Done Anything Creative Over Christmas?

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

Design Practice 1: Animation: 2nd Edit

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.

Design Practice 1: Interactive Spaces: Work Submission

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 time where I had to create user interactions that would have keep audiences interested and involved.

If I were to repeat this project I would add more levels and increase the games playability, I actually took a whole segment of photo's that never got used. I would also avoid using notepad and Internet URL's at all costs

Link to Interactive space: The Teleporter

Design Practice 1: Interactive Spaces: Development

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 downloading them from the Internet, so i had to re go through all my pages (this being proberly the largest interactive space anyone did) and change the image values again. I finally did get it completed it the end, yet my work was posted under Phillip Dobson's picture on the website makingnewmaps.com instead of me Samuel Dobson, ha ha typical, get it right Simon

The moral of this story is to do your research, I could have turned a one week struggle into a pleasant day of work

Some previews below:

Design Practice 1: Interactive Spaces: Analysis, Synthesis and Planning

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 function of my interactive space?
6) What existing products were prime influences?
7) What are some good books, DVDs and useful information.
8) How long will it last?






1) The most appropriate software to use for HTML/CSS coding is Adobe Dreamweaver, It has an easy interface to navigate, has the time saving feature of displaying the link boarder and also is an industry favourite

















 2) I estimate my completion date to be Saturday 4th December 2010, I am basing this on the pace in which I'm learning the dreamweaver, The practical sessions I have between the two date and the overall access I will have to learning materials and the software. This is my goal.

3) I have decided I am going to go with a fantasy theme with an action/adventure story, the user will have to collect 3 coloured gems in order to save the world, I will mix in different locations to create a hybrid genre as well, such as the wild west and space.

4) The story I am trying to tell is that a scientist has created a teleporter, three mystical gems power the machine. The scientists lab assistant has stole the gems to sell on the black market, the player must travel to different places and find the gems before they become unstable and blow up the world.

 















5) The main function of interactive space is to take the player on a journey and entertain them along the way. I want them to experience a mixture of puzzle solving and adventure, without getting bored.

6) The existing products that were prime influences were defiantly the games stated in my inspiration and brainstorming post, Final fantasy 7 and Escape from stickville, the user will hopefully see similarity's while playing.

7)JavaScript: Your Visual Blueprint for Building Dynamic Web Pages, 2nd Edition.
Eric Pascarello. ISBN: 978-0-7645-7497-9.

8) I am estimating the total length to the user complete my interactive space to be 5-10 minutes, It will have 50+ photos so there's plenty to explore, i wanted it to last as long as possible to create a decent story.

Samuel Dobson

Design Practice 1: Interactive Spaces: Inspiration and Brainstorming

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 decipher.



Another Prime influence that comes to mind is again another childhood game, this time a online flash game called 'Escape from stickville'. I remember feeling a huge sense of adventure while playing as no other game had involved me enough to make important decisions which decide if you succeed or fail. Usually I'd just be moving forward along the side scrolling world without a care. The game also used the feature of an inventory, which I really like the idea of.

Find Game here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/16106

Through my inspiration I have decided to create a role playing version of an interactive space where you travel to locations via a teleporter, It will incorpate the idea of an inventory bar and item collecting to further the users journey. The idea of teleporatation removes any continuity isseue as am I am able to move from  location to location without any explanation. My game will have varies nodes that branch out to different outcomes, I want the user to explore and solve my interactive space, not just complete it within 10 seconds.

Now I had my basic idea I needed to select locations to shoot the photo's, I wanted a mixture of ordinary locations and unordinary locations. I have chosen to shoot one segment of my journey in the Waverly building, as this fits the bil for an everyday location and has interesting objects to explore; such as the key card detectors. Secondly my local nature reserve was picked as it's outside and has lots of possible interaction, such as feeding animal and climbing tress. Now I had my locations I pictured them in my minds eye and started designing how different images would branch of and how different object would be collected. I quickly transfered my ideas to paper.

Samuel Dobson

Design Practice 1: One Shot Film: 2nd Edit

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 the nightmare mood and blends the actor in with the shot. The music also helps with the confusion and nightmarish tone.


Chalk Nightmare from Samuel Dobson on Vimeo.