Arts Councils....

I've started joining various art councils and art's and design sites which post work experience both volunteer and paid for degree students, My sister who has just finished an a fine art degree started doing this in her last 2 years and advised me to get going with it now. i think it would be prettu good to get some experence now so i can get an idea of what sort of work i would like to do and where. heres some of the links i have been using.

http://www.arts.ac.uk/student/careers/freelance.htm
http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/home/
http://www.artshub.co.uk/uk/

Film Reviews....

UP

firstly is the animation UP i went to go see a while ago, although you may think at first glance that the film is just for kids, it is not, there are so many parts that are clearly included for adults, the point to the whole story i would say would probably be lost on many children but the adventure would not be. I really enjoye the animation, not only the quality of it but the detail within characters, the way they walk and talk and act is so well displayed. Yet another great Disney-Pixar film that i think is a contender for one of there top 10 best.

AVATAR

So much can be said about this film its ridiculous, i only wish the hype hadn't been so ridiculous not to say that it isn't amazing but i only expected a little more from the storyline, then again i guess it is the visualization of James Cameron's dream.

The animation from start to finish is unbeleivable and lucky enough i got to see it in 3d which is spectacular, the scenes in which the Na'vi fly through the air on the mystical birds are brilliantly done, the colours of the film are fantastic and give you such a good idea of the planet that you are on. Definatly the best film i have seen this year.

Presentation & Conclusions of MMDP1

Had my presentation the first thing on monday morning, went pretty well i think, although 10 mins always seems less when your doing it so felt i had to rush through the last bits o my work, but i hope i got the point across.
Overall i am happy with the work i have done during MMDP1, i think there are areas i could improve such as looking more at developing and defining and idea and structuring it a bit more before i do it, these are things i will take into consideration when doing projects in MMDP2.
I think i have been quick to learn various techniques but would like to devlop these further as i feel they are still at quite a basic stage, although this may come during the next term.
Over the holidays i would like to try and look at developing some of my intial ideas in projects that i didnt take foward, whether or not this happens is a different matter.

Isobel

My sister showed me this pretty snazzy interactive site for an advertising agency called isobel.
what i like most is the simplicity and boldness of the site. The work they have done for various companies is good too and also quite bold and simple especially the TV advertisment for kettle chips.

Looking towards next term....

Been a while since i have blogged, thought i would start with the new term, after having the introductory lecture before we left for the christmas holidays.
i'm really excited about the projects for term 2, mainly the 'create your own laire' project as the virtual enviroments is an area i'm quite intrested in, the other two projects also sound like we will learn a lot from.

Team Unicorn One Shott. Think

Untitled from Josh Crooks on Vimeo.

Editinggg

We took our One shot film into the editing suite today only to get it chewed up and spat back at us from the stupid machine, luckily techno man was able to selotape it back together and it was up and running, unfortunatly with a few glitches in but never the less we didn't have to do it again, Made some group edits which were ok, bit rushed but because we didnt have much time we had to. going to make my own edit but group edit will be posted above.

One Shot

Finsished the filming seemed to go pretty well, only took us an hour and about 4 shots, the scene sort of fell into place for us and seemed to work, everyone had a job so everyone was really included in the making of the whole thing.

Bottle Animation

Bottle Animation from Josh Crooks on Vimeo.

Nissan (See the change)

Nissan "Hedgehog" from Joan Gil on Vimeo.

Structure of new Interactive Narrative

This is a basic structure of my new weird interactive narrative, it looks a bit confusing but it will make sense when i put it together.

Bit of graffiti i did on the train.......

Top Group Consequences

These are two of the consequence's stories that we came up with in the first one shot seminar.

Is that really a car park ......

Another piece of awsome design i found on the Coolhunter.com, a new look on car park's, trying to create a more visual specticle of car parks not dreary and drab.
One shows a new way of storing cars, another shows an innovative way of directing people and others show awsome lighting and additions to the external sides of car parks.
http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/article/detail/1365/is-that-really-a-car-park

Cassius Eyewear......

