NEW YEAR, NEW BLOG

Please follow the link to my 2nd year Multimedia Blog

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http://troysyr2multimediablog.blogspot.com/

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WHERES YOUR HEAD AT?!

VERTEX HEAD (TURBOSMOOTH) - JPG - TROY BROWNE

My 1st 3d modelled head...
...considering I'll be doing 'Virtual Environments' next year I thought I'd try and get some organic modelling down. Ive been putting it off for a while as the process seemed really complicated and couldn't get my head around starting with a cube and building features from it. However I found some tutorials that build the face up with polygons using the line tool and pulling the vertices's using the profile plane. After abit of practise I managed to produce quite a realistic head... and am really happy with it.
I used to watch 'making of' documentaries on animation and see them building up faces on MAX but used to think that such techniques were way beyond me... but now I can do it... wahey!

VERTEX HEAD (SMOOTH) - JPG - TROY BROWNE

VERTEX HEAD DEVELOPMENT - JPG SLIDESHOW - TROY BROWNE

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QUESTIONAIRE

GRAPH RESULTS - JPG - TROY BROWNE

My questionnaire was designed to get the best feedback from the users I tested it on. I set up my Laptop, including WiiRemote in the universities lobby hoping to grab passersby to test on.

The questions I asked were;

1 - Male/Female.

2 - What course are you studying?

3 - Do you like the concept of an online portfolio?

4 - Did you feel the portfolio easy to navigate?

5 - Did you get a sense of the creators identity by using the interactive?

6 - Is an online portfolio an effective way to promote a artist/designers work?

7 - Did the WiiRemote add to the interaction?

8 - Would you be interested in having an online portfolio?

I found 10 people that was interested in testing my design, all giving valuable feedback. The general comment was that there wasn't enough prompts but was all impressed with visual design of the site.

Unfortunately the place where I tested had too much light beaming on the screen which made it hard to see some of the features.

Taking the testers comments on board has led me to think of ways I could improve my project, however I left the testing stage far to close to the deadline and have not had time to make said changes... I will make them though... but I will not be able to submit the revised version.

I produced a FlashGraph of some of the results... embedded below is a slideshow of keyframes.

GRAPH RESULTS - slideshow - TROY BROWNE

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FIRST UPLOAD OF FLASH SITE...

Is it first drafty in here or is it me?...
Well this is my first upload of my project... I will be taking this to my questionnaire stage and testing it on the unsuspecting public... I'm happy with it(ish) there are things I might change but feel its good enough for testing. If you go on my Blog and test this out could you let me know what you think of it as feedback at this stage would be really useful.
Ive not added a preloader... Im not sure where they actually fit in as there seems to be no reason for loading...

SLAP WRK PORTFOLIO - 07/08 - TROY BROWNE

SLAP WRK TROY BROWNE 07-08 by ~teebiebaby on deviantART

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DRAWING OUT

AKA - WHITEBOARD MARATHON

As a sub-project a group of student were asked to set up a whiteboard and produce 5 days worth of whiteboard animation... we set up in the Bonnington, School of art building and asked passers-by to donate abit of time and talent.
So from 10am until 4pm, Monday to Friday we processed about 7gigs worth of animation, with the previous days animation projected near to where we were set up.
The group consisted of Edward Christie, Jacqui Pickup, Laurel Plain-Jones, Steven Bailey and myself.
I think we all had a great time producing it and was a great insight into involving people in art, and that was one of the things that worked... The project itself had no direction and relied heavily on improvised creation, so the animation turned into an ever-changing piece of work.
I was surprised how willing people were to give up some of their time to put down some weird animation... but they did... and more importantly everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.
The work was to coincide with the 'Drawing Out' exhibition held at the Bonnington/Waverly building at Nottingham Trent UK.

WHITEBOARD INVOLVE - TROY BROWNE EDIT

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DESIGNER INTERACTION

DESIGN YOUR INTERACTION
...After completing the design of my project aesthetics the next step would be to focus on the interaction design elements. Being that I'm offering the WiiRemote as an alternative interaction method, the design for interaction should coincide with this control method but also work with standard mouse interaction. I'd like my project to retain an element of exploration, so I wont have prompts and clear labelling, I hope this will entice the user to find their own way around my interface.
The motion of interaction will be that you select a feature on my Avatar head it will then animate a transformation that will display another menu for the user to select from... there will be a back button which will reverse the animation, taking the user back to the main screen.

