Interactive Narrative

Here is my interactive narrative. I enjoyed creating this, because I got a chance to input some of my characters that I draw into the piece. Drawing the pieces took some time, but overall I’ am pleased with the way they turned out. I’ am also happy that I didn’t include colour into them, I feel like that would have ruined them.

The most difficult part about this interactive narrative was the actions to include. At the first I didn’t understand what to do. But gradually I got the hang of it, and discovered it isn’t actually that hard. Usually I’ am just used to making flash animations in Flash 8, so this was a bit different not having a continuous motion within the frames.

The thing I’ am disappointed with most is that I didn’t get to include more noises into the piece. For some reason a few noises repeated onto other slides, which I did not want, so I had to remove them.

Advantages:
-The drawings.
-The ‘story line/ how to play’ page is quite helpful.
-The music was a great advantage; I thought it really helped create the atmosphere of the game.

Disadvantages:
-I could have blended the pictures and images of the internet into the background more.
-Made my own buttons.




Shaolin Chambers by ~cemshaolin on deviantART

Tutorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYAouIbPPhk&feature=related





I found this tutorial above very useful. Although it’s not Flash 8, the similarities in the two are almost identical. I think it’s a good tutorial because it shows how to create the figure through lines, and then fill it in very swiftly. I like how he demonstrates how to make the layers of animation a repeat of the previous frames, making the whole entire animation become a lot faster process. What I want to learn next is how to create a background behind the figure that animates in a loop but doesn’t get in the way of you animating your character.

Still love this animation, rather powerful stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R7HCAXFBQY

My Little Animation: Mr Blob

Mr. Blob by ~cemshaolin on deviantART






^^^^^

The link above shows you a little animation I produced. I think this little character also has potential for a longer animation. I just got to figure out a plot line and some other reasonable characters he can interact with. I felt this piece went rather smoothly through its frames. I think its definite disadvantage, as I have mentioned before in my blog is that it needs colour. Again I will research into a online journal on how to make the whole process of filling in colour quicker.

Here are some photos I took last year and edited in Photoshop. I may use these as inspiration for my interactive narrative coming up soon. I think they are effective because they project their messages well, so using these techniques I can strengthen my photos used in the interactive narrative. For example black and white symbolises dull/ depressive.

Here is a drawing I did a while ago. I’ am thinking of making an animation out of this character to get used to body movements in frames. I find it rather difficult at the moment to incorporate colour into my animations when I do play around with Flash 8 because it takes so long. To get around this I’ am going to study some online journals on the programme to find faster routes in making these animations a lot faster process.

One Shot Inspiration / One Shot Pieces

As you can see we finally made some one shot movies.

This practice one was a very basic idea, but it went very well. We were very fortunate to get an out of order machine to add to our plot line. As you can see we applied my idea of using a person’s point a view like in the video below. Using the hand gestures really adds to the character and interactivity of the piece. I think the music is also another advantage to the overall video because it gives it a very casual feel. The only disadvantage to the video is the zooming in. Unfortunately we didn’t realise that you couldn’t zoom in. But we didn’t go over the top with the zooming in it, so it doesn’t look that bad.

FML from Jonny Sedarati on Vimeo.

Here is the final video. We decided to shoot the video in Jonny Sedaratis room. The concept of the movie is about a student who is constantly bothered by his drunken friends to come out and drink with them, while he struggles to write his essay.

This one shot took many attempts pull off. Mostly because we had so much going on within it that when you messed up, you had to start again. Timing was very important in this as we had to time it right each time, or we had to start again.

Once again we used hand movements and the person’s point of view idea. This time we also added thoughts of the person as a second audio. We did this by going into a quiet room and recording the dialogue we wanted and putting it into the one shot during editing stages (this was done in a quiet room to give the audio a slight echo).

There were a few disadvantages to the video it thought. One of them was that I felt we could have acted a bit better in some places, some places lacked character. Also the clock, although we did include looking at the clock into the whole plot, we were hoping that we could have altered the clock so it look like a lot more time had passed in the one shot, as his friends kept coming in and out, so it looks a bit more realistic. But it never happened.

Accept for that I think the whole piece was excellent; it turned out a lot better than I thought. The music, the plot itself, setting, everything went well. I also had a great time filming it with my group, we had many laughs trying to act.

