Friday, 19 December 2008
Friday, 12 December 2008
Interactive Narrative
Well basically my Interactive Narrative Project is done, but my Internet at my house is so bad i cant upload it onto deviantART.com so going to have to wait until tomorrow now and do it in the library!
At first when given the project brief i was struggling to think of any ideas for my project. I wanted to do something that i was interested in because i knew this would motivate me to make this project good. After scribbling down some ideas and looking at other peoples Flash projects on the Internet I decided to make a quiz style game in flash for my project. I wanted to think of something that kept the user involved and interacting with the movie. I thought by having a quiz format i would achieve this. I wanted a subject that i felt quite passionately about and was interested in, so i chose to base it on football and the English Premier League to be precise.
It was a long and painful process creating my flash movie. I had never used Flash before this and found it very complicated and confusing. The interface is similar to other Adobe programs and is full of different buttons and functions. At first it is very daunting and i didn't know where to start! However, once i started clicking and looking at different things i soon began to understand what different functions that it had and what could be achieved with the program. I watched many different tutorials through the NOW which i found extremely useful. The tutorials i watched were very detailed and showed the user how to do basically anything they wanted in the program.
I spent such a long time creating my interactive narrative. The main reason for this is that i was completely new to the program and had to do everything slowly. The smallest mistake or wrongly pressed button resulted in my movie being completely messed up and caused it to stop working on many different occasions. However, when i finally got the hang of it i started to enjoy using the program and the different things you could do with it.
i am quite please with the outcome of my project and think i have made quite a good Flash movie. I am now waiting to upload it onto the Internet via the library (thanks to my rubbish house Internet!).
At first when given the project brief i was struggling to think of any ideas for my project. I wanted to do something that i was interested in because i knew this would motivate me to make this project good. After scribbling down some ideas and looking at other peoples Flash projects on the Internet I decided to make a quiz style game in flash for my project. I wanted to think of something that kept the user involved and interacting with the movie. I thought by having a quiz format i would achieve this. I wanted a subject that i felt quite passionately about and was interested in, so i chose to base it on football and the English Premier League to be precise.
It was a long and painful process creating my flash movie. I had never used Flash before this and found it very complicated and confusing. The interface is similar to other Adobe programs and is full of different buttons and functions. At first it is very daunting and i didn't know where to start! However, once i started clicking and looking at different things i soon began to understand what different functions that it had and what could be achieved with the program. I watched many different tutorials through the NOW which i found extremely useful. The tutorials i watched were very detailed and showed the user how to do basically anything they wanted in the program.
I spent such a long time creating my interactive narrative. The main reason for this is that i was completely new to the program and had to do everything slowly. The smallest mistake or wrongly pressed button resulted in my movie being completely messed up and caused it to stop working on many different occasions. However, when i finally got the hang of it i started to enjoy using the program and the different things you could do with it.
i am quite please with the outcome of my project and think i have made quite a good Flash movie. I am now waiting to upload it onto the Internet via the library (thanks to my rubbish house Internet!).
Monday, 8 December 2008
Interactive Narrative: www.bluu.co.uk
The home page gives you a selection of a specific restaurant in different places. When you choose a city it takes you to a page which makes it appear that you are in the restaurant itself. It has the bar and also seats which act as links to other parts of the website. The only way to navigate through the website is clicking on the different parts of the restaurant which then opens new links and takes the user to different parts of the website.
This specific website uses a picture of the venue itself. Each different part of the picture has then been made into an animated link which lights up and displays a caption telling the viewer what the link is and where it goes to. There are also lights in the restaurant which turn on and off when you scroll over them. There isn’t much sound on the site apart from very quiet background noise and quiet music in the background. There is however a noise when you navigate from page to page. The best part of the site I believe is the menu section. In the bar there are menus on one of the tables, when this is selected it brings up a menu that is made to look like a real life book type menu. Then you can select the corner of each page and you then drag it down and across to change page, there is also a sound with this which makes it sound even more realistic.
