Updates ‘R’ Go!

So it’s been quite a while since my last post and I’ll try to cover as much as I can remember.

First things first, the Narratives unit essay…I was quite impressed with the mark that I got given considering I didn’t have a clue what I was writing and was so many words under the word count – I was expecting a much lower mark, so was quite surprised when I got given that!

Now onto the Audiences unit. I was dreading the one day project as I didn’t have a clue what I was meant to do for it and I had no ideas for what I wanted my final animation to be before that morning. I happened to have my iTunes playing in the morning whilst I was dreading the thought of getting out of bed, when I suddenly decided what I was going to do. I had decided to animate a character walking and have them “sing” to a pre-existing song medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World” by Aselin Debison. So whilst the character is walking along, I planned to have the background change so it looks like he is moving and the background is going to relate to the song. For example, when the song goes “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high” there will be a rainbow that gradually grows across the sky and then disappears again. This particular line of the song is repeated a couple of times so there will be a few sequences that repeat.

I’ve already – just about – cut the song using GarageBand as the original was 5 mins 30 which is WAY too long for me to animate and too long for the brief. So it is now just over the brief time limit at 2 mins 30, with the actual content of the song within the 2mins, which I hope will be OK.

Mik seemed impressed at the pitch seminar where I wasn’t met with any objections, which I thought there might have been. I just need to try and get in contact with the producer/artist of the song to see if I’m allowed to use the song so that I could if I wanted too, publish it on the Internet. In terms of the Uni Server, it doesn’t matter, but it would be nice if I am able to do so if I wished later on as a kinda of portfolio. In the presentation, I somehow managed to get the sound on my presentation to work (it had been a bit temperamental when I was making it) and I showed the storyboards as the song went a long so that people could see what was happening along with the music.

I plan to make the animation, using Key Frame animation, so that it ‘jumps’ between each frame to make to look a bit sketchy as though its being drawn and edited as it goes on, which is in contrast to the song which is very melodic, smooth and flowing.

I think that’s about all I wanted to say for now. Don’t forget – IMP Social Quasar/Laser Quest on Thursday if my memory servces me correctly. Get in contact with myself/Rea/Gemma Vincent for details…! Byeee!

So far, So good!

Well, the “new” me was going well and I was wanting to blog…but I physically couldnt as the internet in Cranborne House was down for 3 whole days, which was incredibly irritating, especially with the essay due!!

Anyway, the essay is all done and dusted, which now means that these last few days should be relaxing and chilled out – but NO! The horrors of house hunting have kicked in again, but that is another story.When I was writing my essay and going through some of Claudia’s lecture notes, I came across “The Fountain Experience” . I just thought that this was something that I could actually write in my blog, that would be a bit meaningful.

I found it very odd when the page first loaded as I had music playing and I couldn’t work out whether the page had music playing with it as well so my senses were doing over time almost. I just found it interesting that there were no instructions on what to do with the site (obviously as it was to do with the interactive narrative project), I knew that you had to click…but where? That was the question!?! It was all very mysterious and I still don’t really know what it was telling me…I just thought that it was quite good.

On the PDP front, I still havent met with my tutor yet, although I’m hoping to do so in the first week back so that I can get it out of the way. But I have now got quite a few things I think that are beneficial to the unit of work that could help me “become more employable”. We’ll see how we go!!Byeeeee!!

P.S. Oh yeah, it’s completely unrelated, but I was one number away from winning about £15,000 at Bingo!! HAHA!! 

New Year…New Blog

Ok, so this is my first blog of 2008 so firstly let me wish you all a belated Happy New Year! Its been quite a well now since my last post, so I’ll try my best to up date you on all that has been going on. This is also the first post (as far as I can remember) that has been posted at a reasonable time of day! So new starts all round.

Right, where to begin…firstly, WordPress is still driving me mad with the line spacing but anyway…the project. After a very productive and enthusiastic start to the brief there were loads of different ideas floating around of the visual appearance of the website. We settled on the story of ‘The Gingerbread Man’ after I had spent a few hours sat in the children’s section of Bournemouth Town Library reading kids books and making notes on the story or shall I say “breaking the story into nodes”. I found that there were SO many different fairytales that I had never heard of, but also quite a lot that I had forgotten about which I vaguely remember from my childhood i.e. the princess and the pee and even to a certain degree the gingerbread man. Afterall we all know that he runs away from the baker and shouts “Run, Run as fast as you can you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread Man” but who else does he run past?! I’ve since discovered the answer and we have added a modern twist to the story and replaced the characters.