Shots In The Kitchen... from Jonny Sedarati on Vimeo.

This clip if from a website named collegehumor (but embedded from youtube). I like this work due to its humour and its clever ideas. Although we have to include music into the mix, I thought it would be interesting to add thoughts to the audio, like in this clip. I think it will give a more overall understanding to whatever our piece will be themed around.

Although there is movement within the piece (which we are not allowed) I think the video has shown me that because we are not allowed to move, the atmosphere and the surroundings must be interesting, just like this club scene. So that the viewer we not become too bored from the one position.

http://www.collegehumor.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/collegehumor

BarfQuestion

I really like this artist; under the alias BarfQuestion he posts his work on the websites newgrounds and youtube. This kind of animation gives me a feel of our whiteboard animation, due to the fact it’s drawn in black on a white surface. I believe this kind of work deserves a lot of credit because it’s very hard to animate like this, especially if you don’t have a team behind you, it must takes ages to produce each piece. The shady effect is also another great touch. It adds character and a more mysterious attitude to the piece.

You can view all his work on these two websites:


http://www.youtube.com/user/BarfQuestion

http://barfquestion.newgrounds.com/

Practice Pixelation Piece and Final Pixelation Piece

Here is a practice pixelation piece.

Advantages:
• The scene when I change clothes is rather interesting, because it attracts viewers more because you’re seeing a range of colours in front of your eyes, rather than one boring colour on one singular t-shirt.
• The Play- doh scene was also excellent because you see the little creatures form slowly.
• Also the barrier of chairs disappearing was rather effective.
• The comedy and lighting within the piece were both strong also.


Disadvantages:
• In between the walking I could have made it more animated.
• I could have also probably made the piece slightly longer.
• Also probably used more props.
• I should have not used myself as one of the models.





This is my Final Pixelation piece. I’ am very pleased with the outcome.

The plot revolves around the character (Jiten Anand) invading the teddies territory. After he has been attacked by them he awakens to what he thought was a dream, only to find a teddy attacking him from behind when brushing his teeth at the end of the piece.

I enjoyed the editing in this one also because I got to play around with some effects on the pictures this time in Photoshop. I made them brighter and gave them a cartoon effect on top to add to the theme of the piece.

I wanted to keep the same kind of setting (halls) because it adds to the realism of a university student. If I had done it in another location with a different character or theme I think it would have been harder to make more believable because I wouldn’t have enough props.

Advantages

-The music, it’s very cheerful, and it complements the name of the piece ‘Teddy Bears Picnic’. The cheery tempo also adds to teddy bears innocence.
-The effects used in Photoshop.
-The constant experimentation in the hall way.
-The t -shirt changing scene.
-The chair scene.
-The plot itself.

Disadvantages

-Moves to fast in some areas of the video.
-The bedroom scene could have had more experimentation.
-I could have had more models for more interactivity.

-Design Process
















Four specific phases:
-Discovering
-Developing
-Defining
-Delivering


Discovering:
Inspiration-

1. Having ideas, insights, new things
2. Reasearch past znd present solutions, analyzing reasearch.
3. Understanding users.

Developing:
Selecting ideas and creating-

1. Planning
2. Develop concepts and prototypes
3. Acceptance test
4. Choose and refine

Defining:
Validation-

1. Usability test, feedback
2. Refine
3. Further development

Delivering:
Evaluation-

1. Effectiveness
2. Impact
3. Completion
4. Implement


Consider:

- Reverse engineering
- Prototyping
- Open source
- Market research

Competitions:


















I have been asked to search the web for interesting multimedia and design based competitions for some experience. Here are two links below:



http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/animation10/ - About the competition:

- We invite UK schoolchildren aged 7-19 to create an animated film using their computer, and submit it to the competition. On-line submission opens in January 2010.

-Entries can be from individuals, or groups (of up to 4 members).

-All entrants will receive certificates, and winners will receive prizes ranging from laptops to gift vouchers.

-Entries are submitted in 4 age categories (KS2, KS3, KS4 and 16-plus).

-The maximum duration of an entry is one minute.

-Animations must not be interactive - they must run as standalone animations.

