Bone Tool

Today Julian showed us a tutorial in which he showed us how to animate a person using the bone tool, which basically gave them a skeleton so you could move their joints.

This is what it looked like when i connected all the joints:

Flash for Computer Games: What You Need to Know

Adobe Flash, formerly known as Macromedia Flash, is a software program used to create and manipulate graphics and animation. It is one of the most common programs used for creating animated web pages, video players, and audio streaming applications. Flash files are traditionally in the SWF format, or ShockWave Flash, though many other types of files can be viewed or manipulated with this software.

Now a days Adobe Flash can be used for a number of different things, animation, websites and flash games are just a few of them. One animation that was made in Flash was the bobinogs, this was a popular kid’s show not long ago and was broadcasted on the BBC, this proves how big Flash is if a huge corporate company such as the BBC are broadcasting animations made in Flash.
More and more websites are being made in flash now as well pure and simply because of how easy it is, if you know what you’re doing of course, arguably one of the best websites of the year was made in flash, http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/, the website is ingenious, it’s so easy to use and looks amazing.
As well as websites and animations, a lot of games now a days are being made in Flash, my favourite Flash game, http://www.tankionline.com/en/, has quite good graphics but addictive gameplay and now has over 5 million users, which is astonishing considering the game hasn’t been out all that long.
But Flash hasn’t always been this good, so far we know what can be made in Flash now but where did the idea originally come from? Who made it? And how did it become as successful as it is now?

It is said that Flash started life as an idea that came from playing with Lego, this might sound bizarre, but is it really? Yes I’ll admit I thought it was when I first discovered this but when I sat down and thought about it, the two do surprising have a lot in common seeing as one is physical and the other is virtual, with Lego  you can start with the vision and work out the details of the design as you progress. With patience and persistence, John Gay developed the following LEGO-based design process. It's more or less the same process Macromedia ultimately used to develop Flash.
- Choose a problem: Build a LEGO ship.
- Develop a vision: What sort of ship will it be? How big will it be? What will it carry?
- Build: Build the framework of the ship.
- Fill in the details: Design and build the details of the ship, ramps, doors, etc.
- Test: Drive the cars around the ship and sail the ship while exploring the house.
- Refine: Take parts of the ship apart and make them better.
- Learn: Take what you learned from building this ship and use it to build a better one next time.

It’s insane to even think that such a hugely successful piece of software was developed from such a simple looking method as the Lego-based design process. But this was all triggered by the creator, John Gay, wanting to be an architect as a young teenager, but soon after he realised that there wouldn’t be much opportunity to build the houses that he had designed, not long after John got an Apple II computer and started programming near enough straight away, he quickly discovered that with computer software you can design something, build it, and see it work and respond to you. Although bits of Apple II Basic were not as impressive as building houses, he could complete a project and see how it worked. To cut a long story short after he got the Apple II and programmed his first piece of software and entered it into his school science fair which it did pretty well in, short after that his dad took him to a Macintosh users-group meeting where he bragged about his sons programming ability to the group organiser, Charlie Jackson, Jackson wanted to start a Macintosh software company, owned the necessary $10,000 Lisa computer, and didn't have much money to spend paying programmers. John wanted access to a Lisa computer and, as a high school student, didn't need a pay check until after the software started selling. It was a perfect fit, and part of the beginning of Silicon Beach Software. After the summer of 1995 John and Charlie Jackson wrote a simple animation player that used Java but was also horribly slow.  The duo stubbornly kept at it and in the autumn, Netscape came out with their plug-in API. Finally, they had a way to extend the Web browser with decent performance, this was the ancestor of Macromedia Flash Player. As it grew close to shipping time, John and Charlie Jackson changed the name of their software to FutureSplash Animator to focus more on its animation capabilities. Not long after they grew tired of running a company that didn't have much money to spend, and began trying to sell their technology. After an unsuccessful pitch to Adobe and turning down a bid from Fractal Design, they shipped FutureSplash Animator in May 1996. The pairs success then came just 3 months later, luckily for then Microsoft started developing MSN where they wanted to create the most television like experience on the net, Microsoft then became huge fans of FutureSplash and adopted its technology. They also struck success with the corporate giant Disney, who used their FutureSplash software to build animations and user interface for their Disney Dailey Blast, luckily for John and Jackson Macromedia had a very good relationship with Disney, who also used Macromedia’s Shockwave, which lead to the pair selling FutureSplash to Macromedia. FutureSplash Animator then became Macromedia Flash 1.0.