*Note to self: Start New Paragraph*. This now brings us up to after Xmas. This is where the stress began…from what I can recall, the first week back we planned and booked equipment for the latter part of the week. However, after having all the group agree to the dates some changed their minds and so not a lot of filming was done on the day that we had planned. This initially caused myself and our Project Manager issues of rescheduling and rebooking equipment as it had all been planned, down to the wire almost with changes being made/requested and these taken into consideration in the plans so that everything would run smoothly. It would also give us enough so time that if anything needed reshooting we could and we would have long enough to edit.

Anyway, enough of that. The interactive narrative is now complete and is online it is pretty awesome if I do say so myself – and Lydia you have given me many laughs during this project not just in person but on the actual footage as well and its made it all that little bit more bearable!!

The next thing on the list; Monday! HA! What a funny day that turned out to be. Go Claudia Go! You tell em girl! lol I think that woke a few people up and the rest probably weren’t really that bothered. However, Monday, I feel may have marked the start of a new leaf in my book…it’s only little things, but I’m gonna start to try and understand what’s going on a little more rather than just being there in person and not doing much else.

Also, Marian kinda gave me a bit of a wake up call in the “specially arranged lecture” for PDP on Monday. I’ve decided that I’m going to start doing that now and meeting with my tutor and get things going to try and built myself as a person to make me more employable including *shock horror* trying to learn a language again – which could prove very interesting!! haha.

I’ve also decided that I’m going to start blogging more often about the relevant things that are going on in my life. I dont know why, I’ve just got this urge to do it at the moment (I wonder how long it will last…?!).

That said this essay is a bitch to say the least and I have no idea where to start with it…also this blog is probably long enough already so I’m gonna sign off now. Bye.

P.S. This blog has now taken two days to write and I’ve probably forgotten some of the stuff that I wanted to write but nevermind!!

Hmm…

I think its about time that I wrote a new blog entry and this time have it written at a normal time of the day rather than the small hours!

So; Claudia’s out of class homework…We had to choose one of a series of images that are all based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood and depending on our interpretation break it up into ‘nodes’ of the story. Below is the image that my group chose to use.

 

Our opinion of the photo was that it is quite modern and applied to today’s society of the stereotypical youth, hoody wearing generation. Using this as our main idea we went a long the line of modernising the traditional story of Little Red Riding Hood firstly, by naming the story Lil’ Red in da’ Hood as this introduced modern day slang that is quite commonly used today. This idea seemed to be welcomed by the audience judging by their response when the title was announced.

From that we then created a story where there was a common beginning and end, but in the middle the reader was able to make a choice and depending on their choice a middle section would be told to them.

Beginning
- Lil Red is thrown out of his house
- He bowls through the council estate
- There is an old lady walking in a subway carrying her shopping who catches his eye.

Options
1) Ignores her and continues walking
2) Shouts out “What you lookin’ at?!”
3) Follows her home

Ending
Following on from option 1)
- A gang approach the Old Lady and start pushing her around and tormenting her
- Lil Red steps in and saves the day
- He walks her home and makes her a cup of tea to calm her down
- Old Lady offers him a 4 pack to say thank you and places it on the table without a coaster

Following on from option 2)
- The Old Lady’s bags split
- Lil Red offers her help and picks the shopping up and walks it home with her
- Old Lady offers Lil Red a 4 pack as a thank you and places it on the table without a coaster

Following on from option 3)
- Climbs in through an open window and is going through her jewellery box
- Hears a voice coming up the stairs and freezes not sure what to do.

General Ending
- Old Lady draws the curtains and dims the lights and snaps “How dare you!”
- Lil Red says “What dare big dentures you have and an old lady tash!”
- He turns to run away, but when at the front door he feels a presence behind him. When he turns around he sees the Old Lady standing there with her knitting needles in her hands.
- Lil Red never saw da’ Hood again.

This was presented as a powerpoint presentation so that the audience we were presenting it to could see what we were trying to communicate, however, if it was to be made then we thought he would be made from video clips so that the user/viewer/reader would benefit more from the visual aids.

And thats it!

Byeeee

P.S. Is it just me or has Word Press been updated and doesn’t work properly when you put line spaces in…?!