Was looking on The Coolhunter.com and found this really cool eyewear company, i really like thier quite funky perculiar designs. I looked on thier website and it's pretty cool and crazy too. check em out.... http://www.cassiuseyewear.com/

Thoughts on One Shot......

I was thinking about the one shot and thought about all the stupid videos i've made with friends on nights out or just messing around. i think not only does the camera angles and the lighting ect make a one shot good but how real it looks, it needs to flow and be easilly understood and like an advert this needs to be done in a short amount of time. The audience needs to believe in what the advert is trying to say and the more real it seems the more this will happen.
I would like our one shot to be quite simple as well as bringing in too many ideas can confuse the reason to it.

One Shot Film Festival

The one shot film festival is supporting simple but ingenius new solutions to creating recession-beating one shots. They are trying to find new designers with new innovative ideas to create great peices of one shot film.
It's an online festival and it's free to enter?! you can ake a film and upload it too vimeo and it will go up against others to compete for thier prestigious unicorn award.

I was thinking if our one shot film is any good i might enter it into the competition, there's no harm in trying.

http://www.theunicornawards.com

Design Methodolgies

These are just four design methodologies given to us by jools in the Design process lecture, there are many more but i reckon i'm going to chose 3 of these for my Design Processes essay.

Reverse Engineering- taking apart a design and wroking backwards from it looking at the technological principles behind the design. Breaking down a product/design and looking at the process behind it.

Prototyping- a model or a tester product which can come before or after any of the design processes. used to make sure the product is right before finalising it.

Open Source- collaboration, collaborative way of working, using sources and own knowledge to create a product/design.

Market Research- looking at what is needed, or what the user wants from a product or deisgn. Finding out your target market and what it is the target market requires.

Slumdog Millionaire

I watched slumdog millionaire recently and was really impressed with Danny Boyle's direction of the film, it wasn't until i thought about our one shot pathway that i started to look more at the camera angles and use of light and direction, although not only one shot but a sequence of one shot's (Consecutive Cutting) the shot though the streets of the slum when the kids are being chased is really well executed, Danny Boyle manages to capture the buzz and simple life of the slum and follow the children in fantastic motion. the use of different techniques to create a very colourful busy feel to it is fantastic.
I respect Danny Boyle in many ways, one for his skill in directing and filming and also for his courage in taking on films with such delicate subjects and managing to pull them off in a sensitive but brilliant way.

Touch of Evil Opening Scene

Touch of Evil

We watched the opening sequence of a film done by Orson Wells called 'Touch of evil', the opening scene is done in one shot and dnoe so using a large crane with a camera mounted on the end making it possible to move through the different scenes but stay as one shot. i really enjoyed watchin it and like the way different characters and objects were bought in as the camera went round the buildings and through the town.

Steadicammmm

I talked earlier about the fight scene in the movie warrior king being filmed in 'steadicam', i just thought i would research and post what it is.

'A Steadicam is a stabilizing mount for a motion picture camera, which mechanically isolates the operator's movement from the camera, allowing a very smooth shot even when the operator is moving quickly over an uneven surface. Informally, the word may also be used to refer to the combination of the mount and camera.'

Consequences from Top Group

In our group Seminar we had to play the game 'conequences' where you write the start of a story and then hand it over to te next person who writes the next part and then keep going until you've created a story with twists and turns, we did this but our stories ended up becoming ver abstract and a bit crazy but we thought they were nuite fun.....we were asked to do a more serious one which ended up just being really deressing. il scan these in and post them up later.

One shot Top Group Ideas

We met up on wednesday morining to discuss possible ideas for our one shot peice, we were pretty open and had different ideas, we liked one idea which was to set up the camera in a car and drive along a street asing different people (who would probably be us) what they thought about nottingham and what should be done to make it better, with comical bits...for example an old person who starts to go off on a rant but we drive off, we were a bit unsure about this idea and whether we would be aloud to do this as it would mean the camera was moving so we came up with a back up idea, we though about setting the camera up on a coner in halls where you an see to different sides as if there is two differet scenes, then someone one side would be playing a trick on someones room with the other person unaware who then comes along and fools for the trick. They're just starting ideas but i think they could be developed quite well.