Below I have uploaded a slide show... that shows full rendered key frames.

KEYFRAMES FOR SLAP WRK PORTFOLIO - TROY BROWNE

Im liking the look of this so far... my post production consisted of batching out of photoshop with a 'PaintDaubs' filter. I considered the point when a user 'hovers' over a button, there be a projection on the 3d environment that highlights what it is the user will be selecting.

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...my sketchpad for this project so far...

INTERACTIVE IDENTITY SKETCHPAD - TROY BROWNE

This just shows the development of my sketchpad....

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LETS GET CRACKING...

3DSMAK'D SLAP WRK LOGO jpg - TROY BROWNE

...DEVELOPMENT.

It feels better now I know exactly what I'm doing.... and because allot of the creating (in regards to my Avatar Head being made already) is already done, I can now plan the processes of translating the work into Flash. But first I need to render out all the animations needed to navigate my interactive. Another task would be to make a 3dimensional SLAP WRK logo on 3DSMax. Because the head is made primarily from strips I thought it would be good to produce the logo in the same way... which highlights my focus of developing this project to have a uniform feel...

3DSMAK'D SLAP WRK LOGO avi - TROY BROWNE

I like this... and the feel the cell shaded material adds to the 2d/3d element... all in keeping with the uniform feel.

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CHANGE OF PLANS

Hmmmmmm....

I started to develop my 3d pop up project, but there was an underlying feeling that it wasnt right, so I decided to change my whole idea.

After reviewing my Avatar project, I thought it was a shame that I couldnt include my Avatar head as it taken me a while to make and I thought it looked good but didnt show its best within my Avatar CGI short film.

CONCEPT

So this idea will be to have my Avatar head displayed as a menu for my university work (I did say that I wanted to include my OVERALL identity but as Im trying to represent or reflect my SLAP WRK brand I thought it best to hold back on being too personal and try and project SLAP WRK corporate identity).

The work I'll include will be my animation work from year 1 and a few 2dimensional images I produced before starting university, I also animated a series of skits, designed to advertise SLAP WRK they will also be embedded into my design.

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INTERACTIVE IDENTITY

TASK
Design an interactive that navigates your identity. Include five objects that represent aspects of your personality. Use FlashActionScript/3DStudioMax.

IDEAS?....
Initially my idea was to produce a 3Dimensional version of my own sketchpad, it would navigate through my University and work, pretty much the same way as a DVD menu for a film. But after my presentation, following advice from Jools that my University work doesn't best summarise my identity as a whole so I decided to introduce elements of my OVERALL identity.
...which brought me to my second idea which will be an interactive, 3dimensional pop up book that tells a story about the stages of my life. I thought this would best project my identity as the user could navigate my past all the way up to my present. Starting from my parents getting together(but not the act, as that would be disturbing!) up to my hopes for the future.

RESEARCH...
I imagine my pop up book to appear like a collage, setting a scene, filled with popular cultural items of the decade.... IE; I was born in the 80's, so in that scene I'd have toy's, fashion and music that represent that time....
After searching I found a book by Marion Bataille called 'ABC3D'. This book goes through the alphabet in pop up style, its really clever, well designed and love the way it seems to have turned optical illusion into physical illusion.. check it out below...

ABC3D - MARION BATAILLE - RELEASED OCTOBER 2008

I also like the work produced by student Colette Fusansan. Her pop up work best depicts what feel I'd like to create for my own project.

http://youtube.com/user/fusansan

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I wanna take you to a club where people wii on each other...

Alternative interaction methods

Ive been playing the wii recently, 'working' my way through ResidentEvil : The Umbrella Chronicles. Its a cool game, it goes through the first four games of the Resident Evil series, but in the style of a lightgun game using the wiiRemote pointer/cursor. I also purchased a new laptop and wondered if I could control my interactive using the wiRemote as a cursor so 'googled' "wii for PC". I found that you could operate the cursor using the tilt functions of the wiiRemote (tilt back for up, twist left for the cursor to move left). This taken away from the point of me wanting to use the wiiRemote pointer.
The wiiRemote has an infrared tracking camera. The wiiSensor bar emits infrared light which tells the wiiRemote where its pointing. I thought that the sensor bar tells the wii and the wii tells the remote where its pointing, this isn't the case as no information passes down the sensor bars connection to the wii, all that connection is for is to power the infrared LEDs. I found that you could even use two candles as a sensor bar and the wii would work exactly the same.FACT.(this course is slowly turning me into a nerd....also...FACT.)

