A cute little cat with somthing to say. (should prpobably say here that I didn't create the audio bit - Andy Love, lecturer provided us with that). I should also add that this was one of the most hilarious seminars I've had. Enjoy:
Tuesday, December 4
Monday, November 19
Eye Eye
A nice little pair of blinking cartoon eyes. The eyelids are a little jagged for some reason - the smoother did not like working and animating at the same time. O well.
Sunday, November 18
Monday, November 5
Monday, October 15
Friday, May 18
Actionscript Flash Game Thing Task
Ahaa. A task I enjoyed. Didn't really seem like work. Probably due to the idea I had. Click the thumbnail below...
Tuesday, May 8
Gorilla Sting V2
2nd draft of Gorilla Sting. Hopefully without the 'floating monkey' effect this time.
Thursday, May 3
Aaahhhhhh Outtakes
Outtakes are fun. Here are the messed up bits from day 2's filming (day 1's got trashed/lost by the dreaded DSR 11 tape deck thing, the bastard!!)
Welcome Back
Aaaaaaaah. Eventually got into my blogger account again. I purposefully didn't update my account to the new one so I didn't have to log in twice every time with a google account as well. It made me. I made it with a wrong email address. Clever. So I couldn't tell if it was my assword or username which was wrong. It was neither. What a cerfuffle.
So the blog returns at about a week till the coursework deadline. I'll include some of the preliminery photos of 'The Purple Lycra-Clad Warrior/Guy/Thing' who stars in my stings and posters and stuff.
I think you'l agree that costume's probably THE best alcohol-assisted ebay purchase ever. Have you done better? Leave a comment ;)
So the blog returns at about a week till the coursework deadline. I'll include some of the preliminery photos of 'The Purple Lycra-Clad Warrior/Guy/Thing' who stars in my stings and posters and stuff.
I think you'l agree that costume's probably THE best alcohol-assisted ebay purchase ever. Have you done better? Leave a comment ;)
Friday, February 23
Blind Browsing
Wow - this is very VERY annoying. Navigating is a nightmare.
Haha, look what sympathy facebook give blind browsers:
"we're not cool enough to support your browser... please use one of these browsers which you wont be able to see or understand either."
Haha, look what sympathy facebook give blind browsers:
"we're not cool enough to support your browser... please use one of these browsers which you wont be able to see or understand either."
Monday Lottery Summary:
Use of text equivelents - Mostly unusable, but ok for some elements eg 'How to Play'
Ability to use without plugins - Unusable, blind browser users cannot play
Ability to use with keyboard - Poor, possible, but very annoying
Colour combinations used on the site - Poor, visually impared people can hardly see detail
Colour contrast of the site - Poor (same reasons)
Ability to apply user settings to the site - Text size very poor, only some can change, and colours do not change for the important parts of the site - unusable!
Wednesday, February 7
George Africanus
We were given the task of finding out who this guy was and what was special about what he did in Nottingham, and then deliver a site-specific live performance on him in the city somewhere.
I have never attempted anything like this - ever. A similar level of experience ran throughout the group. So we gathered what scraps of imformation we could together. We found he was a slave, turned metalwork apprentice, turned brass forging entrepeneur. We found that a couple
of Nottingham churches and a house near the Lace Market were import in his life. After finding no eveidence of him at one of the churchs and the house is now a tram junction, we found a small plaque with his name on at St. Mary's church near the Pitcher & Piano.
Fantastic. Oh well, better than nothing.
We decided this would be the most likly site for the performance. The idea of a guided tour seemed a good one, but the lack of Afrucanus-afiliated hotspopts around the church was a slight issue. So we made our own. With a few of us dodded around the grounds ready to blow our audiences minds with history and details, a tour guide stringing them along and a handy plant in the group to prompt questions (me), the fact that only one square metre of the church was important was missed by the audience.
To add some fund raising element to the task (fullfilling one of the aims of the task) and adding some interactivity and hands-on factor for the audience I came up with the idea of cutting a laminated picture of Afrucanus into as many pieces as we had stations. Then for the audience to bid on each piece so at the end they could see what he looked like. The idea then pooped up that we wouldn't tell who our audience was learning about untill they put the image together and were standing on his grave (or possibly his grave).
Some late thinking prompted the filming of our tour from the POV of an audience member, presumably to show whoever (lecturers, other interested members of the public etc...). But the cameraman never got that tape... out of the camera? So no post production got done. In fact, we never got to check that ant production got done. So that was a bit of a waste of effort.
And there we have it. The evolution of ideas towards our performance - which went pretty well in comparison to other groups as I've heard. I think we made just over a pound profit. Result!
I have never attempted anything like this - ever. A similar level of experience ran throughout the group. So we gathered what scraps of imformation we could together. We found he was a slave, turned metalwork apprentice, turned brass forging entrepeneur. We found that a couple
of Nottingham churches and a house near the Lace Market were import in his life. After finding no eveidence of him at one of the churchs and the house is now a tram junction, we found a small plaque with his name on at St. Mary's church near the Pitcher & Piano.Fantastic. Oh well, better than nothing.
