Ollie Tristram

Well, I have finally finished my interactive showcase and to be honest it hasn't been that stressful. I haven't tried to be too adventurous, but I think the main reason I haven't had too much grief is because I have been using ActionScript 2.0. All the tutorials I used online to help me were all in AS2.0 so I would have been buggered if I used 3, and when I used 3 for that last Flash project I did it turned out well crap.

I will post the showcase soon, but I just need a few people to test it for bugs etc first.

P.S. I know I haven't posted in a while but I've been playing GTA IV too much! Ha!

The stress has begun. On saying that, things have gone reasonably well for me on day one of creating the showcase in Flash. What's been the main issue is time. I have only got as far as creating a preloader and creating buttons for the 'homepage', and it's taken me nearly 3 and a half hours!

I'm not even sure if the preloader works because the document seems to just load on frame 2 everytime I test it, i think it might be because there is so little information for the preloader to load its loaded and gone in an instance. If that is the case then hopefully we'll see if it works by the time I have added videos.

I have been browsing tutorials most of the time, only finding the preloader one most helpful. I sort of found out on my own how to made the buttons work and they do so as I intended which I am very pleased with.

Here are two screenshots of my days work:





In my next session I am to begin importing videos, pictures and music onto the frames which the labelled buttons lead to.

After today's lecture on Flash and the Interwebs this idea came to me. It is an idea (which will probably be final) for the 'homepage' of my Interactive Showcase. It's simple, which I wanted to originally go for, and also a memorable layout idea.




I started with a basic image of me and imported it into Photoshop. Then using the Polygonal Lasso tool cut myself out. Next, I inverted the selection and painted the background white but because this gives you hard edges I used the blur tool to soften them up. I tampered with the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation until I ended up with this final image. I altered the canvas sizes to divide the image into six segments, five of which can be seen in the image. I changed the dimensions of each to give the image a distorted perception and finally added drop shadows. Also seen there is my logo idea which may act as a button to bring users back to the homepage.

In the image you can see my colour theme, which I explained in my previous post. The five images of me will act as buttons to take you to the next frames hosting various things about me and my identity. For example in the image you can see one will lead you to videos I have made.
With the other four, I am planning on these being Pictures, Music, Avatar and then for the other I'm not entirely sure, but I'm thinking of writing a short Multimedia Autobiography that will let users read my life so far using Multimedia and my influences.

I am planning that when users hover over the buttons a blue border will highlight it and the title of where the button will take you will appear.

Now just to put it into Flash... :(

Right I have been looking for ideas and inspirations for my interactive showcase.

Hello blog.

Feeder (the band) have a competition in where they invite fans to make a music video for their new single "Miss You". As my friend is a big Feeder fan he pointed it out to me that we should make something, and as it is helpful towards Multimedia and AV in particular, we have begun.
Using past videos - primarily our Feeder music video from A Level (which can be seen at the start of this blog - we have re-cut them to fit with the new song, Miss You.
The prize for winning the competition is get your video in the bonus features of Feeder's upcoming DVD. Some of the videos already posted on YouTube are somewhat, er.. n00bish! So hopefully we have a good chance. When it's finished it shall be posted on here of course. I will also be using this as the 'work I have done outside of studies' at the review in a couple of weeks.

Another thing I would like to mention is a couple of ideas that I have for my next Identities project. I think I'm going to make it personal and by this I mean everything in it is going to be by me, or at least co-produced by me.
An idea for my layout will be my bedroom in its usual state as it represents who I am. Users will then be able to interact with different parts of the room to reach different aspects of my Multimedia personality. For example, clicking on the TV will bring you to be able to watch videos I have made or clicking the guitars will bring you to all the music I have made. Each of these sub-screens will give users an idea of my tastes and abilities - or even my potential. Somewhere in here my avatar will be included.

See you soon.
x

My Avatar and it's Environment

Add to My Profile More Videos

Its quite self explanatory, but its just me and my different personalities in an environment which I can relate to.

The music was created by me and can be heard in full at www.myspace.com/pyrodrifter.

Safe!

Yello.

So this is what I have so far for the first project of the Identities module. I am going to use a 2D avatar in a 3D environment.

The avatar is simply me, but in various poses and performing activities that represent who I am and what I enjoy. I may not use all of these pictures in the final piece though and there may be newer ones included in that too. I chose for the photos to be me in normal clothes as it reinforces the idea that I am just the average multimedia student, and this is also the case when describing the editing on the pictures - minimal and simple.

As for the environment, it's supposed to be a nightclub. It is still in progress but this is its current state. There is a disco ball thing, a dancefloor, some capsule seats in the corner and a DJ booth and bar to the right. I may possibly include some more seating on the left. I also intend to use different coloured lighting and depending on how difficult it is, use flashing lights in the final animation. The final scene will include textures on all surfaces to give a more realistic image.

The various avatars of me will be dotted around the club in their different poses and the animation will be of a camera flying through the scene to explore it.

