Evaluations....

for this project i chose the ikea brief and made a short viral advert to advertise the company to a young female audience. I didn't really stick to any of my original intentions of making an animation and and practising my illustration skills, instead i opted for a simpler filmed video. My research into previous adverts for ikea and virals in general showed me that film was the usual medium and gave me an idea of the formula required for making a potential viral ad, it had to be short, funny and to the point. hopefully people will agree that my idea is funny enough, it was pretty tough to come up with something that totally satisfied the brief as my audience research kind of drew blanks. I really enjoyed working with the camera and in final cut, its something that I'm starting to get used to and comfortable with which is a pretty big deal for me, i actually feel as though I'm developing!
As for my professional development i was able to ascertain quite a few websites and e mail addresses for potential opportunities in the video games field thanks to edge magazine which has always been something I've been interested in, i particularly want to get into 2D, character and concept art for games, but as I've learnt I'll need more skills than my illustration o get on board, Escape Studios seems to offer a lot of opportunities in various fields to people with Maya skills Some other fields that I'm interested in are illustration for comic books and writing, when i had a look it seemed like there where very few UK based companies so i think I'll have to look deeper into that. I also had a quick look into courses to learn Japanese but as it turns out that's going to cost a whole lot of money so maybe its something I'll have to wait a while for. I'm actually going to see if i can get a bit of work experience with a Leeds or close to Leeds games company like Rockstar over the big holidays, its probably unlikley but its worth a shot even if end up being a coffe boy i can still try and learn a little about the industry.
Also I'm going to be making a joint portfolio website with Fionnuala (during the holidays hopefully)to showcase my illustrations, stories, characters and comics and hopefully impress any viewers and give the web address to anyone i manage to get a work placement for or go to an interview with or anything like that. Basically to make a good name for myself. I found out that whatever field i chose or where ever i want to find employment I'm going to need a good portfolio of work to back me up and a website should be an easy an accessible way to do this.

Escape studios

www.escapestudios.co.uk/recruitment.php

have loads of opportunities for people who want to get into animation or videogames, its only really in 3D work though so Maya skills are essential

its been a while!

just got back from easter recently and started the second part of the video project!
its been ages since i posted, i've been working on my sketching, trying to get a faster easier style so i can make more work, based on nicolas nemiri and ashley woods and sharknife

i'll post some pictures soonish

personal study

i'll be doin the ikea brief... i think i'm the only one so i'm a lil nervous about it now..

EVALUATION!!

This project has been amazing, my heads never been filled with so much knowledge and the time has just flown by!
i'm really very happy with the work i've produced on flash mostly because its been really exciting to watch what happens after you've laboured over code learning and writing and to see that you've actually made something interactive.... its great.
learning the actionscripts was a nightmare but thanks to the annamorphic tutorials and help from other people as well as the tutor its definatly do-able, just took me quite some time but again its great when you start to get the hang of things and understand the bulk (at least) of what youre typing.

as for the design and concept phase i'm happy with my story concept and 'emesis' character, the building head... i feel that they are different as a story pretty easy to jump into and unnderstand... the building head i found needed to be seen to be understood... nobody seemed to get it when i explianed him...
the lead character is pretty dull looking but i chose to make him that way for ease of animation...

overall i'm pretty happy, i didnt get much feedback on the final showing, it looked like only 4 people viewed it (not sure if thats a bad sign or not) but they seemed to like the style i executed things in and there were no complaints about the actual scripting so thats good and people thought it was funny too which is great!
also no one complained about the controls, i guess its pretty easy to work out up, down, left, right though..
if i had more time i'd probably first try to make more elaborate drawings and animations for walk cycles and the introduction...
i'd definatly try to do some of the scripting to stop the character from walking through walls and off the screen alltogether...
and i'd put a skip button on the movie at the beggining to skip stright to the game, i tried that already but i couldnt manage... i think theres a post earlier on that explains..

the time table sheets we were given were amazing for helping me to plan out my time and see where i was at with the project, if i needed to catch up or whatever it was good because it meant time management was never an issue.
although i kind of wish that this project was set out a little differently so that we learned actionscripting first then developed ideas, that way i could have felt safe in the knowledge that my ideas were definatly suitable for applying what i know to rather than coming up with an idea then seeing if it was posible.. i figure that a company would know the limitations and strengths of whatever medium its going to use before it sets to work making a product..

Mwahahahah

thanks to some extended help from jack and mex i wasd able to achieve what i just said i couldnt... so now i'm happy!
i also tried to put a skip movie button in the beggining but the button for some reason stayed on the game start page.. and when i fixed this the button would only loop the film even when i changed the script from gotoAndPlay to gotoAndStop...

...so now there is no skip function.

thanks for your help jack and mex!

tried and failed

i tried this morning withy the help of mex to have an invisable doorway so that if you move the character through it it would bring you to a screen that says end of demo... unfortunatly it was more complicated than it looked and i'm gonna have to forget about it and leave things as they are.
need to crack on with exporting it and being ready to present at 2

a working demo

yep, its only the intro as an animatic and the one room that you can walk around though.... i'm gonna see if i've got time for more, although i think that'd be pushing it with the deadline being tomorow.
still, i'm pretty chuffed with what ive got!

intro

my intro is done, completed... its still only an animatic but i'm pretty happy with it, its the 1st time i've ever recorded my own sounds and applied them to a movie and i'm happy with the results.... i just need to put it in front of my game now!

notes for codes....how i love them so

grrr!

so i've spent all day doing my sound design and i've got all the sound effects i'll be needing for the game demo recorded and transfered onto the mac and saved in my documents.

only my problem is that i need to change the sound files from .wav to .aiff or at least thats what i've got written down in my notes.. and peak doesnt seem to recognise the files as they are now (.wav) it plays all distorted and messy...

run for the finnish line

in this last week i need to ge enough work done to have an functional demo package...
so far i've got my ideas and my little character who can walk as i initially planned him to do, so i've been able to excicute things the way i intended.. unfortunatly he can still walk through walls which is a shame but i dont have time in this last week to learn how to ammend this so it'll have to be a disclaimer on my demo that there are some bugs or something... you can get a good idea of what i had in mind in terms of gameplay from what i've produced anyway.
what i intend on doing this week is sound design and an opening storyboard to put my ideas into context so that playerrs arent just a strange little mushroom head walking through random corridors, they are sam the man infiltrating the living buildings head in order to restore there name and honour!