EVERYTHING IS FINISHED... EXCEPT MY INTERACTIVE NARRATIVE!!

I have everything finished except my interactive narrative!! i have spent all day finishing it off for it now to tell me that theres not enought memory to test it! so i cant even see if it works!!

My First Deceant Pixilation :)

My Interactive Narrative catch up...

I have realised i haven't put up any of my work from my interactive narrative, and although its not finished yet i can show you my characters and a few of the settings there in...

This is Kumiko... He is the hero of the story.



This is the enemy... Lord Yutaka sends out ninjas which Kumiko has to destroy.



Here is one of the places they meet... inside a shop. In this frame, the playes has to pick an option. They have to choose a power to use against the ninja.



Here are my first photoshop creations for this project. This is Kumiko's belt buckle which is sort of his logo, there is also a picture of his belt which I created not long after.

One Shot

I have been doing one shot film for nearly 3 weeks now, I have really enjoyed it, however had a few complications along the way...

The first lesson was pretty boring, going through all the health and safety precautions, however we then got put into our groups and started to think about our films. Due to the huge lack of enthusiasm from my group I quickly arranged to change groups as I wanted to be productive and get on with the film, due to a lot of other work I had to. I joined my new group after the first week and quickly caught up with them. We met in the week to discuss how we were going to film our idea and where and when it was all going to take place. Our film was about drink driving, we were going to have a couple of us drunk getting into a car and running someone over. On the day of filming I was really excited, despite the freezing cold we had to stand in for hours. However we managed to get what we wanted pretty quickly although there were a few complications. First of all the camera screen was a slight shade of blue, we didn't know what it was supposed to look like but assumed it wasn't meant to be blue. We could not solve this as we didn't know how to change it. Since then I have found out the white balance was off and I now know how to change it thanks to someone I know on a broadcast course. So besides the blue screen we started filming, me and Janos were behind the camera, I was in charge of the light balance as he moved the camera. We had to change the lighting balance as we zoomed in and out of the frame as we found it went too dark or florescent. The main problem for us was the background noise, as there was a cleaning truck taking all the time in the world cleaning the street by our location. I politely asked if they could stop for two minutes, but apparently people just arnt as nice as they used to be these days. When it came to editing our film, the noise was the biggest problem, the noise from the truck just made the whole film like crackle. We boldly decided to cut out all our audio from the film and replace it with a soundtrack. It has actually worked out so much better even tho we spent a very long time finding the right song. We had one more problem with our film... when we put the tape in the VCR the tape got stuck and snapped in the machine... we were almost in tears as we had worked so hard on it, however the technician told us there was a very small chance he could fix it for us by sellotaping the tape back together, but even if this worked we wouldn't be able to rewind the tape once we had played it. Turns out someone likes us as the tape worked and we managed to record it to the external hardrive. But he was right we couldn't rewind it so the tape got destroyed. The result of the tape breaking in the VCR means we have a cut at the beginning of our film, it sort of shakes but we cant change that unless we film all over again and with the time we had left non of us really wanted to be doing that. What we have created with everything that went wrong is brilliant. I am very proud of it and am now considering film next year.

My Race Track for Pixilation

This isn't a very good video but its the only one I could find with the street race in it. This is a clip from Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift one of my favourite films. The racing starts about 2 minutes in and the best bit of drifting is about 4.40 minutes.

Take 2:

After my diaster on thursday I have come up with a whole new idea. I have been home this weekend and today my 4 year old nephew was down. He had all my old race cars out and like usuall was making a mess. I then thought about racing toy cars for my pixilation. I love cars and car racing, I have been to silverstone and LOVED it! I love any film that has a car chase involved, i think i get that from my dad. so i was sat watching my nephew throwing the cars about and all of a sudden saw his lego box and i had a brainwave. I had come up with the idea to create a whole race track with lego people andall. I started making my track but then got delayed as my nephew then wanted to help... however 4 year olds dont exactly help. 3 hours later i had my track all set up i even pulled off all the wheels from lego cars to create tyre walls like they do in the Gand Prix. I have based my pixilation on the Grand Prix and had my dad help me as he has been to watch it many times and watches it every sunday without fail when its on. I have also placed a few crashes in there to make it interesting, after all theres no Formula 1 without a couple of crash scenes. Here are some videos i got my inspiration from:



Here is the line up and it also shows you the start of the race. This was filmed at the Formula 1 in China Shanghai in 2008.



