Actionscript Task

In the past few weeks we have been learning the basics of actionscript. This culminated in us being set a task to create a actionscript based game.

I chose to adapt something i had done earlier in the year, a small flash animation about 5 a side football. Click here to see the original

This task has been a useful one, i intend to delve a lot deeper into flash and actionscript and now i have a grasp of the basics i can build on them and hopefully produce a lot more impressive work in the future.

Click on the thumbnail below to see the final result

Same But Different - Reflection on a failure

Another belated update here, this time focusing on the Same but Different task. We were set this task earlier in the year, read about it here

When the time came to present this my group and i were left wanting, we didnt complete the task on time and to be honest let ourselves down. Despite the abject failure of this task i can still take a lot from it. Trying to quickly hash something together at the last minute as Jools was asking us to present made me feel a bit of a twat and is not really a situation i want to be in again.

With every group task i have done this year there has been difficulties with communcation and planning, something that i need to improve upon greatly in future group work.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

For the record, we did actually have a plan and were on the way to completing. The idea was to have a map of nottingham and to place hotspots on the map at the site of each abandoned kebab box. It was to be presented as some kind of crime investigation/database kinda thing.

Here are a few screenshots of how it was starting to take shape






So that was the same but different task, a shame that we didnt get it completed but some valuable lessons learned in the process.

Site Specific Performance Review ( better late than never!)

You may recall earlier in the year we had a task of putting on a site specific performance about a famous person hailing from Nottingham.

You can read about this in my earlier blog posts here and here (excuse the shocking last minute attempts at flyers, they were awful)

Well i had intended to give a review of how the actual performance went right after we did it, we filmed the perfomance and i was waiting to edit the footage and post it up here. Sadly the person who recorded it never gave me the tape and as Idents arrived i totally forgot about this.

So better late than never, here is my summary of events!

Apart from a few organisational hiccups everything went very well, we delivered a good performance i feel and taught our audience some important historical facts.

Our performance took the shape of a guided tour around St Marys Church, at each point on the tour the audience were given a piece of a puzzle. Once the tour had been completed the identity of the subject was revealed as George Africanus and as we stood over his grave the pieces of the puzzle were put together to reveal a picture of him.



This was an interesting task, quite a difficult one to come up with ideas for but i was pleased with how the end result turned out. I feel with a bit more organisation and teamwork we could have enhanced the experience with more visual aids rather than just talking to people.

One last poster

Throughout my project ive been thinking of ideas for an overall trent media poster, one that advertises all elements. But due to my design approach of being uncluttered and fairly minimalist its been difficult to fit all 3 elements together without compromising those things, so i settled for just using the individual posters.





But last night as i was looking at my website i thought i would try and have one more go, i have been experimenting with different ideas and have decided to go for a layout that is similar to the information pages on my site. With images hovering over the corners of a simple rounded box, and ive continued the theme of being simple and direct with the text. Ive played on a sub-theme thats developed throughout my project which is the use of the words 'Listen Read Watch' under the main logos by including 3 images that reflect those words.





Right that was quickly heading into the land of birdseye potato Waffle! So here is the design, not sure whether i will actually include it in my final submission as it isnt quite up to the standard of the others, but i shall make a decision once i get it back from the printers.

The Business Card

Just 3 days to go now before its all wrapped up and handed in, so with that in mind i think its about time i update you on some of the elements of my package that ive yet to talk about on here.

First up, the business card. This can be handed out by any trent media representative when they are out filming/recording/reporting and is a quick and easy way of advertising.

After talking to several students the overiding opinion was that they would be more receptive to a business card than a flyer and would take it more seriously, but they key element in this is that it would be handed out after the people have seen trent media out and about and had spoken to them, or been filmed by them. Its not just designed to be handed out randomly on the street, as i dont think it would work too well as a standalone piece.

It is something that is already in operation by the current trent media team and it was one of the ways that i found out about them. I saw them filming and was intruiged and the business card with the relevant e mail and web addresses was given to me which i was then able to follow up. I beleive this is something that should be continued within my identity.

So here is the design, nice and simple as with everything else.


Front

Back

Podcasts part 2

Whilst i was playing around with the podcast page for my website earlier it got me thinking about my poster design advertising the fly fm podcasts.

The original entry about that poster can be viewed by clicking here

It was the first poster i designed and i had kinda forgotten about it, and my design approach has moved on slightly since then so i thought it was appropriate to go back and revise it with the deadline so close.

I simply replaced the photo of the ipod with my fireworks mock up, changed the text and included the logo at the top of the page rather than just on the ipod.

I think this one fits in a lot better with the 'identity concept' than the original. It's clean and simple, if your reading this please leave a comment and tell me what you think

Podcasts part 1

Today ive been continuing to work on my idents project and i have been concentrating mainly on the website, all the content is in place and the page layouts are sorted, just got to add a few little touches here and there.

This evening ive been specifically working on the Fly FM downloads page, i made a little ipod graphic using fireworks and edited a picture i took of a studio microphone to include next to some text informing the user what they could download.

The studio mic is still a little rough and ive been struggling a lot with tracing the outline in photoshop, this is about as clean as i can get it and ive used fairly heavy feathering to try and hide some of the scrappy edges, i dont think it looks too bad though.

Here is the page...

Web Design - Compatibility Issues Arrgghhhh

I'm finally making some progress with my website, which is good because the deadline is less than a week away! However ive been quite naive so far in designing my site, ive been happily designing away looking at my pages on my nice 1280x1024 size monitor and it all looks splendid.

So whats the problem? Well i found out today that 49% of web users still use 800x600 size monitors, my question to these people is WHHHYYYYYYY! 49% is a hefty chunk of potential viewers to my site so i'm going to have to rethink some of my page layouts and try and get them to be viewable in smaller windows.

Here are the articles ive got my information from

http://www.jgtemplates.com/learn/web/browser001.asp

http://www.webmonkey.com/99/41/index3a_page2.html?tw=design

Although this could be a significant problem, it might not be as bad as i first thought. I'm willing to bet that although 49% of total web users still have stupidly small screens my specfic target audience is unlikely to have the same problems. The majority of university students will have a computer that is up to date and fairly new and i beleive most of the computers on campus facilities will be 1024x768 if not bigger. With that in mind maybe i can breathe easily and not completly overhaul the design of my site, however what ive just said is an assumption and something i need to verify,quickly!

With this in mind ive been changing the layout and size of my pages today and heres the results

Weve gone from this (suitable for viewing only in 1280x1024, anything smaller and you wont be able to see everything without scrolling, scrolling is bad)

To this (viewable in 1024x760 without any problems)