After being bored to death by that huge chunk of technological genius later on after a little more research, rather ironically actually, I found out that Flash is now used by Lego to sell their rather creativity inspiring pieces of plastic.

Test

Just testing to see if mobile posting works:)

Drag and Drop Game

We have been set a task to make a drag and srop game in AS3 in flash, so far i've completed my proposal and treatment and started my scope of work and have an idea of what i want my game to be.
Will update soon but am going away for the weekend.

Research

In the Media Industry there are many things that need to be taken into account:

• The average hourly pay for a web designer can range between £20-£50, it can be a lot more depending on the client and the media they are asking for
• For a student it could be from £5-£10 but this can also depend on the client and the media wanted but also how generous the client is being
• Set a fixed price from the beginning and stick to it otherwise the client could end up taking advantage and you could end up losing money
• Research a target audience in depth to make sure you are pitching the correct product
• Never turn down a job, if needed bring in professionals and learn from them so you can expand your knowledge for future clients
• Negotiate deadlines that you are comfortable with and can stick to because if the deadlines aren't met, you could end up losing money and reputation
• Budget for software and equipment must be negotiated or else you could end up losing money
• Make sure the budget is negotiated before work has even started as you could forget to include something and lose money and waste time
• Be sure to include travel arrangements, food and accommodation in the budget or you could end up having to pay for it yourself and lose money

Drag & Drop Games

Drag & Drop Games:

The first game I played was called Drag Drop, in this game you had to click on a hand icon and steer it through obstacles to get to the finish point so you could advance to the next level. I thought this game was quite good, it was challenging but got quite hard as you progressed. I thought this was good because most drag and drop games are usually dress-ups or just terrible, but this was the complete opposite. Graphically it was pretty good for a game of its type and it played really well too, loaded fast and wasn’t jumpy. In saying this there were also some bad points, at times the mouse could get really unresponsive and to solve this you had to refresh the page, this made it harder as you would crash into things without meaning to.
http://vectorgame.com/drag-drop

The second game I played was absolutely shocking. There is not a good word I can think of to describe it. You have to drag a picture onto its relevant word and if you get it right a cheap looking animation comes up and there is no variation to it, once you complete it you will not want to do the exact same thing again.
http://www.prongo.com/drag/

My Brief

We at Industrial Appliances Co. create new and effective ways to peel and process vegetables in industrial bulk, we try to make our products as intuitive as we possibly can, so employees of all ability can use them. Our standards are high with our projects and industrial machinery, we are mainly based in the United Kingdom with manufacturing plants located in several major cities, and we are also beginning to expand our business overseas to European countries such as France, Germany and Spain we already are delivery our products to the United states and are trying to expand into Europe.
To do this we are looking for a brand new website which will promote our new product and business alike which would need to of an extremely high standard because of the market today.
We are the main suppliers to the industrial giant Walkers who have to peel millions of potatoes on a daily basis to make their crisps, we also have contracts with McCoy’s, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Prizma.

The new product is the ProPeel1500, the aim of the new product is to peel and process vegetables on an industrial scale and at a much quicker rate than any other rival products. We aim to do this by increasing the amount of vegetables you can peel and process at once, by doing this the customers will be able to save valuable time and even money. We have tried to make our product as eco-friendly as possible by using less electricity consuming parts and methods.

The target audience for the product would be the manufacturers, this is because they would be using the product and would want to make profit with it. The target audience for the promotional site would be European investors and future customers, this is because if the site promotes the company and products well enough it could lead to some foreign business men investing into our ever growing company.

The budget for this project would be in the region of £100,000, the size of the budget indicates how high of a standard we expect the website to be.

We would expect the website to be completed in 3 months, this is because we need the website to be live as soon as possible and we thought that 3 months was a very reasonable time in which to complete the task.

Different Ways of Communicating Across the Web 1

One way of communicating across the web is through Xbox Live, this is where people can go online and play video games with each other. It could also be used to contact friends around the world. For example I use it to play games and to be able to talk to my cousins who also have Xbox Live who live over 200 miles away.

Feedback for YouTube Game

We showed our game to the rest of the class and we gathered feedback, we found out that the wind noise in the background was too over powering so we need to dub over the voices, we also need to smooth an edit because in one scene it just jumps to the next and finally we need to cut down the credits because there is a scene where there's just 10 seconds of nothing happening.