-Entries must be created using one of the following programs: Alice, Scratch, Adobe Flash, Serif, and Greenfoot. We regret we cannot accept entries made using other programs.



http://www.11secondclub.com/- The 11 Second Club is a monthly character animation competition open to everyone. Watch any of the 3167 animations or AnimationMentor.com eCritique™ prizes in our archives. Get a feel for what the club is about and what you'll be up against should you choose to enter.

I was introduced to Tomasz Bagiński by a family friend. I found his work very interesting from the start, not just due to the graphical content of his work, but his interesting concepts in his pieces. For example his piece 'Fallen Art' demonstrates a disturbing idea about suicide, but at the same time it delievers an imaginative plot. However, I found the piece 'The Cathederal' to be most effective and interesting one due to the fact that its not based around human lifestyle, its alien. Therefore, a lot more respectable because its clearly took a lot more work and thought to create such a non-fictional piece.

General Information: Tomasz Bagiński (To-mash Ba-geen-skee), Tomek Baginski (born January 10, 1976, Białystok) is a BAFTA Award-winning Polish artist and animator, best known for his Oscar-nominated short movie, The Cathedral (2002). For his newest short, Fallen Art (2004), he received a BAFTA Award for Best Short Animation and Grand Prix for Digital Shorts at Golden Horse Film Festival 2005 (shared with: Jarek Sawko and Piotr Sikora). Bagiński also created cinematics for The Witcher computer game based on the books of Andrzej Sapkowski

2009 WB Induction: Board Animation

In this introduction lesson we created board animations on whiteboards. We did this by using a camera with a stand to take pictures of a frame by frame animation. This technique is known as pixelation. This is done by taking a picture of your drawn piece on the board and slightly modifying it by rubbing it out and moving it slightly. So when you look back at the picutres, it looks like a sequence of movement is happening.

For our animation we had draw/animate a box and get it from one side of the house to the other using interesting concepts and gags to make the piece appealing. The piece was suppposed to last around 10 seconds. Unfortunately ours didnt meet the demands. However, I still found it to be successful. my groups animation is the one that begins from 1:08 in this youtube clip.

Overview of work:

Advantages:
- I think having the house animated is an excellent idea, because it gives the piece a more human feal. Doing this allows the interaction of the viewer and piece to connect easier.
- The use of fire and water (fire from the demon and water from the cloud) are well animated into the piece. I think we demonstrated the movement and flow of these two earth elements smoothly and effectively.
- I think the page being folded at the end is also a nice touch, as it gives a really comic book vibe of.

Disadvantages:
- I think the most important disadvantage is that it wasnt long enough. Having it not long enough stopped us from incoperating more ideas into the piece.
- Also the drawing got a bit sloppy and rushed near to the end of the piece, which discredited it slightly.
- Finally, I think we could have incoperated some human interaction with the board animations like other groups did. for example 00:51-00:53.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCxPEB-uu20

I really enjoy Waterlollies by Adam Phillips. I have watched his work grow on the website www.newgrounds.com for years now. To believe that animation like this is created in flash is outstanding. Most flash artists are not capable of putting this much detail into flash to the extent where it looks like it was actually drawn on paper and coloured in. His impressive blending methods, and the accurate line structures within the characters is what makes him stand out from the rest. He is the God of newgrounds.

Basic Information:

Adam Phillips (born January 1971) is an Australian freelance animator whose online alias is Chluaid (pronounced 'Clyde'). His recent work, for which he is best known, has consisted of flash animation compositions published on his website Bitey Castle and on the flash portal Newgrounds (there, as of May 21, 2009, his movies have over 12 million views and he is one of the highest ranked artists). He is the creator of the Brackenwood series.
Adam Phillips was a featured artist at the Adobe Design Center for the month of December, 2006. The alternate soundtrack for the YuYu in that link was composed by Lee Miller.




Pinhole camera:

















A pinhole camera is a very simple camera. Instead of having a lens, it has a whole to project the image through onto paper. For our camera we used a beer can. We created this camera using the sources of a can, black card and some tape. In order to create this image we must expose the hole when in contact with your chosen landscape for around 8 seconds. From here we developed the pictures inside, some were successful and some weren't. Most of them weren't! HA!

Advantages:

- Its quick and simple.
- Its a quick process (unlike a shop were you have to develop it).

Disadvantages:

-It can damage easily.
-The pictures dont always develop well like a professional camera.
-Your not able to see through a lens what your capturing.