NTU Multimedia

Client Blogged

2010-04-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

-the proposal

The project undertaken entails creating an informative website on how to construct a self-promoting flash based website for college students; it must include the key elements for a successful portfolio website.

-the research

Before I started making the website I looked at a few tutorial websites to get more of an idea for what i wanted the website to look like. Most of the ones i came across were HTML based sites with a mixture of text and images going down the page. There were others that had more structure and were broken up into different sections making it easier to follow. A few of the websites i looked at are below.

-the ideas + designs

After doing some research i started making some wireframe designs to get an idea of the layout of the website. The first few i made were for a HTML website but then started to think about some flash too. I wanted the layout to be simplistic and easy to follow so i used the ideas of sections from one of the website i looked at in my research. With the flash ones i could be more creative so i decided to put the navigation at the top for one the wireframes to make it look like a tabbed folder with different sections. The other had the navigation down the side sticking to a more conventional look.

-the final designs

I decided on the more conventional flash look and started to create a few mock ups on photoshop in a few different colours and fonts etc trying to find something that i liked which also matched the photography theme after a few i decided on the brown one with the camera.

Client Project Ideas

2010-03-11T03:01:00.000-08:00

Tina Bass Photography Logo's

2009-07-24T12:19:00.001-07:00

TinaBass Photography Website

2009-07-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

2009-06-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

This is my groups final homepage, this is the one I have done with the help of my group!

Flash Game Take 2

2009-06-22T05:41:00.000-07:00

After getting feedback on the "Breakout" style game I handed in I was disappointed, so I had another go. After reviewing my own work I decided the first thing I needed to put in the new game was the SCORE!! Has to have a score to be a game!! so far its only one level but im making another one!

Flash Game Take 1

2009-06-22T05:23:00.000-07:00

This is my flash game that I have done and handed in and got feedback on! It wasn't so good so I have been making another one! Same concept of Breakout but hopefully better than this one! I thought this was okay to begin with used the codes that were given to me, but after playing around and making another one I realised this is pants. There is no score on this one, so that was the first thing I wanted to put on the second one I made.

Website Layout Ideas

2009-06-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

I also made a search bar to go with idea but in the end my design ideas were not used but i got some good feedback to help me improve.

The two images below are websites designs for my group work project for the imaging science group. Even though they both look very similar there are a few difference, one main is the name which was changed after i designed the first one and also the links are not straight in the first one!

Before

After

Flash Quiz

2008-04-24T23:38:00.000-07:00

i made a flash quiz earlier and i have to blog so i thought why not, and here it is! its 5 frames long and it works all the way through and you can replay it if you don't do too well on it!

Project 2: The Interactive Box/showcase

2008-04-11T06:40:00.000-07:00

This projects seems very interesting and I am looking forward to start it properly at the minute have just been thinking about ideas for what I can do for it haven't got a lot.

I'm thinking for the one that has to have audio/visual content i might do a whiteboard animation showing where i was born, where i lived, where i moved to and where i want to go. I need something to show my love for music specially UK based artists. Maybe have an Ipod that has a few tracks on that you can change and play as the music for the site or make a soundtrack on fruity loops to play on the site. I want to have something that shows what I want to do in the future or maybe how I want to live because I'm not sure what i want to do. I'm still not a 100% sure on what I want to put in and still thinking of ideas. I was thinking the whole thing could be like a time line past, present future and maybe use the whiteboard animation as the intro.

Logo Ideas

- superman logo with a K
- car number plate K4RR00
- animated logo with cigarette ash
- graffiti on wall
- animated logo with smoke

Interactive Websites

2008-04-11T05:16:00.000-07:00

LG Viewty

http://viewty.lgmobile.com/uk/

This site is about a LG phone that has recently hit the market and I first saw it when I was thinking about buying a new phone. The site looks very smooth and slick, even though its plain in terms of patterns but blends together subtle colours which gives it an elegant look. Its almost too easy to use, you can leave it and it will do most of it all by itself but you have to choose what you aspect of the phone you want to look at. You can also use the scrollbar at the bottom to go back or skip a section. The content of the site is very relevant to the site as the site is about LG's new phone that has come out and the content covers everything basic you need to know about the phone and its features. It is almost like an interactive presentation, the content tells you about the phone and the interactiveness let you use some of the features on the phone as well as letting you go through the presentation at your own pace. The site has the LG logo on the top left corner of the window and it stays throughout the presentation just making sure you don't forget who the phones by! All the interactive design elements that i used on this site were worked well and were easy to use.

