Jako

Final Major Project Wiki

2008-05-04T13:29:00.002+01:00

For my Final Major Project I have created a Wiki that will catalog my progress through the research and development of a final product. The Wiki is a test drive more than anything else at this stage, it does however contain all my work up until this point.
To view work on the Wiki please follow THIS link. All my reasoning behind using the Wiki can be found at THIS link.

Thank you

RSS

2008-04-28T04:56:00.001+01:00

I've discovered RSS. It's really rather good! I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't given it a fair chance yet. With a good RSS feed manager, such as FeedDemon, you'll be flying! I currently use my feed manager to keep an eye on many things, even the news!

Cyber Vandalism

2008-04-15T00:00:00.004+01:00

An article on cyber vandals and Wikipedia. Talking about how their open editing website suffered from roaming data vandals. Click image to follow

Website Update

2008-04-14T19:24:00.005+01:00

Theme: Further to my work from the end of the deadline I have reworked the theme of the website, which I feel gives the website a friendlier welcoming look now. However, the banner still needs much work yet, as do the fonts used in the navigation bars.

Live search: A feature that searches all posts, comments and pages for search words and displays results as you type. Well why not?

Footer: In response to the contact details not being found with ease, I have relocated the best contact methods to rest on the footer. Along with this I have also added some basic copyright claims and link to my author.

Final Website View

2008-04-07T11:47:00.000+01:00

These two images are to show what the website looks like for the purposes of marking without visiting the website in question. I would submit the website as a separate locally run collection of files but as the nature of website is PHP and MySQL driven it wouldn't run correctly and do the website any justice.

Although you can get a feel of the layout from these pictures, you cannot interact with the website so I hope you will visit the website itself at www.fooddreckly.com

Thank you!

Evaluation

2008-04-07T10:46:00.000+01:00

While this project was a complete success in both furthering my understanding of back end server management but also in creating a stable and long lasting website I do however understand that it's not entirely completed as far as meeting all the brief requirements set by the client goes.

The website may well have all the functionality it needs to do it's job at this time but does lack a heavier image use that could otherwise help make this a lot more appealing to potential customers.
Due to the bandwidth restrictions of the web host we have been very careful with the images used so as not to push the server limits, I do feel though that the website would benefit greatly from a more media heavy style and will be suggesting that the pay package be increased to accommodate this.

I would have liked to work more on the aesthetic of the website and shall be doing so once this project has been handed in. From my point view at this time, the website would look a lot more collected if the corners were to be rounded off and the the footer and header to use images of either Dartmoor or of the food which Food Dreckly creates.

The website for now is fast, easily updated, clean, fresh and highly functional. For the moment, until new hosting has been sorted, this website will serve as an ideal stopping point for customers wanting to learn further about what is it Food Dreckly does and stands for. Once the hosting plan has been upgraded I will be able to implement a lot more media usage as well as migrating WordPress to the latest release and updating the theme to use the much more advanced K2 engine.

I have sent instructions on the website use to the client as well as giving me a short tutorial on simple tasks, such as managing page content and adding additional news, calendar dates and changing page elements and aspects without too much hassle.

The SEO rating of the website has been much improved, now showing at the top of a Google search, along with excellent SEO data for all the sub pages as well. I will be keeping an eye on the analytics data collected by Woopra and Google as it starts to generate a more detailed picture of website traffic and other data.

All in all this project was a success and I'm very pleased to have the website running so smoothly. There will need to be some changes in the near future, but for now at least it's a competent web portal for Food Dreckly and good showcase item for myself.

Adding News

2008-04-05T14:55:00.002+01:00

Because WordPress was originally and still is primarily kept updated as a blogging system it means the admin can blog news direct to a page of the website already created.

This is simply done by going to the dashboard of the admin panel, like you would if creating a calendar date. Instead of going for the calendar, selecting 'Write' and then 'Post' you can write a post simply and efficiently to be posted directly to the news page. This page is accessible like any other page on the website is, as a link on the right hand side.

Categories can give the posts special functions and permissions as well. Such as staff only viewable item, etc.

Now the news tab appears and displays as a link on the menu bar.

And there we have news!

I also remembered from the brief that the website needed increased Google search rating. In order to do this I tracked down this plugin. This tool let you automatically give pages and even posts increased meta ratings for use with search engines. This SEO plugin will ensure the websites correct place on the Google search listings.

Google Analytics

2008-04-05T11:17:00.002+01:00

In keeping with the requirements of the brief I have submitted the Food Dreckly website for analyzing with Woopra.

Woopra is a robust web-tracking & analysis tool that works perfectly on any website. It is mainly targeted for small to medium websites ranging from few hundreds up to tens of thousands of daily page views.

Essentially, it is targeted for blogs interested in the most minuscule details of every single action. In addition, Woopra provides a precise real-time streaming of every single activity on the website.

Woopra also features a clean interface, including many graphical visualization components, such as charts, maps, panels… Along with many other clean and advanced options that make Woopra an ideal solution for webmasters who desire to discern all the aspects of their website.

Woopra Main Features

This allows either myself or a member of the Food Dreckly team to check very precise details about the websites performance. Woopra is also constantly updated by the Woopra plugin on WordPress, keeping the information correct and current.

In addition to Woopra, I have entered the website into the Google Analytics system. This is upheld by a Google Analytics plugin installed into WordPress that keeps Google Analytics up to date.

Banner and Calendar

2008-04-02T17:13:00.001+01:00

In an attempt to get closer to the websites completion I started to try and work in a nicer style for the banner. Cleaning up the image greatly and improving the whole look of the website.

The image quality wasn't superb to begin with so I requested the original Illustrator files to work from. This meant I could fashion a cleaner looking banner that said a little more about what it was this website was about.

This new banner sat nicely on the now much cleaner website. Along with a slight color change, such as the backgrounds to the menu items and the more encapsulating footer, the website now had an events calendar and news feed. This allowed for the admin to quite easily keep the website completely up to date.

To Add A Calendar Date:

First you navigate to your WordPress dashboard where your given all your news from WordPress along with shortcuts to the most useful tools. Then you head to the manage tab of the screen, this gives you the parts of the website you can control from the CMS. You simply look along the bar and select events calendar.

As can be seen in this picture, most of the options for the various tasks can be found this way.

The calendar is a large sheet of dates before you, if a date is entered into the calendar then you can view it here.

Below on the same page you given the option to add an event. The date once submitted will be displayed highlighted in red as a date on the calendar located on the main page. If the user is to scroll over the date with his/her cursor then in a popup bubble the discription of the event, the date it happens and the time it starts and ends can be viewed quickly.

Should it so be wished in the future the user can integrate a more sophisticated event calendar system, with support for iCal already and Google, Yahoo calendars to come.

This now shows the date as a red marked number on the calendar. Underneath that is a news message that can be set to make reminders, among other things of what's coming up.

This image show the cell of text that appears over the dates as users scroll over them. This bubble of text displays the details entered in on the calendar.

The Banner in Working

2008-03-27T16:59:00.001Z

The above image is to remind you of what the original website used as it's header.

Starting off with just this image, more so just to have something in while I worked out how the image should sit within the page.

To round the website up together I decided to use a border to encase it. I took the first image and simply bordered it off. I feel having a website that is neatly displayed in the center of the screen and clearly marked usually makes for a warmer website.

To try and give the website some color I gave the banner one of the images used in the previous version of the website. While nice, the image was too large and garish underneath the badly colored and overly spacious corporate logo and tag line image.

First Attempt At Skinning

2008-03-26T19:39:00.001Z

My First Skin

As a first attempt to get the style going where I thought it should I started by simply tweaking the colors and images of the original Kubrick without changes to the core structure of the CSS layout. This is mostly so that when the next major release of WordPress comes out, within a month or 2, I could easily migrate over without too much hassle. That, and when the new version of WordPress arrives I could also switch seamlessly into the new K2 release of Kubrick. http://getk2.com/about/

K2

This new and much more advanced version of the default theme engine I based my current designs on can process a much more in terms of script capability, much of which is built in. Improvements in K2:

User-friendly.
Admin-friendly.
100% open source.
Semantic XHTML, CSS and JS structure.
Supports custom CSS files.
Smart layout adapts to needs.
Fully configureable from options page.
Upload and manage custom headers.
Sidebar Modules comes bundled (with special K2 modules) and support WordPress Widgets.
Live comment posting.
Livesearch.
Rolling Archives.
Dozens of plugins supported out-of-the-box.

Ok, so I probably won't ever need any of that? True, but it's always nice to have there in case!

Back to my skin...

I went with very similar colors as to the original theme to begin with. Choosing the lighter blues and keeping it fairly simple. Using no images at this point, but leaving enough space that I might be able to incorporate some.
While the fonts and layout wasn't how I'd have entirely liked it at this stage, I felt this would be how I'd like the end product to end up layout wise.

The banner however needing much improvement immediately!

Watergate Bay Beach Hut

2008-03-19T01:14:00.002Z

Watergate Bay Beach Hut, doesn't exist. It's parent website does however, and it's not bad, it's just too much unnecessary Flash that puts me off it. The images used look fairly amateurish, but I can see the direction they were hoping to go in. It's just not a style that I think works for the website.

Venus Company

2008-03-18T13:47:00.001Z

Venus Company, this is a actually quite a good website despite it's old fashioned layout and look. As was stated by the client also. The website offered as much information as you could need, it was laid out in such a way that made it easy enough to navigate, quite a lot of scrolling needed for certain pages though. Possibly more concise page content was needed.

The menu page that it provided was much better than the previous website I looked at. It looked much friendlier for a start, but again gave little feeling of the food without images with which to back it up.

Blue Bar

2008-03-18T01:07:00.001Z

Blue Bar is a bar located in Porth Towen, a place I know. I have eaten and drank at this bar and the website compliments the feel of the bar well. I think this is quite a nice website and despite the client stating that she thought it looked somewhat messy I would have to disagree and say it's fairly clean and easily navigated.

I would have to say however that I don't think there's any need for a Flash banner at the top of the page, however this does add to it's modernistic appeal. I just don't feel it's desirable to have a Flash banner that has to pre-load on a website such as this.

The menu page has been nicely done, giving a good feel to the food using some nice images. Although I'd have to say while the potato wedges there are quite nice, they're also quite soggy and expensive for the amount you receive.

This website is again a good example of why decent images are required on a website such as this.

Wilf's Café

2008-03-18T01:03:00.001Z

Wilf's Café, is as the client suggested; informative, but without any artistic merit. While I'm quite a fan of the very simple web page I must admit to this one lacking somewhat and creating no real appeal for the place.

However this website had obviously not been created to push the café to much via the internet, which is fine. Despite it not being overly pretty I don't think there's a whole lot wrong with this website other than the strange way in which the links have been set about the page.

Panoramic Photography + Viewers

2008-03-17T19:12:00.004Z

Recently panoramic imagery has been something I've been looking into quite a lot. I find it very interesting to view the various images you can find on the web. Having been looking into it for quite some time I've found some very interesting 360* imagery and devices for viewing them. At the top of my list of impressive programs is the Microsoft HD Viewer. This highly advanced utility is for both the creation (stitching) or panoramic images or for the viewing of them. It's also for use more specifically with HD and gigapixel 360* images. The application can be ran and viewed as an ActiveX applet that installs into your browser.

The application can be used to fully zoom in on tiny aspects of a large HD/Gigapixel image that's been taking using fish eye 360* panoramic pictures such as this image above shows. Look how the image can be zoomed in from such great distances. Baring in mind this is not software that stitches various pictures taken already at different zoom levels but instead stitches in a series of VERY high detail panoramic images.

Other applications for this software is the CCTV version. The software can read live fish eye lens feeds and convert them into flat panoramic images. This allows a single static situated CCTV camera to capture a full 180 degrees of photage that can be viewed from a remote console.

A few other sites of interest are listed below, some really good panorama's on them:

Panoramas.dk
Bohonus Virtual Tour
Panoramic Stock

Ric Stultz

2008-03-17T19:03:00.002Z

This is some wonderful artwork by American mixed media artist Ric Stultz. A lot of what Ric creates is of a very postcard, comic cell style but in such a manner that it takes on a much more extravagant poster art feel. This comes down I think in large to the use of paint splattering. Although the work displayed here could more than likely be entirely created using real world tools like the brush and pencil I expect there's a heavy use of digital manipulation amoungst it. I would be interested to know to what extent the computer has been used here to touch up, or perhaps even fully create.

Ric Stultz

HTM2PDF

2008-03-17T18:52:00.003Z

This is a HTML to PDF converter tool that works from your browser. You can either paste in direct your HTML or give the website a URL to convert. From what I've seen and heard, this is a very powerful tool that works well. I'm sure there are others out there that are just as good but so far this is the only decent one I've found that doesn't require a fair amount of time for the PDF to be emailed to you. In fact this doesn't ask for your email address what so ever, which is nice as I for one hate giving me email out to anyone. Especially a service that probably doesn't really need it.

HTM2PDF

Most Used CSS Tricks

2008-03-17T18:44:00.002Z

I stumbled across this page the other day. It's essentially a short list of very useful CSS tricks. Included in this list are things such as how to round off borders with and without the use of images. Also included are more basic tricks, such as creating more aesthetically pleasing lists and forms. This isn't a one stop CSS resource, but it is well worth a look. Most of what's on here can be simple spliced into your CSS to sand off a few of those rougher edges.

Most used CSS tricks

Faces In Places

2008-03-16T23:55:00.003Z

Faces in things is a lovely blogspot blog that is no more than a collection of Flickr streams from various users that depicts simple faces caught on camera appearing in items and unexpected places.
This is well worth the quick flick through the pictures as they're not only great pictures in themselves, but they are also very humorous to look through.

Faces In Places

Little People

2008-03-16T20:32:00.004Z

Not midgets, but little plastic models of people. This is an art project, or time filling interest, that is simply someone placing tiny plastic figurines in various locations and taking photographs of them. The figurines are situated in such a way that they look like they are doing such activities as to make them look almost as if they the correct size (in most pictures). On the whole though it's just quite a funny collection of photographs. It's just a nice idea that I think has been done well. Something quite nice to look at.

Little People

Door.swf

2008-03-16T20:22:00.003Z

This is a straight loading animation made using Flash. It follows the story of a man trying to get through a door as he's presented with many obstacles he has to overcome. It's worth a look if your after something to watch for a couple of minutes.

door.swf

Porthminster Café

2008-03-16T00:35:00.001Z

The second link I was sent by the client was that of Porthminster Café. This website is appawling. Websites like this shouldn't have Flash intros to them, and on top of that they shouldn't be this badly made, or for that matter link to the main page using popup windows that most browser's now block without question.

A splash page might have been OK, given that there is a 2 way split as to where you go once you arrive here, but to have an actual intro that literally takes a long time to slide some text across the screen is a little absurd.

The actual website, as can be seen in the first screenshot was very ugly and had been obviously badly designed from the ground up. The icons, buttons and color scheme were boring and sloppy.

They had menu's on the website that were simply large lists of unimaginatively laid out text. Not very inspiring when trying to entice someone to come and eat at your restaurant.

The website did however remind me how I need to be thinking about implementing some sort of method for locating the café. So far my favorite option is to link to the Google maps page that points to the café's location. This is easily created and serves it's purpose better than poor res images that don't really give enough detail.

Bunkers Beach Café

2008-03-15T10:04:00.000Z

On the brief that I was set there were also a set of links to other café and restaurant websites that the client thought I should look at for inspiration and as examples.
This website, Bunkers Beach Café, is the first on the list and the comments that came with the link are as follows: "this has a modern style, plenty of space and looks professional. However it does not give a feel of the food or place itself."
I would agree with this statement. The website itself is very nice, it's professionally done, clean, easy to navigate and stylized well. I would also agree the feel of the place is lost somewhat in it's design, but the images used are good and it's very hard to get a website that really portrays the true feel of a place.

I liked the way they had set out the news section. It was clean and concise. I would be more than happy if I can find a method for doing similar with the Food Dreckly website.

WordPress Skinning

2008-03-14T23:53:00.005Z

One issue about WordPress that got me at this stage was the theme system. Although it's very easy to use, very easy to install new ones, very easy to customize it was always about to receive a major overhaul in the coming months. Due to this I didn't want to stray too far from the default theme which was highly integrated with the WordPress CMS.

