Research

Lately I've been thinking [but moreso worrying] about what I should research for my final year project, and I've made an inital idea to research into the affects of Web 2.0 on the world wide web and what it has done to the internet community. This will incorporate the likes of social networking and the internet been accessible almost anywhere on almost any electrical device, and how it may change in the future, to 3d internet? and actually been able to do anything without leaving your chair [which, I wouldnt recommend!]

Not a lot of research yet, but over the coming months I will hopefully be more aware of the task in hand.

Research

You know when you set out to do something but then get completely sidetracked by something, well, unfortunately I'm doing this a lot recently, I'm still debating whether this is a good or a bad thing.

So, I was searching for a nice pair of trainers, the winter weather has taken its toll on my converse, and I went to a popular American shoe company to browse their online catalogue and became engrossed in their website.



http://www.macbethfootwear.com

This site is built entirely in flash and has various sections which move or can be moved and have quirky actions when you hover over them. The site is very appealing and I think that if I didn't know about the shoe company I would still be interested because of the design of the site. Also, they seem to have used RSS feeds within the site which made me think of a problem I was having last year, which I would like to rectify. Oh the joys of the internet.

SPP2: Tutorial Task

So another one of our tasks for our regular tutorial sessions was to go along to Broadway [the digital arts/gallery/cinema/bar] and to look at their digital art and have an opinion on it. What I first thought would be very interesting turned out to be very plain.


I was expecting lots of different displays with lots of different installations but all that I got was half a dozen plasma tvs showcasing artists work.....did i miss something? was I too late?

However, I did come across a an interesting showcase on one of the TV's. This artist Jo Berry, seemed to use a lot of hand drawn objects put together in a type of stop-motion animation type of way. I found this interesting.

One the way out I thought I'd stop in the bar for a hot chocolate [been December it was rather cold!] and I came across a projection on the main wall of the bar. It has various lines of text, all in different styles and colours and moving at different speeds. The text shown was a variety of sentences, phrases, words, quotes etc and was very weird to watch, and sometimes even hard to focus in on. I was watching this for ten minutes and I cannot recall seeing any block of text twice so it got me thinking of how they created it [I use they as I enquired as to who constructed it but the bar staff didnt' know]. I got thinking about interaction and that it could be controlled by users inputting text from an external source, such as the internet or mobile phones and it would become displayed up on the projection. Was I correct in thinking this? Who knows....

All in all a rater eventful evening, even if I didnt agree with the fact I had too many maltesers in my hot chocolate!!

Portfolio: It's like a bus!

Now, just when I don't need it I've had another offer from a friend to create them an online portfolio for their graphic design work. I'll hopefully build the site in HTML with a flash based galley, maybe, thats my initial thought on the subject. However, both this and the flash players will have to wait till I've finished my project!

Web Pathway: Web Applications

Recently in the Web Apps series of lectures we have been looking at databases and the ability to query them. I found these very simple to start off with, studying Computing at A-Level I've created more then enough database. This, is slightly different, even if maybe for the same purpose. I'm struggling slightly on the queries and the slightest of things that would make the database incomplete.
Hopefully this will be rectified soon before I need to implement it any further.

Assignment 001: Report

When I was first given this assignment I had many pre-conceptions as to what to produce for my adverts. I wanted something that was stylish and would stand out but wasn’t annoying to view and/or too distracting. In order to think about what I had to design I first thought about what I like to see in a banner. Although slightly annoying and addictive, I enjoy games built within banners, but I generally like adverts with some form of interactivity and that require you to divert your attention away from the page you are currently viewing.

I then started to think about the current task and what I would like to create within my banners. As I had completed an ActionScript based game a few weeks before, I would have liked to include the same concept into one of the banners. As for the other one I wanted to have less user interaction and use audio as the main aspect of the banner. I decided to use the game for the seasonal banner and a sound based banner for the country banner.

As most games within banners on the Internet today are in some way trying to sell or advertise a product, I wanted to incorporate that into the design of the banner. I chose to design a simple, puzzle-based game that faded out to give a quirky message that advertised Nottingham’s ‘Victoria Centre’. Using my knowledge with the game I had made previously it was relatively easy to construct.

For the country banner I chose to design an audio-based advert that incorporated a slider to change the volume of the audio file contained within. This was my initial idea but then I adapted it and added images that would change depending on where the position of the slider on the volume control was. It works rather well, but not how I exactly wanted it to. However, I’m very happy with the way it came out

For both of the banners I researched current trends and styles for banners on popular sites for the target group (teenagers), such as social networking sites; ie. Myspace, Facebook etc, where they would gather quite a lot of attention. I also gained research from website “Banner Blog” (www.bannerblog.com.au) which showcases a large proportion of the adverts/banners that are around on the interent today. I gained quite a lot of ideas from this site and it helped me when constructing my banners.

Within this project I have developed my skills within flash and ActionScript and realised how Web 2.0 is currently affecting the Internet world, both directly and indirectly. I would like to pursue this idea further in the future.

Bibliography

Ellen Finkelstein, EF. Gurdy Leete, GL. Macromedia Flash MX 2004 For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

Sham Bhangal, SB. ActionScript For Flash MX 2004 (Foundation), friends of ED, 2003

Assignment 001: Finished

Right, as far I can see my banner is completed, a few more tweaks here and there since the last post and its done. Still didnt manage to get the hover function working, but well I never seem to get exactly what I want from flash, and it keeps me coming back for more, great.

Now to just complete the report.

Assignment 001: onMouseOver gotoAndPlay....

See thats the code I want to try and implement, or something to that affect, but its not working. Ive spent the past week or so trying to figure out the code to make the movie play a certain frame when the slider hovers over a certain part of the slider, but it will only work on a press function. This is not good, and I'm slowly starting to lose my patience. If anyone has any ideas please help me.

Portfolio: Finally...

So after stressing about the fact that I dont actually have a portfolio, besides the work I've completed within university I've been asked by a friend to create a flash audio player and a flash video player, similiar to the ones seen on youTube.com and purevolume.com.

This sounds very interesting but very complex. Let's hope I'll see more of this in the future.

Assignment 001: Intro and Outro Completed

So I have now completed the Intro and Outro to the Christmas banner. Which means, its finished. Half way there, finally, thought I'd never make it.