NikeID

http://nikeid.nike.com/

This is the Nike website where you can customize your own trainers and boots. It has a black background that gets lighter the as you reach the top of the screen. A ball made of lots of different trainers and boots in all colours is in the centre of the interactive design and the has the interactive categories at the top of the interactive window. Its fairly easy to use has all the categories are at the top its 4 sections: mens, womens, favourites and view all. If you put the mouse over the first three categories a menu drop downs with all the sub-sections in that section so the content is easily accessible and well organized. With the interactive bits on the site you can change the colour, material and add a personal id tag. You can also change the colour of everything its very interactive as you can change the view of the traniers and see it in a light or dark background. In the top left corner of the site it says NikeID and like the LG site it stays there the whole time. All the interactive bits on this site work equally as well as the LG site.

Project 1: Second Self Evaluation

2008-04-11T03:15:00.000-07:00

The idea of the identities project was to create an avatar and environment which represented me. To help us with project we were advised to use Second Life and blog your time on there a bit like a diary. At first I dint know how second life was going to help much, I knew about changing the avatars looks and clothes and thought yeah that would help a little but it wasn’t until I was on for about a week I found out you could change the way you walk, sit, stand and fly. That’s when I realised it will be more useful than I thought and so I started thinking about how my character is going to look and what kind of environment I want him in. I started off just browsing the internet for animated characters for some influences and found a quiet a few different type of characters that I liked. Spending time on Second life helped me with the environment going to different places I got different ideas so I took pictures of them and blogged them.

After looking at all the choices I had I tried to play around with 3ds max trying to make something at first it was okay playing around with it after the seminars but it was still hard to get use to. As I went on using it I dint really get any better learnt how to do different things but actually making the things I found hard so I thought I need to think of a more simple idea. While I wasn’t researching consciously was watching “Ghostbusters” and researching sub-consciously. While watching I thought I could make something like “Slimmer” it wouldn’t be too hard and thought I could put some legs on it too. I spoke to a friend on the course and we shared some idea’s he told me about his sci-fi design and his influences and I told him about mine. It was then I realised that I had forgotten that my character had to reflect me so I had to come up with something new since there wasn’t a connection with “Slimmer” but the talk about sci-fi got me thinking about aliens.

That’s when I got my idea to make an alien and in a city. The alien represented me and the city was my preconception of Nottingham City. When I moved here I didn’t know anyone and so that’s why I thought the alien was appropriate and I made the city look really dirty and dark skies because from what I had heard Nottingham wasn’t the nicest of places and always being on the news for shooting, stabbings etc. Overall I think my work is ok not the greatest and not as good I would have liked it to be. I didn’t have too much difficulty with the software except the camera but I think that was just on my copy at home so my character kept going off track. I think it did ok as representing me and how I felt when I moved here maybe I could’ve done it about how I am generally.

Nearly Finished Environment

2008-04-11T03:12:00.000-07:00

Inspiration For Enviroments

2008-04-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

A Few Inspirations For Coursewok

2008-03-11T09:07:00.001-07:00

2008-03-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

Second Life

Week 3

Day1 – Start of week three and what a start got an invite from a friend to help with the decorating her home she needed to buy some pose balls and stuff like that so she teleported me to Pillow Talk Island along with my friend Blonde. We did some modelling for her with different poses so she could decide which ones to buy. I offered to help because I had nothing else to do and I’m glad I did, she paid me $300 for right clicking and choosing sit and then right clicking and choosing stand and repeating about 5 times! So yeah what a start!

Day2 – I have spent most of my Second Life day with the gun store girl, she told me that my character looked like a gay thug because of his body movements. She told me about AO’s which I had no clue about. AO stand for Animation Overrider, I don’t know how it works exactly but it makes your character walk, jump, fly and sit in different ways depending on the AO, I got a gangster one that the gun store girl paid for, which saved me $1,500 Lidens! Rest of the day I spent working out how to work it since gun store girl went offline.