This is a screenshot from the example page from the WordPress homepage. It shows the default theme in it's relatively default state. Although this theme isn't at the height of beauty it is very well made and provides a very decent starting point for creating my own customization of this theme. There is also a version 2 of this theme on the way that I tested briefly. Although buggy at this stage "Kubricks" next update will be "K2" and from what I could see it is very impressive. It adds massive functionality to the theme editor within the CMS and would be, once released, the major next default theme for the next release of WordPress. So given all this I decided I would go with Kubrick for now, hoping that this leaves me in a better position to transfer over to the new version of WordPress.

The above image is that of K2, taken from the K2 website. Although it looks quite plain in it's default state it's the back end stuff that I'm more interested in as it integrates itself with WordPress much more and makes the entire site, including the CMS behind it much easier to use.

WordPress Installation

2008-03-14T23:49:00.002Z

Once I made backups of all the old Food Dreckly files I installed WordPress. Although it took a long time to upload all the hundreds of small files the installation was incredibly easy. Installation was as simple as creating the correct MySQL database, dragging and dropping the WordPress files onto the server using FTP and then running the built in installation module.

The entire process took no longer than 5 minutes, as was detailed it would do on the website.
Once installed I could take a look around the interface which was easily navigated and shouldn't provide too much hassle to anyone when wanting to make additions and changes to the content.

WordPress

2008-03-13T23:35:00.005Z

The next project I looked at was WordPress. This is a project that hasn't been going for as long as PHPNuke for instance but still has something under it's belt. It also appears a lot under the suggestions for easy to use CMS that can be easily skinned and managed by less technically astute users.

Skinning of the default theme used in WordPress, from what I can tell from testimonials on other websites seems to imply that it's easy which is a bonus.
Although WordPress is a lot more of a blog site it is also apparent that you can turn this around quite easily to make it a fully featured website as it allows for not only a posting system like Blogger, which would be useful for news, but also a 'page' system for creating proper website pages. This means that with some simple tweaking I could remove most of the blogging functionality and create a very easily update able website.

Also given the massive very open source orientated community there are a lot of free themes, plugins and add ons that would expand what can be done with this system massively and without too much hassle.

So far WordPress has impressed me the most and so I will install it to the web server as soon as I can in order to test it. The installation process is supposedly very easy to use and integration with MySQL is also easily made as the host that Food Dreckly use provide cPanel which makes life easier.

Another CMS

2008-03-13T23:24:00.000Z

Not overly impressed with the first lot of content management systems that I looked at I decided to keep on going with my search. The first I stumbled across (from the PHPNuke website forums actually) was Post-Nuke.

Post-Nuke, from what I can tell is quite a new project and I'm always wary of going with something that's not had time to mature. I'm also very easily put off a project and from what I could see it didn't set itself out from the crowd at all.

The thing that put me off the Post-Nuke project the most was that they included the most horrific links to websites that used the Post-Nuke system. As can be seen below!

None too impressive really, given that these are the showcase websites. Although I am aware this doesn't speak too much about the server side code that drives it, but instead says a lot about the designers of the websites they used as example. I'm still too put off to look into it any deeper.

Server Integrated CMS

2008-03-13T22:41:00.001Z

Theres loads of available options of course, picking one shouldn't too much hassle since most of the advanced functionality of these highly developed CMS will be lost on the Food Dreckly website. With that in mind I decided to pick the one that seems to me the easiest to navigate and use.

The two that I looked at firstly were:

Drupal
PHPNuke

Drupal is very advanced, not to say it's overly complicated. This package is used around the world for projects ranging from corporate to personal websites.

Although the general ease of Drupal to use is obvious I decided that with such a massive array of options available to the admin, presented in such a way that isn't all that obvious sometimes, that Drupal would be powerful but possibly not the best option.

PHPNuke is a CMS that a few people I know use and love. However it's layout isn't nearly as good as that of others, even Drupal. One of the key aspects that I need to keep in mind when choosing is that it has to be very easy to navigate when using the back end admin panel.

There's also the fact that I have issue with it not being entirely open source and requesting that you buy a license to remove copyright text. Personally I'd rather support an entirely open source project that offers a friendlier outlook.

The Problem With Tumblr

2008-03-11T22:30:00.003Z

Like I said in the previous post there are some issue's with Tumblr which I don't think I'm going to be able to overcome. The lack of formatting options for the posts and the style in which it's used to upload images will make it a bit too featureless.

I also sent the Tumblr support team a quick question about embedding individual posts into websites. Being that I couldn't find any method for doing so other than to embed RSS. The following is my email:

Subject: Embedding individual tumblr posts

I'm looking to create a website that has an easy to use CMS to control news items / page contents etc in an easily navigated environment. My college tutor recommended I play around with tumblr for this and now I'd really like to use tumblr as the backbone for my college project website. I've found how to embed my tumblr site feed into my website but is there a way to embed individual posts? So that I might be able to control various page contents, over various different pages, from my
tumblr dash board.
If this is at all possible could you please show me how as I love tumblr and would want to continue using it!

Thank you for your time,
J.O.

In reply to this email:

Subject: Re: (Case 6881) Embedding individual tumblr posts

Hi, Jako. That is not possible at this time. My apologies. I can't tell you how much we appreciate your support and feedback. I've passed your suggestion along to our development team.

Please let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.

Thanks for using Tumblr!

Marc   :-)

I guess this rules out Tumblr for the time being, I shall however continue to use it and keep an eye on the updates it receives in future. There's a lot of potential behind Tumblr, but for what I need it in this case I think I'll give it a miss!

Tumblr

2008-03-10T22:12:00.002Z

Tumblr is good, very good. Having a play about with I can really appreciate the ease of which content can be added to your Tumblr blog. However it does have some issue's which may cause a bit of a problem. Firstly it is again possible to embed Tumblr into your website using feeds, but these cannot be formatted which is an issue.

There's also the issue of how it blogs, that is to say that while it does blog text and can be used to blog images it cannot be used to blog more than a single image and isn't designed to blog large text and image posts. This makes sense in it's scrap book theme but could cause serious problems for what I am going to be needing it for.

Adding posts:

Adding posts to your Tumblr is straight forward, I would even go as far as saying it's also the easiest system of blogging out there. With no bullshit to contend with it's a system that anyone could get to grips with following the shortest of tutorials, which fortunately Tumblr supplies.

Playing Around:

I thought I might be able to use this system still by creating a homepage on the Food Dreckly server and then skinning the Tumblr blog to look similar so that the homepage could link to the various Tumblr posts individually and then Tumblr would link back to the Food Dreckly homepage. This would allow for a very easy method of updating the website.

2 Blogging Websites

2008-03-08T22:06:00.004Z

To kick things off I looked at 2 blogging websites:

Blogger

While using blogger would be possible, it is seemingly only possible by embedding RSS feeds into the website. RSS feeds are hard to format and annoying to implement. Although Blogger is a very good blogging website, the support it has for embedding it's posts in other websites seems to be fairly none existent, so I dropped this as a choice fairly soon after looking into it. I also feel that steering clear of Google applications is always the best approach in life. Using a blogging application like this can also look a bit messy and I feel it is somewhat of a cop out. In the long run I'd want something more integrated.

I could have however used a blogger blog site entirely. By skinning it cleverly and using labels to mark pages and then using the fooddreckly.com domain name to give it a more Food Dreckly inclusive feel. We'll see if I'll return to this option at a later date, but I doubt I will.

Tumblr

This is a website that was suggested to me by my tutor.

This is a very cut down version of your usual blogging website in so much that it is designed more with a scrap book appeal to it. The idea behind Tumblr is to create a system of incredible ease and speed with which to blog with. However, despite Tumblr being a very easy system to use it does have a lot of very advanced features behind it. Of course it's greatest appeal is it's ease of use, given what I need of it to fulfill this brief.

Content Management Systems

2008-03-08T20:56:00.007Z

It is clear that the best approach in creating a new and improved website would be to base it on a well kept and already existing CMS that would allow for easier updating, preferably entirely workable by a less technically literate person. This would allow for the website to be completed and for that to be the end of involvement to the most part by the website designer, handing over the day to day maintenance work directly to the client.

Although the website hosting plan that is being currently used is of quite low cost and thus low bandwidth + available space, the actual service it provides is fairly feature filled with cPanel pre-installed and PHP/MySQL/ASP.net support and so forth. This means that although the website there currently doesn't make use of any of these features it would be more than possible to do so.

So what do I require from a CMS? Really the most important thing I need is a simple way for myself or a member of the Food Dreckly staff to make changes to any one of the pages quickly and without much technical jargon between them and the update.

When first looking into various CMS I started thinking how I could use the original website template and replace the content of the pages it loaded to that of blog posts from an external blog hosting website. This would not only reduce the amount of bandwidth that the website would require, but also be a well kept and easily manageable system to get to grips with.
Firstly I had a look at using blogger for a system of blogging directly to the website. Or rather the website retrieving the blog posts.

Analyzing Original Website

2008-03-07T20:26:00.007Z

From receiving the brief and analyzing it for a summery I decided to have a look at the original page and note what I thought of it to help me work out how better to improve it.

This page I created a year or so ago now and was designed originally to be an easily navigated, simple and clean website that would help drive trade to the clients email address and allow for viewing public to gauge simple information about the Food Dreckly service.

This website is also situated on a low cost web host pay plan that offers a smaller amount of bandwidth and space. With that in mind this original website was created to not push the limits of these server restraints. A small array of imagery was used and an overall low page size to decrease bandwidth usage and thus potential cost.

The biggest issue this website has was the way in which it had to be updated. Because I made this website entirely using HTML and CSS and without any hint of a real CMS, the updating of the news section and the website in general became an issue. While it was fairly simple to update the news it was a very tedious chore to keep it both updated and stylized the way they were required to be. In order to update we had to enter the new dates into a table using raw HTML and then manually alternate the colors of the different cells by hand, finally uploading the updated file via FTP. A lot to do if your not good with computers.

While it was possible for a short while to do these updates by hand it was deemed that a more client friendly approach was needed for a future release of the website.

The client had also complained about the shear bulk of spam emails that she was receiving. Despite placing various junk mail filters on the email account using programs such as 'Spam Assassin' it was made clear that a better approach was required.

Although this website did have it's faults I was a fan of it's clearly set out interface, very simple navigation system and bold layout. When viewing websites I very rarely get on with a site that over complicates itself in any form and feel that the simplest and clearest approach, with as few sprawling links and cluttered imagery, is best. In any future website design I would quite like to keep within the same theory of design.

In conclusion it's really the back end of the website that needs to be given a work over and the actual aesthetic of the website is not far wrong as it is. There needs to be improved functionality and this really will be mostly a server side job.

Analyzing the Brief

2008-03-07T19:49:00.003Z

Once I had the brief I set about trying to condense and summarize what it was asking of me. I figured the best approach to doing this would be to bullet point the requests. This will help me greatly in working out what I need to be getting on with.

Neccessary:

Improved layout
Simplified updating
Events viewer
To show 3 distinct arms to the business
Picture of the café
Outside catering page to include image sample of food and testimonial's page
Fast food / Farmers Market page to include images, sample menu and link to the Farmers Market website
Better suppliers links setup
Accessibility specification check
Better Google listing

Not necessary:

Complete overhaul

Pages Required:

Home page
Sample menu
Outside catering
Sales day page
Farmers Market
Third Friday Night and 'other' events
Contact page

Aesthetic:

Clean
Clear
Simple
Blue and maroon color theme
Logo complimenting colors

Other items that the client wishes to receive:

• The website itself – as a series of HTML pages;

• Documentation - a list of the pages along with a map of how they fit together;

• Clear information on how Food Dreckly staff can update and manage the site in the future

• A clear indication that the code has passed accessibility requirements.

The Brief Set

2008-03-05T23:37:00.005Z

For our Personal Development project we were asked to obtain or create semi professional briefs. Because I felt that a previous project of mine was in need of a major over haul from a server side point of view, and because the client felt so also I asked for a brief off of them. The following is what they sent me:

---------------------------------------------------

Website Design Brief

Overview

Food Dreckly currently has a website which is in need of revision and updating. We do not feel that a complete overhaul is required but definitely new text, changes and additions to the current web page layout and better links to other sites. The website is promoted in all our publicity and therefore it is of paramount importance that in the future a ‘non techno’ member of staff can easily update the site to reflect changes to the business.

Aims and Objectives

Food Dreckly is a proactive food business with a growing reputation for quality food. We would hope that our website will act as a ‘shop window’ for the business providing potential and existing customers with a ‘taste’ of what we do and how we do it. To this end we want the site to demonstrate the Food Dreckly:

• ethos – the use of locally sourced, high quality and seasonal ingredients, often organic and where that is not possible the use of fairly and ethically traded goods.
• attitude – relaxed with a touch of humour, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the food on offer.
• menu – high quality, traditional (with style) and innovative dishes, affordable;

Audience

The intended audience for the website is likely to be:

• existing customers - wishing to find out about events, sales days, outside catering and contact details.

• potential customers – those who have read about us in marketing, promotional or media material or heard about us from friends.

• Other business’ that are looking to sell us their products or services or create mutually beneficial links. This might be potential suppliers, other tourism business’ or even our competitors.

• We recognise that most of our clients are professional people who are looking for high quality and healthy food in an informal atmosphere. This group also eats out at other more expensive venues and has quite high expectations of service. The age range is probably late 30’s upwards and includes an increasing number of retired ‘comfortably off’ customers.

Design Specification

Clarity, cleanness and simplicity are crucial to the feel of the site.
Font - We have an existing logo using the colours blue and maroon. Staff uniforms include blue polo shirts and maroon aprons. Any font or colour used needs to complement this existing logo and colour bias.

Picture – we have a small library of pictures that can be used. The current site only uses pictures of food. Pictures of the café, the farmer’s market food stall, suppliers, Dartmoor and the Tamar Valley area and outside catering events should be included. The use of high quality pictures is very important as we are appealing to professional and often artistic customers.

Other Café Websites

http://www.bunkersbeachcafe.com.au/breakfast.html - this has a modern style, plenty of space and looks professional. However it does not give a feel of the food or place itself.

www.porthminstercafe.co.uk - an example of a good title bar but a far too crowded and messy layout

www.venuscompany.co.uk - an example of good information but very old fashioned design

http://www.wilfs-cafe.co.uk easy to navigate, fast and informative but no finesse or artistic merit

http://www.blue-bar.co.uk a modern feel and relaxed but still a bit messy

http://www.watergatebay.co.uk/thebeachhut - slick and possibly a bit too clever for its purpose

Functionality Specification

Navigation: We already have a clean and functional title bar that will helps the customer to navigate the site quickly. However the quality of the logo is poor and takes up too much space, it is dwarfed by the strong font of the strap line.

Home page the existing page needs to clearly show that there are three arms to the business, these are: the café, outside catering and Farmers Market stall. There also needs to be a ‘Contact us’ provision. We suggest using a picture of Dartmoor or the Tamar Valley on the home page to reinforce our pride in the area.

The café opening page to include: existing text to set out our ethos, a picture of the café, a map to the venue and opening times, this page should have links to a:

1) sample menu,
2) Third Friday Night and other events
3)Ward and Chowen cattle sales days
4) details of media coverage
3) contact us

Outside catering opening page to include existing text and picture of a buffet or sample dishes. 1) A link to testimonials from past customers would be desirable 2) contact us
Fast Food /Farmers Market opening page to include picture of the stall in action, sample menu and link to Farmers Market website.

Supplier’s links to our supplier’s websites need to be better integrated into the text
Accessibility Specification

The current web site is no longer easy to access on Google, the inclusion of the Food Dreckly name on the web sites of others has pushed our own website down the list. It is very important that the search engine ranking is increased to improve our accessibility. The work of the designer will not be considered complete until the website is checked for accessibility using one of the popular tools

Deliverables

By the end of the contract the following work must be delivered:

• The website itself – as a series of HTML pages;

• Documentation - a list of the pages along with a map of how they fit together;

• Clear information on how Food Dreckly staff can update and manage the site in the future

• A clear indication that the code has passed accessibility requirements.

Budget

The budget for the website is very limited and we do not wish to incur expensive after care, hence the lack of interactive elements. To this end we would require the website designer to include all likely costs within the work including any changes we make during the process.

We require a clear statement of the ownership of copyright over the pages, code, content and images created or used in developing the site. In particular, you should ensure that rights over the coding of the pages remain with Food Dreckly.