Warrior King (2005)

Warrior King (2005)

In this film Directed by Prachya Pinkaow, there is a a fight scene lasting almost 4 mintues done intirely in one shot, which i pretty impessive and even more impressive once you've watched it. it shows the main character Tony Jaa making his way up through a hotel fighting various body gurads to reach the top and talk to the boss not only is it incredible that they did the whole scene in one shot but you have to respect the concentration and fitness of Tony Jaa. He and his mentor choreographed the whole thing and along with Pinkaow decided to shoot the whole thing using 'steadicam' making the whole one shot more smooth.
The fight scene is excelently worked out and seems very real, which is impressive as there are no special effects. i did wonder how many taked it must have taken before they got the inal one without any mistakes.

Animation 2 ideas

My first initial idea before i did the bottle idea was to create some sort of character out of play doe and have them going around my desk doing different things, which I'm considering doing as my second. I also really liked some of the animations done by PES, making everyday objects become life like or take on different persona's, but i feel this is a bit like the bottle idea and i would like to do something different. I'm also going to lookg into the idea of a 2d one with just paper cutting it and making things grow ect which i think will look quite cool.

Interactive Narrative 2- Uni Life

Here's a simple not completed structure of my second interative narrative uni life, i'm waiting until i have all the pictures together and will look at whether or not they all work together and have the right feel to them, i will then do what we did in the animation pathway and make them look a bit more crazy by batch processing them in photoshop.

Essay

Finally know what we actually have to do now so i cna get started, the thing i really need to do is buy some of the books on the reading list to help out, otherwise it should all be pretty simple and self explanatory.

One Shot

Started looking at some of the material on NOW for the last pathway this term-One Shot, i was a bit sceptical about it before looking wondering whether i would enjoy it, i think now it should be quite fun and different to any other work i have done, i also started looking at some of the examples given on the NOW, and thought some were really good, I'll blog these as a follow on.

New Interactive Narrative Idea

Seeing as we have to do another interactive narrative on our own i thought i would get started now and start exploring some ideas. After some brainstorming and general idea generation i had decided i want to do a more flexible project, without too much narrative or restraints seeing as my last one was pretty simple and self explanatory, i was also thinking about the guest lecturer Keita Takahashi, who talked about his game NobyNobyBoy and how it didn't really have an objective to it, but let the player find their own objective.
I want my second interactive narrative to be a bit like this is someways, my initial idea is to take up a picture of the living room/ kitchen and everything in it and then you can basically play around clicking on different things, leading you to other areas etc.
i also really liked the gorillaz 3d interactive site that i looked at while on the 3 week interactive narrative part, so i might look at that again and the sorts of things involved there.....

Harvie Krumpet-Adam Elliot....Just a small part

Harvie Krumpet-Adam Elliot

Another person we talked about in our last tutorial, the independent film maker Adam Elliot. I watched one of his award winning pieces of work called 'harvie krumpet' the story is about his life from being born in Poland to dying in an old peoples home. i really enjoyed watching it although the story has a quite morbid and sad feeling to it throughout, it's the Small bits of comedy that kept it going for me. The clever thing about harvie krumpet is that there is hardly and talking from the characters themselves, the whole thing is pretty much narrated. What i also like is the Quirkiness of the characters and the facial expressions Elliot gets out of them.
This short (23 min) film won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 2003, in addition to numerous festival awards and the 2004 Australian Film Institute Best Short Animation award.
It is quite different from a lot of other animations, probably the reason for it's success.

Winsor McCay

We talked about McCay during or tutorial session and andy told us about the fact he was pretty much the first person to produce such a moving picture in the way he did, i decided to watch both 'little nemo' and 'gertie the dinosaur' his 2 most famous pieces. i was amazed at how good the drawings were and how well they flowed, he must have been a very persistent and patient man, as the clips must have taken a long long time to do. The first was impressive as he did it as a bet saying he would draw 1,000 drawings that would move.
McCay basically laid the pathway for all other animation to happen and really was the starting point. i think what amazed me the most was the quality of the work from such a long time ago, around 1914 to be exact.