To create the crashes in my pixilation, i used bluetack and wire, this held the cars in the position I wanted as they were flipping over and crashing. This was so much fun although it took me a good 4, 5 hours from when i started to make my track. I am getting a train back tomorow morning so I am hopefully going to put all my frames into Adobe professional after tomorrows lecture.

Animation Over Time

I have been looking at animation over time, going from the first animation in 1906 'Humorous Phases of Funny Faces' to one of the most recent animations 'UP'. Animation has changed rapidly over time, and im very excited to see where we will be in 40 years time. Im not a fan of the 3D cinema at the moment, i havent warmed to it. The thought of having to sit wearing wierd glasses for 2 hours just dosent attract me. The first time I really noticed animation was when i watched Monsters INC. They managed to capture each strand of hair and the defination to me was the most amazing thing in the world. I have always loved animation however it was around the early 2000's when the animation really got my atention. I was yet to be amazed again when Wall-e appeared in the cinemas. It looks so real and although he cant talk, the animators and directors have really caught the emotions and its so easy to connect with the machine robot, sounds silly but its so clever. Here are quite a few images i have found to show you the extent animation has changed over time.

Cars 2 World Grand Prix Trailer!!!!

This is a bad video on my computer but i have seen it in high deff and the graphics looks amazing! Its due to come out in 2011 and i cant wait!

I have been to see UP in the cinema and although i thought the story was pretty boring untill the last 20 mins, the animation is incredible, there is so much detail in every movement. Here is the link the emdedding was dissabled:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USpI6Jzl3No

Im my tutor this morning we were looking at each others blogs and we watched a trailor for the new EA Games Basketball Game... it was Fantastic! From where i was sat it looked real and at first i thought it was a film trailor untill the EA Games logo came up! They have personilised each player down to detailed tattoos, and even included sweat patches and muscle defination! Its more realistic than most animations! Here is the link from the video the guy in my tutor posted: (its amazing)

WHAT A WASTE

I have just spent an hour and a half taking my photos for my pixilation and spent 2 hours before hand making my cars and my memory card has all of a sudden decided to wipe itself clean!!!! I now have to go and take all the pictures again and i was only half way through it in the first place and i also dont have pictures of my process through making the cars!!! I HATE CAMERAS! My flat mates are also fed up of doing it..... this is rubbish!!

My First Pixilation

Here is my first pixilation. Its not brilliant i have created it to test out the software and get used to using it. i will be taking photos for my finial pixilation tonight, which im really excited about. I found with this pixilation that it went really really fast and you couldent really see what was happening, so i slowed it down by 70 % and its still extremely fast. when i take the photos toninght i think i am going to make 3 replicas of each photo just so it it last longer. This may not work, however i think its worth a try because i really dont like the pace of this pixilation.

MY IDEA FOR MY SECOND PIXILATION

After watching a clip on youtube i got the idea of cardboard boxes... but turned into cars. I have two volunteers from my flat who agreed to help me out. The cars will start in a flat on the top floor and they will race down the stairs, and out the door, I am also considering having a road rage scene in the middle, but i will see how i get on.

George Smith

I think George Smith's work is very abstract. In an article I read, he quotes "My style is abstract, sometimes too abstract for most people" but I love it and I love creating abstract work myslef. Although you have to know the limit otherwise it can just look too messy. George Smith describes it as "contrlled chaos- going insane whilst keeping it under controll" and I completley agree!



