Thursday, February 21, 2008

Useful Tutorials

http://www.flashandmath.com/index.html

This website has some really useful tutorials for using Flash AS3

http://www.flashandmath.com/basic/mousedraw/index.html

http://www.flashandmath.com/basic/colors/index.html

These two in particular will come in useful for Camilla and I when writing the script for our interactive kiosk.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

SPP2 Lecture with Simon Perkins

The lecture yesterday was really interesting. Simon was talking about how each new technology used is expected to make the product more realist. When people see graphics on games and films now they always expect it to be as real to life as possible. When you start to think about it you have to ask, "why?" Why does everything have to be realistic? We expect actors to make us believe their story and we slate them when they don't, when all the time we know they are just acting so why do we expect them to be able to make us believe they are a different person. We expect computer graphics in films to be realistic when most of the time the graphics are creating fictional characters and situations so how can it be realistic. This lecture really got me thinking, why are we trying so desperately to incorporate fictional and virtual reality into 'real world reality' in as believable a way as possible. When people view graphics they know all the time that the graphics are fictional and have been created by a computer, but for some reason they want the graphics to look 'real'. Why?

Tutorial Feedback & Project Update

In our tutorial yesterday with Roma, Camilla and I discussed our idea for our interactive kiosk. We got some useful feedback from our tutor group and have adjusted our idea slightly. We have decided to limit the number of phidgets and animations in our kiosk, by doing this we will be able to make a each animation more interactive and therefore make a more successful and appealing kiosk.

We are planning to use 3 or 4 phidgets in our interactive kiosk. A joystick which we will hopefully be able to make into a simple drawing tool for the user so they can create their own image over the animations they have activated using the other sensors. We are not sure how feasible this idea is and need to carry out further research to find out if it is possible and also how complex it would be to create. A vibration sensor will activate an animation on the screen which will vibrate and move around with more velocity the more the sensor is made to vibrate, again this is an idea that we need to look into further as we do not know if we have the knowledge in actionscript to make it happen. The third sensor will be a slider which when activated will change the background colour from light to dark.

When all the sensors are activated the user will have interesting visuals to view which they have helped to create by using the joystick to create their own image over the background shade they have chosen and the animation they have activated.

If all goes well and the kiosk works with these phidgets and effects we would like to add one last phidget. This would be a touch button which would take a snapshot of the image the user has created. When this kiosk is in place in an art gallery cafe or bar the user would be able to print this snapshot image to postcard or business card size. They would collect this card from the bar for a small fee. On one side of the card would be the image and on the other would be some basic information for the gallery such as gallery name, address, phone number and website address. This would work well as advertising for the gallery and with a small charge for the printoff the gallery can also make a small profit.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Word Animation Idea 3



Word Animation Idea 2



Line Animation Idea





or go to http://www.swfup.com/uploads/swf-132733.swf

Word Animation Idea





View my SWF file
or go to http://www.swfup.com/uploads/swf-132709.swf to view

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Short Animation



View my SWF file
or go to http://www.swfup.com/file/131000

This is a short animation I have worked on which would appear in response to a phidget on our interactive kiosk. It is like the previous post but I have expanded on it to make it more intereseting.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

An example of one of the simple animations




View my SWF file
Or go to http://www.swfup.com/file/129247

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The Idea

Today Camilla and I had a mass brainstorming session over giant mugs of tea. After sitting in silence for a while with no inspiration we finally came up with the idea. We decided the industry sector we wanted to design for would be cultural/entertainment more specifically, art galleries. We want to create something for an art gallery's cafe or bar rather that in the exhibits. Cafes are usually quite bland, although they make the effort with avant-garde furniture the overall effect is often clinical and unwelcoming.

Our idea is to create something innovative, creative and most importantly entertaining to be set in these cafes. We want to use a range of phidgets in our design including touch sensors, vibration sensors, sliders, a joystick and a light sensor. The idea is to have a screen mounted in a table with the phidgets lined up below the screen. Each phidget will create a different effect of moving images on the screen, by playing around with the phidgets and using them in different orders the animation on the screen will change as the different images overlap.

We will create the animations and the links to the phidgets using actionscript 3.0 in Flash. As neither Camilla or myself are experts in using actionscript this idea will work quite well, it gives us the flexibility we need if we come across problems with actionscript. We will start by creating very simple animations in Flash which will allow us to start on the scripting quickly, as we become more confident with the actionscript we can expand our animations to become more complex. By doing the project this way we are giving ourselves the freedom to leave the animations simple if our scripting work causes us problems.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Cloverfield Advertising Campaign



This teaser poster was released before the film had a title, another version was accidentally leaked saying monstrous. With this poster no one knew what it was for, why it was appearing everywhere, or what it was all about.



When this poster was released people knew it was a film being advertised and the name was Cloverfield, but that was about it. This teaser campaign intriqued people and when the film finally came out everyone was desperate to see it to see what all the hype was about. I went to see this film yesterday and unfortunately I was very disappointed. The 'hand-cam' filming didn't really bother me because I soon got used to it and it was a lot less irritating than when the Blair Witch Project did the same thing. The storyline was pretty much non-existent, there was no ending. The most annoying thing in the film though was the unbelievable acting, and I don't mean unbelievable in a good way.

I think this is film is like marmite, you either love it or hate it, i loved the advertising campaign but hated the film.

Interactive Advertising



www.nike.com

The nike website has great interactivity, you can customize the sportswear, get inspired by other people's choices and create your own personalised look. I had fun on this website and if I had the money i certainly would have been tempted to buy the outfits I had created.



www.miniusa.com

The mini website has games the user can play, it's great way to get people talking about the brand of mini which in turn gets people taking about the cars. The games are just a bit of fun and don't really need to be on the website but it adds a different interactive side to the website ad keeps the user interested. These games could be played on a big screen at a launch of a new car as part of an advertising campaign.