Day3 – Back on again and today I went to the zoo and carnival with my friend, its was okay not as good as i thought it would be but was still pretty cool. 1st we went to the zoo it was pretty cool rode on some horses, took the train around the zoo, tamed lions and stuff of that kind was fun for about 5 minutes. After that we went to the carnival this was better, it was on a beach and you could get on a hot air balloon that was cool. Then took this walk tour of the island walk thing that was really long but saw some really cool things on the way. In the end we just chilled out on the beach for a while.

Day4 – A couple of days ago on Second Life I made a weird looking female friend, at the time she seemed ok… But now I’m not so sure, she wants me to be her Second Life boyfriend and wants me to move into her apartment on Second Life. I told her I’m only here because of my course but she doesn’t seem to understand and now I’m being stalked by her. So I’ve spent most of the day in hiding before removing her from my friends list. There are some real weird people on here so that’s me done for today.

Day5 – Today I’ve been on an island called Hippotropolis, it’s an island where u can create stuff. Earlier I went and bought some pose balls and now I’m just learning how to create a platform and a back wall so I can take pictures without having the island scenry in it. It’s hard to explain if you don’t understand have a look at the pictures. If you still don’t understand, don’t worry about it!

Day6 – Today I went back to an Orientation Island were I leant stuff about CSI, with my friend. It wasn’t all that much fun, you have to pick up evidence but its all there in front of you I thought maybe the 1^st case would be like that to familiarise you with everything but they were all like that I got 2 out of the three and got my CSI badge! Went off Second Life for a little break when I came back my friend took me to one of her favourite islands where we had a tour of the island in a hot air balloon and then just chilled out and conversed.

Day7 – My Second Life journey is coming to an end now, it has been fun, and sometimes disturbing, but nevertheless enjoyable. I don’t think I have enough time in my real life to get on Second Life regularly but I will try and get on when I have a chance and catch up with my Second life chums! I spent most of today just telling people that I was going to be leaving and giving away the money I have got to my pals.

2008-03-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

Second Life Diary

Week 2

Day1 – Logged on to Second Life a little earlier than I was going to out because I can’t really be bothered to do anything else. Didn’t really know what to do so I just roamed around for a little while but then a friend came online and she an island to show me. So she teleported me over and we explored the island, we walked around for a bit before stopping to meditate and even got dancing before I left back to reality. Another pretty chilled out day on Second Life.

Day2 – Have spent the last couple of days to get to know the gun store girl in hope that she will give me a gun, after a little while of exploring she told me she had something for me, and I knew what it was… the gun!! I was still surprised even though I was waiting for a gun for few days because she got it personalised with my characters name on it and told me to come round to her shop where I could have another two of my choice but I didn’t really have time so it will have to wait until I am on Second Life next.

Day3 – Got my personalised gun with a holster now and the gun store girl thought I should go see how good my aim was at the firing range. Teleported me over I did pretty crap but it was my first time so wasn’t to bothered played on a few different ranges before we moved on to shooting zombies and shitting pigeons on the Land Of The Dead. I realised before I left that I could camp and shoot… instead of just sitting there being bored I can make money while shooting everything.

Day4 – Still talking to the gun store girl all week and have slowly worked my way to getting her to give me two guns of my choice on top of the one she got personalised for my character. There were quite a few to chose from I chose the Desperado and Outlander, I don’t know much about guns but I’ve heard they can kill a person! So I thought I should get two, any two it didn’t really matter just wanted to shoot people on Second Life.

Day5 – Last time on Second Life, the massive shooting spree I went on after getting the guns, I got banned from a couple of places but it was well worth it some people take the game way too seriously. My friend the gun store girl had also got my character a tattoo with his name on it, and it looked ok as well. Didn’t really do much today, a sword fight with a friend and the tattoo were the highlights of my characters Second Life day.