The menu is again similar to the other two. It is an environment which allows the user to freely navigate around the site; they are not confined to menu bars. The each link becomes highlighted when rolled over which clearly shows the user what is a link and what isn’t. The main audience interaction is the food and drinks menu. The menu allows the user to flick through manually using the mouse.
This specific website uses a picture of the venue itself. Each different part of the picture has then been made into an animated link which lights up and displays a caption telling the viewer what the link is and where it goes to. There are also lights in the restaurant which turn on and off when you scroll over them. There isn’t much sound on the site apart from very quiet background noise and quiet music in the background. There is however a noise when you navigate from page to page. The best part of the site I believe is the menu section. In the bar there are menus on one of the tables, when this is selected it brings up a menu that is made to look like a real life book type menu. Then you can select the corner of each page and you then drag it down and across to change page, there is also a sound with this which makes it sound even more realistic.
The menu is again similar to the other two. It is an environment which allows the user to freely navigate around the site; they are not confined to menu bars. The each link becomes highlighted when rolled over which clearly shows the user what is a link and what isn’t. The main audience interaction is the food and drinks menu. The menu allows the user to flick through manually using the mouse.
This is a website advertising a restaurant/bar available for bookings.
Interactive Narrative: www.seabrookscrisps.com
I like this website because of the way it is all laid out. It has graphics at the back and towards the front and at the back of the page. It is made to look like a village set out in the hills. As you move the mouse around the page the different icons become bigger and are highlighted telling the user what each button links to. The menu is spread out all over the page around the village making the user want to explore around the page and use the different links, however there are also quick links at the top and at the bottom of each page, ensuring that certain users who don’t want to spend time browsing the site can get to where they want quickly.
I really like the images on the website. Most of the images are used as links and also move when highlighted by the mouse. The images are really big and clear and easy to see what each thing is. Towards the top of the home page there is a plane that flies past on a loop displaying a banner advertising the different flavours of the crisps. This really catches the viewer’s eye.
When a link is clicked on the page becomes dull and closes into the centre. The new page then opens and brightens from the centre. There is also video on each page, its only little things, like a crisp van driving down the road or the sun’s rays rotating but it adds to the atmosphere of the website.
There are also a few sounds on the website, however, it is mostly background noise. When outside in and around the village environment there are bird noises and also the occasional car noise. The plane also makes a noise when it flies overhead.
When in the Seabrooks shop when a certain packet is highlighted, the shop keeper tells the viewer what each flavour is in a Yorkshire accent and the product is highlighted and becomes larger.
I really like the images on the website. Most of the images are used as links and also move when highlighted by the mouse. The images are really big and clear and easy to see what each thing is. Towards the top of the home page there is a plane that flies past on a loop displaying a banner advertising the different flavours of the crisps. This really catches the viewer’s eye.
When a link is clicked on the page becomes dull and closes into the centre. The new page then opens and brightens from the centre. There is also video on each page, its only little things, like a crisp van driving down the road or the sun’s rays rotating but it adds to the atmosphere of the website.
There are also a few sounds on the website, however, it is mostly background noise. When outside in and around the village environment there are bird noises and also the occasional car noise. The plane also makes a noise when it flies overhead.
When in the Seabrooks shop when a certain packet is highlighted, the shop keeper tells the viewer what each flavour is in a Yorkshire accent and the product is highlighted and becomes larger.
The menu navigation is similar to the Kanye West website. The way the links are on the page is the same, an outside environment which allows the user to freely navigate through the website without being given a specific menu layout. When each object is clicked it becomes highlighted and then each new page is opened. By having the menu set out in a village it encourages the user to browse through the site and click on each different link.
The website is advertising and selling a food product.
The website is advertising and selling a food product.