We decided this would be the most likly site for the performance. The idea of a guided tour seemed a good one, but the lack of Afrucanus-afiliated hotspopts around the church was a slight issue. So we made our own. With a few of us dodded around the grounds ready to blow our audiences minds with history and details, a tour guide stringing them along and a handy plant in the group to prompt questions (me), the fact that only one square metre of the church was important was missed by the audience.
To add some fund raising element to the task (fullfilling one of the aims of the task) and adding some interactivity and hands-on factor for the audience I came up with the idea of cutting a laminated picture of Afrucanus into as many pieces as we had stations. Then for the audience to bid on each piece so at the end they could see what he looked like. The idea then pooped up that we wouldn't tell who our audience was learning about untill they put the image together and were standing on his grave (or possibly his grave).
Some late thinking prompted the filming of our tour from the POV of an audience member, presumably to show whoever (lecturers, other interested members of the public etc...). But the cameraman never got that tape... out of the camera? So no post production got done. In fact, we never got to check that ant production got done. So that was a bit of a waste of effort.
And there we have it. The evolution of ideas towards our performance - which went pretty well in comparison to other groups as I've heard. I think we made just over a pound profit. Result!
Tuesday, January 9
Same But Different - or is it?
An odd task. Take lots of pictures of the same objects and categorise them somehow, adding an interactive interface.
We chose kebab boxes as there are hundreds of them littering our streets. We all took a few pictures - which was fine. Then people started to loose focus. I will certainly admit to loosing a sense of purpose. We didn't agree on how to categorise the pictures until too late to spend a lot of time on it.
We had the idea of making each picture look like a crime scene (despite being told to keep the pictures as original data) so I put some crime scene tape across the pictures (left).
We chose kebab boxes as there are hundreds of them littering our streets. We all took a few pictures - which was fine. Then people started to loose focus. I will certainly admit to loosing a sense of purpose. We didn't agree on how to categorise the pictures until too late to spend a lot of time on it.
We had the idea of making each picture look like a crime scene (despite being told to keep the pictures as original data) so I put some crime scene tape across the pictures (left).We had the idea of making the interface a map of the town centre, showing the location of each box, with a link to it's picture and details, and the location of the kebab houses and student halls - to see if there was an obvious correlation. Due to bad communication about 3 people started to make the interface and none of them got finished. Below is my attempt.
Thursday, January 4
Space Centre Report
Good Exhibit: The space pilot console
AV Elements: It's essentially an arcade game. The user controls a ball-style mouse device, moving a cursor around a smallish, low quality monitor. As a mouse-button-style input, there is a very inviting 'big red button' next to the ball.
When prompted, the user is supposed to use the cursor as the pilot's hand, to press buttons and drag levers on a virtual space shuttles control panel.
How successful were the multimedia elements?
The videogame likeness of this exhibit is probably what drew me to it, and indeed what kept me in 'the zone' for about 15 minutes - the longest amount of time I paid attention to any of the exhibits that day. Similarly it’s the only single-user exhibit I saw with a queue! I imagine it has the same effects on similar aged-guests.
Do I think the interactive elements helped me engage with the information in a new way?
Wow, umm, let me think.
They helped me grasp some of the physics behind piloting a space craft, and what is basically involved in getting a shuttle into orbit. Is this a new way of engaging? It’s better than just reading - and it made a nice change from reading, because there was a lot of reading to be done elsewhere in the centre! Also, I'd never played a realistic space flight game before, so yes; I guess from my point of view, it is a new way of engaging with the information, (if we want to put some grown-up words into it.)
Bad Exhibit: The 'Be an Astronaut' area
Its Problems:
The overall fantasy of going to Eutopia and maintaining your shuttle was somewhat lost by the spotty teenage staff on site: "Orright mate? Jou wanna come froo 'ere or not?" "I am attempting to re-configure your oxygen supply if you don't mind you cretin! ...Oh brilliant were all dead. Cheers." Fantasy lost. It would have been nice of everybody could get a personal score at the end of the 'mission'. Which was, admittedly, what they were trying to achieve, but if you missed out bits as I said before, or like me, the state of the art barcode readers failed to recognize you, or see you as worth remembering, you got a crap score or no score at all. Again, fantasy lost, point lost, interest lost.
AV Elements: It's essentially an arcade game. The user controls a ball-style mouse device, moving a cursor around a smallish, low quality monitor. As a mouse-button-style input, there is a very inviting 'big red button' next to the ball.
When prompted, the user is supposed to use the cursor as the pilot's hand, to press buttons and drag levers on a virtual space shuttles control panel.
How successful were the multimedia elements?
The videogame likeness of this exhibit is probably what drew me to it, and indeed what kept me in 'the zone' for about 15 minutes - the longest amount of time I paid attention to any of the exhibits that day. Similarly it’s the only single-user exhibit I saw with a queue! I imagine it has the same effects on similar aged-guests.
Do I think the interactive elements helped me engage with the information in a new way?
Wow, umm, let me think.
They helped me grasp some of the physics behind piloting a space craft, and what is basically involved in getting a shuttle into orbit. Is this a new way of engaging? It’s better than just reading - and it made a nice change from reading, because there was a lot of reading to be done elsewhere in the centre! Also, I'd never played a realistic space flight game before, so yes; I guess from my point of view, it is a new way of engaging with the information, (if we want to put some grown-up words into it.)
Bad Exhibit: The 'Be an Astronaut' area
Its Problems:
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