Image Meaning -

Hello all its time for another wonder into the world of my course.

We have been set a task to evaluate on of our own possesions and what it means to us. I have chosen my picture board. It is a large picture frame filled with pictures of my friends and family from home. This is of great importance to me as it reminds me of home and of some of the greatest times of my life. It also gives me perspective on the future, i can look back at the good times but i can see how much i have grown since some of the pictures and realise how that is still continuing. From a visual point of view the object has value to me as it makes my room look nicer and brings it more personality. In terms of functionality it could perhaps be a bit better as the photo's often slip out of place and it is difficult to move them without taking the whole thing apart.

We have been asked to look at other students images for this task and choose one we like and comment on it. I have chosen Richard Parr's image, he has a picture of his I Pod( is it reaally your own i pod though Richard????) and i like this because as soon as i saw it i could relate to it. You can find out a lot about a person through the type of music they listen to and this would make an I pod a very interesting object to look at. It also brings into question, as Richard has touched upon, our need for aesthetic beauty. There are many many Mp3 players on the market but why is the I pod the best selling when it has one of the worst battery lifes and can be prone to failure? Because generally people, particularly the younger generation, will go for style over substance and have a desire to look the best and have the 'in' thing of that particular era. Well Done Richard, good choice sir.

So thats it for my Blog on Image Meaning, i hope you enjoyed reading it and check back soon for my next update

Farewell and Have a Nice Day!

David Walker

Gamecity 2006

Just a quick post. I went to one of the exhibitions that is part of the GameCity festival. It was an exhibition of art taken from video games. I particularly liked this picture from the oddworld series of games. I am a big fan of those games and i think this is a great image.

Below is the picture for you to enjoy in all its glory....

Interactive Narrative's

Hello all, weve been learning about the weird and wonderful world of interactive narratives. This is an interesting module for me because at the core of it is web programming, mostly in the form of Javascript and HTML. I have prior experience of this and enjoy it very much but am very rusty with scripting as its been a few years since. I was encouraged by how much i remembered though so hopefully i'll be churning out websites left right and centre before we know it.

The other part of interactive narratives i find interesting but i also have a few reservations about it. Let me show you what i mean.....http://www.abc.net.au/arts/strange/workshop/flash.htm

Look at the flash animation on this page. Its very well done, nice animation and you can move the characters around by clicking on them but i feel this typifys the pointlessness ive come across so far when looking at interactive narrative based projects. It seems to be interactive for the sake of it, there doesnt seem to be any purpose to that flash animation than to give the user the chance to make a little man move from one box to the other. What i would really like to see is something that was interactive but still carried with it a clear sense of story and narrative and felt like that it had a purpose and significance to it. I beleive this would still be possible to do without conforming to a linear structure. I will search for something like this and if i dont find it maybe i'll try to create it myself.

Thanks to my fellow student Rumante Kupaityte who brought that animation to my attention via her blog http://rioreflectivejournal.blogspot.com/

Weve been set a task to create an interactive narrative about a place in nottingham using digital photography and javascript. I think this is a really intriuging project and its one i cant wait to get to grips with. Ive had a few ideas as to how i will go about this but i will save that for a later post as i'm really trying to keep this short and sweet.

Thats it for another few days, i'm off back home to Watford to celebrate turning 21 on Friday! Woooooo any readers who want to send me presents or indeed just wishes of goodwill are more than welcome!

Farewell and have a nice day

David Walker

Journal Entry - 18/10/06 - Short Films

Welcome folks to yet another exciting installment of my journal!

Let us take a moment to sit and think about short films...................


Thought about it? Good. The reason i have asked you to do this is because i have been assigned the task of making a short narrative based film with my group mates. When you sit and think about telling a story in just 2 minutes you realise it is quite a hard task so i have been watching some award winning examples on t'internet. Some have given me inspiration, some have confused me and some have just bored me. Later i will elaborate on which ones, but for now lets ponder some more shall we?

After being given this task i went away feeling as if it would be fairly simple, upon some reflection i decided i was actually very wrong. This is a very challenging task. The fact that i have to work in a group has presented some frustrating problems, for one reason or another people have not responded to my e mails too quickly and ive had problems getting all my group together which obviously means less time in which to come up with an idea. But despite these teething problems i am confident once weve all sat down and banged heads we'll come up with a splendid concept and will deliver a decent film.


Another difficulty for me with this module is that my creativeness is perhaps not as developed as i would like, i find it hard to just come up with ideas and get easily frustrated at that fact. I have always been a very technically minded and somewhat efficent person, its hard to make the transistion into being a bit more artistic and creative but it is one i'm enjoying learning. The seminar we had with Dominick Shaw was an intriguing insight in how to improve this skill.


Now back to the films, my first port of call was www.depict.org this website features short 90 second films that were in a competition.

One of the films that i watched is entitled 'Pemba'. It is a short film depicting an african child making a football out of a condom and string. I like this film because it shows how something we take for granted in the western world brings happiness and joy to the children in a way we cant imagine. It is a powerfull message using very simple images. The use of the condom is quite a powerfull image because it immediatly gets your attention and raises curiosity as to what the boy will use it for, when you see that it is a football it brings home the message of the abject poverty these people live in and how such a small thing can make them happy.