Interactive Narrative: www.KanyeUniverseCity.com
This is Kanye Wests’ official site. When you first open the website you are greeted with a welcome page, it has many different TV screens which you cannot click on. The only button you can press is ‘ENTER’. Once you have entered the site on the same computer for the second time this page is left out and you travel straight to the ‘City’ page.
The thing I like about this page is the choice of colours. The designers have chosen to use bright colours that really stand off the page and make the whole thing look very appealing. The site uses mainly bright pink, mixed with blues, yellows and reds.
When moving the mouse around the website you move around the City, it moves from left to right showing different buildings and structures which then link to different parts of the websites. When you stop and hover over each object the movement stop and a pop-up is displayed telling the viewer where the link goes.
The site is constantly flashing and there are objects moving round the screen at all times making the viewers eyes wander around the screen looking at all the different parts of it.
There are two main parts of the website. Being a hip-hop artist the biggest part of the site is the music section. On this section the user can look through the different albums Kanye has released and also listen to and buy any of the music on these albums. This is presented in a traditional jukebox style format. When you click on the different parts of the jukebox the album covers are displayed and can be navigated.
The other main part of the website is the online store. This part is divided into 3 main sections, these are Book, Music and Merchandise. These 3 sections are displayed in 3 different towers, getting larger from the back of the page.
What i changed in my One Shot Film.
My One shot film was created as two different files. I had an .avi file which contained the video but also the background sound and many different .wav files which contained the voice overs and other sounds to edit into the film.
The .avi file had two runs of the film rolled into one video, firstly i had to cut out the run that i didn't want. i decided to use the second run, therefore i cut out the first one. This made the total running time of the film about 1 minute 20 seconds.
My next task was then to add my sounds into premiere. Before i added the files into my video however, i needed to delete the video sound track so that the sound files could be heard clearly and wouldn't clash. The sound files themselves needed cutting down in premiere because the sounds recorded had some talking before and after the actual line needed. The sound files themselves where the thoughts of the girl and not actually the dialogue between the two. Next i then needed to look through the video and pick out where the sounds fit in to sync with the visual speech between the two characters, this was quite a long process as i had to keep replaying the video my make sure it was in the correct place.
After i had the video and sound in sync and running smoothly i then had to write and insert subtitles to show what conversation was actually happening. I had to again scan through the video and find exactly where each line was being said. I found it quite difficult to fit both the subtitles and sounds around the video, however i managed to fit them all together and the video played through quite nicely.
My final task before exporting the film was to add a title page and also an end page. This was very simple to do and introduced the film to the viewer and justv said The End when the film had finished. I Then exported my film in Microsoft AVI format with about 85% quality, this ensured that the video still looked and played well. The total file size was 220MB which would easily upload onto youtube as their limit is 1GB.
The .avi file had two runs of the film rolled into one video, firstly i had to cut out the run that i didn't want. i decided to use the second run, therefore i cut out the first one. This made the total running time of the film about 1 minute 20 seconds.
My next task was then to add my sounds into premiere. Before i added the files into my video however, i needed to delete the video sound track so that the sound files could be heard clearly and wouldn't clash. The sound files themselves needed cutting down in premiere because the sounds recorded had some talking before and after the actual line needed. The sound files themselves where the thoughts of the girl and not actually the dialogue between the two. Next i then needed to look through the video and pick out where the sounds fit in to sync with the visual speech between the two characters, this was quite a long process as i had to keep replaying the video my make sure it was in the correct place.
After i had the video and sound in sync and running smoothly i then had to write and insert subtitles to show what conversation was actually happening. I had to again scan through the video and find exactly where each line was being said. I found it quite difficult to fit both the subtitles and sounds around the video, however i managed to fit them all together and the video played through quite nicely.
My final task before exporting the film was to add a title page and also an end page. This was very simple to do and introduced the film to the viewer and justv said The End when the film had finished. I Then exported my film in Microsoft AVI format with about 85% quality, this ensured that the video still looked and played well. The total file size was 220MB which would easily upload onto youtube as their limit is 1GB.
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