Day6 – It’s been a while since my last visit to Second Life, so was hoping for an interesting time getting pretty bored of it now since I seem to be doing the same thing all the time. I wanted another tattoo but I was wondering if you could like make your own because all the one’s I saw were on the body of the characters but I wanted one on my face like the rapper The Game. I learnt how to do it you have to download a template from second life and the do some stuff on photo shop but a friend who does it as a business on Second Life did it for me so been a pretty good day!

Day7 – Twenty minutes after I got on Second Life my friend came online and told me she has made a killing from prostituting her character, she had been paid $2,000 Lindens and got taken shopping so she had some new gear and was more than happy to give me $600 lindens! We chilled for a little while before I went off to buy some stuff. Didn’t really find anything that interesting to buy got some cool new things.

Second Life

2008-03-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

Second Life Diary

Week 1

Day1 – I had never heard of Second Life until we got told to use it, I was keen to get on it and have a look at what all the fuss was about. To use it you had to download and install it so after doing all that I got started… At first I didn’t really know what I was doing and couldn’t get off the stupid Orientation Island but after about a day I figured it out! Had to do the tutorial because I wouldn’t have known how to do anything found out a few useful things like fly, drive and how to change things on your character

Day2 – I was back on and focused my time on changing the way my character looked. I wanted him to look like a thug, but at the time he was a weird shape and blonde! A couple of people I asked took me to some nice places but you had to PaY! I had only been on a day and therefore was a homeless with no money so I was trying to find free stuff after some unsuccessful attempts to change my character into a thug, I flew into what I was looking for…

Before

After

Day3 – Using Second Life for a two days now and realising how much there is to do on here, met a few people who have been showing me some cool stores to get clothes and stuff from but… money is still an issue… so I’ve been doing surveys pretty much all day to get some money so I can pimp out my character. It has been a pretty dull day trying to make money! I did find a place with all the thug clothing i wanted...

Day4 – After a boring and tedious day of filling out surveys and camping, I have finally made some money enough to get my character well on they way to being a thug, so I spent most of today just shopping around looking for clothes and stuff… got some free stuff that was cool… but then found a place where they sold some good thug-wear! And this is what I got two thugged out looks and some accessories.

"Thugged1"

"Thugged2"

Day5 – Today I spent most of the day just exploring Second Life, met a few interesting people and a lot of weird ones. Pimped out my character a bit more got him a do-rag and some LA earrings. Found a couple of good islands, did some cocaine and hit a couple of bongs but mostly just spent the day dancing and chatting to my real life friends that are on Second Life.

Day6 – I haven’t been on Second Life for a couple of days now so I thought I’d go back on and see what’s happening, kind of got bored when I ran out of money there really isn’t that much to do without money, so I spent most of they day talking to random people. I made a new friend today and she has been on Second Life for a while now. She taught me a few things like how to share things in your inventory and took me to an island I hadn’t been to before Bahia where my character did some surfing and rode a whale!!

Day7 – Second Life is getting real boring without money and I don’t want to do anymore surveys or camp for twenty minutes and get $2. I met a girl who’s avatar was a lot more realistic than most people’s and her friend, so I figured she or her friend would know how to make some quick money since she had a nice skin and there expensive… She said quickest way was for me to buy Second Life money with real money but that’s not an option I have no money in real life! The only other ways were prostituting myself and camping! Was moneyless so I spent most of the day just talking to her about what she does and stuff. She owns a gun store in Second Life and said that she might get me a gun, which was cool!

One Shot Film (Evaluation)

2007-12-11T06:22:00.000-08:00

The one shot movie was a group project. We only had three people in our group but it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would it be. We only really had one idea so we settled on that but once that was done I came up with an idea that I liked more using the same piece of footage as the group so I decided to hand this piece in as my main bit. The idea came to me when I was bored on YouTube watching video while waiting for Dan to come over and I came pass an anti-bullying video, can’t remember what it was that I started looking at.

We filmed the initial idea at Sagaar’s house in Leicester and it wasn’t really much of a problem except for the fact that we weren’t quiet sure of what it meant by “one-shot”. All we knew was that the camera couldn’t move but we weren’t too sure about if we were allowed to pan and/or tilt, but we did it anyway which I was a bit hesitant about, but in the end it did look good so I didn’t really care but was just hoping that we had got it right. We wanted it to be very dark and glum so we didn’t really have any lights, looking back it wasn’t the best of ideas the quality of the video wasn’t the best even though it looked good. I enjoyed the filming and the editing and I got to do more of it as I did my individual one as well as the group one.