Intro

I decided to make an intro to our YouTube game, its cartoony but with the right sound affects it will be really good.

YouTube game

We decided to re-structure our game for YouTube, and theme it rather than making it random, we started filming and so far its going great, its also really good fun, we hired Harley's brother as an actor to support the idea of our game, not giving anything away yet though.
I had to make a desk last week for our project due to not being able to get a new or second hand one because of funds.

Interactive Ethics: Copyright

1. What is Copyright?
What is Copyright? Copyright protects the physical expression of ideas. As soon as an idea is given physical from, for example a picture drawn or made on Photoshop, it is protected by Copyright.

2. What are the 3 Moral Rights?Copyright has 3 moral rights, which are:
1- The Right of Attribution, the creator of a work has the right to be identified as such.
2- The Right of Integrity, the work may not be altered or changed without consent.
3- False Attribution, a work cannot be attributed to a creator falsely.

3. How might Copyright affect you and your work with Interactive Media?
It would have huge effect on me and my work because if someone takes work that was created by me and didn’t attribute me, then I could possibly lose out on profit or success that, that product would be making.

4. Do you think illegally downloading is morally right or wrong? Justify your position?

If I’m honest I think illegally downloading content is wrong, because the producer is losing out on money that the product should be making, but at the same time some of the content that is illegally downloaded is ridiculously priced and not everyone can afford to buy it, this becomes a bigger problem when people need the content, such as me needing Photoshop and not being able to afford to buy it legally, to be able to succeed.

5. What does Creative Commons do?
Creative Commons is a charitable organisation that lets copyright holders easily allow anyone to use their work in ways that the author is comfortable with.

6. Use an image from Creative Commons in your blog correctly.

Courtesy of Gamerscore Blog.

7. Give your opinion on the way that total freedom from copyright might affect our culture.
If Copyright ceased to exist then none of the major content producers would continue to produce anymore because it would be a non-profitable industry, so they would see no point in continuing to produce.

Animated Toolbar GIF

Animated Toolbar GIF

Web Protocols

There are many web protocols, but the ones i will be covering in this essay will be:
- WAP
- GSM
- GPRS
- 3G
- Bluetooth
- Broadband
- VoIP (Voiceover Internet Protocol)
- HTTP

WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol and is mainly used for web access in mobile phones.
Most of today's mobile phones, smartphones and PDAs come with a built in WAP browser. With a WAP browser, you can access dedicated WAP pages while on the move.
As WAP phones have smaller screens, content is oftenly fairly basic, so pages are quite efficient and downloaded quickly.

GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications and is the most popular standard for mobile telephony systems in the world.
GSM differs from its predecessor technologies in that both signaling and speech channels are digital, and thus GSM is considered second generation (2G) mobile phone system.
GPRS is short for General Packet Radio Service it is also a way to enhance 2G phones to enable them to send and recieve data at an increased rate.
With a GPRS connection, the phone is "always on" and can transfer data immediately, and at a higher speeds. An additional advantage is that data can be transferred at the same time as making a voice call.

3G is also known as 3rd Generation, is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunicationsservices fulfilling specifications by the International Telecommunication Union. Application services include wide-area wireless voice telephone, mobile Internet access, video calls andmobile TV, all in a mobile environment. Compared to the older 2G and 2.5G standards, a 3G system must allow simultaneous use of speech and data services, and provide peak data rates of at least 200 kbit/s.

Bluetooth is an open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over a short distance (using short wavelength radio transmissions) from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks (PANs) with high levels of security. Created by telecoms vendor Ericsson in 1994, it was originally conceived as a wireless alternative RS-232 data cables. It can connect several devices, overcoming problems of synchronisation.

The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal (and the broader the band, the greater the capacity for traffic). Different criteria for broad have been applied in different contexts and at different times. Its origin is in radio systems engineering, but became popularized after MediaOne adopted it as part of a marketing campaign in 1996 to sell their high speed data access. The slogan was "This is Broadband. This is the Way". The term has never been formally defined, even though it is used widely and has been the subject of many policy debates, and the FCC National Broadband Plan.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is any of a family of methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. Other terms frequently encountered and often used synonymously with VoIP are IP telephony, Internet telephony, voice over broadband (VoBB), broadband telephony, and broadband phone.

HTTP is short for HyperText Transfer Protocol, the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. For example, when you enter a URL in your browser, this actually sends an HTTP command to the Web server directing it to fetch and transmit the requested web page.