MyWiimoteControlsMyLaptop!!...

After looking on various forums I found that I'd have to make a sensor bar for my laptop with the USB powering the infrared LEDs. Ive not had an electronics 'project' since school, but am kinda aware of what resistors are... so just went for it. I followed instructions on; http://www.modpulse.com/articles/console-mods/usb-wii-sensor-bar/
I brought all the bits from Maplins and got soldering!...
The WiiRemote is connected to the pc by Bluetooth, so had to sync those.
...and it works!

I found.. theres a guy called Johnny Chung Lee hes a student at Carnegie Mellon University and has developed various projects using the wiiRemotes infrared capabilities. I'd urge you to check his Blog - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

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...another

PIXELSLAP - SLAPSKIT - 2008 - TROYBROWNE

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YO YO, CHECK MA SLAP LOGO

Skitting...

We was asked to start developing designs for our own logo. As we've not really covered this type of design in a brief it was a good opportunity to get back to grips with my graphic design experience and develop my ideas as I would when studying graphic design at college.

What makes logos and corporate identities stand out in my view is ones that intrigue the audience instantly. One that stands out to me now are the quick animations MTV used to throw into their programming and most recently channel4's 'estings'. I like the estings because they use quick contemporary animations and even try to include their creative audience by holding competitions for them to have their own 'esting' animations shown.

E4 Stings "Bump" 2007 -



Skit marks

With 'skits' the idea is to capitulate a corporate identity using a quick video clip/animation. I tried a few of my own. Ive chosen the name 'SLAP WRK' and have used colours red, black and white.

PIPEFACE - SLAPSKIT - 2008 - TROYBROWNE

PUNCH-UP - SLAPSKIT - 2008 - TROYBROWNE

REDBULB - SLAPSKIT - 2008 - TROYBROWNE

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FLASH!....PRESENTATION

I think this is the style of my new 'IdentityInteractives'. My idea is to have an interactive sketchpad... because that where my projects start. I have practised with my current sketch pad and am doubling it up to present my first project.
I like how its come out, I designed it using 3DSTUDIOMAX and feel its worth developing.

INTERACTIVE FLASH SKETCHPAD - TROYBROWNE


MY3DSKETCHPAD by ~teebiebaby on deviantART

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2NDLIFER - 5 - week4

POTENTIAL?

I can see the potential in this software for the future, but I mean waaaaaaaay in the future. So imagine in a 100 years, or even a 1000 years time! the technological advances will hope to make the whole thing so much more believable, and once when it is totally believable?... what going to happen then? plugging your real self into a computer generated environment and carrying out your full time life out in a generated one... the whole thing has tones of 'The Matrix'. I watched that film again recently and because I was doing this project at the time, the thoughts about 'what is an Avatar?' were fresh in my mind. I came to the conclusion that SecondLife (of the future) has the only logical conclusion of operating similar to the environment in 'The Matrix'.

Overall I thought that SecondLife was OK, if you wanted to have fun with it. I found allot of people out there that take the whole thing abit too serious. Steve had encounters with avatars getting really upset about being asked about their avatar identity, he found himself being verbally attacked by an avatar that was 'employed' as a 'secretary' for a 'businessman' defending her 'boss'!!! the whole thing was strange.

'THEMATRIX' - 1999http://www.imdb.com/

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2NDLIFER - 4 - week3

AVATAR ENCOUNTERS.
Throughout my investigating of SecondLife, I travelled around with Steven Bailey. The computers we used were in the same room and it was a laugh telling the other one to do something and the other watch it on their screen... (cos lets face it, were all easily pleased)
For some reason I thought conversing with the most extreme people I could find would be the best way to investigate the depth of SecondLife... which in turn led me to find a 'world' titled 'pornland'. Before going on SecondLife I imagined their would be some pretty weird sexual tones and wasn't surprised when an Avatar walked past me with a 'computer c***', erect, sticking out his 'trousers'. I was more shocked that there was somebody out there that 'designed' that and imagined how long they spent on it.
I found out that you can purchase things like 'sex poses' in which you can (cooperatively, of course) carry out with another Avatar. I stood and watched as a couple of Avatars got into position for a session of exhibition, two-way oral.... and guess what.... who appears?.... the man with a computer generated penis.... I had to go at that point... and log out of SecondLife.