After the anti-bullying idea came to me, I decided to keep the film short, simple but with a hard hitting message. I searched the internet for facts about bullying and I found a few that I used in my movie. Once I started I got really into because it’s something I feel strongly about unlike the first movie we did about the guy with girl problems I felt that this movie possessed no real meaning. I think if had come up with the idea earlier I could have tried out different locations to film in and tried a few more shots with more people.

Overall I think that my movie was a success even though it was done quickly and I only had one piece of footage to work with which was because I felt I didn’t have the time to go out film another couple of pieces on my own. Even though I got the project done I realised that I spent a lot of time on an idea that I didn’t want to do, purely because I just wanted to get it done but I see know that if I would’ve done something that I had thought through and planned out I would’ve not only produced work that was of a higher quality but also I would’ve enjoyed myself a lot more.

Flash

2007-12-11T05:38:00.000-08:00

I found the Flash project was the hardest thing we had to do in this term. I just didn't understand what I was doing but I am pleased to say that I got it done! I didn’t think I would I found it really tedious all the time it seemed like I was doing a lot of things but wasn’t getting any further into my project it was always WRONG and nothing absolutely nothing seemed to work! We were given a template by Jools, which we had to mould into our own. I decided to do a quiz (which was not a good idea) on Arsenal Football Club because I’m arsenal till’ I die. After I started doing it I realised that I was going to have do stuff to the action scripts and like a brick in the face it hit… I had just made things a lot harder for myself. While messing about with the action scripts I figured out what I had to do to make it work and so carried on and at first it wasn’t working and I kept getting it wrong but after about a hundred tries I nailed it! So happy that it is done, dusted and out of my life!

One Shot Film

2007-12-11T05:19:00.000-08:00

For my one-shot film I worked with my friends, Sagaar and Dan. In the beginning we were stumped, didn't really have any idea's but then Sagaar came up with and idea that we were happy with at the time.

Sagaar’s idea came out of the blue and it was mostly his film, he had everything planned out so we just did as he wanted us to do. His storyline was going to be about a guy making mistakes in his life mainly revolving around girls (just like Sagaar). When we started filming everything was going to plan and it was easily accomplished but then we had heaps of trouble trying to find a song or music file to fit the theme of the movie. Once again Sagaar was the man with a plan, he heard a song that his sister’s friend had produced about a guy wanting to make amends with his ex-girlfriend.

After we had finished editing the film and put it altogether we were pleased with the outcome even though we weren’t to sure if we had done it right because we didn’t have a clear idea of what one shot was. I think we might have made a mistake in the filming because of the movement of the camera. When I got back home I thought I would use our video to make a completely different film with a totally different narrative. I did it on bullying I think it works pretty well, it didn’t really take to long to do as I already had the recorded video just had to edit it and put a soundtrack on it.

Stop-Motion

2007-12-11T04:43:00.000-08:00

The 1st piece of assessed work we were set was stop-motion. My group included myself and my friend Dan, together we came up with a few ideas but we did most of it as we went a long. We realised that it was better to have a plan than do it as we went a long but we decided we were far too into the project to start all over again and decided if we have time we could do a couple of short stop-motion films. In the end we only got round to taking more pictures but not actually creating a movie.

I had never used any of the programs that we needed to produce the stop-motion, I found it interesting to have a little play around and see what things did and changed the filter so many times but then after a couple of hours playing around with the software I figured out what i liked and what i didn't like. Adobe Photoshop was one of the programs we used it was fairly straight forward after my friend explained it to me for the 3rd time round. On the other hand I had a lot of trouble with Adobe Premiere even after millions of explanations I just could get my head around it and it took a very very long time for it to click but it did come to me eventually.

The main influence for our stop-motion was Prodigy's Smack My Bitch up video. We thought that by taking the images from a first person perspective may add something 'different' to the final piece. We spent a lot of time just watching stop-motion movies on the Internet, mainly via YouTube but did not see any that I can remember that were in 1st person so we thought we would try something different!