YouTube

Probably the best album megamix i've ever heard, i'll be sure to buy the album just from hearing this, this is proof that YouTube is a way of advertising and it's free! This is a huge advantage for producers like Drum&Bass Arena because if they're not a mainstream advertiser and don't buy slots inbetween tv programs then YouTube is a great alternative.

Toy Story 3 Website Response

All Responses Welcome:)

10 things that make pokemon popular

1 - 'Gotta catch 'em all' - keeps the person playing.
2 - New world concept - more new pokemon each time.
3 - Played by a wide variety of audiences
4 - Huge fanbase.
5 - Game can be portable.
6 - Some pokemon are cute for girls and others are tough for boys so appeals to a wider audience.
7 - Huge franchise including games, anime and merchandise.
8 - Good fun.
9 -  Simple concept.
10 - Not story based.

Website so far

For our latest assignment we had to create a promotional website for a newly released film of our choice, i chose to create one for Toy Story 3.
So far I have made a home page with a pre-loader before it loads, i have also animated in the Toy Story 3 logoand added in some background music from the film, 'you've got a friend in me'.
I have also made mock ups of the characters pages on Photoshop.

Game Reviews

Game 1: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/254456
The first game i played was Dad 'n Me, in which you have to beat people up, you could say that you play the 'bully' of the game, the game has an integrated combo system, simple controls and superb artwork.
You can smash poor children's sand castles and watch them cry. You can throw propane tanks. You can kick a football into a goal and watch the score go up, or you can shoot hoops. You can even throw children in front of cars.
Dan Paladin's amazing art adds a cartoony feel to the game, keeping the seriousness of bullying and stabbing little children at bay. You never once feel bad for entering rage mode and tearing through a horde of little kids.

Ratings:
Graphics - 5
Gameplay - 4
Controls - 5
Overall - 4.5


Game 2: http://www.maxgames.com/play/age-of-war-2.html
The second game i played was Age of War 2, in this game you have to evolve yourself through the civilisations, starting off at the stone age and gradually working your way through to a sort of futuristic age where you get half men half robot type cyborg things.
The aim of the game is to defend your fortress while at the same time, crush your enemies, you have to gain exp by killing enemy units to evolve to the next level, when you do eventually evolve to the next age, new units and upgrades are available to you.

Ratings:
Graphics - 5
Gameplay - 3
Controls - 4
Overall - 4


Game 3: http://ninjakiwi.com/Games/Tower-Defense/Play/Bloons-Tower-Defense-4.html
The last game i played was Bloons Tower Defence 4, it's pretty damn fun, in the game you have to build 'towers' to defend yourself from the attack from vicious ballons! You have lives which you lose if you let the ballons get past you.
It's better than the previous games in the series because you don't get all the towers at once, you have to rank up to unlock them, this is clever because this makes you want to play the game more.

Ratings:
Graphics - 5
Gameplay - 4
Controls - 5
Overall - 5

Understand Principles of Digital Video Technology in Interactive Media

Designers use digital video technology to enhance a user’s interactive experience on different platforms for online media with two main categories: applications and technologies.
The applications side has a wide variety of uses, starting from media such as short films, promotional material, film trailers and user-generated content all the way to e-learning platforms such as the World Wide Web, email attachments, presentations and mobile devices.
Whereas the technology side focuses more on digital video capture, e.g. digital video file formats (.mpg, .mp4, .mov, .avi, .wmv, .flv etc.) and streaming methods (downloading, progressive downloading and streaming) etc.

