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northlynx-blog · 8 years ago

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My Year 2 Term 1 Project

My project for term 1 was to create an 80's styled beat em up video game character presentation that was about my radio presenter character were at the end we would also have an interactive choice for something. When designing my character, I wanted to have a gentleman who uses an umbrella to fight, however when I decided to make the radio presenter I still liked the idea of a character who uses an umbrella so I decided to keep this concept, I also decided to add a microphone in the other hand to symbolise that my character is a radio presenter. The interactive choice I chose was to have the audience pick what weapon they would use to defend the radio station from the gang member. When creating the project, I wanted to create the feeling that the audience was watching a news report of the fight were the audience can choose the outcome of the fight.

I believe that my strengths in my project were in my motion graphics using adobe after effects since I was able to handle their creation very well and I was able to create what I wanted with little to no difficulty. I believe that another strength was my ability to edit the videos together using adobe premiere since I was able to put all the scenes and shots I wanted in the correct area and make the cuts rather smooth. I feel that one other strength was my ability to film my green screen footage, I feel that I could accurately film the shots I wanted and was able to direct the actors well in the actions they needed to take. I also feel that one of my strengths was coming up with the costume for the character, I feel that this is a strength because I spent so much time researching this and was able to get a result that looked similar to what an 80's radio presenter would look like. I feel that my final strength would be that I was able to use YouTube's editing software because I was able to correctly use the annotations and was able to create a seamless transition between the two videos with options to choose the weapon and options to go back and choose again.

I feel that my weaknesses were rotoscoping since because I missed parts of the weapons and made the actor lose chunks of his body at time which means that I had to continually adjust and edit the rotoscope. Another one of my weaknesses in this project was my inability to correctly use the green screen editing software in after effects when I used the keylight effect since at times I would make my actors transparent. Another weakness I had was that I had trouble adding movement to my shots and story board, while I had the correct angles and directed the actors according to my script, later I found that there was a lack of movement from my characters which I never added to my story board. I feel that my biggest weakness however was my lack of understanding towards my character since I didn't know how to represent him as a radio presenter through his actions, story and location. I feel that another weakness I had was that my lack of understanding of the 80's theme, I feel that my background wasn't 80's themed enough and the motion graphics weren't fast enough.

The specific theme for my design ideas were to make it look like a news report that was broadcast, so because of this I decided to add lots of red to fit into the colour scheme I was using. I also wanted the video to feel very 80's so I needed to add 80's music to complete the feel that this was a cheesy 80's video. One of my biggest influences is the 80's CNN because of its red colour scheme which is what made me go with the colour red. my original idea was to have a purple black and blue colour scheme and make the video seem to be outside at night, however due to the style and colours of the costume and the character being changed to a radio presenter the outdoors theme didn't work which is why I chose a bright interior look. When creating my title sequence, I wanted to stick to the old theme but with some brighter colours such as orange. My influences for my title sequence were Far Cry Blood Dragon because of its 80's neon purple colour scheme and grid, and the other influence was Kung Fury which has a similar colour scheme but has more red and bright colours. I made choices based on what the real life colours and looks of news programs and what films often had as their title sequence.

The areas that I experimented on were the design of the character, who was originally going to be a high class gentleman but was discarded due to it not fitting well with the 80's theme. Another area that I experimented with was the story, at first I was going to do a by the numbers clean up the streets story however with the introduction of the new design for the character it was changed into a turf war story. The final piece of experimentation was one of the biggest and that was the design of the main character who was originally going to wear a full suit all in black, then I decided to scrap the idea then use a striped shirt, jeans, and a red brace, but we then found that a more accurate piece of clothing would be black trousers which we later found to be a problem since when removing the green screen, it would make the trousers transparent.

The key areas of development were the green screen film since I needed that to show off my character and create the effects, backgrounds and animation. I needed to focus on the green screen film because I would need to add in backgrounds to show were the character is and I would also need to add falling and a flying animation of a person and to do that i needed to move them without moving the background. Another other key of development was the creation of story board which we would use to tell us what shots were needed, what actions to take, and what motion graphics were needed. Another key area of development I feel is The motion graphics creation, this is because of the creation of the title sequence, the creation of the news report opening and the headlines. These motion graphics allow the audience to know what the title of the game is, who the character is, and that he's being reported on. The last key area of development was uploading the video to YouTube and editing in the annotations to allow interactivity.

The final outcome works as intended for its intended purpose platform, YouTube. I believe that this is because of the way annotations are simple and can work easily by allowing the audience to click on the annotation in the video and then be sent to another link and set time in the link if it’s another video. YouTube would help promote the product effectively because of the amount of people who use YouTube.

http://fortunelords.com/youtube-statistics/

I feel that the project went well, not perfect, but well. This is because it shows what I wanted which is a radio presenter beating up a villain using an umbrella and a microphone. The creation of the project was mostly smooth but there were some bumps such as when the character jabs the gang member the elbow went outside the green screen, the rotoscoping fixed this but made the rendering process much slower therefore taking up more time than I would have liked.

