are a few area's where I could improve).
I think I could improve on the plot a little, and make it a longer strip as it seems like its been forced onto one page, and I could've pushed it onto two. I think I did well in the template, layout and dialogue areas though :D
Reflecting on U67: Evaluating the Game Trailer storyboard.
The storyboard was created using Comic Life, a program which gives you the necessary tools to create a comic with different fonts (like the 'KAPOW!' font) templates and custom templates, different speech bubbles, and descriptive boxes.
The entire process was a learning curve for me as I've never used the program before, but after creating a comic with it, I've grown accustomed to it and find it very handy to have. I found that people were using Photoshop to create their comics and took nearly twice as long to produce their comic.
The story is about Spongebob and Patrick going to Sandy's house to go meet her. Her house is full of snow as its hibernation season, and her being a squirrel, is hibernating. Patrick and Spongebob see this as an opportunity to mess around in Sandy's house while she sleeps. In the end they make too much noise and Sandy wakes up in a cranky state, and attacks Patrick.
The empty page is the template I used for my Comic strip, it is a custom made one that I modified from one of the preset templates.
The entire process was a learning curve for me as I've never used the program before, but after creating a comic with it, I've grown accustomed to it and find it very handy to have. I found that people were using Photoshop to create their comics and took nearly twice as long to produce their comic.
The story is about Spongebob and Patrick going to Sandy's house to go meet her. Her house is full of snow as its hibernation season, and her being a squirrel, is hibernating. Patrick and Spongebob see this as an opportunity to mess around in Sandy's house while she sleeps. In the end they make too much noise and Sandy wakes up in a cranky state, and attacks Patrick.
The empty page is the template I used for my Comic strip, it is a custom made one that I modified from one of the preset templates.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
DERP.
The purpose of the trip to Huddersfield University was to increase our knowledge on the course that they offer.
The course structure is as follows:
Year 1 Concept Design:
Studio 1 Design Development: Studio 1
Interactive Games Culture 1
Visual Studies for Interactive Content 1
Authoring Interactivity 1
Introduction to 3D and Animation
Year 2 Concept Design:
Studio 2 Design Development: Studio 2 Interactive Games Culture
2 Visual Studies for Interactive Content 2
Authoring Interactivity 2
3D Character Animation
Year 3 Sandwich
Optional Supervised Work Experience
Year 3 Full-time/Year 4 Sandwich
Individual Project
Advanced Visual Studies
Advanced 3D
Showcase
Team Project
and the course information is:
The course structure is as follows:
Year 1 Concept Design:
Studio 1 Design Development: Studio 1
Interactive Games Culture 1
Visual Studies for Interactive Content 1
Authoring Interactivity 1
Introduction to 3D and Animation
Year 2 Concept Design:
Studio 2 Design Development: Studio 2 Interactive Games Culture
2 Visual Studies for Interactive Content 2
Authoring Interactivity 2
3D Character Animation
Year 3 Sandwich
Optional Supervised Work Experience
Year 3 Full-time/Year 4 Sandwich
Individual Project
Advanced Visual Studies
Advanced 3D
Showcase
Team Project
and the course information is:
UCAS Code
G4W6 CGD
Course Length
3 years full-time 4 years sandwich
Number of Places
40
Contact
The Departmental Office
Telephone: 01484 472450
Fax: 01484 421106
E-mail: newmedia@hud.ac.uk
G4W6 CGD
Course Length
3 years full-time 4 years sandwich
Number of Places
40
Contact
The Departmental Office
Telephone: 01484 472450
Fax: 01484 421106
E-mail: newmedia@hud.ac.uk