User-generated content comes in many varieties and is available in many forms, it can consist of anything from pictures, self-made or taken from a certain category, a game for example, to videos which can also be self-made.
User-generated content can be used to advertise what the creator includes in it, for example, a montage made a video game can be used to advertise the game because it includes what the games like, what’s actually in the game, like maps and weapons, and if the game is popular or not, because if there are a wide variety of montages on the video sharing site that must mean that the game is popular, an example of a video game montage can be found via this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlAfpyzPzxM.
Another form of advertising is a type of video called viral this is where a video becomes popular through the process of internet sharing, typically through internet media sharing websites, ‘a video, image or text spread by "word of mouth" on the internet or by e-mail for humorous, political or marketing purposes; Of or relating to a biological virus; Caused by a virus; Of the nature of an informatic virus; able to spread copies of itself to other computers’ quoted from: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=active&biw=1024&bih=643&defl=en&q=define:viral&sa=X&ei=P7E2TenmAYexhQfZqI3HAg&ved=0CBoQkAE, such as YouTube, on YouTube people can upload videos they have made which can then get views, where people view the video, if then the video becomes popular the channel that the user owns will start to get subscriptions where other people on YouTube receive messages on which the persons channel uploads new videos. The video can also be shared on social networking sites by posting the link in a ‘status’, Facebook being the most popular, people then click on the link which take them to the video. This is another form of advertising, it’s called viral advertising where as stated above a video gets spread across the internet via media sharing websites and social networking sites, it could also be called ‘word of mouth’ advertising. This is probably one of, if not the most effective way of advertising for designers and producers because it’s free, and if a friend tells you to watch something you are more than likely going to do it than if a television add comes on the screen and tells you to. ‘With internet advertising consumers are only ever a click away from advertisers' online shops and websites and they can learn about and purchase products 24 hours a day.’ As quoted by http://lbug.co.uk/viral-advertising.html, it also states that ‘Small business can save money due to the reduced need for a sales force, and because of the low production, distribution and residual costs of a viral campaign internet marketing can help a company expand from a local to international marketplace’.
User-generated content can be found to sometimes advertise something without the creator realising, this is because video nearly always have a product in it, whether it being anything from an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 to a piece of music by a famous artist, 30 Seconds to Mars for instance, a good example of this would be a fan made music video to the song ‘This is War’ by the band 30 Seconds to Mars, this video not only advertises the song, but it advertises a video game also, the game being final fantasy, this is because the music video is made up of cut scenes from within the game series, ranging throughout 7 of the games. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV30-5E6Png – The link for the music video)
YouTube is also a catalyst for advertising because some advertisements that were made for television viewing later become banned for some reason or another, but being allowed to put them on YouTube allows the advertisements to then do the job that they were meant to do in the first place, an example of this is a banned Xbox 360 advert that was put on YouTube, although it actually nothing to do with an Xbox it makes you remember the advert which then makes you remember the product. Putting banned advertisements on YouTube or any other media sharing website stops the creator from losing money put into making the advert, but this is only the case if the video gets views, this is a disadvantage to putting adverts on YouTube instead of the television, although its free to do so, the consumer choses to watch it whereas on the TV the only way you can stop yourself from viewing it is by changing the channel.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNuRQmvykwk – The link for the Xbox advert)
 Blogging can also be another form of advertisement because if a blog becomes popular and the page gets ‘followers’ then whatever the author puts on the blog will become advertised, so if the author put on a review of a game for example, it could become well known and encourage people to buy it, whether it’s intentional or not, it’s still another form of advertising. An example of advertisement within a blog would be my own, until now I hadn’t realised it was actually advertising the games I was playing, as it’s a gaming blog. (http://brazzersgametime.blogspot.com/ - The link for my games blog)
Although blogs aren’t very ‘high tech’ due to a YouTube video being the most advanced technology available, on the blogging site http://www.blogger.com/, but this still allows you to advertise videos that have been posted onto YouTube, this could be linked with a self-owned YouTube account for instance because if you had a successful channel then you could advertise the videos that you have posted onto your YouTube channel.
 When using viral videos to advertise, the digital video file format must also be taken into consideration because with each different file format a different level of quality is included and also what the video can be used on, for example an .avi file can’t be used on an iPod. For example if you wanted to post a video onto YouTube the file format doesn’t really matter as it supports most popular formats, ‘YouTube supports a wide variety of the range of video codec formats, audio codec formats and container formats in use.’ As stated on the website: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55744
 The introduction of the new Kinect for the Xbox 360 has changed the way people play games all over the world, not needing a controller to play the games means that the user is more involved in the game, both physically and mentally. Kinect was introduced to broaden the Xbox’s audience beyond its usual ‘hardcore’ gamers and could also help to try and remove the name ‘coach potato’ from the common Xbox gamer. Kinect competes with Wii MotionPlus, PlayStation Move and PlayStation Eye motion control systems for the Wii and PlayStation 3, however both MotionPlus and Move require controllers which are pointed at the screen whereas with Kinect, the user is the controller.
According to www.activate3d.com ‘Kinect uses a special camera to compute the depth of each pixel in addition to the normal red, green, and blue colour information.’ (see, http://activate3d.com/2010/11/how-are-we-different-than-kinect/) it also states that ‘Microsoft took the output depth data and state of the art computer vision research to separate out human beings from the background in the image and break them up into the individual component body parts.’ (also see link above).