sandr093

In between the mad rush of Christmas and new years eve, I found a gap to experiment and improve my skills in certain areas of design, It was a toss up among learning more about 3DS max or Photoshop. For some odd reason a lot of people are experienced in photoshop from use at college and from an early age (I think I missed out there) and have a good understanding of it, so to not risk being a photoshop novice I decided to play around with it. I took a picture of WWII fighter plane and manipulated it to look as if it had been shot down and was on fire, using tools such as hard light, layer masks, smudge and noise. It's a lot different from Microsoft paint :) Original Image: Photoshoped: Finalised on a background: I also designed the Christmas tree with contrasting colours, silver and gold baby, ooh yeah lol Samuel Dobson

Here is my final 3DS max animation for the design practice 1 module, The main addition is the camera scan of the swords at the start and the plunging into water. I believe It adds a little adventure.

Last Monday i completed my design practice one module: interactive spaces, as i explained in my last blog post a simple task became a complex one with lack of research, using notepad instead of dreamweaver increased complexity ten fold, although now everything is completed I am very satisfied with what I have produced. After finally importing all my notepad files into dreamweaver I began to link the pages with boarders, the process was quite complex as I had alot of nodes that branched of to different options, If a user collected a certain object the interface of the image changed as there was a new item in the your inventory. So in entirety i had to produce a lot more photo shopped images than normal to indicate a person has an item in there inventory. I defiantly learnt that planning is crucial when it come to interactive spaces, the simplest things like using front slashes instead of backslashes can cause problems. I also understand the aspect of journey better, this was the first t...

I have finished my interactive space module which should have been alot of fun and relatively easy but wasn't. I first set out to get the photo's which I would be using, this section went as smooth as can be, got the camera, asked some people to pose for some shots in the Waverly building and had a nice coherent sequence of images to link. The next stage was when things started to go wrong, I had previously missed the lesson on dreamweaver, so like a old school pro I thought we were meant to use notepad, I painstakingly produced a good chunk of my work in notepad before realising dreamweaver is available and makes working so much easier. The next problem was that, as I 'd missed a previous lesson, I was unaware you could link pictures directly from your image directory, so like a pro again I uploaded my pictures to my blog and was using the URLs from there to direct the pictures. This posed even more problems as the loading time between pictures was terrible as it was downl...

Now I have the basic concepts and designs for my one shot film, but have made no solid judgements or sense of the development stage, I like to identify the implications of my inspirations and brainstorming before I continue with later processes. This allows me to learn further and avoid possible problems arising in the future. I  adapt any new ideas created by my analysis/synthesis at this point and usually incorporate them into my current project. Analysis involves listing as many questions as you can think of regarding your project. The questions will vary from project to project but usually the majority of these questions are the same, whatever the project you are attempting. the Synthesis is the following section in the design process and is a list of answers. Quite simple really. 1) What software is most appropriate to use? 2) How long do I estimate to completion ? 3) What genre will it be? 4) What story am I trying to tell? 5) What is the main funct...

To get things kick started with the module I began conjuring up thoughts in my head, specially past examples of interactive spaces I've enjoyed. As with all my designs, inspiration is the key to turning ideas into reality. Firstly Final Fantasy VII is the first game I can recall playing which involved exploring and a meaningful journey. Final Fantasy VII is a role playing game, that had excellent graphics, game play, music and story for the time and was highly praised in the gaming community. The stand out feature for me was that it mixed technology, playability, and narrative to create a fascinating journey. The main character (you) had to choose your path, collect materials and items to advance to next levels and make interesting choices along the way which ultimately decides your fate. It had many different outcome which were influence by making different decisions. The formula for this game turned the average linear story into a much deeper structure of nodes and paths to dec...

So, I was very satisfied with the group edit we produced, but to show that I am able to go back to a project and refine through an iterative process I have produced a individual edit. My new version is called 'Chalk Nightmare', It works on basis that the story of the girls parent breaking up remains but she is recalling the events through a nightmare. The shot is reversed to indicate that the more recent memory's are being recalled first and the earlier ones last. To reinforce the idea of dream, the dip to black transition is used first to symbolise her eyes closing and the dip to white transition last to show her eyes opening. The nightmare aspect is created by lowering the brightness and gamma to create a dark and eerie atmosphere, I also changed the camera zoom and angle so the pictures is more visible and the angle creates a quirky feeling. Finally to match the mood of the lighting I change the coat from red to blue via colour changer, It fits well with th...