Monday, 30 April 2012

Blog Entry 17 - The Sound Studio & Progress

Today we had our sound studio session to attend to, I wrote up the scripts for the group:
Sandy couldn't make it in today, but he used his own facilities to record his sounds and sent it to us.


Group Introductions
Loading Screen
The sound session went well, we got done quite promptly, allowing us time to finishing other deadlines. We still hadn't heard anything from Group 5 so I worked the script around it.


I have completed almost all the videos now, the only ones that are left are the ones that require these sound recordings also on the 25th April – I  fixed the idle chatter bugs (censorship and out of sync knocks).

Thursday, 26 April 2012

Blog Entry 16 - Advertisement

On the 23rd of April we came in to be interviewed about the exhibition and our project as a team to advertise the sensations exhibition. The video is now up on youtube.


Wednesday, 25 April 2012

Blog Entry 15 - Tutorial

In this tutorial, we discussed and previewed our work to the tutors they were impressed and happy with the progress, Andrea also previewed her logo design that our tutors asked from us.

Non contributing members
Mekalia turned up today (the second time we have seen her in this project) to ask us on what we had done, we updated her and heard why she hasn't had any input. She stated that she has had other projects on.

I bit my tongue to save conflicts and demotivating our group; but after discussion it turned out I in fact had more deadlines than Mekalia, also Andrea has the same work she has (being on the same course), but we all have been capable of managing our time and working hard on this project and more importantly working hard as a team. Her lack of effort couldn't be justified.

I left the decision to Andrea and Katie to co-ordinate her and set work.

Updating this particular blog, this work that was set was not acknowledged again, delaying our group a bit because we had to catch up on the delegated work.

Advert
After talking to our tutors about our work, we were asked to feature in an advertisement scheme for the exhibition. This would mean as a group turning up and getting interviewed by other University students and then that video would be edited and put on youtube. We agreed on doing this.


Research
Group research (my research on 1, 4 & 5)
I enquired with the groups we did not have work for about their projects so we could piece together a new script for their "glitchy" introductions.

I spoke to Tom from Group 1 about their project, and discovered they are re-creating a piece done by Stelarc.

I also spoke to Matthew from Group 4:


I tried emailing members from Group 5, I think they were worried that we were trying to plagiarise their work or something because they ignored my emails.

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

Blog Entry 14 - Final Video Template

Final Video


Group 12 - Virtual Reality Tour Guides.
Sensations University Exhibition on Cyborgs & Virtual Realms.

Andrea Davis:
- Actress
- Co-Director

Katie Smith:
- Actress
- Writer
- Director
- Co-ordinater

Sahand Jalali ( http://www.sahandofficial.com ):
- Acter
- Music
- Sound

Toby Cooper ( http://www.tobyjamescooper.co.uk ):
- Acter
- Co-ordinater
- Photo manipulation
- Animation
- Video manipulation, editing & creating

Green screen:
Recorded at the University of Hertfordshire.

Video created using:
- Illustrater
- Photoshop
- Flash
- After Effects

(Video) Total time: 15 hours.

Sounds created using:
- Logic Pro 9

(Sound) Total time: 10 Hours

Thursday, 19 April 2012

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

Blog Entry 12 - Green Screen Session

On the day of recording our tutor Chetna came down to help out. I discussed further our plan with her and she made me aware of the impossibility of completing the amount of work I set myself. I agreed and we worked out the kinks, I set it to one introduction each and several idle chatter videos. As well as Chetna making me aware that I didn't have to program the player, which was a huge sigh of relief!

We also worked out Katies script as she didn't fully understand the concept of having two avatars on at a time, and the possibility of three or even four glitching over the original two. Also because of the change in the workload some of the script became redundant, so we pulled the best bits from the script and used it as a guideline for us to improvise - under Katies directing.

We compromised and tweaked everything. Ready before the technician came and opened up. They were twenty minutes late. I think this was a mix up in booking time, because we turned up at 10:00am but they claimed we didn't turn up on the scheduled time.

Mekalia never turned up to document our group work or take photo's, as previously arranged.

On the day of recording our group formed a hierarchy and we established the peak of our group working abilities. We all took on responsibilities, all had a say and we functioned well as a group.

Andrea and Katie were both in charge of directing the proceedings, they did an excellent job of organising us and discussing how things should be done. Sandy was in charge of the sound and we all acted.

Chetna helped us capture the footage as well as share an input.

This is the point where I realised we moved past the storming stage, because we worked hard and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in the process, this reflects our attitudes in the recordings!

The day went well, however we had to miss out a few groups, but we booked out the sound studio and I said I would make that script and get the information, the idea is to make their introductions as a glitchy one. We also forgot to do our own introduction...so the same had to be done for our group.

Although Katie wrote the characters up; loosely based on our own characteristics. We still had to present our avatars in the same way we would have represented ourselves as an avatar on an online game for instance.

So for my Avatar I carefully planned how I would do this.


I picked an outfit and a username for my avatar to express my personality to the viewers, I’m a comic geek and superman is one of my favourite superheroes. As well as this most people relate me to superman because of my interest in comics and I quite often wear superman based t-shirts. So to portray my personality as an avatar I chose to wear a superman t-shirt. My username is the same username I use for everything, you can search it on google and find most of my profiles or work based on my username, it’s my first two initials, my surname and the year of my birth, again this is an expression of who I am.


