Batman Poster

This image is from a poster that I have in my room. As everyone knows the new Batman film ‘The Dark Knight’ was a massive success. To go with the film there was also a lot of merchandise released, especially posters. I wanted a Batman Poster for my room so I got this one, it is one of the best I have seen and I like how it has been made.




Batman himself has been made from Joker cards; there is also a scalpel at the side, creating the effect that he has been cut out. There is also a big Joker-style smile across his face that has been made to look like a blood smear. The Batman logo itself has been created out of ‘Ha-Ha’s’. This of course is one of the trade-mark Joker quotes. Other famous Joker sayings are scribed all over the poster.

Collage

I created this collage with pictures/things I had knocking about my room. I wanted to make an image to convey my personality. I created this with pictures I had printed off, pictures I had on my walls, clothes labels and also a beer can. I think the image the items create together does show my personality to an extent. I stuck all my items onto a piece of A3 paper.

Images: I used images of Megan Fox, an Xbox controller, Muhammad Ali, Alan Shearer and also a

Batman Poster I have in my room.

Tickets: I used two concert tickets on my collage. This being from Kanye West who I’ve seen twice and Girls Aloud (A contrast I know!).

Poster: A Kanye West flyer advertising his concert and also the Batman collage. I also have a KissKiss flyer which is the NTU night at Oceana.

Photos: I have used two photos. One is of a few of my mates back home before our leavers do and the other is of my flatmates from last year.

Tags: I have a clothing tag from Adidas Orginals which I have quite a few items of. I also have a Rochdale football top tag, my local team that I follow.
Other: I have cut out the logo from a beer can. Carlsberg Export is one of my favourite beers.

The other collage is from my notice board that I had last year in my residence Gill Street.

Second Life

I have been logging onto SL quite a bit and I am still struggling to find anything interesting to keep me on the program. I don’t really know how to use the program and I am finding it hard to navigate and interact with the environment. However I stuck at it and when in search of things to do.
I found somewhere that appeared to be like an outdoor club/bar, I decided to check it out and even had a bit of a dance, the moves my avatar bust out where average at best and he looked even more of a tool than usual. I left him alone dancing for a bit while I read about SL on the internet.

I spent about 1 hour on it today just looking round and attempting to find these so called ‘freebie’ stores around to try and get some new clothes, because my avatar is quite plain and boring. This is the freebie room that I came across but I still couldn’t work out how to get free stuff and clothiers. I clicked on a few of the adverts but they were asking for money so I didn’t make any purchases and continued elsewhere.

I continued to browse for things to do and for more of these freebie stores. My search however was again in vain as I came across a Megastore. Again though, there seemed nothing available free and everything kept asking me for this stupid SL money. Rubbish.

Autodesk 3D Max

Today for my identities module i was introduced to Autodesk 3D Max. I had never used the software before but had heard good things about it. The first thing that struck me about the program is that it was very simple to use. I had used Adobe Flash as an animation program before and found it quite difficult.

The first task as an introduction to 3D Max was to create a text animation using my name. I made the text bounce on the screen and look like it was hitting the floor. I did two different versions of the animation, the first one is without the ground and the second one is with.





And my second version......

Identities - GTA IV

The first thing i thought of when i downloaded SL and started to play it was that it reminded me a lot of GTA IV (without the meaningless violence and fun obviously. Its got a similar concept as in you can dress your own character and roam freely around a 3D environment. GTA IV allows the user to interact with the environment in many different ways, from talking to people, driving cars, going into buildings and so on. GTA can be played online with other people, this then allows you to communicate with other people from around the room.
The obvious main difference is the fact that GTA has a storyline. It is after all a game and is meant to be completed, unlike SL. The 3D environment which of GTA consists is very complex, the amount of detail it has can sometimes be astonishing. I know there are many differences between GTA and SL but the basic concept of making yourself, moving around an environment and the interaction is similar.
Because SL is based on using an internet connection, this can sometimes make the environment run slow and also cause the software to lag. This does not happen with GTA and it runs very smoothly. This issue was my major problem in SL, the speed at which the 3D environment reacted to my input was annoyingly slow.

Identities - Second Life

For the start of the identities module my task was to create an avatar and record a diary of what i did with my avatar. I decided to use Second Life to do this in. I downloaded Second Life onto my laptop and created my own account.



When you first open Second Life (SL) you can then edit the appearance of your avatar to make it more personal. I found that this was very hard to do and i couldn't really make my avatar look anything like i wanted. This could be improved greatly.



When i had messed about with my appearance i started in/on somewhere called help island. There were a few people in this area so i decided to have a look around, there wasn't much to do or look at. I then clicked on something that said start.



When i tried getting somewhere else i was met by this black screen all too often. It seemed slow to move around and a few of the people seemed grey had had no clothes or features when it finally loaded a new location. I wasn't sure whether this was my painfully slow internet connection or the standard for SL.



This was the map i saw which let me change location, the area of SL was extremely big and much larger than i originally thought. There were many different areas, however when i visited these areas there wasn't much to do.



One good thing about navigating through SL is the fact you are able to fly around areas, this made travel much quicker and cut out much of the slow walking that was annoying me.


When browsing through SL i came across R2-D2 on some kind of docks. I clicked on the object and was given the choice to sit - so i did, this entertained me for about 5 seconds! there seemed to be no one about on most of SL so i didn't talk to anyone really, i was just trying to work out what kind of things i could do.

I came across a car at one point while randomly walking round. I tried to 'Cruise' like the option gave me, however this seemed to not work and i just sat in the car doing absolutely nothing!

Hopefully i will find something more entertaining to do on my next visit. I also intend to talk to someone and find out why they use the program and also what they do.

Back For Part 2!!

Well I'm back for the second term. I had a nice relaxing Christmas and didn't really get up to anything exciting so I'm nice and refreshed and looking forward to getting on with some more work!

Christmas for me involved seeing family and friends, i didn't get to go out that much due to financial constraints! New Years Eve was good, but also a little strange as i went out in a different town with people i didn't know!!

I had a look and a little go on Second Life over Christmas, i wasn't overly impressed with the program, however i had a go and will upload my screenshots later!