You can watch my weekend break holiday video which I have edited on my Facebook videos page. But if you don't give a shit about what I did then you don't have to (there are ghosts in it though so you should).

Also, I'm going to create my own music to go in my Identities project thing when it is done. But I don't want to give anything away, other than it's very 'personal' to me.

Until next time...

After today's seminar on learning how to create a BBC Three-esque blob character, this is what I ended up with. Now admittedly, I didnt create the spiralling horns/arms, Andy Love did, but that was because I'd dared be more adventurous from creating 8 teeth instead of 4 like the instruction sheet said.

Andy makes 3Ds Max look so easy. And then when I want to go and use it I think, "oh i'll just do this and then this will happen and its easy to mould shapes etc", but then when you come to do it there is always something which I don't know how to do which prevents me from getting further and therefore resulting in my getting annoyed with the nothingness I've created. Anyway, I made a figure out of using the Line tool and then extruding it. It means nothing really but it could make a cool logo... or not.



And then I began trying to model a person until I couldn't figure out how to make more polygons on a face so I couldn't make any facial shapes or anything so this is as far as I've got so far.

The brief for the module says as follows;

"Create an avatar in online 3D environments, like Second Life and Virtual Doppelganger spend some time exploring the virtual environments and communication with the residents. Keep diary of at least four weeks of your Avatar’s experiences and screen shots and publish them on your journal between weeks 20 to 32."

So after testing Second Life and concluding that it is absolutely rubbish and complicated I found another similar online community, There.com. It is much easier to use and for starters doesn't lag so much! It is fairly bandwidth-friendly and I haven't encountered any serious performance issues with it thus far. I could tell I was signing up for a more user-friendly environment just from the initial log-in and welcome pages. It used a lower formality tone and talked of how There.com is just about having fun.

I have used the username of OllieT88 (Ollie Tristram and then my birth year 1988) as its what I've used in the past and its easy to remember. This is what your default avatar looks like.



As you enter the virtual world you start on Fisher Island which has multiple billboards giving you beginner tips on how to communicate, move etc. It's very simple. Use the arrow keys to walk and double tap and hold them to run in that direction. I saw a few other avatars running around the island and went over to one. All you have to do is type and a speech bubble appears above your head. This guy was nice enough and introduced himself as being an Aussie and that a lot of people are quite cool and nice on There.com. I asked him some questions about customisation and what you can get up and he said the 'buggy races' were quite fun and other than that you just make friends. Then came along a female character and we ended having a 3-way conversation. The view switches so that you all become central to the chat. You can even use gestures to help communicate expression and feelings. Laughing, becoming mad and flirting or just a few of these.



There.com uses a currency just like many other virtual life simulators. This time its called 'There bucks' and you can use it to buy land, houses, clothes and many other accessories. Unfortunately, this money system prevents you, from having a different appearance other than the default one. On saying that, you could customise you head size and shape, including nose, eyebrows, lips and ears. Therefore, without paying you are very limited from being individual. I did try however, to make the face look like as much like my real life self as possible, so judge for yourself on how accurate I was!



After getting used to Fisher Island, I looked on the map and one of the 'Places of Interest' highlighted was Motu Motu, so I teleported there. It was a row of houses and if you walked up to them it told you who owned them. You could then click on that sign for further information such as when any upcoming events were at that house.



At the end of the row of houses was a club and on the outside were signs and posters advertising for you to pay 'There bucks' to rent out the club for whatever use. Inside the club were tables and chairs, a dance floor with moving lights and whatnot - all of which you could interact with, and had there been many people about, it would make for a good virtual social hang out.

Next time I log-in I think I shall check out all the different events and 'fun' activites you can participate in.

In today's seminar we made another animation on 3D Studio Max. This time it's a squid! He's a very happy squid.
I must admit that without any of Andy Love's instructions it wouldn't anything like this. 3DS Max has so many features and functions and unless you know the program inside and out, you make 3D modelling and animation very difficult for yourself.

Anyway, enough chat, it's time to meet Squiddy!
(The clip loops 10 times)

This picture I created again in 3D Studio Max. This time I used map pictures found on Google for the Earth and Moon simply after creating spheres. I also placed a targer spotlight on the planets to give them that silhouette style. Finally, I imported the rendered bitmap into photoshop to touch up the levels and contrast and placed in a lens flare to represent the Sun.


I call it, Orbit.

Yeah it's good. It's just another one to get used to. However, it seems easier than flash so far. Another thing is that it would help if some of the stuff on the tutorials was actually in the program.

So i decided to sort of help me gradually get used to this technical program I should do some tutorials and I found a good selection on http://www.tutorialized.com/.

After a few trial and errors on some tutorials which apparently were out of my skill-zone at the moment (such as creating hair), I selected to created a wierd ornament thing.

To be honest, the end result on the tutorial was better than mine, but after a bit of Photoshopping mines looks not too bad... although you can't really tell it's 3D anymore.

I call it, Star.