I received two kinds of feedback on my final outcome, a professional one form our tutor and an unprofessional one from my parents. This gave me feedback from a trained eye, and an untrained eye who is most of the people that would view this. The professional feedback I received was that the background didn't show that the character was in an office and that the background could have been sized better. Another problem that the backgrounds showed was why my character was holding an umbrella indoors which they then go onto say that the background should have shown the character outdoors. Some other feedback was to be more careful with the camera angles and perspective. And lastly the final bits of feedback are increasing the resolution of some of the scenes, tweaking the motion graphics speed, adding more energy to the character and showing his name more clearly.

One of the things I would change the most was the jab attack since the elbow went outside of the green screen which caused major issues since it took too long to render frames when editing the scene, so to improve on this I would either use a shorter object or use a different move to fight the gang member. One other problem I found is that because of the umbrella and black trousers both became transparent in the green screen which caused some problems with detail and aesthetics, to change this I would change the black trousers to the blue jeans, the umbrella was fixable and if I was to use the umbrella again I could do the same however it would be easier to use a different umbrella that isn't transparent. One other problem I found is that the lighting didn't match up with the lighting of the interior, to change this I would have used a different background or planned out what background I would use and then decide on my lighting.

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northlynx-blog · 8 years ago

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Year 1 FMP Evaluation

Reflective Evaluation

Unit 4.1

This is my evaluation for my final major project where I’ll explain and describe what happened in my FMP and how it changed and adapted.

What was the purpose of the project? What did you hope to learn?

The purpose of my project was to create an entertaining and educational podcast about law and how detectives can support a career in law. My FMP was also meant to let people choose what their story is and what decisions they will make from the decisions given. I aimed this project at people within the age of sixteen to twenty-four. The reason I aimed it at this age group is because, at sixteen people are beginning to wonder what they want to do with their life and what they will need to do to get there, and adults at the age of twenty-four have properly already have a job however, people at that age could be in law and be interested in what I’m doing or have free time if their working at home and want to listen to something. I hoped to learn how to create audio pieces as I always enjoyed them and thought that I could use these skills and apply them in other pieces of work. I also hoped to learn more about law when writing out the story and using research to help me, this was because of my interest in law and that I want to work as a lawyer later in life.

What was the theme for your project?

The theme of my project was law, mystery and ethics. I decided on these three because law and ethics go well together, and mystery goes with both of the other two. The reason I decided on law is because of my interest in law and I wanted to show my interest in law though this story.

How much have you developed your ideas?

I began wanting to create an interactive, choose your own story, audiobooks first few chapters that was about a detective mystery story about law and a murder with a detective deciding on whether they want to follow a legal route or follow an illegal route. However as time progressed my idea began to change from an audiobook to a podcast because of the extra features you get with a podcast such as sound effects and music. As more time progressed my idea of how I was going to implement the interactive side of it became more clouded. My original idea for the interactivity was to create an app like feature on Adobe InDesign, however the creation of that as well as the podcast would take too much time and be too much to handle so I eventually decided against it. Later I decided that to keep the interactivity I could create a poll where the listeners could vote on what decision they wanted and post any feedback on what they would like to improve the story.

How much reference material did you find (primary and secondary research)? Do you think that you could have done more? If so, explain what you think you could have done?

Most of my research was secondary research due to the nature of my content. I found lots of books and websites that helped me create the story and books that helped me understand different ways of telling a story, this is where I got the idea to create my story in a second person perspective. There were some websites and a booklet that helped my FMP by giving information about how to correctly create a character bible and the content that will be inside the of the character bible. I never got to do any primary research however I did set up a survey monkey quiz that I would use to allow people to give me feedback however I unfortunately never got round to using it. I feel that I could have easily done more research. I feel that I should have done more research into creating a short story (or flash fiction) to give me more room to add information about law.

Which developers, art movements, designers, media companies/campaigns and industry examples have you looked at to assist and inspire you?

Two major inspirations I had were the app game design company 3 Second Games because of their game Lifeline, the writer David Eddings, and the book/play An Inspector Calls. 3 Second games inspired me because of the story and the story altering decisions that you quite often make. I was inspired by David Eddings was an inspiration for my story writing because of the simple yet useful descriptions of items in the story. And lastly An Inspector Calls was an inspiration because of the story and genre. In An Inspector Calls there was a murder and a family that all helped commit it, the part I found was useful however was when the inspector was interrogating the family members and using evidence and getting information from them like witnesses.

Explain how your production board presentation went. What feedback did you receive and how did this help you focus your production?

My production board went quite well and after it was over I understood what I would need to do to improve my FMP. I explained the name of my FMP then talked about the influences that I had and used, afterwards I gave a very basic synopsis of the story that I would be using, I then described the audience, technology required, format, genre & style, mechanics and then music and sound. The feedback I received was to show some of notes I made for the FMP, to show the research that I put into the FMP, to create a poll for the interactive points, and a time limit of 2:30-3:00 minutes long. These helped in my project by showing more of my research and notes, and the most useful ones, the time limit and the poll which I used both for my FMP.

How did your work change through the project?

