Unit 33 LO2 - Full Presentation

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Unit 66 LO4 - Full Presentation

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Unit 66 LO3 - Completed Model

Here is my final renders and screenshots of my 3D model. I textured the car with two different colours to see how they looked.

Unit 66 LO2 - Full Presentation

All videos embedded in the presentation won't work but links should be provided with all the videos.

Unit 66 LO1 - Full Presentation

All videos embedded in the presentations won't work but links should be provided with all the videos.

Action Jackson, Fix Up UK - Motivational Session

Action Jackson came to Shipley College as a part of the Aim Higher services available to students in the United Kingdom. Action Jackson has his own company that's called Fix Up UK to help motivate students to be inspired to do work and enjoy life. is motto was; "Success is not magic but hard work" or words to that extent. He shared information about his past and what he is doing now with his several businesses. After reflecting on his history he started activities to motivate the students present at the event. Several students got involved with Jackson's motivational activites including myself. He just asked me what I wanted to do and I replied with "Game Developer at a high production company." Jackson got other students involved with the event. Jackson also played the guitar and was dancing throughout.

The event was fun but most of the motivational information presented I already know. Not my kind of thing but fun all the same. I left a comment about what me and my brother think about people who want to work and have a passion, "Don't be satisfied with something you don't want. Don't do something at you hate. Find a passion, enjoy what your doing with your passion and enjoy life."

Overall I'll give the event 7/10.

Unit 65 - Planning for Animated Game

Completed Unit 65 Learning Outcome 2 Assignment Document.

Unit 33 - History of Animation **Updated**

Completed Assignment of LO1 for Unit 33.
YouTube embedded videos in the presentation do not work.

Unit 19 - Evaluation

My project began several months ago when I was doing the desktop project, the 4 themes was decided at that point; Fantasy, War, Horror and Sci-Fi. We needed to do 5 icons for this project in total so I linked the 5th icon with work from another project I've been doing along side this one. At the start of this course I playing around with 3D Studio Max, learning the basic techniques to create basic shapes. One week in the 3D sessions we made a car, very basic but still holding the principals of what a car is, this basic car gave me the idea of having my 5th icon to be motor sport related. Originally I wanted it to be related to my favourite team in motor sport being Ferrari but this would of been easy and probably effected my grade as it wasn't an original design. So instead the 5th icon would be related to the model that gave me the Ferrari idea, my basic model I created a while back. The basic car which would ultimately be my 5th icon.

So going back a few steps in the process, to continue from the collage of the 4 themes we had to do research on icons and symbols that are famous or well known like Egyptian Hieroglyphics and road signs for example. We had to analyse these icons and what was the meaning and purpose behind them. Doing so helped us understand how our own icons could have the same effect in it having a purpose and meaning or relevance. After looking at the icons is was important to look at the platform we would be displaying these icons on to. We looked at the history of Apple, the varies products they sell, the differences between the last two iPhone models and for me the differences between the iPhone 4 Vs. the LG Optimus 2X. This give us more information on the brand behind the iPhone and the competition against in the smartphone market.

Another important step in this process was looking at interactive media, this is the industry I'm working for so it was important for me to look at not just games but other elements like Television forums like BBC F1 forum. I also looked at the Coca Cola Company with it's unique graphics used for their logos and still ads. Finally for this first part of the process I had a look at BAF10 and what Sony presented there, they gave people more insight on 3D images and how they worked. Also showing people games using 3D like Gran Turismo 5 and Killzone 3.

Next up was creating the concepts for the 4 icons in their specific themes. Before this I made my proposal of how it will run. Multiple drawings for each specific theme was made in the process with detail of what they are and colour palettes chosen for them. After the concepts were complete discussions happened to decided which ones will be taken to the next level. This included design on Ferrari which was dropped for the 3D model as stated above. Once the 4 individual icons from each theme were chosen the final drawing had to be produced for further production. All 4 designs were done and scanned on to a computer for PhotoShop manipulation. 


PhotoShop work began to develop the icons further, this brought them to life by introducing the colours that was mentioned in the concept sheets. As well as the colours, effect with brush types and use FX tools were used to the icons look 3D. Both these elements help my drawings look better. FX tools used were shadows, glows, gradient & Bevel and emboss. *A log sheet* will follow one from this evaluation to detail all the techniques used on Photoshop.

Fantasy Icon

 War Icon

Horror Icon

Sci-Fi Icon

Motor Sport Icon

Now I'll just do a brief summary of how I think each icon went. 

For fantasy my initial idea was to have a floating island, similar to what you may have seen in James Cameron's Avatar. For several reasons this wasn't possible, first of all my drawings skills ain't all that special so it won't of looked all that and then the time to manipulate it would of taken probably longer. A though it wasn't what I was intending originally I think my fantasy icon worked out quite well. The colours I was going for and the FX have worked out quite nicely.

With war I wanted to have a dirty and gritty icon, plus I wanted a flag to go with that. This icon purpose was to remember the lost in both wars. Overall it worked out alright and doing its job, even though I couldn't have the flag dirty or gritty for reasons based on respect it still holds its message across I think. Again the FX helped make it look even better than what it could have.

