Comment on Colour and Light

This picture is by Jay...

Jay's Photo

This is my comment...

The reflection on the water and the shadow behind the sea wall clearly indicate there is a strong sense of light coming from the right. the way the light falls across the surface of the water brings out many shades of blue from a flinty blue to a more vivid cobalt.

Scream Colour and Light

For a tutorial I had to take a photo that screams colour and light in response to a tutorial we had on colour theory. Here I have purposely put various contrasting colours in one photo, such as the green dog and the red sofa as well as the blue jacket and the orange sunburst guitar. These colours are lit up by a combination of outdoor (from the left) and indoor lighting (the surrounding right), I also turned the Christmas lights that still haven't been taken down yet. The colours are vivid and saturated (apart from the black and white poster, but this is given colour by the christmas lights).

Getting acquainted with my avatar

I'd been having a few problems with my second life account so In the mean Time I set up a Habbo Hotel account www.Habbo.com. This is similar to Second Life but not quite as in depth, you can create your own cartoony avatar and go about a large hotel talking to other people or "Habbos". Below is my Habbo "Erebus Styx" who shares my internet pseudo name that I have used for the last 5 or so years.



With my character I ran a little experiment, I approached a Habbo called emogrl525 and asked her about her avatar. I asked her if she thought her Habbo was a true likeness of herself and she said "of course". I then asked why she didn't want to make up a bizarre avatar like mine, she responded with "because that would be gay." then she left.

Eventually I got my second life account working where I was dropped into some sort of training area where new comers like myself learn all the skills needed to live in second life. Here I went through various tutorials and spoke to many other new comers who thankfully where just as clueless as I was. Unfortunately the tutorial has a flying section where the page up and down buttons are needed, as I have a Mac I don't have these buttons so I called it a day, I will need to complete this tutorial in the Waverly building. Below is a picture of my avatar "Erebus Tolsen".

3D Studio Max

I've just starting using 3D Studio Max again, I had it home a few years ago and got very annoyed with it but this time with proper tutorials etc. I think I'm getting the hang of it. Its not what I initial expected at all, now I find many complex shapes can be extruded out from a sectioned cube, or at least this way works for me. I've been thinking in terms of extrusion, for example the biggest size cube I could fit inside a head and extrude it in various sections to make a 3D Portrait. Although the model making is almost as arduous and time consuming as i thought it would be, the animation seems a little easier as 3D studio max method of animation similar to "tweening" in Flash. On Monday I attempted to recreate a character called master chief from a game called Halo, my efforts were pretty much fruitless but I believe if I reattempt the model from scratch ever week a progression should be evident.
Here is my first attempt...

Identities 2008

Our new project for 2008 is called Identities, this project will be split into 2 tasks...

- The Avatar (a second self).

The idea is to explore a virtual avatar, through a application such as Second Life and then to create our own using 3D studio max.

- Navigating Identity

Looking at Joseph Cornell, we will create a box containing things we believe to show our identity. The difference is ours will be online using flash rather than a palpable object. Our box will also contain our avatar from the previous task.

In this project we will be exploring our own professional identity through independent multimedia practise. I will again be using flash so it is important I learn more advanced tools in action script. When using flash it will important to test usability and learn inter relationships in multimedia techniques.

I will be exploring the way we interpret others identities and how myself and other interpret my identity. I will also look at the way consumerism effects peoples identities and how people will associate action and engagement with a product, for example Edward Bernays'campaign to get women smoking.

Review week

After the holidays the first thing i did back at university was have a review week with Deborah Tuck and Simon Perkins. The most obvious thing I realized from this review that I have already stated because of this, is that during the narratives project I was working in familiar areas so I wasn't challenged, but now I face new tasks that I have little or no experience in. This year will be a lot harder for me and as a result I will need to put in more effort to maintain my current standard of work.
I was also asked by Simon and Deborah to look into the following points...

-Look at direct cinema
This is because of the different levels of focus I used in my zooming one shot film.

-More about process on this blog
This is because most of my reflective writing is an analysis of my work rather than an account of how it was produced.

-Read the language of new media by Lev Manovich
This book will help me in general with my studies. I believe this was suggested to all students that haven't already read this book.

-Put labels on blog
This is purely to make things easier to find.

-Review others work
This point I found most interesting, to review essentially any piece of multimedia I see, for example any film with an interesting use of camera or light, any website I think works well, or even the opposite, things I hate I should mention on my blog.

2007 presentation

To finish off the narratives project I gave a presentation about all the work I had done so far, with the main emphasis being on the analysis of my 3 final pieces, the pixilation, my one shot films and the interactive game. After the presentation it was obvious that i had explored a lot of these themes already and my work showed influence from my previous efforts. Realizing this I think that Next year for the identities project I will need to look at other practitioners a great deal, s I will be work in unfamiliar areas I have no previous work to reflect on.
Also I may have limited myself this term by relying so much on my existing work, contextual work is always relevant.

Download my presentation here...

http://www.geocities.com/whuzo2001/multimedia2007.ppt

Interactives Finished

I feel I may have squandered my time for this project, even though I lack experience I still only managed to link frames via buttons using the tutorial on the VLP. Perhaps if i spent less time getting photos ready, thinking about narrative ideas etc. I may have figured out how to include music, sound effects and things of that nature. Regardless of the lack of special effects in my narrative, I think I have learned a fair amount just from the tutorial and look forward to using flash again. The game is rather amusing and I believe the narrative works well so not all was lost.
If any thing this task has shown me that when working in unfamiliar territories and will need to apply myself more to achieve the outcome I want. I'm looking forward to using action script again for the next project "Identities" and also using 3D rendering and animation tools like 3D studio max.

Escape from Zombie Halls

I've planned out my interactives piece frame for frame and convinced my flat mates to dress as zombies. The Total piece is 15 frames long with title, there are 3 alternate endings and the longest linear path is 7 frames. I couldn't figure out how to embed the flash game into my blog so for now all I can offer you is a picture of me dressed as a zombie.

Interactives

For the final part of the narratives project we need to produce a interactive narrative using flash and action script 3.0. The task is to create a series of still scenes that are linked by question boxes to make a sort of manipulable story board. As simple as the task sound I have no doubt I will find it challenging as I have never even attempted action script before. I have thought about my ideas for this narrative and after rewatching George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead I will make a Story about escaping from zombies, "Escape from zombie halls".

One Shot Additional Films

The reason for 4 films was a result of the inadequacies of the first film, the film noir. As much as I liked the film it really didn't stay within the parameters of the task, that is why i felt it important to reflect on these faults and a produce work that tick the boxes the film noir didn't. As I said before it's like learning from my mistakes.