Nottingham Contemporary: Lunchtime Talks

Every Wednesday
18 Nov 2009 - 19 Jan 2010

Drop in at lunch time and walk through Nottingham Contemporary’s galleries with one of our own curators. This is a friendly and informal opportunity to learn more about the themes of our current exhibitions and our artistic ethos. Ask questions and we will try to answer them! Please wait at Reception and we will come and find you.

Time: Every Wednesday, 1pm - 1.45pm

Free

Our programme of Talks and Discussions is jointly funded by Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham.

Architecture, Art and the Changing City

On the 9th December there's a Debate on how Art and design is changing perceptions and in turn changing the city, how cultural and aesthetic forces influence design? and much more, i was thinking i would try go as it might be quite an intresting discussion. It's at the The Space, Nottingham Contemporary at around 8.30.

Cool Piece of Arcitecture in Nottingham

Went on a run the other day at 6 before anyone got up, don't know why just felt like it anyway i didn't really set a course just went round Nottingham for an hour, i found myself down a place called the Rope Walk i guess because it winds like a rope, and i saw this awesome piece of architecture and manged to find a picture of it online somehow, it really stands out with it's peculiar angles and the fact that it looks like it should be toppling over, a bit gravity defying. It is called the icon and is also integrated into an older building.

PES....Not ProEvolutionSoccer

This isn't about proevoltuionsoccer but about a director and animator called Adam Pesapane, who specialises in short films and commercials, i looked at the PES site and got lost for a long time looking at some of his short animations and adverts for various companies, he has clearly got a lot of talent which has got him work for quite high profile companies ranging from Nike to orange.
i really like the quirkiness of his work and especially in some of his short animation the use of everyday objects, taking them and making them into life like things, for example keys as guns or a swithboard as a city. I didnt know about PES until my tutor Andy Love showed me the the site and it's really intresting to find out he has done some adverts that iv'e seen before, which made think about how designers or animators don't get much credit or recognition for their work, unless you reseach and find out.

If you happen to read this and go to the site, the videos that i think are really worth watching are.....The commercials for-Bacardi, Orange and Beasty Boy (which is although quite disturbing in actual fact very funny. There's so much to look at but one of his shorts i liked was Kaboom!

Quay Brothers

After watching one of the most perculiar animations of life, streets of crocodiles done by the quay brother i decided to research what they were about and other work they had done.
Stephen and Timothy Quay work in england and studied at The Royal College of Art, London. nearly all of their work features dolls and carries that dark mysterious and slightly creepy feeling to them, something which they seem to have mastered by using a variation of clever techniques fom timing, colour, light, texture, sounds and many others. Thier short film on streets of crocodiles got voted 'one of the 10 best animated films of all time' by Terry Gilliam a well known Director/Animator.

Although very creeped out by the animation we watched, i found it highly intresting and was really impressed with it.

Bottles Animation...........

My animation/pixelation has come on quite far but is also starting to get a bit anoying because its slow to do, but once put together i think it actually looks pretty good, i'm just having troubles with the finsih, i need to complete this then out all the pictures into photoshop and then into premier, i have already done a run through of how to do this, with help form others and it all seems pretty simple, so hopefully once it is finished and edited it should'nt take to long to put together as a final peice. i've started looking at what i could do for another animation, i was thinking that i want to make it different to the one im doing some i might use people if i can get someone to help me out with my work.

Red Interactive Agency

Thois is a really cool interactive site that i found while on the interative narrative part of the course, but just forgot to blog. its pretty weird and trippy but definatly draws you in and want to find out more, the layout is pretty crazy but works. The site is actually for a quite high profile design agency. i just really like how different it is.

Tutorial Week 16

Looked at last few peoples peices of work from the first project, a reviewed what could be improved and what was good about them, ended up looking at a number of different films, all one's i haven't seen but would like to see, most of all 'tron', and 'tron legacy' which look pretty sick but comes out some time next year. Hope to see 'a scanner darkly' and '9'.