On the day it took six hours to record everything. Then because they were recorded on a Mac, my hard drive wasn't compatible and formatting it at that point in time wasn't an option. We worked around it by using Sandy's macbook to collect the 72gb folder. We then spent two hours manually transferring them on to the uni computers: 4gb's at a time and then transferring them in to my hard drive. This took a further two hours to transfer and check.

In this time I worked on a prototype:

First attempt

Monday, 16 April 2012

Blog Entry 11 - Green Screen Preparation

 For the Green Screen preparation I previously mentioned Katie wrote up a script, this was finalised when Andrea & Sandy got the information from most of the other groups, there was 3 groups we did not get information from.

To ensure we got all the recordings done I produced a checklist of all the videos.
Checklist
 

Unfortunately I was let down again by Jack, as Sandy & Andrea had to do his work of contacting the other groups. I'm yet to find out if Mekalia will turn up to the recording day.

I delegated the work with the team, I did this via email, text message, phone call/skype and our main channel of communication: Facebook. The reason I had to do this was because some members of the group aren't on Facebook, also for those that are I used another device to talk to them privately about their work so they would understand.

Delegation - Co-ordinating



I broke down what work needs doing and by who to the group, so that the group understood what needed to be done. This was done via our channel of communication, Facebook.

Broke down

I enquired about the booking to our main tutor Veronika, and I sent on the message to my team so they were made aware of the equipment and length of booking we had.

Equipment


Neural Interface Suit

As well as Katie's script we negotiated a title screen for our project. This would be a loading screen for the VR Communications that will work as an opener to our project. I further expanded this idea to incorporate Sci-Fi research.

My idea expanding this was to make science fiction references in both games, comics TV and Film.


All four of us would talk, and as we talk a team speech would pop up (gaming) with our username and a speech symbol. We would also make references, for example Fallout 3. In Fallout 3 to go in to a simulation you must wear something called: "A Neural Interface Suit".

Other references would be about difficult settings and control pods, which appear in all sorts of media like American Dad, Johnny Bravo and so on.


Control pod

Saturday, 14 April 2012

Blog Entry 10 - Prototypes

12th April – Circuit currents looping prototype
12th April – Final template with code and binary added
13th April – database models



17 April at 02:03 – BSOD

26 April at 04:03 – Pop-up box

Friday, 13 April 2012

Blog Entry 9 - Easter Break Progress

Over the Easter break my work for the group was to produce prototype's and templates for the videos.

I have animated the background of my dark computer circuitry room design, so that electric currents go through the circuits in the background. I have further animated this with "DigiFace" typography that is also animated, this animation is online gaming based settings that are constantly changing in the background subtly. The last animation I made was hexadecimal binary looping in the center of the video.



I have now made my static UI design fully animated. This was done using CS5.5 Flash. It took me roughly 6 hours in total to animate everything perfectly. I exported the flash video as a .mov file.

I imported the file in to CS5 After Effects, and worked on adding the photoshopped filters over the top of the animated background.

This now means I have a finished template that will easily compensate the green screen recordings in between the animations and filters.


While I have been doing this Katie was working on script ideas, Sandy was working on the soundscape we previously discussed and the three of us and Andrea were all getting on to the other groups to get information and content.

I was contacting my group regularly over the Easter period, keeping them informed of my progress and checking up on them, and enquiring if they needed any help.

Thursday, 5 April 2012

Blog Entry 8 - Concept defined


Background

Cyborgs
Cyborgs by definition are extensions of someone physically. For example glasses enhance people’s vision, and are therefore classed as an extension of the eyes. So people who wear glasses, by definition can be classed as cyborgs.

tjcooper91
Avatars
Avatars can be classed in the same area, as avatars express our personalities. An example of an avatar would be: the “XBOX 360 Live Avatar”. Social avatars are extensions of our essence of who we are and how we express ourselves. As an example my XBOX 360 personal avatar is designed to look like me with the same hair and a beard. Also because I’m a geek and my favourite superhero is “Batman”, my avatar is also wearing a Batman costume. This is an extension of my personality.

Usernames
Usernames relate to the same principle as avatars. It is a text representation of how we identify ourselves. So for the avatars I have asked my group for their own personalised user ID. Usernames normally consist of something relating to that person: i.e. a name, nickname, a date (DOB) or something personal. For example: my username for everything is: tjcooper91. Just by googling that user ID you can find most of my work, I use this as it is the first two initials of my name then my last name, the 91 is the year I was born.

Virtual Societies
Virtual societies are increasingly growing with advancements in Facebook and online gaming. Digitally native people will grow up to be more active in a virtual society than the physical one. Because of this we came up with the idea of using science fiction virtual realities combined with our concept of avatars.


Plan and Concept

We originally planned on having this as a projection of us discussing the exhibition and bantering amongst ourselves and the watching audience. The idea and concept got great feedback from our tutors in the presentation; from this they offered us a greater challenge. We were then asked to orchestrate the exhibition with our idea and concept.

So our idea evolved in to bringing all of the 16 final pieces together around our idea. This is done by introducing the exhibition and having us act out as though directly in front of an audience, and acting like a tour guide to all the work.

Our group introductions will be played around the other groups’ physical or digital work. In our own way we explain what there final work is.

As well as being a tour guide we are a stand alone piece. This is emphasised with bantering comments and conversations with the avatars (this will be played at random in between the work). This also pulls us away from being direct guides to the exhibition and makes our piece a stand alone article as well.