Dont Click

2008-01-09T14:20:00.000Z

http://www.dontclick.it/

We’ll miss you Pandora

2008-01-09T08:45:00.002Z

Well as we were all expecting the end of Pandora is drawing near in the UK. Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora has issued an email notification of the impending blocking of UK IP's to the Pandora website after negotiations between Pandora and the various alliances and organizations that pretend to protect the music industry push impossible to meet royalty costs on the playing of free to listen web radio. It was an astounding project that got me through a lot of dull times with the fast streaming of quality music. This is a prime example of a service that had found a solution to free music without the need to pirate and now that it's gone, I guess I'll go steal again. The following email is what Tim circulated:

hi, it's Tim,

This is an email I hoped I would never have to send.

As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. It was a terrible day. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

Based upon the IP address from which you recently visited Pandora, it appears that you are listening from the UK. If you are, in fact, listening from the US, and are denied access from Pandora on or after January 15th please contact Pandora Support: pandora-support@pandora.com.

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don't often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists. The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans. As a former working musician myself, I find it very troubling.

We have been told to sign these totally unworkable license rates or switch off, non-negotiable...so that is what we are doing. Streaming illegally is just not in our DNA, and we have to take the threats of legal action seriously. Lest you think this is solely an international problem, you should know that we are also fighting for our survival here in the US, in the face of a crushing increase in web radio royalty rates, which if left unchanged, would mean the end of Pandora.

We know what an epicenter of musical creativity and fan support the UK has always been, which makes the prospect of not being able to launch there and having to block our first listeners all the more upsetting for us.

We know there is a lot of support from listeners and artists in the UK for Pandora and remain hopeful that at some point we'll get beyond this. We're going to keep fighting for a fair and workable rate structure that will allow us to bring Pandora back to you. We'll be sure to let you know if Pandora becomes available in the UK. There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK.

Pandora will stop streaming to the UK as of January 15th, 2008.

Again, on behalf of all of us at Pandora, I'm very, very sorry.

Lost Planet

2008-01-08T21:58:00.000Z

Again, another award winner from Horizon. Again, nothing too splendid. I can appreciate that the best approach to creating a game website is to imitate the game itself in style, of which most achieve. However I don't think it needs to be done in such a bog standard manner. It may well come down to budget but I don't think this is any excuse to keep on churning out website's that are quite literally identical bar a style switch, which is very reminiscent of just switching to a different CSS style on a template.

This website is very similar in style to the EA Game's release "Battlefield: 2142". The thing that I quite liked about this website was it's thermal indicator. Basically this is a part of the website that encourages the user to boost his 'thermal energy levels' by looking through the website. Once your 'levels' have reached a high amount you get to see something or other.
However with the website seemingly not loading 90% of the time and there being no way of reloading previous pages I got stuck with loading bars almost all the time and so gave up. This idea however was a great plan to get users to fully explore a website that they might otherwise move along from quite soon.

Civ City: Rome

2008-01-08T21:51:00.001Z

This computer game that will be released shortly hired a team of designers who go by the name ROKKAN to create a promotional website for the game. They won an award for their website in the Horizon best Flash website category.

I'm wonder why though. The website doesn't offer any new approach to creating a Flash based game website. This is a very standard affair with nothing any more interesting than a few dozen others that I've seen.

Again though we find ourselves waiting silly times for content to load. I just can't seem to find justification for the load times on this website as there isn't all that much to see after each loading period.

This is the typical loading bar, a pillar being constructed. You get to see this a lot on this Flash website.

I do quite like the background movement going on, for instance in this shot the people are building on the left hand side of the screen whilst you read about the game contents.

OK so while the website isn't fantastic at any stretch of the imagination it does look all very professionally created with a very unified style that seems to tie in perfectly with what the game itself offers. This maybe exactly what they were after, but it all just reminds me of the old Age of Empires website + game which makes the entire product look dated and as if it offers nothing new.

Medieval Total War

While the Civ City may not have created a very impressive website there only seems to be two main approaches to creating game website's. Either a very heavily Flash orientated approach or in my opinion the much more desirable HTML website with Flash to back it up visually. A good example of this would be the Medieval Total War website. Although it's not a stunning example of interactive design is achieves perfectly a highly and easily updatable website that visually is more than enough.

You also see a lot less loaders on this example. What content does need some loading is also content that isn't essential to the viewing of the website. This is my preferable direction in a website.

BMW Transact

2008-01-08T20:23:00.001Z

I love the clear design and simple layout of this website. Ever increasingly I've come to realise less is more. With all this web 2.0 interactivity and design I really feel the website's that speak to me the most are those which don't try to bombard me with choices.

On a different note I found the loading times of this website very annoying. Everything was a quick simple flash website with little to load but the main content, which were high res videos. Videos that, for their size, needn't be quite so high res.

Boost Mobile Rock Corps

2008-01-08T20:20:00.000Z

Although this website was very busy it managed well to keep itself coherent. The duel Flash, HTML design worked well and complimented each other well which isn't too often.

This website must take a lot to keep updated and in terms of faults I found the fact it reloaded itself whenever a HTML link was clicked quite annoying but the load times weren't bad and the important information was there first to be viewed.

The visual styling of the website wasn't anything ground breaking but it managed to stay consistent and seemed to fit the content and the style of writing perfectly.

Jelly Jumper

2008-01-08T20:19:00.001Z

This is a website that Mule showed me earlier. It's to market the Logitec keyboards via a fun game that lets you take control of a jelly man and gets you to jump around a keyboard onto coloured keys. It's actually really good fun for such a simple game. But simple things done well are often the best things. As I've said in prior posts, simple and well done is best. In projects I often complicate things too much for myself and then in the end I always have a good idea which hasn't quite reached it's full potential. I'm trying to train myself to take on less and achieve more. This is a prime example of that ethic.

NTH Degree FX

2008-01-02T23:15:00.000Z

I came across this design team whilst surfing a good design website of which I can't recall the name. However It was strange for me to find this design group with an online portfolio that didn't match the level of their work. This group, NTH, create high end business websites. However, they're own portfolio was very poor in comparison. The quality of work looked rushed and somewhat low grade with some dodgy and plain animations and a very mediocre style Flash site. However they had a nice style going as can be seen in this from the site.

Some of the groups they've worked for are Disneyland:

And the Hard Rock Hotel:

However the design team, using their portfolio site, do demo their work well with some nice demo reels dedicated to individual projects.

An Experiment in Particles

2007-12-14T11:09:00.001Z

A simple experiment into a particle explosion that I thought would be interesting to create in search for ideas surrounding the project.

View my cursor explosion here.

View my firework explosion here.

Code:

Moon Orbit

2007-12-14T10:46:00.001Z

This project is in continuation of a tutorial of Flash AS 2.0 using some AS 3.0 practices given to us by Anna.

Essentially the tutorial was to create a moon orbiting the Earth within Flash.

I thought it would be interesting to extend this to being able to play with the settings that determine the orbit trajectory while the file is playing. I allowed the user to change the numbers that govern the trajectory, speed with the inclusion of the Earths own orbit.

Please view here.

This was a fun excursion into some techniques I hadn't before tried. For example the inclusion of the components that Flash offers as default in order to control the settings of the orbits.

Code:

angle = 0;
centerX = stage.width/2;
centerY = stage.height/2;
centerpos = {_x:300, _y:250};
i = 1;
earthSpeed = earthSpeed_com.value;
moonSpeed = moonSpeed_com.value;
earthXRadius = earthXRadius_com.value;
earthYRadius = earthYRadius_com.value;
moonXRadius = moonXRadius_com.value;
moonYRadius = moonYRadius_com.value;
var earthSpeed_com:mx.controls.NumericStepper;
var moonSpeed_com:mx.controls.NumericStepper;
var moonXRadius_com:mx.controls.NumericStepper;
var moonYRadius_com:mx.controls.NumericStepper;
var earthXRadius_com:mx.controls.NumericStepper;
var earthYRadius_com:mx.controls.NumericStepper;
var nstepListener:Object = new Object();
nstepListener.change = function(evt_obj:Object) {
trace("Value changed to "+evt_obj.target.value);
earthXRadius = earthXRadius_com.value;
earthYRadius = earthYRadius_com.value;
moonXRadius = moonXRadius_com.value;
moonYRadius = moonYRadius_com.value;
earthSpeed = earthSpeed_com.value;
moonSpeed = moonSpeed_com.value;
};
earthSpeed_com.addEventListener("change",nstepListener);
moonSpeed_com.addEventListener("change",nstepListener);
moonXRadius_com.addEventListener("change",nstepListener);
moonYRadius_com.addEventListener("change",nstepListener);
earthXRadius_com.addEventListener("change",nstepListener);
earthYRadius_com.addEventListener("change",nstepListener);
var moon_mc:MovieClip = _root.attachMovie("moon_mc", "moon_mc", i, centerpos);
i++;
var earth_mc:MovieClip = _root.attachMovie("earth_mc", "earth_mc", i, centerpos);
earth_mc.onEnterFrame = function():Void {
this._x = 300+Math.cos(angle)*earthXRadius;
this._y = 200+Math.sin(angle)*earthYRadius;
angle += earthSpeed;
earthpos = {_x:this._x, _y:this._y};
i++;
var trail_mc:MovieClip = _root.attachMovie("earth_mc", "earth_mc", i, earthpos);
trail_mc.onEnterFrame = function() {
this._alpha -= 1;
this._xscale -= 2;
this._yscale -= 2;
if (this._xscale<=0) {
this.removeMovieClip();
}
};
};
moon_mc.onEnterFrame = function():Void {
this._x = earth_mc._x+Math.cos(angle)*moonXRadius;
this._y = earth_mc._y+Math.sin(angle)*moonYRadius;
angle += moonSpeed;
moonpos = {_x:this._x, _y:this._y};
i++;
var trail_mc:MovieClip = _root.attachMovie("moon_mc", "trail_mc", i, moonpos);
trail_mc.onEnterFrame = function() {
this._alpha -= 0.75;
this._xscale -= 2;
this._yscale -= 2;
if (this._xscale<=0) {
this.removeMovieClip();
}
};
};

The Big Box

2007-12-14T10:40:00.001Z

The 500x500 banner was always the one I dreaded the most. My first plans for it were lending towards a dress up droll style game. However during the time I spent creating the other two banners I came to realise that I didn't think it was a worthy exploration. So instead I turned my attention towards a mini version of the Marvel digital comics comic viewer. A mini flash application that lets you read a sample comics. Roughly about 5 pages long each page is 100k and loaded as and when the user requests the page. I can't show you how it works here so you'll have to make do with some screen shots. It's unfortunate but I just don't have the web space that is required in order to uploaded the various different files that this banner uses.

This was a good project, even if it didn't entirely succeed, which can be read about in my evaluation (to follow sometime shortly).

The reason I'll label this as a decent attempt is simply that it taught me some incredibly useful techniques that I just hadn't grasped before, in particular setting off functions in a different manner and the use of XML within Flash.

Code:

//xml
function loadXML(loaded) {
    if (loaded) {
        xmlNode = this.firstChild;
        image = [];
        description = [];
        total = xmlNode.childNodes.length;
        for (i=0; i<total; i++) {
            image[i] = xmlNode.childNodes[i].childNodes[0].firstChild.nodeValue;
            description[i] = xmlNode.childNodes[i].childNodes[1].firstChild.nodeValue;
        }
        firstImage();
    } else {
        desc_txt.text = "unable to find file!"
        content = "file not loaded!";
    }
}
xmlData = new XML();
xmlData.ignoreWhite = true;
xmlData.onLoad = loadXML;
xmlData.load("images.xml");
//variables
//listeners
listen = new Object();
listen.onKeyDown = function() {
    if (Key.getCode() == Key.LEFT) {
        prevImage();
    } else if (Key.getCode() == Key.RIGHT) {
        nextImage();
    }
};
Key.addListener(listen);
//buttons
reAlign_btn.onRelease = function(){
    reAlign();
}
previous_btn.onRelease = function() {
    prevImage();
};
next_btn.onRelease = function() {
    nextImage();
};
sizeInc_btn.onRelease = function() {
    sizeInc();
};
sizeDec_btn.onRelease = function() {
    sizeDec();
};
panRight_mc.onRelease = function(){
    picture._x += 20;
}
panLeft_mc.onRelease = function(){
    picture._x -= 20;
}
panDown_mc.onRelease = function(){
    picture._y += 20;
}
panUp_mc.onRelease = function(){
    picture._y -= 20;
}
//object functions
p = 0;
this.onEnterFrame = function() {
    filesize = picture.getBytesTotal();
    loaded = picture.getBytesLoaded();
    preloader._visible = true;
    if (loaded != filesize) {
        preloader.preload_bar._xscale = 100*loaded/filesize;
    } else {
        preloader._visible = false;
        if (picture._alpha<100) {
            picture._x = (Stage.width / 2) - (picture._width / 2);
            picture._alpha += 10;
        }
    }
};
//functions
function beginDrag() {
    picture.startDrag(true);
}
function endDrag() {
    picture.stopDrag();
}
function nextImage() {
    if (p<(total-1)) {
        p++;
        if (loaded == filesize) {
            picture._alpha = 0;
            picture.loadMovie(image[p],1);
            desc_txt.text = description[p];
            picture_num();
        }
    }
}
function prevImage() {
    if (p>0) {
        p--;
        picture._alpha = 0;
        picture.loadMovie(image[p],1);
        desc_txt.text = description[p];
        picture_num();
    }
}
function firstImage() {
    if (loaded == filesize) {
        trace('done');
        picture._alpha = 0;
        picture.loadMovie(image[0],1);
        desc_txt.text = description[0];
        picture_num();
    }
}
function picture_num() {
    current_pos = p+1;
    pos_txt.text = current_pos+" / "+total;
}
function sizeDec() {
    picture._xscale -= 15;
    picture._yscale -= 15;
}
function sizeInc() {
    picture._xscale += 15;
    picture._yscale += 15;
}
function reAlign() {
    picture._xscale = 100;
    picture._yscale = 100;
    picture._x = (Stage.width / 2) - (picture._width / 2);
}

The Final Landscape Banner Design

2007-12-14T10:33:00.001Z

After the excessive amount of time wasted on making lightning (as far as the progress of this project goes) I finally came up with this small and efficient little banner. It does the job, which is all I think in the end it needs to do. I'm glad I looked into the lightning since I feel it pushed my knowledge of Action Script forward but in the end I'm more pleased with this than any other attempt.

Please view it here.

Lightning

2007-12-14T10:30:00.001Z

This is going to be the hardest. My intention is to have the lightning striking outwards from the finger tips of the users flash cursor and for the lightning to strike areas of the stage. However, in practice I've come to realise this to be far too hard.

The following are some of my attempts, and some of my failures. However, this has been one of the most rewarding experiments I've ever attempted. This is AS that I've never attempted before and the results were actually quite pleasing, if not what I'd attempted for at first.

It has to be said that I spent far too much time on this aspect of the project getting far too involved with code that I knew from the offset would ultimately be too far from reach.

The actual design I went with for this landscape banner is entirely different, simpler and after much deliberation, preferable.

The following are links to the hosted SWF files. At the very end of the post will be listed the code I used to get this effect.

Working lines.

Creating a moving lines.

The final attempt with some effects thrown in for good measure.

//////////////////////////////////////////

//Sorry for the formatting, Flash won't format my code properly.