Throughout the project my work changed from being an audiobook that I would create an app for to a podcast where I could now add sound and have a poll for the story selection. Because of these changes I was able to do more for my FMP. When creating my FMP I found that I kept adding parts to the script, for example an intro and outro, which extended the length of my audio tracks. Another way that my work changes was creating thumbnails, banners and icons. This changed lots when I got an IPad pro with a pen so that I could use drawing software to create the images needed.

Which technical skills, methods and techniques did you use?

When creating the thumbnail and other images I used a method to improve drawing which was where I draw a very basic version of what I want then I add another layer where I add a more detailed version of the sketch and repeat that until you get the finished project. A technical skill that was a major part in editing my project, was cutting and pasting to separate parts of my recording and space them and move them in order with the other recordings.

What were the key areas of development in this project?

The biggest key area of my FMP is audio and sound. This is because my project is an audio based project that requires sound and uses sound to actually show any results. Another key area of my project is script writing, scriptwriting is a key area because it tells the reader what they need to say and how to say it, without a script, there is very little order or sense in what is being recorded. A key area of development was finding out who I was, this is because I can find out what I’m good at and what my weaknesses are, what I enjoy and what I want to do in life. This would help me understand what kind of project would be best for me. Another key area was character and world building by creating a character bible that describes who the character is and other small parts of information. This key area would be used to help me understand what kind of character I’m writing about and how I need to make them.

What experiments and exploration did you do? How did it affect your projects development? Were there any significant changes?

One of the biggest pieces of exploration I did was when I was looking at becoming a podcast because I felt that there were too many limitations for an audiobook. This affected my project a great deal because I ended up using a podcast format later because of the accessibility and popularity it has. There were significant changes because I now had to create sound effects, create music, and find voice actors for the script, another part that changed was the writing style because instead of writing he said this or he replied with this, the voice actors each show who each character is without any needed explanation about who’s speaking. When editing my recording for my hammer sound, I was experimenting with all the different tools to make the sound more wooden, eventually I found the bass and treble effect which made the hammer sound more wooden.

Is the final product appropriate for the intended platform/purpose?

Yes, final project works well for my chosen platform SoundCloud, the reasons for this that sound cloud is used to host sound based media such as songs and audiobooks, which works well with podcasts because their a mix of the two. The final product is also appropriate for the intended purpose because it uses mostly sound and the information in the story still provides an educational standpoint on law and ethics.

Identify the strengths and weaknesses in your final product.

The strengths in my final product are that it’s a good easy length with the average time being around 3:45 minutes long, and is easily accessible because of it being hosted on SoundCloud which provides easy and free access to anyone. Another strength is that I’ve posted both choices, so if anyone wanted to choose the other story they can. Other strengths are that I’ve created a twitter page to help with advertising my project and provides an easy way to contact me. The weaknesses of my project were that the audio quality is not as good as I wanted it to be because we didn’t have the equipment available to stop any popping or increase the quality. Some other weaknesses are that when recording I removed a few unnecessary line to shorten the video from being too long, but because of this some of the narration and descriptions are missing.

Find a similar product – place it next to your own – what comparisons/difference can you identify?

The product I’m choosing to compare is http://www.thelapse.org/devil-dont-shawn-duyette-episode-38/, the similarities between the two products are that they are both podcasts that tell a story using different voice actors, they both use sound effects to build atmosphere, and they both use a narrator for the story. The differences are that my story has multiple choice, its theme is law rather than horror, and my products platform is SoundCloud.

Review your proposal - what changed, what developments did you make, did you manage to complete everything you set out to?

In my project the biggest change was it going from an audiobook to a podcast to allow more effects. Another part of my project that changed was my project going from being around 3 minutes long to nearly 4 minutes long. Once I finished the main script recording I realised that I needed an intro and outro for my podcasts so that people know what their listening to and what they need to do once it ends. Finally I feel that I did finish everything I set out to do and completed to a standard that I’m happy with.

Are you happy with your final piece? Are there any elements you like in particular?

Yes, I am happy with my final piece because I completed everything I set out to do and completed it to the best of my ability and the ability to the technology that was available. The elements I like in particular are the images I had to create, the script because of how I felt like the writing gave the information about the story and law, and the recording because of the voice actors I had to support me and help complete the project.

Is there anything you would change? Why?

If I could change anything I would change some of the story to focus more on the educational aspect of my project, and change leaving out some of the narration as I wanted that to be part of the project even if it wasn’t necessary. I would also change doing my recordings earlier to help complete the project in time with time to spare because I felt like I had to go and complete things on the last week and had too much pressure.

http://www.bang2write.com/2015/12/how-to-write-tv-series-bibles-the-infographic.html

Glen C. Strathy. (2008). How To Create A Plot Outline In 8 Easy Steps.Available: http://www.how-to-write-a-book-now.com/plot-outline.html. Last accessed 06/05/2016

Ariel Chai. (Unkown). Herzog - Character Design Document. Available: http://www.svartberg.com/wip/Herzog_-_Character_Design_Document.pdf. Last accessed 17/06/2016.

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