Horror was the perfect icon in my opinion, instead of blood or cheap thrills I wanted something simple and not scary at all. I basically penciled an outline of how a Owls head looks like and its eyes. then scanned this in and let the colours and FX do its magic. A simple silhouetted owl with only it eyes and beams of light behind it. Later I added circle to represent the moon for more detail. Worked out exactly how I wanted it to be.

The Sci-Fi icon started out like it is now but without colour and FX. The original bland and basic icon looked nice and fine. On this one and think I went overboard with the colours needed for it. I if was to go back and changed anything in this project I think this would be the main one. The idea and drawing was sound, colour use wasn't.

Obviously the car idea which was the fifth icon spawned from my love of motor sport, I wanted it to be Ferrari related and that wasn't possible for this project so instead I based it off another project I was doing in 3D. As mention above the basic car helped me with this icon greatly but I did leave a little hint of Ferrari in it with the colours behind the car. The colours of Italian national flag.

This is the final image with all my final icons on the iPhone 4.

The above image shows professional examples of iPhone icons, most of these are official iPhone icons with my own made icons on the iPhone as well.

For more details of my progress in my work please look at my blog post titled Unit 19 - LO1-LO3.

Unit 19 - LO1-LO3

Lewis Guarniere - Creature DT

On Monday the 14th of February 2011 Lewis came to do a presentation about working in the industry of media, specifically film but it linked to gaming as well. Lewis talked more than just what happening in the industry though and touched on how he got there, the work he had to do before getting to his current position and his experiences along the way.


Lewis started by showing a show reel of his work in film and advertisement. Several advertisements that was recognisable by everybody and especially the films he has worked on. After showing his show reel he begin talking about his experiences through uni life and advised people to do what you can and not good over board with your ideas and the scale of the projects you want to do. He advised people to get a foot in the door anyway, doing this can lead to better jobs. He went in detail about his job experiences first as a runner, his incident with Ridley Scott and his all night render farm maintenance. 

One student asked about his wages in the jobs he's done. £11,000 as a runner, £26,000 in his first senior job role working on advertisements and now £36,000 at Double Negative. Lewis wanted to show everyone the Channel 4 indent that was filmed in Dubai, he asked everyone have many building in the indent was computer generated. The number was over 50% with most of the detail in and around the panning camera shoot of Dubai being added in by Lewis and the teams he worked with. Plenty of questions was asked and answered by Lewis on the advert, on how it was made, the effects used and budget of the advert. Lewis said the project was ideal because of the conditions of the location and the agreements with the companies involved. This brought the morning presentation to a close. 

Unfortunately for me I had exams on at the same time as the afternoon session. I heard Lewis asked people to consider everything going on in a production and audience members completed brainstorms of what may go on during the whole process. When I did eventually return to the event Lewis was showing the process elements of 3D in all of it's stages. I'd seen similar demonstrations like this before, mainly from Guerrilla Games a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Guerrilla Games did a application demonstration through the PlayStation Network called Killzone 2: Behind the Bullet.



All in all it was a brilliant experience, hopefully more speaker will be able to come and discuss the industry in the future at Shipley College for the future students.

Double Negative Visual Effects

Unit 66 & 67 - Texture Wrapping

Today we looked at UVW Unwrap, with this we started with a basic model of a house. We selected the model on the edit tab and when down the list to Unwrap UVW. Then we selected each flat face of the structure, all surfaces must be flat or problems will happen. Each individual surface was unwrapped and put in place. All the faces need to fit in a square shape, this is were all the textures can be edited in another application.

 I chose Photoshop CS3, this application lets me modify the surfaces easy. I took a screen shot of the surfaces in place and pasted it on a new PSD file. Started with a new layer and used the polyonal lasso tool. This tool allows me to just go over the surfaces I need, as for the top I used a box selector and filled in the colour I wanted. I added one more layer for a door I picked off the internet, deleted all the addition area around the door and placed it on the first surface (As seen in the image above). Then I copied the original layer and lighten it and turned down the opacity. Furthermore I added a dark layer to all the faces in the new layer on the top.

This is the finished basic texture for the building, I went back to 3D Stuido Max and used the M key to bring up the material editor. With this I placed the texture I made using Photoshop.

 

Unit 65 - Web Animation Techniques

First Version of the assignment, revisions with follow after tutor assessment!
YouTube embedded videos in the presentation do not work through Google Docs or Blogger.

Unit 66 & 67 - Welding Objects

Starting off with a simple box we was told to delete one face of the box before doing anything else. After this we copied the original box and then instead of a carbon copy we used instance, this allows us to modify one and the other would follow suit. We was given free reign to design any type of space ship ourselves. Once customization was finished Chris showed us the how to weld the two individual pieces together. First moving the two pieces close to each other. Then attaching the two pieces, highlighting the vertexes on the side facing each other then hitting the weld button. This completes the process and makes it in to one. A few tweaks to finish off the ship and it was done. Cool lesson today and learned important tools on the software.

Unit 19 - Desktop Project Document **EVALUATION UPDATED**