//the simple code

i = 0;
fscommand("allowscale", "false");
onEnterFrame = function () {;
var line_mc = attachMovie("line_mc", "line_mc", i);
i++;
xpos1 = _root.circle1_mc._x;
ypos1 = _root.circle1_mc._y;
xpos2 = _root.circle2_mc._x;
ypos2 = _root.circle2_mc._y;
xscale = xpos2 - xpos1;
yscale = ypos2 - ypos1;
line_mc._x = xpos1;
line_mc._y = ypos1;
line_mc._xscale = xscale;
line_mc._yscale = yscale;
};

//the more complicated code

i = 0;
xPlace = 90;
yPlace = random(160);
bolt = function () {;
p -= 5;
p = 50;
glowXScale = 200;
glowYScale = 200;
for (i = 1; i < 70; i++) { ;
circle1_mc.removeMovieClip();circle2_mc.removeMovieClip();//line_mc.removeMovieClip();
circle1Place = {_x: xPlace, _y: yPlace};
var circle1_mc = attachMovie("circle_mc", "circle1_mc", i, circle1Place);i++;
var glow_mc = attachMovie("glow_mc", "glow_mc", i, circle1Place);i++;
circle1X = circle1_mc._x;
glow_mc._xscale = glowXScale;
glow_mc._yscale = glowYScale;
glowXScale -= 15;
glowYScale -= 15;
newPos = {_x: xPlace+p, _y: random(40)+10};
var circle2_mc = attachMovie("circleblue_mc", "circle2_mc", i, newPos);i++;
xPlace = circle2_mc._x;
yPlace = circle2_mc._y;
var line_mc = attachMovie("line_mc", "line_mc", i);i++;
xpos1 = _root.circle1_mc._x;
ypos1 = _root.circle1_mc._y;
xpos2 = _root.circle2_mc._x;
ypos2 = _root.circle2_mc._y;
xscale = xpos2 - xpos1;
yscale = ypos2 - ypos1;
line_mc._x = xpos1;
line_mc._y = ypos1;
line_mc._xscale = xscale;
line_mc._yscale = yscale;
//
p -= 5;
xPlace = 1;
yPlace = random(50)+25;
p = 50;
glowXScale = 200;
glowYScale = 200;
};
for (i = 1; i < 50; i++) { ;
circle1_mc.removeMovieClip();circle2_mc.removeMovieClip();//line_mc.removeMovieClip();
circle1Place = {_x: xPlace, _y: yPlace};
var circle1_mc = attachMovie("circle_mc", "circle1_mc", i, circle1Place);i++;
var glow_mc = attachMovie("glow_mc", "glow_mc", i, circle1Place);i++;
circle1X = circle1_mc._x;
glow_mc._xscale = glowXScale;
glow_mc._yscale = glowYScale;
glowXScale -= 15;
glowYScale -= 15;
newPos = {_x: xPlace+p, _y: random(40)+10};
var circle2_mc = attachMovie("circleblue_mc", "circle2_mc", i, newPos);i++;
xPlace = circle2_mc._x;
yPlace = circle2_mc._y;
var line_mc = attachMovie("line_mc", "line_mc", i);i++;
xpos1 = _root.circle1_mc._x;
ypos1 = _root.circle1_mc._y;
xpos2 = _root.circle2_mc._x;
ypos2 = _root.circle2_mc._y;
xscale = xpos2 - xpos1;
yscale = ypos2 - ypos1;
line_mc._x = xpos1;
line_mc._y = ypos1;
line_mc._xscale = xscale;
line_mc._yscale = yscale;
};
};
setInterval(bolt, 500);

Jumping to the End

2007-12-14T10:13:00.001Z

Due to lack of documentation on the between effort this is the end design. Sorry for the leap. I find it very easy to get caught up in the creation of a thing and forget to actually record the progress I make.

The SWF can be viewed here

Hot Fingers

2007-12-14T10:04:00.001Z

The flame is initially going to be burning from the tip of the hand in this banner and so I needed a finger from which to burn. The following are just my experiments towards this end.

This is the finger I went with. The flame will emanate from the top of it. An idea posed in class suggested that I should also turn the hardware mouse into the button press finger icon but after many attempt and searches I couldn't work out how to do this and instead went with the simple pointer.

Burning Ring of Fire

2007-12-14T10:00:00.001Z

Creating the flame that the hand holds. Just some basic attempts to get it looking the way I want.

First attempt, far too chunky

Second attempt, too skinny.

Third attempt, just right!

I wanted to get the flame to touch the logo on the screen and set fire to the logo text but after hours and hours of trying and failing I decided to just encase the code that causes the burning in quotes and leave it be. As can be seen below.

As far as I can tell the code that does cause the burning 'should' work, but instead of catching fire to the text it just seems to warp the original fire and cause excessive amounts of lag due to (I'm assuming) a bad loop somewhere down the line.

onEnterFrame = function () {
if(firstRun == "go"){
fadeInText_mc._alpha += 4;
hand_mc._y += 4;
arrow_mc._alpha -= 6;
}
var flame_mc = attachMovie("flame_mc", "flame_mc", i, decalpos);
i++;
var spark_mc = attachMovie("spark_mc", "spark_mc", i, decalpos);
i++;
flame_mc.speed = (Math.random()*(5-2)+2);
flame_mc.scaleDown = (Math.random()*(6-4)+4);
flame_mc.startScale = (Math.random()*(500-400)+400);
flame_mc._x = _root.xmousepos+(Math.random()*(3))-(Math.random()*(3));
flame_mc._rotation = random(360);
flame_mc._xscale = this.startScale;
flame_mc._yscale = this.startScale;
flame_mc._alpha = this.startScale;
spark_mc._alpha = (Math.random()*(90-20)+20);
spark_mc._x = _root.xmousepos+(Math.random()*(10))-(Math.random()*(10));
spark_mc._y = _root.ymousepos - 9;
spark_mc.speed = (Math.random()*(5-2)+2);
spark_mc._rotation = random(360);
spark_mc.scaleDown = (Math.random()*(3-2)+2);
spark_mc.onEnterFrame = function() {
this._alpha -= this.scaleDown;
this._y -= this.speed;
this._xscale -= this.scaleDown;
this._yscale -= this.scaleDown;
if (this._xscale<=1) {
this.removeMovieClip();
}
}
flame_mc.onEnterFrame = function() {
this._alpha -= flame_mc.scaleDown;
this._y -= this.speed;
this._xscale -= this.scaleDown;
this._yscale -= this.scaleDown;
/*if (this.hitTest(_root.marvelLogo_mc).hitTest(_x, _y, true)) {
this.removeMovieClip();
thisPosX = this._x;
thisPosY = this._y;
trace("hit "+p);
p++;
burnpos = {_x:thisPosX, _y:thisPosY};
var burn_mc = attachMovie("flame_mc", "flame_mc", i, burnpos);
i++;
burn_mc.speed = (Math.random()*(3-1)+1);
burn_mc.scaleDown = (Math.random()*(7-5)+5);
burn_mc.startScale = (Math.random()*(50-20)+20);
burn_mc._alpha = startScale;
burn_mc._xscale = startScale;
burn_mc._yscale = startScale;
burn_mc.onEnterFrame = function() {
this._y -= this.speed;
this._xscale -= this.scaleDown;
this._yscale -= this.scaleDown;
this._alpha -= this.scaleDown;
};
}*/
if (this._xscale<=1) {
this.removeMovieClip();
}
};
};

Initial Banner Creation Attempts

2007-12-14T09:50:00.001Z

The first banner I intend to create is the flaming hand skyscraper banner.

The following is my collection of images taken from Marvel sources that I felt could be used as inspiration or assets when creating this comic. Since the aim is based around fire it seems I'll be focusing quite a bit on the Human Torch from the Fantastic 4.

Body By Milk

2007-12-14T09:28:00.001Z

bodybymilk.com

What an advert for simply milk. This is a large advert that could be quite misunderstood to be a fully fledge website. This website is aimed at kids and teens and attempts to encourage them to drink milk with some good old fashioned and blatant whoring out of teen idols with milky mustaches. I can't say I like this website what so ever, while thumbing through it you just get the overwhelming sense of sly intent. The advert has all the hall marks of a McDonalds advert with it's 'funky' and 'cool' layout and cheesy music. This advert has nothing to offer on a content front other than it's impressive construction. However impressive it is the overpowering smell of corporate misunderstanding of youth interest put me off actually venturing too deep inside and even though I did to more extent than I would have usually for the sake of research I found little to keep me there.

When it comes to these large and very interactive adverts it almost always pays to just be simple and direct in my opinion. Very often as soon as anyone realises that it's no more than a cruel attempt at peddling an idea at you using bright colours and flashy images you'll immediately try and look for faults unless the subject matter is already a subject of interest to you. In this case, being it milk, I don't think many will stick around just to listen to the lyrics of one of the worst bands I've come across.

Humanitarian Aid

2007-12-14T09:17:00.001Z

Demonstration of this advert can be found here.

This is a very impressive advert. As you can see from the demonstration link above, the plane flies in over the page content and drops aid bags on the website and then in the centre of this the main advert appears. The entire sequence doesn't take long, it looks very pretty and certainly grabs your attention while at the same time offering you little information other than a single line of text and a link to find out more. This appears to be a favourite with the military at the moment, inviting you to find out more and giving you very little to go on in terms of initial information. I have no intention of ever joining the army or even entering conflict but some of these arm recruitment banners have taken me, quite willingly, to the recruitment site just to find out about the rest of the advert.

In particular I think it's worth noting the British Army's current advertisement campaign which presents you with footage from what appears to a real recording. The video will always start off with a simple recruitment appeal of sorts (even if it's just someone explaining the good work they do) but then take the video very suddenly to a crisis which doesn't quite resolve itself before the advert ends. In order to find out what happens you have to follow the link and find the ending, very effective form of advertisement.

Also worth mentioning is the U.S. Military and their recruitment through free online games. It's this form of advertisement that seems to most win over the viewers interest. U.S. official claim the game "America's Army" which was created with the intention of boosting recruitment has increased the recruitment of young adults by up to 17% since it was first released. Statistics indicate that 28% of all persons visiting the America's Army website with the intention to play a first person shooter actually visit the U.S. military recruitment website via simple and small advert banners nestled within the games website.

America's Army

It may even take you a few careful looks to find these adverts, but it just goes to prove a well placed advert no matter how small and unobtrusive can be a powerful tool.

Researching banners

2007-12-14T09:02:00.001Z

Shrek Interactive Advert

This interactive advert uses the highly popular overlapping advert technique that seems to have become incredibly popular all of a sudden. It's a well polished advert that offers interaction, exploration and pleasing visuals. However like with all these adverts it can quickly draw your irritation as well while it overlaps onto web page content that you need to see or use. These adverts are only becoming more of a nuisance the more they become popular and start to obscure more and more of the website. My casing point for the annoyance they cause me really stems from the Pandora website that features such adverts appearing in various locations around the outer edge of the media player and can get stuck enlarged over the buttons that control the player. I would try and link to these adverts but the Pandora site loads random adverts each time your visit the website so finding an example would be down to shear luck.

Despite my hatred of the advert I do find they work, they always attract your attention. Even if my attention is mostly livid disgust.

Initial sketches

2007-12-14T08:41:00.001Z

Sorry about the poor quality and visibility but they were only pencil sketches.

These sketches were all to be based on the idea of discovering your own power through the use of the digital comics website. It would imply that by using the website you could effectively have at your finger tips your own digital super power. Or at least as far as the super power of reading high quality and unlimited comics online goes.

First sketch: the landscape banner.
Initial plans are for a hand that's controlled by the user and on press will emit lightning bolts form the fingers to singe, burn and strike the MARVEL logo text.

Second sketch: the skyscraper banner.
It was my intention to make another hand controlled by the user, only this time it would emit flame and this would catch the MARVEL logo text on fire.

Final sketch: the 500x500 popup window.
Here I plan to create a fairly simple dress up doll but in the style of a super hero. Using images taken from the digital comics website to create a digital dress up doll in super hero fashion. A sort of pick and mix make your own super character.

These three different ideas would all have included slogans to match the discovery of your powers theme that I was trying to create.

In theory the hardest idea I have here to create will be the lightning power landscape banner. This will require me to explore and research deeply how to create dynamic lightning effects as this is something that I've never attempted before.

Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex

2007-12-12T08:45:00.000Z

While researching hyper reality I came across a woman who started a group called “Velvet Strike”. The idea behind Velvet Strike is to create awareness at the level of violence inherent in today's entertainment industry while at the same time denouncing war. This is achieved (or at least attempted) via the game Counter Strike, a Half Life modification that boasts a more military realistic form of game combat. This game features Counter Terrorist and Terrorist groups fighting against each other in small scale multiplayer action. Members, followers and fans of Velvet Strike will infiltrate Counter Strike matches and spray anti war propaganda onto the walls of the game environment. Other forms of protest include entering a game and refusing to fight. While following various links and articles relating to this movement I found that while most researchers weren't necessarily against video game violence they did acknowledge a dire need for the game consuming public to realise just what it is they are doing when playing these games. More than this there seems to be a growing need to confront the ever increasing military recruitment application on the entertainment industry. Reading on through various blogs, articles and papers on the subject it has come to my attention that not only do the military fully endorse the violent games industry but they also directly fund the creation of games titles with the intention to create interest and thus recruit players to the (in particular U.S.) military. This might not seem too disturbing at the heart of it, but until forms of 'entertainment' such as games reach a stage where the full horror of war can actually be portrayed to the player this form of recruitment is without a shadow of a doubt false advertisement and forcing of government doctrine on an impressionable youth through their misguided innocence. The prime example of this form of military recruitment is through the game “America's Army”. This first person shooter takes you as a player to the U.S. Military boot camp to get you ready for combat in a fictional country called Tazikhstan, situated between Afghanistan, Pakistan and China. In order to play this game you must register and visit frequently the official game site which is riddled with links to U.S. Military recruitment sites. You must be 17 to be officially recruited to the U.S. Military but this game is directly marketed at the 12 – 16 year old. The military has now a massive string of game projects both released and in development to increase the pressure put on those who would play these games. It seems strange to me that we wouldn't consciously let our children bare direct witness to physical forms of violence but the government find no issue with the imprinting of this culture of hatred and violence into the younger generations.

Art Steiber Photography

2007-12-12T08:03:00.000Z

Ok so the subject matter isn't very interesting but as far as the web design of it goes I find this website quite something to look at. It's not overly flashy, it's not overly smart, but it is created in such a way that it loads superbly fast (something that I think we're taking the wrong route down at the moment with websites that takes minutes and not seconds to load). It really is just a platform to display images, being that it is a photography website that's no bad thing, and is does this with a very simple to use slide show style interface. I've always been keen to make Flash websites with independently loading elements with the intention of keeping overall load times to a minimum before the user can enter the site whether or not the site continues to load content while the user explores. Anyway, this website is a prime example of how we can incorporate rich Flash content without sacrificing too much time waiting to get to the website while it loads the large MP3 music file and downloads all the flashy images.

http://www.artstreiber.com/

Zoom Quilt

2007-12-12T07:43:00.000Z

OK we've all seen this before, and many similar too it, but I think it's worth another look. Zoom Quilt is for me just a collection of interesting art displayed in a new form. This was the first I saw of this type of image display, I'm sure it won't be the last.

Musicovery

2007-12-12T07:15:00.000Z

This project is very similar to last.fm and pandora.com but instead of finding music you like through genre's and artist's relating to other artist's and genre's and people with similar interests you select the sort of mood your in and the Musicovery finds music that fits these parameters.

I doubt this project will ever take off but it's been nicely created and to some extent I find it quite enjoyable, although I think perhaps more based on an interest in the program than finding the music it selects for me that enjoyable. Anyway, it's quite and easy to use Flash stuff that's worth a brief look.

http://musicovery.com

Face Distortion

2007-12-10T11:28:00.000Z

This is probably one of the best illusions ever! Please do the following: look at the above images from your seat in front of the computer; Mr. Angry is on the left, and Ms. Calm is on the right. Now, get up from your seat, and move back 10 or 12 feet. Who’s the angry and calm now?

Man in the Dark

2007-12-09T06:48:00.000Z

This little thing has been created in Flash and is quite simply a modification of that follow the mouse snake script that we've seen here and there for a long time now. I understand how they've managed the get the character to follow the mouse the way he does, I don't understand the 3D aspect of the model. This is something that appears a lot at the moment and is something that I don't think I'll ever quite grasp in terms of how to re-create.

Man in the Dark

My Name Was God

2007-12-05T07:47:00.000Z

What a lovely website. I really like the idea of playing with Flash to get a website that looks and works like a regular HTML website only much cleaner and more fluid. I don't think this website has done anything ground breaking with it's design here but really the thing that sets it apart from the rest for me is it's use a scroll bar within Flash. Scroll bars in Flash have always been a bit of a muse for me, never quite able to work them out and certainly never managing to harness their potential to the full, but trying none the less.

A lot of web designers seem to find audio on website's just a bit of an irritation but on this website they've managed to get a really nice sound track that properly compliments the website instead of dominating it. Minimalistic audio over simplistic design, that's the way forward.

http://www.mynamewasgod.com/

Friends of White

2007-12-01T22:28:00.000Z

This is an interesting website built to promote Orbit Whitening chewing gum. It's an exceptionally well made website that let's itself down a bit with long loading times. It's a very dreamlike experience with this strange all dressed in white perfect cast of actors talking you through the aspects of the website. The seamless animation and clean graphics make it although very uninformative a really notable website. This is something that's taken not only money, but a very professional design team to create.