Minilogue/hitchhikers choice

a very random stop motion video that i really enjoyed while browsing on youtube, i love the randomness and craziness of it, the fact that it doesnt really have any narrative as such is not a big problem as just viewing this persons mind processess but down into a playdoe stop motion animation is intresting enough.

Minilogue/hitchhikers choice

13th Street-The action and suspense channel

Found this on the CoolHunter- "To promote the exclusive thrillers and horror films on 13th Street, the toilet of a nightclub in Hamburg was specially prepared. Just after entering the room, the light suddenly goes out and the room is bathed in Black light. And now a bloody crime scene becomes visible on the floor and walls: "See what others don't see. 13TH STREET. The Action and Suspense Channel."

http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/article/detail/1272/13th-street.-the-action-and-suspense-channel--hamburg

Serioulsy Cool Site

One of my friends on Fashion Design and Branding told me about this site called the cool hunter, i took a look and its got some pretty awsome things on it, lots of new design and concept designs.

http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/

Warrior's Dance-Prodigy

I was told about this video when telling someone in my flat about my idea, they said it was a little bit like mine in the way the little cigarette boxes come to life, its actually a pretty sick video so thought i would post it anyway.

Warriors Dance-Prodigy

Start of Pixialtion Idea

These are just a few frames from the start of my idea, there are a lot more and fromwhat i can do on my omputer it looks like it is working, i just wish i had dreamweaver on the laptop so i could test it out but i will go in to waverley later to check i out.

Pixilation Idea

i decided that i would try use objects instead of people for my project but have now decided that the two may interact, i think that the start of my project will involve a the sides of a beer box slowly coming down and then inside one bottle which will then slide out, random start i know but i can see it in my head, i think the rest of it will probably come to me as i go along, this is just a rough start in my head.

In Response to Peyman

The new BMW M3 GTS may be good but its tacky and driven by idiots who thinks they're racers, i hate to say it but the germans know how to make a car......

Kenna-Hell Bent

I found this music video when looking for songs by an artist called kenna, and found it so intriguing i ended up watching it about 3 times, i found out it was originally an oscar-nominated short called "More" done by a man named Mark Osbourne, i watched the original but mch prefer the fitting of kenna's music to his video.
Kenna also has another really good song with a great music video called freetime, which i will post just above this, although not animation its stil pretty awsome.

Kenna-Hell Bent

Kenna - Hell Bent (Official Music Video) - Click here for another funny movie.

Pixilation-Stills as frames

Today we had our first introductory seminar to pixilation, looking at what it is and playing around with the cameras in groups, looking at the image sequence stop motion, pixelation and people as puppets.
We had to capture around 360 shots (12 per second) our group couldn't really decide on one idea and kept swapping ideas and so came up with about 5 different short ones, some working better than others, but it was a good experimentation and helped in exploring how we might do the project in our own time.
i decided from the day that i might just use objects or play doe in my piece as it is easier to work with than people and my friends are lazy and probably wouldn't do it.

C.R.A.P Lecture

Today we were looking at crap which is design for layout of screen space. we had to bring into our lecture 3 pieces of design that we thought were really bad, we then got into 2's and discussed/argued which design was worse, after deciding we then doubled up with another group and did the same with our worst chosen design and so and so on, it was good as different people pointed out different areas of design that were bad and why, forcing you to really break down the design and the thought behind it.
Our final choice was a leaflet on giving blood, the general layout was pretty dreadful, there was a lot of repetition in the colours and to much of the same text, which had awful alignment, all in different sizes and spacing.

Design Process

This is my design process for my last project interactive narrative.

1.Discovering
Firstly we looked at what an interactive narrative was as a class, helping us to understand what we had to do and it's use, we then individually had to come up with some basic narratives/strories. i decided to make a brainstorm of ideas and then began to bounce ideas of others in the class.
We also had to look at flash and watch some tutorials to get some knowledge about the programme, i also just fiddled about with it and learnt myself which i happened to find more effective.