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2NDLIFER - 3 - week2

ENVIRONMENTS - week2

For my next chapter of SecondLife I set put to explore the environments and summarise its design aspects. I was surprised of how well my computer handled the huge amount of data whilst running this application, and was also surprise at the level of detail architecture wise. This place is massive and the customisation options allow anyone to build anything they want... which left me with wonder of what this place will be like after 100years of development.

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2NDLIFER - 2 - week1

I'm In!! - week1
...it took me a while to get in here as my laptop has got a outdated video card, so I used schools computer to access SecondLife.
As explained my initial thoughts of SecondLife type applications laid in the negative, but decided to have a little fun with it. I decided my avatar would be a reporter of experiences within this world. I would go round trying out all the features and conversing with the inhabitants to report back to my Blog.
The first thing you have to do is create your avatar and was quite shocked in the level of customisation that is offered to you. You can obviously change the usual things like, sex, skin tone, hair etc... but extra features included increasing the bulge in your trousers and deciding if your character in 'bow-legged'.... even thought these customizations are questionable in there point, it gives the users room to create individual avatars.
Once I created my avatar I started to explore the world. Initially you placed into a 'lobby' type place, in which you have to complete certain tutorial task to access the main SecondLife arena. Its a good idea to introduce people to the functions and features before stepping into the main world because I imagine for people not used to 3dimensional environments it could get quite confusing.
Something else that I liked was the ability to fly... there are other modes of transport eg cars, bikes, jet skis etc...

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2NDLIFER - 1

SecondLife

Part of this brief is to investigate one of many online 3d community environments. I chose Second life as its the most popular and most developed. Before even going on the site my thoughts about this sort of thing were slightly sceptical, I assumed the people who would use this sort of application would be 'nerds', not actually able to make things happen in their first life. I admit that this is a very judgemental and ignorant view and completely hypocritical as thoughout my life I have had allot of interest in 3d worlds and interactive environments, so why would I 'slag it off'?(so to speak)... well, I just think that theres not much point in walking around in a 'world' conversing with 3dimensional versions of people, like in gaming theres always a point/objective of your interaction with the environment and that gives the whole thing a little purpose. However with SecondLife, I thought the people your likely to meet would be individuals who have created this hyper sized version of themselves and they converse with each other.... "...but why?"

SUPERSTAR AVATAR!-10-EVALUATION

SKETCHAVATARA - TROYROWNE.

SHORT EVALUATION


The development of this project demanded allot of time from me, not just producing it, more time was spent using trial-and-error techniques to get the effect(s) that I wanted.


I'm very happy with my results and feel happy that I didn't just settle on a single idea, just to get it finished. Early on in the project allot of my time was used up by developing 'Icon4Emoticons', time that I'd have preferred to spend on 'I, Avatara' which highlights the importance of project management, however I learnt allot about 3dStudioMax in that time and might not have had the software experience(though small) to develop 'I, Avatara' in the same way.


Throughout the development I was constantly showing other people and explaining my ideas, which worked out well because I would take any feedback and then try to modify the project accordingly. Most people thought the visuals were nice and this confidence carried on to help me develop other factors I wanted to express.... like atmosphere, mood and room for a story.


I feel this project can say allot about my Identity and this project has helped me somewhat understand what MY Identity is. I wondered if as part of a psychotherapy exercise this technique of 'defining your own Identity' would be useful for anyone 'soul-searching'.. and in fact I found a company that does just that...

"Avatar is the most amazing set of tools you will ever come across; these tools help you explore your consciousness and mental blueprint of how you created yourself and life so far. You get to take a look at your attention, your will, and your beliefs; I liken it to looking under the bonnet of your car - see how your engine works. You also learn the tools to create what you want in life. Understanding the relationship between how your attention, will, feelings and beliefs are filters on the world and deliberately changing them. You learn how to free up your attention, this is very powerful. Having free attention is what really allows us to follow our dreams and get things done effectively. There is nothing more impeding than a foggy mind. You can lose days, weeks and even years when you do not handle the fog and move on"

Julie Armitage - http://www.avatar-london.co.uk/index.htm