I love that there's these strange animations going on around the stage, things that offer nothing informative but help to build a very ambient set. These animations are loaded after everything else has loaded, or as best I can tell, which is helpful as the quality of the imagery used, the audio used and the video used is very high so the load times for every new section of the page is large. If these were included and not streamed in after it just wouldn't be worth sticking with.

There's not lot's to do on this website but what there is to do is both scary and very high quality design. This is a prime example. Clicking on the "Join the Sing-a-long" takes you too a camp with our clean white friends singing the Orbit White song.

Takes a while to load mind. The audio can even be downloaded after for use as a ring tone on your mobile. Not sure if it's the sort of thing anyone would download, but by the fact it's there it kind of adds to the odd theme of the website and it's content.

The song even has a sing along karaoke!

Interesting little game

2007-12-01T22:00:00.003Z

http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/dice/dice.html

An interesting little game involving the rolling of dice. It's a sort of dice Risk'esk game. Worth havign a go!

19 years

2007-12-01T21:38:00.001Z

This 19 year old from the Netherlands has created himself a demo reel, this is truely exceptional and really humbles me to see this considering his age.

http://www.vimeo.com/401206/

Open Source Windows

2007-12-01T06:21:00.000Z

OK this is simply a website listing decent open source projects for Windows OS. Many free open source applications to replace the ever more expensive professional software out today. I won't go into detail, just have a quick look yourself.

http://www.opensourcewindows.org/

Fray

2007-11-29T13:10:00.000Z

CSS is a lovely thing, and lovely things are done with it. This website is a prime example of a good looking quick loading website with interesting design and styling, however, I really hate websites that take you to an entirely re-designed page every time you click a link. This website seems to need to reload itself with entire new layout each link which means the page goes blank while it gets the new content. This site is nice and it's simple but I just find it too annoying to navigate. I'd much prefer the click a link to get the new content loaded into the old layout without having to find all new positions for things. I think it's disorientating and slow for a website that is primarily dealing with quite simply text and images of this sort. Anyway, see what you think.

http://www.fray.com/

This is what we like!

2007-11-22T13:40:00.000Z

This website allows you to send files from computer to computer via the website without the need to install software. You send the file to the website while another computer downloads the file from the website, this allows people to stream video and music to each. Interesting little project that would be very useful but for me as of yet I've not had any cause to use it. Let me know if you do end up using it much.

http://www.pipebytes.com/

MAKE

2007-11-12T12:08:00.000Z

This is my brothers textile design company that he set up some time back in order to peddle his T-Shirts to various passers by. This website is however a fine example the sort of the website I like. It's in noway overly complicated, it uses neat popup windows that for some reason are never blocked by my popup blocker and it's easy to navigate. Just thought I'd big up the family Osborne really, take a gander. I have a couple T-Shirts from him, really nice designs in my opinion. I especially like his depiction of prince Harry and William with their cocks out.

http://make-land.com/

Tomato

2007-11-12T05:54:00.000Z

I'm not sure how this website has been created but I really like the idea of playing with new ways of approaching site exploration. I couldn't work out what was going on at first with this website but when your cursor moves away from the navigation bar the buttons start to disappear until you once again move your cursor back. Is this some sort of PHP script? I'd be interested to know if anyone has any ideas.

Worth checking out though - Tomato

Although I like this website it's certainly not the easiest to access and wouldn't be a website to inviting to the unsuspecting or novice user. Maybe something to be kept (as it is) to the more advanced domain.

Rationale - Pick and Choose iD

2007-11-12T05:41:00.000Z

I have decided upon the Marvel web comics advert banners for my project. Initially I'd like, instead of exploring flashy imagery and funky animations, to explore clever action script and new approaches in delivering tasters of the comics through the advert banners. Being restricted to 100k file sizes to keep load times to a minimum I thought I'd use a sort of "fetch more data on user request" system to enable viewers to spot the banner containing a taster comic cell and then allow them to interact with the advert to get the banner to fetch another cell to be viewed. In theory the user could view the entire comic (should I let them) through this banner, but of course it would be much easier if they just clicked the "take me to the full comic" button and the Marvel web comic website loaded instead. This would enable me to more or less dodge the 100k file size restriction due to the fact that the user is requesting the increased data and the load time of the banner and thus the entire page would still be kept to a minimum. Of course this may not be possible in full throughout the different banner types, but it is certainly something I'll experiment with when attempting the pop-up ad. All in all I'd like to portray to the viewer that the web comic experience is easily accessible, interactive and above all it's just as entertaining as reading a physical comic.

Usful CSS templates

2007-10-12T09:00:00.000+01:00

This website just lists some very basic CSS templates to download and use. As a resource for quick CSS templates to work from this is genious!

http://www.mycelly.com/

And this useful link is a breakdown of clean CSS code. Again, good stuff.

Audio And Visual Techniques: Video Montage Evaluation

2007-03-27T05:33:00.000+01:00

Video editing has never been a strong feature of mine despite my interest in the subject, so the opportunity to work on a project such as this was a welcome thing. The assignment offered a casual look at the video editing software “Final Cut” with a manageable final outcome at the end. Video editing for me previously has been almost entirely orientated around the software “Adobe Premier”. Despite Premier being a very powerful editing kit I found it also to be fairly cumbersome and a hassle to navigate the work space, with things shuffled about from the familiarity of other Adobe products. Final Cut I found just as difficult to navigate at first but learnt where things were much quicker. Once I had my head around the layout of the interface and roughly how things were organized I found it to be a much more convenient and of more intuitive a design than that of Premier.
Moving image since the dawn of television has been a beacon of light shining the way for technology. We ride the achievement of the television over that of the space programme and it has become ever more prevalent in society as time goes on, I see no reason for it to slow. Video editing is a very important part of moving image and something I have never even tried to get any real proficiency at. This project has been an important step into a better understanding of video editing techniques, something I would most definitely like to pursue further with future projects.
I am not often one for working in groups and usually find the notion somewhat daunting, in this case however it was welcome. Up until now I have not been involved in any proper group work (despite this work being more duo than group). I enjoyed working alongside Olly, although our first dive into this project was primarily from separate work with communication of ideas over email.
Our first week or so was spent sending emails to and from; discussing the possibilities of various ideas concerning the different words with which we had to orient our outcome with. Our second week we both drafted ideas of what it was we thought the end piece should look like. We chose the word “routine” from the list and decided on trying to convey the idea of routine through a varying degree of mediums within the video. We chose to portray a narrative of routine centred around the aspects of life, mundane and repetitive, without using footage that directly implied this. The aim was to edit the entire thing in such a way that the utilised footage was to be less relevant than how we edited it together; a message through the timing and organization of the footage rather than the footage itself, so to speak.
In the following week we merged our rough ideas together to form a final piece, working together at college and then finally at Olly's house. However, we did end up using Premier software, after converting all the footage we needed, as we were working from a PC. Collecting our thoughts together from the rough ideas we had initially created was difficult and excruciatingly tedious as, in combining a lot of our work, we hadn't taken into account the many possibilities in the final elements of design. We hit many an unhealthy bump in the road when trying to cut our footage together, for example keeping things fluid and without strange ghosts and artefacts (of which there were many) from other seemingly hidden layers of video.
The end result is pleasing, we have created a rhythmic and vastly hypnotic experience of a life sequence that has stayed pretty much consistent throughout development. I think the way we edited and (in particular) the timing we used to transit between the various footage gives a great impression of repetition and the passing of irrelevant time. I was particularly proud that we didn't get sucked into using any of the horrid but easily appliable 'effects' that offer themselves through Premier. However I would have liked to explore the use of sound further in the production, perhaps touching on creating music with short segments of audio stolen from within the clips. Another one of my concerns is that the video may need a couple of decent viewings before the true message that we were trying to portray can be understood. The video isn't really interesting enough for more than one sitting which makes understanding it a slight problem for those who don't have Olly or myself there to explain it.
As far as the narrative of the video goes we were trying to sequence all our footage to the beat of “travel, work, travel, leisure” and for the best part I think we managed this. The segmented and short flashes of the relevant footage creates a very powerful suggestion of what each part of the video is about. The way we organised and timed the shots however leaves the viewer without fully understanding the message. Cutting it up again with the sharp noise and repeating escalator footage intervals really creates a very strange and unnerving day-dream-like atmosphere to the entire creation. This however is precisely the sort of effect we wanted to demonstrate. A sort of insight into to how we thought life goes on, but of course... the viewer probably can't quite work that out without some help. Maybe a draw back to it's design? I'm not so sure, but this is a direction of conveying ideas that I would like to explore in the future. Slight implication, not blunt and forced opinion.
I think our achievement was in creating an excellent first attempt, but hopefully not last, video production. It is obvious to me what it is I would have to improve on in further video editing projects, and what it is that I have learnt in terms of overall information media design. There were a lot of ideas and concepts that I shall expect to surface again in future projects.

The Importance of Play

2007-03-08T08:38:00.000Z

As part of this study I’m going to be looking at two texts, they are “A Theory of Fun” by Raph Koster and an article published in the International Journal of Computer Game Research that I found particularly interesting; “The Playful and the Serious: An approximation to Huizinga's Homo Ludens” by Hector Rodriguez.

Both texts differ massively from the very basic ‘A Theory of Fun’ to the very long winded study of ‘Huizinga’s Homo Ludens’.

‘A Theory of Fun’ was written by Raph Koster and was based on a presentation that Koster gave at the Austin Game Conference in 2003. Koster is American born (1971-) and is most notably the lead designer of Ultima Online and Author of this book.

Dr. Hector Rodriguez is a New York University graduate with a doctorial degree in the field of cinema studies and is now an associate professor at NYU.

The article that I am studying however is the examination of “Homo Ludens” by a one “Johan Hyuzinga”, a Dutch historian who was one of the founders of modern cultural history (the combined study of anthropology and history to examine popular culture). Homo Ludens is Hyuzinga’s discussion of the influence and importance of ‘play’ on European culture.

There is something in both texts, despite their obvious differences that is agreed upon and is best summed up by Rodriguez as “The player must respond to some event, in the context of a structured situation. Playing consists in a trans-individual process of action and reaction, which often takes on a to-and-fro quality reminiscent of dance.” That is to say that play is a dynamic interaction between player and event that is either counter or imply and follows to a new set of rhythmic events. The main difference is that while Hyuzinga would rather notion towards play being a mundane experience that is simply lived for the very sake of it and Koster implying that play is, although mundane in appearance, actually the mind testing itself through cause and effect so that it may better improve through experience. Koster believes that play is education in such a format that the mind rewards our senses for achieving goals. The structured format of play is simply how our mind best receives the information.

Applying what I’ve learnt from these texts to the production of my game in the case of ‘A Theory of Fun’ was very interesting to do. Koster, although implying very little that we couldn’t deduce ourselves, set about reaffirming and challenging the notion of games beyond that generic and ‘mundane’ word ‘play’. He would like to see games seen as obstacles we pose ourselves for very serious reasons. He outlined good games in his work as puzzles that bare real life relevance. A good example of this is chess. One of our oldest games and still more than popular it was created as entertainment and played by kings no less. It was commonly thought that although the game was primarily just that, a game, it actually taught better command and strategy. It has been proved time and again that people who trend their gaming habits towards more strategy based games, Age of Empires for one, actually improve a lot of real life strategic problems quicker. This of course is open to debate as to whether this is simply that we enjoy things that we already have some proficiency at and thus those of us who do prefer RTS (Real Time Strategy) will in fact already have some inherent command of such skills.

Some pre game production fantasies

2007-03-08T07:10:00.001Z

A key focus in the game scenery will be the advertising. As part of this there will be 3 major types.

Corporate
Federal
Criminal

Corporate

The setting of the game is aboard a colossus farming ship. It's objective is simply to collect sea based resources (in particular the algae that grows all over the water) and deliver (via small cargo ships) the materials back to the mainlands for sale.

The advertising to this end will be based around the work that the ship carries out, the constant aggressive policing of the floating city and that lovely false corporate productivity banter.

Billboards
Posters

Federal

The floating farm has progressed beyond a simple corporate platform and become a floating city with citizens born, raised and dying upon it's decks. Due to the state of the mainlands, the famine, warfare and disease that have spread since the moon collapsed gaining placement on the ship sounds like a good deal. It's got work, food and is for the most part safe from the toils of war. However due to the demand for work the ship has become itself a battleground of illegal immigration and poor working conditions.

Policing has become paramount to the floating city state. The advertising on this front will represent

calls for new officers (or as I'm calling them in this game 'prefects'). Along with this there will also be warnings of punishment for criminal actions and rioting.

Billboards
Posters
Fliers

Criminal

Criminal advertising will be in the form of graffiti mostly but also in the form of character speech. Passers by offering drugs etc. There will also be a strong terrorist and rebel advertising present. Posters and graffiti making up the majority of this.

Posters
Word of mouth
Graffiti

Prosumer

2007-03-08T07:06:00.001Z

Here is a word that I have only recently discovered. One that I doubt we’ll be seeing in the Oxford Dictionary anytime soon. Prosumers; this neologism is the head on collision of producer and consumer. The idea that the consumer and producers would merge in the production of, in this case at least, games. This can almost be seen in Half Life, but what I expect will grow into a much more definitive genre before long.

Half Life isn’t really recognized for Half Life as much as it’s recognized for the shear quantity and quality of the community mod work. Few of us brought Half Life 2, for example, for the core game but for the opportunity to play any one of the hundreds of mods it would spawn after its release. This is prosumerism, a professional industry standard product released and customized to fit by the consumer. Another example of this would be Second Life, a game that is so massive in it’s customization that it’s not so much a professional game anymore as it is our (that is to say, the general public’s) creation. Second Life is nothing without direct community customization. This is the direct result of the massive demand for new and interesting products to hit the market, and in my opinion, the world population feeling a certain lack of identity.

Free Game and Industry Connections

2007-03-08T07:04:00.000Z

Today’s entertainment industries are some of the most lucrative in circulation and the impact and importance that the video game makes on the market is undeniably the largest portion of this.

For me however the most impressive aspect of the games industry doesn’t dwell on profit margins but in the ever growing free game and community ran games out there.

As never before we are seeing a massive increase in creative free exchange of information and ideas on such a structured level. Games such as half life with its extensive modders support are just an example that I’m sure most of us can relate to. Taking it further however is the increased rate at which games at industry standard are created entirely from scratch on a community collaborative effort are emerging. Games created via communities of enthusiasts with all manner of varying skill levels and experiences are pulling towards common artistic goals.

A fantastic example of this is the excellent “Total Annihilation: Spring” project. Based on the popular and now aging game “Total Annihilation” this project features a very clever Wiki style creation allowing any person to add material towards the game to be used openly by the developers. This project, not even nearing a level of completion, has already managed to inspire huge levels of modding and scripting to enhance the core game beyond its original intent.

However like most things there is of course an element of finance to couple great ideas, in the case of free games a lot of bulk of a game will be compiled through a few key members and projects like this do stem a lot of their success through not only the community submitted work but also from the donations. Furthermore to this there is the serious element of industry recruitment. A lot of the big name games companies now have at least one, if not many, game designers working for them that were directly recruited because of their free game and mod work. An example of this would be the Doom 3 key level designer who was recruited by the company from the maps he made for Doom 2 all those years ago. A simple boy creating simple yet interesting maps for one of his favourite computer games he now resides within the pay roll of one of the worlds leading games studios.