Thursday, 13 May 2010
Some people never left the playground. :O
Today, I planned, designed and created my own graphic novel, based around one of the Spongebob Squarepants episodes 'Survival of the idiots!'.
I altered the plot quite a lot to make it my own piece, but still kept it vaguely in line with what happened in that episode. I tried wording things the way Spongebob and Patrick would speak, so it seemed as real as possible.
I used the program 'Comic Life' which helps you create graphic novels by providing you with 'Blam!' fonts, layouts (which you can customise), different types of speech bubbles, and other comic book related stuff.
:D
:D
Thursday, 18 March 2010
a detailed look into the level of detail. I'm awesome at creating post titles.
The level of detail involves decreasing the complexity of a 3D object representation as it moves away from the viewer. For example, as an object cannot be seen for its full potential when viewed from a distance, and the more polygons that are on the screen, the laggier the game. Therefore, objects seen from a distance need to be as low poly as possible, but still have the correct visual shape that you can figure out what it is. An example of LOD could be a shotgun. From afar, the gun would have its shape and its figure, but not the detail, the closer you get to the gun, the more detail is put into it.
The reason this is done is so the number of polygons used is minimised. The more polygons you use, the longer the loading time, and the bigger the drop in frame rate.
That is why LOD is important. :)
Thursday, 4 March 2010
children?! get gone!
Today I progressed a bit more with my spaceship - getting to the dreaded wing bend that I struggle to do >.<
I think I have the right angle that I need for the rest of the wing, so I just need to rectify off that.
Maybe it needs to be less flat (the tube) and be more solid. I think that might be what the problem is.
Oh, and I taught Robin how to get a shape similar to the ship outer-case I'm using. :)
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Reflection on Bradford Creative Careers fair
On the 24th February at approximately 10:30 we arrived at Bradford University for the Bradford Creative Careers fair. We were faced with about 30 minutes of time to look around the Media stalls to look around at different careers and what they offer.
At about 11:00 we were sent into the hall to hear a lecture from a guy called Philip Charles who runs PiPeLine Productions - a rap and music production company for young people. [http://www.piplelineproductions.co.uk] The guy had a positive attitude about his work, and seemed really down to Earth with young people. He talked to us about getting into the music business and the enterprise behind it, as well as incorporating graffiti.
Amy Held then spoke about her job experiences, and how she did alot of voluntary work to build up her CV. She said how it was better to build up your CV before going full-time job hunting, as it will help you get the job, and help in the long run.
The other workshop we did was the 'Stop Motion competition' where we could win £25 for our troubles. Hell yeah! ^_^ we used play-doh and MicroSoft paint to our advantage, and compiled a stop motion animation based on 2 classic video games - Pong and Pacman. One problem we came across was the fact that the program we used to compile the stop motion animation took FOREVER to load. and crashed the laptop. MonkeyJam decided to make a 1.26mb file 3gb big and didn't work, and it was hard to find a suitable replacement, because Flash crashed. Finally, Windows Movie Maker became our Lord and Savior.
Overall, I think the fair was a success, although it would've been nice if it was a bit more organised.
Below is the final stop motion animation:
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Our ship is in ship-shape, captain.
Ship-shape screeny. =3
Today I started to create the spaceship for my main project. I experimented with a couple of ideas on how to first start building my ship - for example, an extruded sphere, or a sphere and cone combination. I think I may go for the latter of the two as I can control the nozzle shape, angle and size easier.I am now starting to extrude the vertex in order to make the cone blend in with the sphere.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
G-Unit (18) evaluation
The task set in unit 18 was that we were to generate an iPhone app icon that couldn't be seen as offensive or cause ethical issues.



I first began the project be researching popular apps in the app store and taking a look at the icons to see how they approached things, and as I expected - they all use there own icon that they created themselves. Such corporate companies like Facebook simply use there own self branding (in this case, an 'f' on a blue rounded square).
We were then given 5 themes that we needed to explore; war, fantasy, horror, sci-fi and something we could use in RClayton's unit.
For the war theme I decided to use an ancient weapon as opposed to a modern weapon; a spear. I thought it would be fitting to use an ancient weapon as a gun can also be used outside of war (e.g. gangs) but no one ever runs round with a spear impaling people with it. I think the icon could be offensive as it is seen as ‘promoting’ a weapon, so it is best to avoid using any icon like this.
For fantasy I decided to use Navi - Link's fairy. This icon can't be seen as offensive, but may breach copyright regulations. It also may not work as the only way you know who Navi is, is by playing a Zelda game before hand, so anyone who hasn't played the game before may be mislead.
For the horror theme I decided to use something linked to Zelda - Link and Link in wolf form. There is nothing that can be taken as offensive in the icon, therefore it would be a good Icon to use. However, it would breach copyright regulations and so, it would be wrong to use it.
For Sci-Fi, I couldn't think of anything to do with Zelda, so I decided to use the Plasma Rifle from the Halo series. Obviously, this has nothing to do with Zelda, so it would be pointless using this icon. Other than that, it would also breach copyright laws and mislead the client.
And finally, the icon I would use for RClayton's unit would be the Zelda logo. However, this isn't the original Zelda logo - this is a Zelda logo I created from scratch. I settled on using this as my icon in both units as it doesn't breach copyright laws and isn't offensive, so therefore fits both unit criteria's.
I then researched the specifications of the iPhone and here is what I discovered:
3.5 inch screen
480 x 320 resolution
600 MHz processor
256MB RAM
Fixed memory units (8GB,
16GB and 32GB)
Sensors- Accelerometer,
Proximity Sensor, Ambient
Light Sensor
3 megapixel colour camera
I then compared it to the HTC HD2, a competitor to the iPhone and found out that the HTC HD2 beats the iPhone in nearly every category, but due to Apple's app store and the fact that it is now seen as a fashion accessory, the iPhone still remains the more popular of the two.
The HTC HD2's specifications:
4.3 inch screen
480 X 800 resolution
1 GHz processor
448 MB RAM
Expansive memory
Sensors- G-Sensor,
Proximity Sensor,
Ambient Light Sensor
5 megapixel colour camera
with Auto focus and Dual
LED flash
My final 5 icon designs are as follows:
I also produced a document that reflects different file formats and where they are used. (bottom)

I think I met my original intentions. I set out to create an icon that looked like a Zelda logo, but managed to avoid copyright by starting from scratch, and produced an icon that cannot be taken to offence. Overall I think the icon was a success.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
iMake iPhone app iCons :O
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