To watch this film please click the following link : http://www.depict.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Depict.woa/wa/representation?object=5830


Another short film i will talk about is quite a famous example, in fact it won an oscar for best animated short film in 1997. It is entitled 'Geri's Game'. This film is a joy to watch from a visual perspective, it is entirely 3d computer animated. In terms of message and narrative it is a nothing more than a bit of light hearted fun. It depicts an elderly man playing chess in a park, seemingly with himself. It is a fun little film and in terms of the animation is extremely well constructed. For my own short film i like the idea of a fun light hearted story as i beleive it is hard to generate more deeper and meaningfull stories in just a few minutes. So this may well be something i bare in mind when thinking of my own short narrative with my group.

You can now sit back and watch the film by clicking on the player below.....






Thats it for my blog on short films, thanks for reading and continue to check back as the blogs come thick and fast over the coming weeks as i delve more and more into my course

Farewell and Have A Nice Day

David Walker

Journal Entry - 15/10/06

Welcome to the latest entry in my journal, today i am going to talk a bit about blogs and what i think of them from my limited experience thus far, i think this is relevant because as you know by reading this, i have to keep my own blog as i go through the course commenting on all aspects of my learning.

Before my seminar on monday i did not have my own blog or know how to set one up, however, i had come across a few blogs that i reguarly viewed and had found them to be of great interest and use to me. I think they are a great way of interacting with people through the internet, they seem to have a personal touch to them that is not always present from say just a normal website. It is like the author of the blog is actually talking to you and involving you in their day to day life, or week to week, month to month etc depending on how frequently they are updated.

An example of this would be the website NS4life.com, this is a video blog website from a record label called 'Next Selection' viewers are regularly updated on goings on with the company and it provides a fascinating insight into a world not usually seen by the consumer. This is a great example of the interactivity a blog can provide, in this instance the media is in the form of short videos usually about 1 minute in duration.

This is a very simple yet effective way of communicating with the record labels target audience. This has clearly been a success as the record label have gone from an independent outfit with no releases to having a subsidiary deal with Bad Boy Records and having the number one Artist on Myspace music and having the most played song on US radio.

To view this website and see for yourself why i am impressed by it click here : www.ns4life.com

So to conclude my ramblings, i am enjoying keeping this blog and learning ways in which i can improve it, i want this to not just simply be a day to day diary of my course as that would be rather simple and probably quite boring.


I want to continually improve my blog and look for new ways to relay my thoughts, feelings and opinions across to my tutors, classmates and, god forbid, any member of the general internet public who should be reading this.


One of the things i am finding most challenging is keeping the length of my posts down and i'm also aware that most of this quite essay like. But for now i'm going to bask in the comfort of inexperience and just keep it this way, but rest assured i'll be taking steps to make it more snappy and accessible as time goes on.


Coming soon on David Walker's Journal........

We take a trip into the world of short film, i will soon be producing my own short film along with my group mates and to prepare for this escapade i will detail a few of my favorites and i'll ponder my upcoming project.

Farewell and Have a Nice Day!

My First Post

Hello and welcome to my first blog, my first blog was composed in my first seminar of my first year on the first day of term. Today is a day of many 1sts, hopefully i will finish my course in the way it began, with a 1st!!

Perhaps i should start with a little about myself, (yaawwn!) so if anyone out there is for some reason reading this they can appreciate who i am and where i'm coming from.

Right, where shall i start? An obvious place would be my name i guess, its David Cameron Walker. I hail from the town of Watford in the county of Hertfordshire which for those of you who are somewhat geographically naive is just north of London. I am 20 years old and am studying Multimedia at Nottingham Trent University, which is the reason i am writing this blog.

I have taken a route to university that is perhaps a little different to most people's, i finished my A levels two years ago and was sick of the bombardment from my teachers about how important it was to go to uni. I wasnt ready for uni and saw no reason at that time to take a degree in anything, i had frankly had enough of education and wanted to see what the real world was like, little did i know i would come scurrying back to warmth and comfort of education when i found out the working world was actually quite mundane and hollow.

Somehow i ended up working in the accounts office of Norwest Holst Construction Ltd, my job was to pay the subcontractors that carried out the construction work for my company. Whilst i learned a great deal from this experience and met some great people during it, ultimeatly i found myself unfullfilled. I went back to the drawing board of life and decided i wanted to pursue a degree in Multimedia, much of my inspiration for this came from my time studying web design in the 6th form where i met a remarkble man called Mike Harber, his brilliant teaching left a lasting impression on me and i never forgot his words of advice to go to uni one day, but only do it for the right reasons with the right course for me.

Which brings me to the present day, enough waffling on about me and my past, lets get down to business. This blog is a journal of my experiences on my course and will be updated on a regular basis with my reflections and thoughts on all things related to my course.

Reflecting on my first few tentative steps into the world of Multimedia i must say i am feeling a variety of different emotions, i am excited at the prospect of learning and i am also apprehensive as to whether i will be able to handle the rigours of my chosen course. I have a determination born out of the apprehensiveness to do challenge myself and succeed. I will look back on this first blog at the end of year 1 and am very interested to see how my feelings compare to now.

Thats it for my first blog, just a little introduction into who i am and what i'm doing. My next post will delve into more depth my experiences of blogs so far and what i like about them and what i dont like, and also how i hope to use some of the ideas ive seen already and implement them into my own blog.

Farewell to all readers and have a nice day!

As a goodbye treat i will give all readers the pleasure of viewing a picture of me below :)

David Cameron Walker