Some Initial Work, The Island Game Project

2007-01-29T07:18:00.000Z

So we're planning our games round an island. A narrative (physical or otherwise) that restricts the user in some form or another. I'm going to take a few key elements from the word Island and bundle them into my game.
Firstly, as I detailed earlier, my game will be following a relatively linear concept. You progress through the game world in order to read a story that I have set. Deviations from the path may well be introduced but for the most part you are being directed by me, the narrator.
Firstly, and most probably the incorrect way of going about it, I wanted to make the game engine (if that's what it can be called) based on my first thoughts about concept.
Because the story is linear and because the game is point and click I wanted at least to have the interface interactable. A scroll map, one you explore through mouse control.
After talking to Anna-Beth about the concept that I had for a scrolling map I created the following code:

a = Stage.width;
b = 565;
doStuff = function () {
x = _root._xmouse;
b_mc._x = (b*x)/a;
};
setInterval(doStuff, 1);

In short this would direct an image (the world) to position itself on the stage at a point relative to the user cursor. I'll describe how it should behave:
We define 2 variables. The first, "a" is set to obtain the stage's (that's the area in flash you work with) width. The second variable "b" is set to the width of the image we wish to scroll.
We then have our code, this I set as a one tick function with an interval to repeat it.
In theory the variable "x" will capture each tick (that's the frames per second tick, each time the frame is loaded) the position of the mouse on the stage.
I named our image "b_mc" and have the code position it's "_x" location (that's the distance along the x axis (the width) to variable "b" multiplied by variable "x" and divided by variable "a".
The set interval at the very bottom simply tells flash to replay that code, which I named "doStuff" every 1 milliseond. Flash counts in milliseconds, i.e. 1000 = 1 second.
Unfortunately this code almost but not quite works, the image scrolls and will match to 50%. i.e. if I placed my cursor on the far right of the stage the image will align. However, if I place my cursor on the left of the stage then the image will only mark half it's distance. I've no idea how to alter this as my maths is shocking to say the least and the idea is now obsolete to another anyway.

This method is a great way to allow a user to search a small area but after much deliberation I figured I would return to my original plan which I shall go through in the follow:
The map (the area the user explores) will scroll along the _x plane at a speed and in a direction based on the position of the users cursor upon the stage.
i.e. If the user places his/her cursor on the far left of the stage then the map will scroll away from that direction, as if the user is searching the map with his mouse.
With this system the user will be able to search a map of any size whereas the previous idea would have made a very large map very touchy and sensitive to navigate.
I shall detail the code I have thus far:
Now, we're assuming we've made a movie clip that is larger in width to that of the stage and that we've named it "city_mc". This is our map. A few things to note before I explain the code. It's good practice to have everything code driven in your production held within a single frame and as rarely as possible within movie clips. This allows for much more precise control over your production and makes it easier to read what's going on. This code is all nestled in my main _root frame. Also, I've tagged my descriptions with "notation" marks. These marks usually look like this "//" . What they do is tell flash to ignore the follow code as it's there for reference and not for flash to use. In this case however I've used the larger notation marks which you can use to bracket larger text together. The "//" only works for a single line whereas "/*" defines an area. The area is defined with /* at the beginning and */ at the end. Just like brackets. If you wish to test this code you can copy and paste it ALL straight into Flash.
One last point, I apologise for my US spelling of the word "center". Flash works with US spelling and it's just something you'll have to ignore.

--------------------------------------------------

city_mc.onEnterFrame = function() {
/*First we target our movie clip which we've named "city_mc". Then we let flash know this is a per frame tick function with "onEnterFrame". Finally we tell flash the following is the function we wish to be executed by opening our statement with the "{" bracket.*/

center = Stage.width/2;
/*The first line of code in this function defines a new variable. A variable is code association. We define for the code a word that means something else. In this case we've told Flash that "center" actually means the "Stage.width/2". Which in short means the word "center" when used within the code actually means; the stage width divided by 2. This is an easy way of finding out the center of the stage and referring to it later./*

if (_root._xmouse<=center) {
/*Our first "if" statement. A statement is a collection of code contained within the curly brackets "{ }". These "if" statements tell flash that the following statement is to only be executed if certain specified conditions are met (that's the bit contained within "( )" brackets) . In this case we're saying "if the _x position of the mouse on the stage is equal to or less than the center of the stage, then you may proceed with the statement". Remember we named "center" as a variable for the center of the stage! Now if the condition is met, then the next line will be executed.*/

if (city_mc._x<=-10) {
/*Here we're making another if statement, this way Flash will have to meet 2 conditions in order to proceed. This statement is to stop the map scrolling further than it should. We don't want the user to just scroll to nothingness. Now all this part of the code is about the mouse being on the left hand hand side of the stage and thus making the map scroll to the right. So here we say: "if the map (city_mc) is positioned on the _x (horizontal) axis less than or equal to position -10 then you may continue". If the conditions are met then the next line is executed.

city_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/40;
/*This line instructs that: "the position of the map (city_mc) on the _x axis should be it's current position minus (symbolised by "-=") the following". This effectively will move the map each tick by "(_xmouse-center)/40;" which in short is the _x axis position of the mouse minus the "center" variable and together divided by 40. This results in the map being moved to the right at a speed relative to the distance of the mouse from the center of the stage.*/

}
/*This bracket defines the end of the current if statement, but not the statement this one resides within!*/

if (_root._xmouse>=center) {
/*Now, this is a third if statement. The following code is dedicated to the opposite direction and works in exactly the same way bar a few "numerical and comparison operator" changes. Comparison operators are "<=" and the like, operators that compare properties. */

if (city_mc._x>=-2200) {
/*In order to obtain the _x position of our map that we wish it to not scroll beyond we simply align our maps right hand edge to the right hand side of the stage and copy the number in the _x axis property window for the movie clip. Simple enough. For the left hand we can assume that it will always be 0. However I made i -10. Just to be on the safe side.*/

city_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/40;
/*This repeated bit of code will move the map the opposite direction as well since our mouse position will now be into the positives numerically which has the effect of increase when 2 negatives are used. I don't expect you to understand that as neither do I and it took me much trial and error to work it out as well!*/

}
/*This ends the current statement*/

};
/*This ends the entire statement. The code is now complete and because it's a "onEnterFrame" function it will if all goes to plan, just run it again next frame. The ";" marks at the end of the curly bracket tell us that this is the end of a code block.*/

Well now that's the code for the scrolling background. It's quite small and simple enough to understand once you get your head round the basics of action script. I'm going to paste now ALL the code I have. I'm not going to explain it all as there's a lot there and most is completely irrelevant. However I did take the time to add a little notation which might help guide you. Basically in all this code we have several map layers driven, plus some sky and even some rain. On top of this there's some looping ambient music which plays in the background. There's some notation in there that you may not understand, your not supposed to. It's just me saving some un-used code should I need it in the future. The notation marks just means Flash ignores it for the time being. I recommend you paste this code into Flashes action script box so you can read it easier. Thank you.

--------------------------------------------------

stopAllSounds();
/*Attaches and loops the music*/
//create new empty sound object
musicDrone = new Sound(this);
//attach the sound to the empty sound object
musicDrone.attachSound("acz.wav");
//play the sound object. 0 = start possistion and the 999 = the loop times
musicDrone.start(0, 9999);
music = new Sound(this);
music.attachSound("short.wav");
music.start(0, 9999);
/*Create rain*/
//creates a variable with number 0 assigned
rainNum = 0;
//Create a function to run random steam noises
steamNoise = function () {
randomNumber = random(2)+1;
trace(randomNumber);
if (randomNumber == 2) {
steam = new Sound(this);
steam.attachSound("steamLong.wav");
stam.start(0, 1);
}
};
setInterval(steamNoise, 1000);
//Creates the function to follow, called rain
raining = function () {
//incriments the rainNum in integers of 1
rainNum++;
//creates a variable called rain and attaches the raindrop clip to it
var rain = _root.attachMovie("rain_mc", "rain_mc"+rainNum, rainNum);
//places the raindrop in a random location along the width of the stage
rain._x = Math.round(Math.random()*Stage.width);
//gives each raindrop a random transparency
rain._alpha = random(20)+15;
//random speed
rain.speed = random(30)+20;
//random _xscale
rain._xscale = random(80)+20;
//random _yscale
rain._yscale = random(80)+20;
//on each frame the following function will run for the variable objects "rain"
rain.onEnterFrame = function() {
//commands each dropket to move 3 pixels downwards each frame
rain._y += this.speed;
//commands each dropket to move 1 pixels left each frame
rain._x -= 3;
//The following removes the droplet once it leaves our view.
//If we left the raindrops to accumulate without removing them they would slow down the game
//This says, if the _y (height) of the droplet falls below the lowest stage coordinate
if (rain._y>Stage.height) {
//If the previous is true, then the droplet is removed on the next available frame
delete this.onEnterFrame;
this.removeMovieClip();
//This decreases the rainNum count so that the rain doesn't reach a depth that we require other objects to reside on.
}
};
};
setInterval(raining, .1);
/*Scroll top & rear landscape
To reverse the direction the backgrounds scroll switch "-" with "+" and vice versa.
"+" will scroll towards the direction the mouse is sitting on
"-" will scroll the opposite direction to the mouse
The "+30" and "-30" at the end of the if statesments are to give the stage a un-reacting dead zone. Anything 30 pixels left or right (60 pxl spread) of the center will have any effect*/
city_mc.onEnterFrame = function() {
trace(city_mc._width);
//This is the work out the exact center of the stage. Stage width could be anything
center = Stage.width/2;
//Scroll right (mouse on left)
if (_root._xmouse<=center) {
if (city_mc._x<=-10) {
sky_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/100;
city_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/40;
city2_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/45;
city3_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/50;
city4_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/55;
} else {
trace(city_mc._x);
}
}
//Scroll left (mouse on right)
if (_root._xmouse>center) {
if (city_mc._x>=-2200) {
sky_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/100;
city_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/40;
city2_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/45;
city3_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/50;
city4_mc._x -= (_xmouse-center)/55;
} else {
trace(city_mc._x);
}
}
};
//This stops play on this frame
stop();
/*fscommands are used to control the window and some limited OS features*/
//This turns the flash screen into a fullscreen
//fscommand("fullscreen", "true");
/*Attaches and loops the music*/
//create new empty sound object
//musicDrone = new Sound(this);
//attach the sound to the empty sound object
//musicDrone.attachSound("introBassBoost.wav");
//play the sound object. 0 = start possistion and the 999 = the loop times
/*musicDrone.start(0, 9999);
_root.start_btn.onRelease = function() {
gotoAndStop(3);
};
stop();*/

--------------------------------------------------

At First Glance, The Island Game Project

2007-01-29T06:47:00.000Z

A while since I've posted anything so I thought I'd write up a not so quick message detailing some of the work I've made thus far on my game design project.
I've been reading up on my game design, in particular a book called "Theory of Fun" by Raph Koster. A very valuable resource if your going to get anywhere in game design and yet I find myself ignoring some of it's most important points.
Firstly and foremost the game should challenge our skills and we should be able to improve through the game some very fundamental human abilities such as spatial awareness in first person shooters and our sense of planning and resource management in real time strategies. In order for a game to remain exciting it should constantly challenge these skills while still keeping the goals it set's forward obtainable. The game should be not so easy that we get bored and not to difficult that we might get frustrated and abandon it.
I searched for a game that sums these ideals up. I came across "missile 3d". This is a game based on a concept that I'm sure most of us are familiar. Guide yourself (the cursor, whatever) through a the levels while avoiding certain obstacles. Give this game a go, it's addictive because it's both challenging a skill we put to use everyday ( orientation, spatial awareness and concentration) while remaining rewarding enough for us to replay.

Missile 3D - See if you can beat my score, 89% through level 6.

Now I mentioned my game would be different, it shall be in a sense. The reward of the game won't be obtaining physical objectives such as FPS and RTS games but instead it shall play like a book. You interact with the world in order to read a story. Some objectives may well be introduced in order to keep the user reading the story in the correct order and I may even create some multiple directions in the outcome.
I'd like to think I'm exploring a new approach to reading a book but this idea is far from new. I'm just mixing a few different methods together in order to create an idea that has in many forms been done before. For me however this is very new, and I'd be interested to see where I take it through the course of it's production.

Task 3 - Evaluation

2006-12-14T14:49:00.000Z

I set out to make a web based slide presentation of a computer game of my choice, for all intensive purposes I think I've succeeded.
The site is to the point and contains the theme I had originally intended and set out to achieve.
The only downfall to the site is that I didn't get hold of better quality imagery, however this is mostly overlooked when the site is run in it's intended 800x600 resolution.
Although the website runs perfectly on a Windows based PC for some reason a mac has difficulty rendering some of the images used within. I'm not sure why this is but it's something I'd like to know how to overcome as most of my work is now based on macs.
It would have been nice if I could have included some streaming video into the presentation but as it is I couldn't work out how to get things to load properly and for that matter find video's that were of stream able size on the web.
It's unfortunate that the game I chose to promote hadn't released a proper web kit with their designers pack, the kit is very out of date and thus I could not show off the true graphic splendour of the game as I couldn't have it installed to screenshot for myself.
I would have also liked to give the site some more time dedicated to dynamic and animated content, this is something I'd be very interested to include in any future projects I undertake of this sort. A lot is lost in the presentation of the game as I could not get enough animation included.
The show was a success on the whole, there are definate points I would like to have remedied and the comments left by students in the class have given me a real insite into how the flash application could have been better put through it's paces.

Grotesk and Monstrous

2006-12-14T14:46:00.000Z

A wonderfull website, it's clean, has beautifull sound and visuals. The site is immersive and concise. It's got wonderous illustrations and has had my attention and admiration throughout this and my previous course.
Most of my work stems down to just a couple of websites for inspiration, this is one of them!
All done in flash with some very nice steaming imagery.

Task 2 - Website

2006-12-14T10:43:00.000Z

Follow this link to view my website.

Evaluation

The website works, it's concise and it's (in my opinion) well layed out. The major and really only regret is that I could not get 'just' the new content to load and have the banner and nav bars to stay constant. This is something I'd like to look into during a year 2 product. Investigating more advanced code languages and create a more dynamic website experience.
This website however is perfect and just what I needed it and intended it to be, bar one minor detail. There's a flash addition situated underneath the nav bar that does not load when on the web but seems to work fine when run from a local source. Odd, but to my best attempts unsolvable. However annoying it is the flash item under the nav bar was purely cosmetic and not that good anyway so no harm done.
The website contains everything it needed to contain and manages to maintain a constant style and is easy to navigate and use.
There is one element to the website that I feel set's it aside from others and that's the mixed up language/spelling used on the nav and title. I like people to view my work and find it not immeadiately accessable, I want them to spend just a moment think about what they're seeing. This is something I think playing with the text in this manner achieves well.
The project was for all intensive purposes a success and a style and basis I would like to work on in the futre.

Research

Angry Blue

This is a web design, illustrator and general new media artist that I adore. His primary role is to create band art, posters, CD covers and mechandise and has worked with some of the most widely famed bands there have ever been.
His art is somewhat odd, far from unique, but tends to hold well to his particular style. However, he's a good media designer to employ as he follows briefs set very rigorously. This can lead to some of his art being somewhat disapointing but at the same time admirable as he takes difficult tasks and succeeds to inject brilliant illustration and design.
His website is lovely, it's plain and simple to navigate and portrays all his hall mark designs. It's very well layed out and a perfect platform to advertise his skills as a media designer.

Task 3 - Progress

2006-12-14T07:21:00.000Z

What I Need

The first thing to look for is to get the slides looking as if they've been themed as the real Dark Age of Camelot team would of themed it. This I think would be best explored via a webkit. Most games, and to my knowledge this one as well release webkit's. Packs containing graphics and various web materials for building fan website. This is a great way for the game to promote itself through methods that both cost nothing in money nor staff time.

Making the show:

Take border graphics from the main DAoC website along with banner graphics from the webkit.
Background applied, simply the glow background from one of the webkit graphics.
Fade applied, when a screen is changed it will flick to black and then fade out to the new graphics being displayed.
Added next button and next page.
Added previous button
Added initial slides
Gave slides and transitions between pages a fade.
Re-did the title bar

Final step included polish the edges with black strips and borders while at the same time adding the final slide which displays the creators tag.

Task 3 - Initial Work

2006-12-14T07:03:00.000Z

Rationale

For my project I will be attempting to design an aspect of advertising for a computer game. I have chosen the game and the advertising will be a sort of web based slide show that tries to show off the aspects of the game that potential customers might be most interested to see.

In order to create this I will be asking people to fill out questionnaire's and investigating already practised forms of game advertising. I shall be asking primarily into what type of player I'm trying to reach and what sort of styles would be most fitting to reach this end.

The idea of this web slide show is to promote the game quickly, effectively and without forcing the user to trawl for detail himself. This is also a perfect platform for advertising very selectively. Leaving out information or spinning information that has driven old users away. The game I have chosen has many downfalls and is currently supporting it's slowly dwindling numbers on old faithful players with very few new comers. Any accounts made again are almost entirely made up from returning users. This shall play a major aspect in the advertisement, trying to persuade old users that the game is worth returning to.

In respect to the design of this presentation I will be using the already established theme of the game and be making it in flash to allow for the greatest use of visual styling and clean modern look the game needs so sorely.