ALIEN REVISIONED

www.endeffect.com

Phil McDarby

Phil McDarby is a very creative designer, he,s been workin in Graphics, 3D and Videogame design for about 10 years. Hes even set up his own games company called Vyro games. Im not a fan of fantasy but I love some of his works with dragons. I love the image below, which he created in photoshop, even tho im not a massive fan of dragons in art, there is something about this piece that I just love.

The Amber Dragon’s Hoard

http://www.philmcdarby.com

I thought this video was really well created, i really like the idea of it however i can imagine it would have taken a very long time.

ahhhh my interactive narrative is taking me agessss, although im slowly getting there. I am ill at the moment, been given antibiotics therefore flat bound and cant go out and party :(... However its turning out to be a good thing because im getting soo much more work done! My interactive narrative is now lookin more like ... something, rather than a bunch of random drawings. I also need to start cracking on with my essay, which I am feeling more comfortable with since my tutor meeting last friday.

I have also realised listening to classical music is soo relaxing and makes it easier for me to work... although my flat mates think im a looser for playing it... I will turn them around, they will love it by the end of the term!

I had my first pixilation seminar on thursday, im really interested in animation so really looking forward to the rest of the three weeks. We all got put into groups and had to go and take roughly 350 photos which we will use to make animations with. We went out and took about 500 and had time for a cup of tea which we thought was really good, however when we got back to the room and our tutor looked at the photos, he realised we had taken some portrait and they all had to be landscape. This was my fault as the portrait ones I took... oops! However I didnt know we had to take them all landscape as he never told us and my classmates didnt think about it either. This is not the end of the world as I have plenty of time to go out and take my own, so tomorrow me and a couple of my classmates are going to take some more.

Sketches

Here are some of my beginging sketches that I was playing around with . I have drawn these to help my idea evolve in my head and to get a rough guide as to how long it was going to take me to draw out each scene. Suprisingly enough the walls/alleys have taken me the longest to draw, one taking me an hour! I was really pickey making sure every angle was right to make it look realistic. Ironically I have realised I am not realistically goin to get the project finished if I take an hour to draw a wall!!

Its all making sense now

I am feeling so much happier about this course now, as I am finially understanding the process of the projects and what exactly is expected of me. I also now understand a bit more about these blogs and what we are meant to be using them for. I have been so used to working in sketch books that I didnt ever think about using an online space for a sketchbook. I think it is quite a good idea however I think I still prefer to use sketchbooks the old fashioned way. Futher to my tutor meeting, I have realised I should be posting all my work on here throught out the whole project, rather than waiting untill I have finished certain parts before uploading them all, and I can now see why that is so important.

Here is my plan for my interactive narrative, I have sketched out a couple before hand however I ended up editing them throught the last couple weeks as more ideas came to me.

There are basically two main routes you can go down, however only one route works. throughout each routes there will be a couple choices they have to make and the other slides are just continous however the gamer will have to cpntroll that movement. This plan is not set instone, it may vary as i put my images together, and I may still come accorss some faults.

Interactive Narrative In Process

This is taking agess! I have got my idea and have started drafting it all out. I am hand drawing it all i think and then finishing it off in photoshop. I have also sketched out my character and some implements from the different scenes. It is taking me soo long tho. My idea has changed over the last week as i started out with a completly different character and motive to the story line. hHowever after watching 'The Last Samuari', i changed my plot and adapted my character. I really like the idea of martial arts so think I am going to carry this theme on. Im also panicking about using flash, im starting to think i should have made this project abit easier for myself!

Interactive Narratives

Have just been set my first project, I'm finding it difficult to think of ideas as every time i think i have it right i see something else which makes me think I'm wrong. I'm initially finding this project difficult but i am going to keep researching to help me understand it better.

and i dont understand the NOW system!

Tuesday and im hungry

Just started Multimedia, I wanted to do Graphics so im bit worried wether this course is gonna be too difficult or i just wont like it.