2.Developing
I picked my idea and started to develop the story as a storyboard first just written using postitnotes then on the computer as a clear structure, i also came up with some scrapy images and ideas of how it might look. i put some of the images into flash and stareted to play around with them. I then created the omages on the computer and chose the most effective ones.

3.Defining
After creating my interative narrative i decided to test it out on my house mates who enjoyed it and found it relatively easy to use except for some of the pages they didnt know where to click to move foward so i looked at changing where the arrows would be on the page.

4.Evaluation
I posted my piece of work up on my blog and deviant art in the hope of getting some critical analysis from the users and viewers, which i did i then took this into consideration and analysed the project myself, which i have yet to post.

Incubus-Drive

One of the many music videos ive looked at on youtube, this produced for incubus is a bit like one shown in one of my tutorial lessons, like that one the combination of the drawn animation with real life footage i dont think really works ide rather it be one or the other and if i had to chose i rather it be the drawn animation as it is far more intresting and when watching the video you feel like you are waiting for those parts.

Gorillaz 3D Hologram

I remember watching this a while back when it first came out, and was watching it the other day with a m8 and thought i put it up on the old blog seeing as its pretty awsome. I really like the gorillaz music videos and the whole characters being the band, but this takes it to a new level.

Gorillaz 3D Hologram at MTV Europe Music Awards

Chemical Brothers- Star Guitar

I found this video by Michel Gondry really intriguing, when you first look at it you don't fully notice how clever it actually is, but looking at it a second time you realise parts of the video are on a loop to stay in time with the beats and sounds of the song, but the video has been produced very well and it just looks like one continuous journey, the timing of the video is also excellent to allow the different objects to hit the beats on time.
The video is based on DV footage Gondry shot while on vacation in France; the train ride between Nîmes and Valence.
Gondry plotted the whole video on graph paper before actually filming it and putting it together.

Its Up

Thanks to Peyman the computer genius my interactive narrative is now up and working. kick asss

Maybe....i could?

i reckon with a bit more work and a bit more knowledge of flash that i could do a piece like "let's play drums" the hardest part would probably be putting the sound on as i havent even dared to try this yet. it would also be helpfull to get flash on my laptop, if anyone has it give me a heads up cheers

Let's Play Drums

This is a really cool interactive piece of work i came across when looking at the site http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/, the layout and spacial awareness of the interactive piece was excellent and could easilly be used by any audience, simple click and go buttons, which all allow you to play around with the sounds, it almost makes you feel like a dj and i actually spent a fair bit of time playing around on it even though it was a simple piece of flash.

Flash

Just spent the day playing around on flash, and after the begining stage of just getting pissed off with it, i started to understand it and get to grips, the coding can be really anoying and sometimes makes you have to start again.
i've now completed my interactive narrative and feel that if i had known that i was able to use the flash programme i could have developed my story further and made it a little bit more complicated.
i might try doing this though before the hand in date.

Faith by Robert Kendal

This was a very differnt interactive Narrattive to ones i have seen before, no real image just words being played around with in a very clever fashion, the timing of it was very good and the structure to move the words around seemed quite complicated, i think some of it was a little to understand from an audience perspective but i think it was well made.

Ninja Warrior

First image to come up

Interactive Narrative Structure

file://Interactive Narrative Structure- just a simple structure of how my interactive narrative plans out.

Seminar 2 on Interactive Narrative

this seminar was more about getting to grips with the flash programmes itself and playing about with the interface, at first i found it pretty annoying and aggravating to use because the icons don't make it obvious what they do, but after a while of searching and playing around i managed to get a small very crappy interactive narrative together, i think with a little more time and some tutorial watching i will be able to successfully put together my final interactive narrative now named "Adventures of ninja warrior".

The lesson also helped us to come in with some sort of structure or formula to our narratives so that we new where we were going with it and what we have to do to get there.