Questionnaire

How old are you? Circle one

10 and under / over 10 – 15 / 15 – 19 / 20 – 29 / 30 and over

What gender are you? Circle one

Male / Female

What top 5 features do you look for in a massively online multiplayer role playing game? (MMORPG)

Do you prefer a game to be complex or simplistic? Circle one

Simple / Complex / Not bothered

Do you like your games to feature mature content. Gore and the like? Circle one

Yes / No / Not bothered

Do you look for good graphics in a game?

Yes / No / Not bothered

Do you look for a game that will run smoothly on your computer?

Yes / No / Not bothered

Is player versus player combat important in an MMORPG?

Yes / No / Not bothered

What is your favourite MMORPG?

.........................................

What my Questionnaire Returned

In my questionnaire I tried to determine what would be the best things to advertise and in what order they should be advertised on this web based feature's slide show.

The age rage is primarily from 15-19 on the questionnaire but on asking players within the game how old they were the reply was mostly between 20-30 with some exceptions leading to almost 50!

Features that the questionnaire determined as being the most sought after were a large player base most of all and a particular attention to the player versus player detail of the game. Both aspects are not unique when it comes to a massively multiplayer online role playing game such as this but in any cases are usually some of the most important aspects to focus on.

Another item raised by the questionnaire that bares particular importance to this game is the fact that advancement past the highest attained level should be important. This is very important especially to this game as it's going to be aiming a lot at returning old users. Advertising the advancement the game has made recently to show of what new points of interest the game has to offer and what the old users might not have tried yet.

As with most MMORPG's this game is one that updates it's content on a fairly regular basis with new expansions being released along side continually added features and fixes.

Players of Dark Age of Camelot are on the whole of the older age range and on the whole enjoy a game that is complex to play and tricky to master. This is something Dark Age of Camelot does offer. This game is not for someone who has a dislike for number crunching and tactics. However, this isn't something that most new users would be looking for in a game so this is something that I shall be practising selective advertising on. I will however mention in an under hand way that the game does feature many customizations that require some serious thinking. Hopefully in a fashion that most new users might overlook.

All the questionnaire's returned that users look for a game that runs smoothly on their computers, this is something Dark Age of Camelot does achieve and something I will be making a particular note of.

The greatest thing this game does feature is it's attention to the player versus player combat aspects. It's taken the idea of combating players to a previously unforeseen level, especially with new and recently released features.

The Games

The questionnaire returned 4 favourite games. Only three mostly due to the fact that the only people I had available to me to ask in person were people I have met before. The trend of games tends to circle close when it comes to acquaintances of mine.

The four games were:
Ultima Online

World of Warcraft

Jennifer Nation

Dark Age of Camelot

Ultima Online:

This game has been around since the dawn of time, it's one of the first of it's kind and boasts still some of the most immersive game play your likely to meet. Since the good old days Ultima Online has changed little and yet still maintains a good honest (and somewhat ageing) player base mostly consisting of over 30's.

The features it likes to press the most is it's age, this is something Dark Age can't rival but it is something it can say it has of it's own. Dark Age has been around a long time and has created some new unique concepts that other games are now trying to copy.

In particular to Ultima Online, and what in most cases keeps the players it has, is it's sense of community. The servers (or shards, as MMO's like them to be called) are quite small compared to modern standards and at the most will never have more than a few hundred players on at a time. Dark Age can support well in excess of a thousand players.

World of Warcraft

We've all heard of it and like it or not it is massively popular among most age groups. It's a trendy game that's loaded with features. However the thing that let's this game down is it's complete lack of depth. Once you've hit the top that's really where you stop and most players don't even reach that before they get bored of the linear and repetitive gaming.

Dark Age can't be rivalled on it's features beyond it's maximum level, in fact a lot of players even loath it but it is something that new players don't consider and old players would be interested in. Dark Age tries to cling onto the players it has by enforcing how much there is to do for players that think they've almost got it all covered.

Jennifer Nation

This sweet little game isn't really much to do on. It's a role playing web browser game that features no player avatar and instead is a micro management game based on moral dilemma's. I shan't be looking any closer at this.

Dark Age of Camelot

I shall cover this in a different section.

What I Need to Include

Aspects:

Player versus player combat:

This featured highly on the questionnaire, more or less everyone requested it.

Customizations (Character development)

Player classes, character statistics and the sort of play styles available

Player presence (Character building)

In a massively multiplayer online game with many other players being an individual is hard and a game that promotes a large sense of unique presence is usually onto a winner. This was something that came up as being quite important in my questionnaire.

Quests

Questing is an integral part of role playing games, it's something they all have in common in whatever forms they take. DAoC is no exception with massive amounts being churned out and a recently released expansion dedicated to quests among other things.

Groups of players

The questionnaire showed that people are after a game that features the ability to 'group' with other players to participate in events. Dark Age has this down to a fine art with many grouping features. This is something I'm going to play on as an MMO is often very group orientated.

Graphics

Dark Age is an old game and it's graphics were becoming outdated but it's managed to stay ahead of the competition in many ways by keeping itself updated with the recent remodelling of many in game elements. I think I'll have to have a slide dedicated to the graphics that it shows off best.

Size of the player base

MMO's are about the players, Dark Age although dwindling since it's prime day's has managed to boost per server player bases by merging servers and combing certain area's with other servers. A server in the US will never have any less than 300 online and will usually push at least 5 or 6 hundred. Populations often reach in excess of one thousand and can even get as high as two or three thousand at peaks.

Item craft system

One questionnaire mentioned they liked MMO's with an item craft system for players. This is something I'm fond of as well, it introduces dynamic economics and adds a whole new dimension to what's going on in the game. A game such as this orientates itself on the dynamism of the virtual world, this is a great way to invoke this emerged and dynamic feeling we crave.

Story

The defined game story is often unimportant or at least mostly ignored by players who prefer to focus more on the player orientated events and plots. However, a plot of at least some description is often required to give the game direction and let players know what's going on.

Online continuous play

A gaming world that doesn't sleep, it's something that all MMO's will boast and something that DAoC doesn't lack. Once your character logs off the game doesn't end, players continue the plot and events still take place even in your absence. This should be made well known in the slide.

My Images (right) analysed

2006-12-07T10:45:00.000Z

Many of the influence's that govern my work comes from exploring random sites and anonymous artists that I have found over the years. I very rarely stick to one specific influence nor do I prefer to keep my work in any particular style. However, influences that definitely have governed my work have been the work of American new poster artists. In particular, Angry Blue. Primarily the artist who works mostly under the seudonym of "Angry Blue" creates band art, CD covers and advertisement in still print.
I like my work to come out as if somewhat disturbed. Human figures often are the centre of the attention but rarely look like a normal human being. When someone views my work I would like to think they remember it for it's mis-shapen forms and techniques that give the figures a pained look. When something doesn't look quite right, but not entirely wrong, people tend to pay attention more closely and in the end remember it for longer.

Binannary
This image was created from a photograph of my girlfriend that I traced over using 1's and 0's. Binary + Anna = Binannary... get it? Clever aren't I?
This image (best viewed on a mac, for some reason) was created with the intention that it be shown on a massive scale. The image would only form once the viewer moved back from the image. It's not a very original idea but it is one like I'd like to explore further. It's very based on the art movement "ASCII".

Tale
I love forcing two images together. This is something that most media designers experiment with at some point in their lives. In this case the image of a cat + a woman were the only two images I used. As for influences on this one, they really do just come from the experimentation and browsing of art related websites.

Lick
I wanted to use the image of a beautiful woman, in this case a stripper, and then alter her face to make her appear less beautiful but without altering the dynamics of her face. I.e. no mindless nudging and warping but instead to overlay images on top of her. This again has been created using just two images. That of the woman and that of a scar from a boys arm.

Bent Over
This was a doodle, I like experimenting with form, such as in most of my images again it's a person. I love to take a recognizable shape and transform this into a still recognizable but somewhat crippled form of what it 'should' be.

Scared of You
This is very much influenced by the American poster art that I spoke of previously. The idea was to create a scene that was not explained. We know there's two figures, they look humanoid, but we can't work out why they're in this huddled position or from where/or what time they represent.

Photo Essay (baby grow)

2006-12-07T10:18:00.000Z

Surrealism

2006-12-07T01:39:00.001Z

The movement arose shortly after the end of World War I in France. It was a reaction to Dadaism, which in turn was a reaction to “logic” that which Dadaists believed had caused the war. Whereas Dadaism sought to revolt against logic with near pure chaos Surrealism sought to rebel with more structured manipulation of reality. Surrealists preferred to use psychedelic studies into the sort of mind analysis Sigmund Freud would make. They would try to explain the human mind by forcing people to expand and confront its boundaries.

Although surrealism is most commonly associated with the visual art it extends to most forms of artistic expression. Alongside the artists were the poet’s in particular. Mostly the poet’s would write about love and nature. Although surrealism did exist in most other forms of art it was mostly a point for other related mini movements to spin of from it. Usually start in a definite sort of art type or the other. Sculpture, prose and the like.

Semiology

2006-12-07T01:06:00.000Z

The study of signs and symbols; the implications, invoked sense's and how we relate to each in connection to one another, the final conclusion or even the implied conclusion in relation to every active signified or signifier.
Semiology is the study of how meaning is created, not what it is.
The problem with semiology is in the very definition of the word applying to every aspect of our lives. The word itself confuses its own conclusion in that it is subject to relativity, more or less its own study. Signs and symbols do not carry a solid universal meaning, this extends to all forms of such, even lettering.
Even though semiology is technically very difficult to define, it is this very confusion that makes it very hard to disprove an argument on its definition. My understanding of the word, based on the forms presented to me thus far is this.

Semiology is more than the study of signs. Semiology is the study of age, social class, fashion, quadrivium, the junctures of these and many other aspects. Semiology is how we perceive the world through a relative perspective and how more importantly we perceive other’s perceiving the world.

An example of a semiotic study:

A cigar; a sign of wealth, relaxation and an easy life. The proletariat might perceive this to be a sign of things out of their reach perhaps? The smugness of the bourgeoisie? Furthermore to this we must consider its placement, is this item found as an image or a physical prop? As an image we immediately try to find more its meaning than simply an item. Item’s (I feel) are considered more an immediate acceptance and thus less is thought of them whereas an image is to invoke feeling and an item is usually (in this case particularly) created for the usefulness to ourselves, not for others. Example:

A cigar is used by us to smoke,

A picture of a cigar is more commonly used to the designers end. Advert imagery etc.

Tracing semiology back it is most commonly associated with the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.

Semiolingo

Sign: The very basic unit of meaning. A sign is something that creates meaning. (Umberto Eco’s wrote: “a sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie”).

For every sign we have two major aspects:

Signifier: Any material thing that signifies, e.g. text, facial expression.

Signified: The concept the signifier refers to.

For instance the text “man” is the signifier. When we read this we think of a man, this is the signified.

Denotation: the relationship between signifier and signified. The literal meaning of a sign. The text “man” signified to us a male human.

Connotation: This is when a second signifier is introduced. For instance if we introduced the text “idiot”. The picture of the man is then not just a signified but becomes a signifier as well. The signified is the picture in your head. A stupid man maybe?

Leonardo da Vinci Exhibition

2006-12-06T17:34:00.000Z

A couple of months ago I attended an exhibition of some of his work at the Henry Moore institute. More specifically this was directed at work rescued from some of his sketchbooks. It's quite an incredible thing to actually see work at two inches from your nose that has been drawn (as in some cases) in complete day dream ignorance by one of the worlds greatest thinkers and artists. Due to the age, paper and the condition in which they were kept the sketches had even picked up print from pages they were kept against, illuminated in the gallery with clever lighting you could see text and doodles layered on top of each other.
The gallery room used was small, the collection not huge either but the gratification from being able to get so close to the work was just fantastic. Leonardo has always been one of my favourite artists. Not for his oil work which receives greater attention but for his genius sketch work. There's something that conveys more an artists skill in sketch work than in all his most celebrated work combined. Something in the fluidity and the thinking I feel is lost when work is planned. I prefer a more instant transcribing process between brain, pen and paper. When viewing exhibition work that contains sketches you can feel so much closer to the artist and what he was thinking. The moods and the feelings he was experiencing at the time. Doodles are like snap shot views of the inside of a person.
I particularly appreciated in terms of the gallery how they planned the space in which the work was laid out. The room was mostly a dull matt white and the work contained within glass casing's which were in most cases illuminated from behind as well as general area lighting. Some of the work was suspended in the air via metallic woven cords and double backed glass frames. The effect was quite clinical and modern which was a really nice touch to an exhibition of what is commonly associated as rather ancient art (although as time goes, not really that ancient).
The artwork itself was a collection of sketches and scribbled writing (although by any modern day standards intricate and fluid). They were plans for work, idea's for future projects and general visual thinking. It was a little like a mind map but without the bubbles and lines we associate more commonly with planning. They even had an initial sketch of Leonardo's most famous work Vitruvian Man, which by most accounts is a sketch itself.

Along with the Leonardo exhibition there was a modern minimalist exhibition in the same building. This is a good contrast to the genius of Leonardo. I do not like 'minimalist' work on the whole. There's nothing wrong in my view with an image or sculpture that makes use of minimalist techniques. Clean and simplistic, layout and colour choices at the optimal point of the design but in most cases I feel it's just a plain bore, this was no exception. The work was made up of large white coloured boxes differentiable from large plainly coloured crates and boxes so far as that a large crate or box actually has a real use. This offered no practical or artistic use, it was not pleasant to look at nor was it well thought out in any obvious manner.

The room was badly designed, a dull room that was no different from any other, it was filled with (in the centre) a collection of boxes of varying size. They weren't very well painted, the plainness of minimalism seemed lost in this as the room's lighting and layout offered no aesthetic pleasure. Maybe the artist/designer was trying to tell me something? I couldn't see any reasoning behind it. Maybe there was a hidden message I was not getting, but what's the point in messages if their hidden and there's no real incentive to search an answer out?

All in all the other items on display were interesting to view, some great sculpture at the entrance using optic fibres and LED's. Some very interesting photographic works and even a large collection of famous sculpture prototypes on display. A good trip, just a disappointing display from the minimalist front.

Digital Art

2006-12-06T16:54:00.001Z

Christiane Paul - Digital Art

Exploring the section "Internet and Nomadic Networks"

The book is dedicated to various emerged and emerging art types related and originating to the digital world. This particular section focuses on the World Wide Web and how art orientating around it, has developed into a new movement. It explores how, for the first time, art has become a dynamic multi user experience, the WWW as a platform for users of varying experience in the field to collaborate together and create art.
The web has been around a long time, it's concept since the later years of World War 2, but not until the early 60's did it start to emerge as a new and accepted form of communication. It was not until the mid 90's however that the internet has been made more widely available to a general audience.
Art on the web with commercial backing has been around since 1984 when the National Science Foundation involved itself with ARPANET, an artist network. Possibly the first of it's kind. Pioneering the arts organizations however was New York based "The Thing". A simple bulletin board system for contemporary and cultural theory. In the 1990's the advent of HTML was conceptualized and made to be a collaborative multimedia information system. As HTML came to the fore front of web design so did the .com domain craze. This was really the spark that started the flash fire of commercial web enterprises.
Many new art related groups emerged during the late 90s. Of particular importance the NET.ART movement dedicated to net art (oddly enough). This is a good example of how art groups started to perceive how web art should be approached as this NET.ART movement was criticized when a conference of it's members was organized. The meeting was very exclusive and in an art movement that orientates around a global network this was thought of as a double standard. More open and incorporative communities were created as a result of this.
As web art took off, a more community based experience, the platform for users to interact became an issue itself and art started to approach the very foundations of the communities. Multimedia sharing became as much an experimental and involved experience as the work that was exhibited.
The most important and interesting point this section of the book brings to light is how the cyber is finally in decline from a digital experience back into a physical one. We are now experimenting with new forms of artificial intelligence which, although still basic, are actually not formulated on how much further we can take communication in terms of innovation but how we can revert our current innovations back to ancient communication forms. A good example of this is "Text to Speech". We want to prove to ourselves that our technology can be used to improve upon some of our most primitive information delivery techniques. This is a point that really comes accross while reading the section, and for that matter most of the book.

