End of design practice 1!

I have finally finished my pixilation project. The film reel, silent movie music and sepia effect really add to the putcome. here it is:





Also, my interactive narrative is also complete and on deviant art. If you do have a go i know that it is quite an obscure idea but i think it works quite well. It is based on the idea of the butterfly effect and my outcomes are very dramatic to emphasise this. I did design 4/5 of the characters myself (I think it is obvious which one I didn't design) but did have influences from UP 3D and other cartoon characters. The final product works quite successfully i believe. I would have liked to have offered more choices to the user and more outcomes but as more choices are put in, the frame rate grows exponentially. Also, with a bit more time I would have inproved the drawings but this was impossible. I did find it quite tricky to do but after I got the hang of it, it all came together quite quickly. I have realised i should have made the objects buttons and not just the text, I apologise to anybody who finds this frustrating. So here it is, the final edit:



http://jkirkie91.deviantart.com/art/interactive-narrative-146729273




Overall, I think that the past 9 weeks have been successful and I am pleased with the outcomes. Looking forward to some of the projects next year after reading the briefs but for now going to enjoy the break.

interactive narrative

2 weeks into the project now and i have my idea completed now, and also have most drawings done. I would try and explain but I wouldn't know where to begin. Basically, it all came from the idea of the butterfly effect. The idea that one event no matter how insignificant it may seem could have a massive effect on the future. So my flash consists of the user selecting the future over the period of a day. Unfortunately I could not have much of a web of events as th more options the user has the more frames it would take up. The designs for my character have basically come from a combition of pixar characters and random photos i have found on google. All that is needed now is for the last few sketches to be complete and the buttons added and it hopefully should be complete by Friday!
On a side note, I watched UP 3D last week. The first 3D film I have seen and thought it was one of the greatest cinematic experiences I have ever had. Story line, characters and presentation was amazing. Also the use of 3D wasn't used as a gimic and really added to the film.

one-shot

To begin to project i looked at videos of other short films to try and get ideas. i found this one intriguing and interesting but it didnt spark any ideas:



i also found a video with different objects travelling forward or backwards in time. this became an idea for the group production but was decided against when we finalised our idea.

We filmed our one-shot on saturday and are ready to edit in the next seminar so video should be up after that

a working progress

this is my pixilation at the end of the 3 weeks. it seems to work quite well together although i am going to improve it. i am going a sepia effect to the images to give it a silent movie feel to it and also add the piano music to go with it. i haven't included a chunk of photos in this initial videos as it wouldn't work without me editing the photos first. these will be in the final edit though. by the end of all 9 weeks, the video will look completely different and hopefully much better.

influences on pixilation

after being given the project brief i started to think of ideas immediately. most of these came from videos i had watched recently. i watched a few music videos from the maccabbees after seeing them at Leeds festival and found the backbone of my ideas from here,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0QgGS5FK7w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5i3-8RWvFA&feature=fvst
i liked the idea of having objects transforming and also changing people's faces and portraying emotion by adding things over them. this idea was also in the music video Andy showed us on the first animation seminar but i can't remember what it was. i also liked some effects used in the film Donnie Darko which i may bring into the video. i also highly recommend this film to anybody who has not seen it.
all photos have gone well and have editing has finished for most of them apart from some that need special attention. so by friday the video should be on youtube but the completed version will need a little more time.

the future of storytelling panel

i've just watched the conference from X06. thought that it was interesting having peter jackson commenting on the subject as well coming from a film background and not that of gaming. to me it seems as though the future of storytelling lies in almost a completely new kind of category with the ciematics of film, interaction of gaming and imagination and creativity from reading. this of course would mean that all kinds of different experiences would have to be created to suit different people.the problem though with having interactive experince where you start at A and have to get to B, and you can get there however you please, is that the adventure is resting completely on your shoulders. this means that you won't be put in these memorable situations that film, books and games do. you will have to find them yourself.

After reading the task for the first essay i've tried to think of an initial plan of the structure. So far i am thinking:
1) introduction - explaining what design methods are and which 3 i will focus on
2) paragraph on each explaining what they are, pros/cons etc
3) compare all three. which one is better than the others?
4) conclusion - briefly go into everything i have mentioned and round the essay off.