Photographers journal:James Hill in New York

Photographers Journal:James Hill in New York

A different interactive narrative to most of the ones i have look at so far, quite simple but effective. it very simply is a slideshow of James hill's favourite pictures he has taken of new york but what makes it effective is his narrating on each picture of the top. the interactive part is that there is a time bar along the slideshow which allows you to jump to different pictures at different parts of the narration. you can also view them as the slideshow is playing. The audience interaction is very little but i think it needs to be as it is more about viewing the pictures. The spatial awarness of the site is excellen and simple colours and layout don't distract form the pictures.

Congo Trek

This is actually a really intresting and insightful interactive narrative, especially for me as i used to live in Congo as a child. There is a lot you can do on the Congo trek making it very visual and interactive for the user. The narrative follows a conservationist called Michael Fay on his trek through congo. the site allows you to follow his trek though a map viewed thtough a magnifying glass, at each signifiacnt spot you can click on and view what was there and what he did. each part giving you more information or pictures on that part of the trek. a part of the virtual enviroment i especially liked was a 360 walkaround which puts you in the middle of the jungle, you can click on different objects which then take you to some more information about that or a video, for a example a gorilla you click on takes you to a video on gorillas and thier packs. It also uses sound to mke you feel like you are actually in the jungle, which is a nice touch.

Interactive Narrative Research

the gorillaz interactive narrative was definatly the most fun that i visited, and had the most audience interaction.i'm a big fan of the gorillaz anyway but the way thier interactive narrative was laid out meant you could spend hours on it without even noticing. the was a large variation of media used such as animation over the top of stills and music each time you clicked on something making it far more intresting. the layout generally was very good, although at first it seems to be messy, you start to look around and see that time has been taken of the structure, you also recognise that it is in setting with the gorillaz themselves. i liked the fact they chose not to have their songs just playing over the top and instead little exerts or weird sounds playing whenever something happens. the narrative also used the characters from the band to move you around the enviroment and help you find out what lies beneath the darkness of it all. after looking around for a while you realise theres a task bar at the bottom of the page which leads you to even more things you can do. you could see the gorillaz site as being confusing but the confusion turns into curiosity and pushes you to look further round the site.
theres some really clever parts in the narrative such as a computer in the virtual enviroment which allows you to go to links which let you buy thier music. they make this virtual world seem quite trippy and surreal.

operation ninja

After brainstorming i decided to maybe chose a different idea for my interactive narrative- operation ninja, i decided to have a ninja character who has to complete a mission, the interaction being how he goes about completing his mission. meeting different characters along the way, such as evil ninjas and random beasts.

A small part of a stroyboard for one of my ideas for the interactive Narrative project, not very great but just a rough start.

Red Interactive Agency- an advertising agency. This site is a really good example of interactive narrative, its very complex but a lot of fun to use and make your way around their site. they also seem to be a very prolific advertising agency.

Awsome random Interctive Narrative

This was one of the examples that shaun put up on the powerpoint presentation from the first lesson but i think its really crazy and wacky but i like the look of the messyness combined with the neat interface.

http://www.nawlz.com/

out of the many ideas i came up with i have started to explore a few, either just jotting down the ideas and exploring them or drawing up some images or storyboarding them.

one idea looked at the walk to the university campus and the different distractions along the way from the hundreds of people handing out leaflets to friends telling you to come somewhere else.

another idea looked at a character who was hungry and walking through the highstreet having to make their mind up where to eat, each choice ending in an eventual outcome.

an idea i randomly came up with with was to have a sort of ninja like character on a mission and the choices for the user would be how he went about the mission almost like a game in same ways.

My ideas are quite random but i think that as long as the narrative has a sort of flow to it and at least one plot within it, it should be ok.

Friday 16th- toda we were with Shaun Belcher exploring the start of out first project "Interactive Narritive" After discussing the context behing interactive narrative (flash) we were asked to get started by coming up with some ideas for our narrative and look at how we could use these in our project, the narrative has to have a number of decisions for the the user to make too.
i found the lesson productive and insightful and i managed to come up with quite a few ideas for my interactive narrative.

Started the course this week and had a very intresting lecture today, we looked at a music video done by a company called monkeehub

i expect to learn how to use macs properly