Image Analysis (essay and answer sheet)

2006-12-06T16:11:00.000Z

This image is found centre top of a web page. This is not a well known image, nor an image that anyone has studied before bar those looking perhaps for a simple example of commercial image design. It is merely an animated image aimed at drawing the attention of the reader to the aspects the website beyond it promotes.

This image is not an entirely unique image as far as what it's trying to promote and as far as what it is aims to achieve, but the image is not an exact replica of any other that I have seen. The style's used and the context they are used in have been used many times before. This image (with small animation aspects) was produced in the Summer of 2006. The historical aspects include it's use of the new media. The animation and indeed it's location (the web) are very modern mediums. The design is obviously aimed at new consumers with flashy and clean graphics. The main focus of this design is the simple shopper figure image at it's centre. The content contains firstly, a new media type, associating itself with the modern. The person in the picture is female and thus we can assume a feminine orientation within the site.

The media is digital stills imagery and flash animation. Both very modern media's. They have been selected as they are easily and cheaply created and are also easily implemented into a web based environment. The medium's imply that the website is current and fashionable. As far as I can tell this image has been purpose made for this exact use and is in an unaltered state.

There is only one person in this image, a young female holding shopping. The girl is fictional and represents a shopping of the facility that the website promotes.

The girl is wearing clothing that looks fashionable, she is also wearing a reasonably short skirt and has long hair (if not a little scarce) that moves as if being blown by the breeze. In addition she also holds a shopping bag in each hand.

The girl is standing in a very stereotypically feminine pose. Relaxed and with arms low, outwards and bent slightly at the elbows (as if to imply she's lifting something of mild weight, the shopping). One foot is somewhat out turned and forward from the other. The facial expression is in my opinion poor choice. The girl looks a little sad and the slow waving hair adds to this. The gaze is sombre and the eye's look down turned.

Judging by the clothes she is in the middle to upper class and looks like she might have some money, she is white and reasonably young in appearance.

The image was produced to catch the website users eye and thus promote the shopping facility. I know this because every aspect of every commercial website is designed with one key aim, to promote and boost company sales and reputation.

The image is location upper centre of the page, it's situated here because it will be the first thing the user will look at when loading the page. The image captures the users gaze.

The 2 shopping bags are the most telling prop used in this website. Immediately any viewer can tell they will be dealing with a retail website. The other images used around the girl are clean and “fun” shapes that promote the joy that visiting this facility with incur. The shapes are also in the form of flowers, perhaps to promote the freshness of the website?

Situated either side of the girl (on the shopping bags) there is 2 groups of text. The first text (located on the girls right side) tells us that on this website we can find out “What's On” and on the other side of the girl “The Shops” shows us we can browse through the various retailers within the facility.

The image has been produced for this retail group to promote and to boost company productivity, the image as best I can tell is not political but does serve to guide the user about what they find within. What sort of website this is and what sort of function it plays. The image tries to be as aesthetically pleasing as it can be to try and grab the attention of the user.

The more convert operations of this image try to portray the website as a very feminine affair and that it holds a classier sort of deal. The girl is as I have said I think in the middle to upper class range of citizen.

---------------------------------------

Questions and Answer Sheet (without the questions)

1. Yes
2. Contained within a website. Center page.
3. The image has not been written about. It is merely a animated image to draw attention to text.
4. This image is unique but not original. Many others have used this style and in this context.
5. This image (animation) was produced in Summer 2006. The historical aspects include it's use of new media. The animation and indeed it's location (the web) are very modern aspects of design. The design is obviously aimed at new consumers with flashy and clean graphics.
6. The image portrays that of a shopper. The content contains firstly a new media type, associating itself with the modern. The person in the picture is female and thus we can assume a feminine orientation within the site.
7. The media is digital stills imagery and flash animation. Both very modern media's. They have been selected as they are easily and cheaply created and they are easily implemented into a web based context. The medium's imply that the website is current and fashionable.
8. As far as I can tell the images are as they were originally intended.
9. There is one person in this image.
a) She is young, female and is holding shopping.
b) The girl is fictional and represents a shopper of the facility that the website promotes.
c) The girl is wearing clothing that looks fashionable. She is also wearing a reasonably short skirt and has long hair that moves as if being blown by the breeze. In addition she also holds a shopping bag in each hand.
d) The girl is standing in a very stereotypically feminine pose. Relaxed and with arms low, outwards and bent slightly at the elbows. One foot is somewhat out turned and forward from the other. The facial expression is in my opinion a poor choice. The girl looks a little sad and the slowly waving hair adds to this. The gaze is sombre and the eyes looked down turned.
e) She is a female. Judging by clothes she is in the middle to upper class and looks like she might have some money, She is white and reasonably young in appearance.
10. The image was produced to catch the website users eye and thus promote the shopping facility. I know this because every aspect of every commercial website is designed with one key aim, to promote and boost company sales and reputation.
11. The image is located upper center of the page. It is situation here because it will be the first thing the user will look at when loading this page. The image captures the users gaze.
12. The 2 shopping bags are the most telling prop used in this website. Immediately any viewer can tell they will be dealing with a retail website. The other images used around the girl are clean and "fun" shapes that promote the joy that visiting this facility will incur. The shapes are also in the form of flowers, perhaps to promote the freshness of the website?
13. Situated either side of the girl (on the shopping bags) there is 2 groups of text. The first text (located on the girls right side) tells us that on this website we can find out "What's On" and on the other side of the girl "The Shops" shows us we can brows through the various retailers within the facility.
14. The image has been produced for this retail group to promote and to boost company productivity.
15. The image as best I can tell is not political but it does serve to guide the user about what they may find within. What sort of website this is and what sort of function it plays. The image tries to be as aesthetically pleasing as it can be to try and grab the attention of the user.
16. The more covert operations of this image try to portray the website as a very feminine affair and that it holds a classier sort of deal. The girl is as I have said I think in the middle to upper class range of person.

Rationale

2006-11-27T11:03:00.000Z

For my project I will be attempting to design and make a live website that promotes my media design skills. I feel this project would best serve me as web design is something I would like to become proficient in and a website promoting myself is something I could put to long term use (if it's any good).
I have both the web space and domain name with which to use for my project and would like by the end of it to be able to actually generate some user interest in it. This might mean promoting it with interactive media such as games and user submitted work.
Because the website will no doubt be the largest promotional aspect of a new media designers portfolio I am going to have to create a website that not only works flawlessly but also looks clever and well designed all round.
Because there is no end of web design and media design web site's out there I will need to devise some gimmick's that set myself aside from all others. This may well take the form of a more genre or scene based website. Possibly something that caters more towards a certain sort of person, whether that be by their taste in music or age.
Because my code skills are far from good I will have to spend more time focusing on the visual aspect of the website.
This project also allows me to display work created at college while at the same time continuing my work on a website created from a previous module.

Final montage

2006-10-19T10:08:00.000+01:00

Before I start detailing my final montage I'll just mention quickly a little on my style of working. I can plan all I want, images, text's and research of all kinds, my final product very rarely resembles anything in the prior work. It would seem this habit has extended to my final image in this project.

My initial sketches depict a rather busy scene, I intended to fit much into this montage of mine. In my final image I came to realise that space was somewhat harder to manage than I had first thought and found myself craving the open space and the bolder statement the images I did include made upon the canvas.

However some of my planning has not gone to waste, I planned (as I do in much of my work) to use a maximum of 2 or 3 hues. As I mentioned, this is the case in much of my work so it was no wonder I decided upon this choice again. As a result the montage is almost entirely black and brown. With some hinting of other colour within.

I am a great admirer of stencil art. I love the black silhouetting and the way images aren't quite there in full. I tried to capture this same effect with my montage. The images have been cleaned up and then had the “stamp” filter applied over the top to give them that duo tonal stencil print quality.

I chose the corrugated card background because I wanted the art to look as though it was printed on an uneven surface. Such as stencil graffiti is often found on brick walls.

One of my aims was to get everything in the image connected via swirls and lines, when I came to adding this element in I found the image became to crowded and lost some of it's impact. Thus I decided the images were better laid out with plenty of spacing between. However, because this had the effect of making the entire image seem a little too empty I added in the staining to the background. The splodges and the very faint lines. This draws all the images together without making the entire montage seem to complicated to look at.

When planning my montage I did a mind map of interests that I could include in my project. A lot of different things came up, originally intending to use as many as I could. Because in this final version i decided to go with fewer images I had difficulty choosing which ones in particular that I wanted to use. I decided to list a few things that I showed interest in within an hour or so. As a result I included:

Clouds, I've always had a fascination for the sky.
Anna, the reason I am where I am today.
Music, hence the phono speaker emerging from the clouds.
A silhouette of my head.
Wine, beer and cigarettes.

The image has been entirely made using Photoshop and images taken from my personal image stock and that of Google images. Image quality wasn't such an issue with the montage as everything had the stamp filter over the top which resulted in any pixelation being smoothed out anyway. The only image I would have liked to get in high resolution would be the background. This image is the only one without a filter over the top.

I am not much pleased with this image. I find the whole thing somewhat empty to look at despite my decisions to reduce the number of images within. On top of that I would have preferred

to remove the white colour from within the stencil images, this isn't something you'd see in real stencils. You'd just have empty space in those areas. However, after removing the white to check what the result would be I found the image to dark and decided to keep it in.

As a summarized conclusion; a reasonable image in need of a few minor tweaks. A good basis from which other more thought out work might spring.

A Brief Look at Japanese Art and Manga Origins

2006-10-15T17:17:00.000+01:00

When we consider Japanese art the most thought of example would be Manga (漫画). Manga is a Japanese word that accounts for comics and print cartoons. The rest of the world think of Manga more connected with a particular style of racy and anglular drawings. Japanese Manga and Anime now commands a $5 billion global market.
The art style has been developed from a number of different influences, both Japanese and foriegn. The word manga in literal translation means "random pictures". The word was first used in the late 18th century along with publication of works by a number of artists and including:
Suzuki Kankei's "Mankaku zuihitsu" (1771)
Santo Kyoden's "Shiji no yukikai" (1798)
Another wave of works arrived in the early 19th century such as Aikawa Minwa's "Manga hyakujo" (1884) and more importantly "Hokusai manga". Hokusai was a famous "ukiyo-e" artist.
Ukiyo-e translates as "floating world" (more commonly translated into "pictures of the floating world") and is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and 20th century. They mostly feature lanscapes, theatre and sex. The art movement rose up amoung the urban centers of Edo (Tokyo), Osaka and Kyoto. Early ukiyo-e originated in popularity from the single color works of Hishikawa Moronobu in the 1670's but the style of ukiyo-e did NOT originate with him. Hishikawa was the son of a well respected dyer and silver/gold thread embroider. He studied in both the Tosa and Kano schools of art, both highly repsected institutions. You can see some of the teachings of Kano and Tosa in the works he produces. The bold outlines of Kano can be spotted in his landscape work and his Tosa background emerges through his human subject orientated work, which about a quatre of was erotic art (also called "Shunga").<br>Ukiyo-e art at first was made using India inks and then shortly after some prints were manually coloured with a brush. In the 18th century Suzuki Harunobu developed techniques for polychromal painting.
He used this technique to produce "nishiki-e", which refers to Japanese multi-coloured woodblock printing. Nishiki-e is made by carving seperate woodblocks for each and every colour and using them in a stepwise fashion. Although Suzuki was credit with the development of the technique used, it was an engraver by the name of Kinroku who created the technical innocations that allowed so many blocks of seperate colours to fit perfectly onto the page where they ought to in order to create single complete images.
Ukiyo-e was very popular partly due to how affordable they were. This was down to the fact they could be mass-produced. Men who were not wealthy enough to afford original paintings would oftens buy these works instead.
Originally Ukiyo-e art was orientated around city life. Featureing mostly courtesans, sumo wrestlers and other popular activities. later on landscapes became also very popular. The art created very rarely featured politics or people of stature above the lowest levels of society. Although officially sex was not a respected subject it continually emerged in ukiyo-e prints, it would even occsionally incure the wrath of the law on the publisher and artists who produced it.
The manga that we now enjoy really only emerged in the 20th and 21th centuries after "Dr. Osamu Tezuka" (1928 - 1989). He is generally regarded as the fore-father of Japanese Manga and Anime. His most famous creations were "Astro Boy" and "Kimba the White Lion". Osamu developed a lot of the modern techniques and styles used in Manga. Interestingly the large eyes that Manga is so commonly connected with originated from Osamu, more interestingly he developed the idea and style from that of the western cartoon "Betty Boop". In fact Osamu was a massive fan of the Disney animations and all his work has been in some form or another been inspired by Walt Disney. It was also with Osamu that much of the graphic violence of modern Manga has originated. Although by far not all his works were violent, as with Astro Boy, much of his work featured gritty story lines and a lot of mature content.

This is a brief write up of the first part of some notes taken within a lecture on Japanese. I mostly gained my insight into the art through wikipedia.org

Blue Screen and 3 Point Lighting

2006-10-12T14:01:00.000+01:00

Sketch taken of the 3 point lighting and blue screen filming tutorial.

Apparatus used:
4 x Red head lamps (clear gel)
soft lamp
back lamp (high)
back lamp (low)
fore lamp
1 x Blue screen
1 x OHP screen used as soft light bounce board (preferably use "soft box")
1 x Subject
1 x Camera (we used an XL1)
1 x Laptop for real time preview

Initial Montage Ideas

2006-10-12T11:23:00.000+01:00

The hardest design point in this task is the choosing of images to portray aspects of my life and my interests.
My initial idea is to have seemingly un-related images collected together with a single photographic image, such as a hand holding photographs.
I intend to have a photograph of my hand holding slips of paper between my fingers (more than likely using both hands). I will then super impose onto the paper the images I wish to use. I will then make the images and the paper combine to form what looks like old photographs. This design should get a nice minimalist style but at the same time allow me to cram as much imagery in as I should need. The images should be busy and full where-as the hands holding the images should be still and quiet, possibly on a calm, plane, white background.
Another route to take would be to instead of photographing my hands but to draw them holding paper. This would add (but may not look quite so good) a more personal touch to the work. If I drew my hands then I think I may have to draw over the images I’m using within the work in order to get things looking better connected.

Other ideas (as shown in image) have been that of a tree with images for leafs or just a scattering of what looks like old polaroid photographs.

500 Words

2006-10-11T18:00:00.000+01:00

Savile Lumley

This was a poster run throughout 1914 and 1915 (the first 2 years of British involvement in World War 1) as part of a recruitment push to fill the 300 thousand new recruits that the government requested. As a result of such public pressure from adverts like this and many others in 2 years a million new recruits had signed up. The following year to that, conscription was introduced.
This particular poster tried to guilt trip young Briton's into joining the force by effectively taking a snap shot of what life would be like in post war. It attempts to depict your average conservative father in a comfy domestic roll being turned upside down by the guilt of not partaking in the bloodshed of 1914.
The pattern in this image is particularly clever I feel as the feint embroidery on the lounge chair and curtains contains what we commonly associate with very imperial coloring and shape. On the fathers lap sits the pretty bow tied haired daughter who has glanced up from her novel to ask her daddy... "Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?” His son sits by his side playing with his toy soldiers. The father stares at the viewer in guilt.
The greatest asset of this poster is the father’s head. It is as if the head has actually been cut out from the rest of the poster and inserted back in. The effect is that the head almost seems to stick out in a 3d fashion. This is the foremost thing that lodges in my brain when looking at this image. The somewhat displaced head is unnatural and thus our brain has to work harder on deciphering it.

The Uncle Sam Range

"Uncle Sam's Little Dinner Party...1876." A patriotic appeal to sell stoves. The whole world attends Uncle Sam's dinner party.
Here we see a dinner party run by a stove company that contains all the various stereotypes of that era. We have the upper class white being served by a black servant. Uncle Sam sits talking to “The World” with an eagle perched on his shoulder. All the colours used and indeed the pattern is entirely American. Red stars on a blue background, or of course red and white stripes.
I think it’s interesting despite the obvious anti black feelings at the time that they chose in this picture to depicts the world with a rather round African face.
The stove of course is the focus of this image, the sole supplier of this historic dinner party. It displays plenty of pots and kettles boiling on top, with even a roast chicken being produced from within. A testament to the versatility of this rather splendid luxury item.
My favourite aspect of this poster is Uncle Sam sitting at the table and appearing to offer the world food from his stove.
This is one of the ultimate pieces of commercial advertising and political propaganda combined I think we have ever had.

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2006-09-21T11:02:00.001+01:00

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