The visual story

I’ve been reading this book called "the visual story: seeing the structure of film, TV and new media". It’s written by Bruce Block. This book is great and very relevant to what I’m doing; it was also on the reading list (duh!). But I thought I would give a little detail about it.

Ok, so this book is about film and TV production. We produce film and TV by editing
video clips and joining them together to create a seamless visual story. The editing is affected by 7 basic visual components. These must be taken into consideration to create the perfect show. These are Space, Line, Shape, Tone, Colour, Movement and Rhythm.

After being introduced to the 7 visual components, Bruce goes on to explain how each of these used together can create clear visual grammar, thus producing a better finished piece.

This book has really cleared things up about films and other visual media. I highly recommend reading it if you're into AV as it gives a really good in depth perspective of visual media. Top marks.

Morph concept

Well, after having the usual glance at youtube, I came across this. It's quite amazing:



"Morph is a concept demonstrating some of the possibilities nanotechnologies might enable in future communication devices. Morph can sense its environment, is energy harvesting and self cleaning .
Morph is a flexible two-piece device that can adapt its shape to different use modes. Nanotechnology enables to have adaptive materials yet rigid forms on demand.
It is also featured in the MoMA online exhibition "Design and the Elastic Mind". It has been a collaboration project of Nokia Research Center and Cambridge Nanoscience Center."


Whether or not it will be implemented for certain in the future, this looks so damn cool! Just thought id mention it ^_^.

The walker!

In our latest seminar we got to make a 3d walking thing. This was at first rather complicated. But as usual, became easier after playing around with it. The main point of the seminar was to get a better understanding of hierarchies. Not only that but we learnt about IK solvers. This is where the computer works out which end of your joints you want to move and how the joined components should act accordingly. It makes life so much easier when animating, you don’t have to move every individual part that would take a lifetime. So here it is:



I looped it a few times because to walk cycle is about 16 frames. Not very long I know, but once you have one cycle you can loop it as many times as you like. Unfortunately I think this little dude has a limp. Oh well. ^_^

Online avatar diary - part 3

This week in my adventures of seal online, I’ve had a grand old time. Met some new people, discovered some new towns/environments and even found a hairdresser! I actually need to get my hair cut in real life, oh well. Instead of posting a ton of pictures I decided to have an embedded slideshow. Much cleaner ^_^

So I start my journey looking for other areas and environments, firstly because I’m a little bored of the town I’m in (Elim) and secondly for a little research for my own environment I will need to make. I came across a wagon driver who tells me I can travel to any of the other main towns for a fee, so why not. I found two new towns which are Zaid; a nice icy mining town, and Madeli; just a big circus really. Neither of which had much of a civilization. Two more ghost towns to add to the list. It seems the main place where people congregate is Elim, the largest of all the towns and the one with the best facilities.

While travelling from town to town, I bumped into someone of very similar qualities, avatar wise. This guy was, like me, a warrior. We were wearing almost identical clothes and armour and were about the same level. So I started up a chat with him. He was in America and the time for him was 3 in the morning! I think he needed some sleep. But I was just asking why he chose to make his avatar the way he did. He said he personally liked the cutesy anime like avatars of this game, the way you could have outrageous hair was “great”. He made the avatar look how his alter ego would look, in real life he had black hair, but in game it was the total opposite, a bright white. He added me as a friend so I could talk another time, but said he had to go since he was levelling with a friend in real life.

After that I wandered round and came across a barber. For a fee I would be able to change how my avatar looked. The rarer hairstyle cost more money from prices ranging of 100,000 to 1 mil. I’d rather not pay that much ^_^.

Well thats this weeks up date. One more to come. The next one will blow your mind!

More 3D studio max

I’ve been playing around with 3DSM some more recently. I decided to have a little go at a space scene. This is what I came up with:



Saturn's ring looks a little funky but at least it looks like Saturn.

Ideas for my avatar

Ive done some mind mapping and sketches towards my avatar. Im still trying to figure out what hes going to look like and why, so here are 3 pages that ive done so far:

My colourful little tree

The 3rd thing we made in 3D studio max (3DSM) was a tree. This was made a while ago, and have no idea why it hasn’t been posted before! anywho its here now.

It was good practice for 3DSM, as i had to play around with mapping and modelling. I also added a camera and started to learn the basics of rendering for a camera's view point. Sorry if you think the camera is a bit dodgy, it was my first go and will become much much smoother in time. But yea i found it a little hard at first to fiddle with the camera, but after a while it became a little easier.

Little things you can notice are the bump map; the yellow bits of the bark are raised slightly. And also the little island my tree is perched upon was made using contours and the terrain tool, which i thought was quite cool.

This kind of tree could be used in my environment for my avatar. Our avatar doesn’t have to be life like in anyway, Hence why my tree is not life like at all ^_^.

Here it is:

Squidy!

I finally got around to re-making my squid. I unfortunately lost him before due to a broken hard drive. Oh well. But now he lives again so it’s all ok!

It was rather handy that I lost him, as I went over the stuff I have previously done, it meant that I had to re-remember and re-learn it again. Which was good. Just means when I come to finish off my 3D avatar it will all become easier for me ^_^.

Anywho heres the little guy:

Being connected

Wow I swear this is harder then writing an essay! Ok, so our last lecture was about being connected as an interstitial node. Il try and explain what it all means and what I think about it.

We looked at becoming an interstitial node. What this means is how do we know each other, how do we link ourselves to one another in a way we can relate. Well, to give some help explaining Il delve into a bit of history. Modernism and Post Modernism.


From what I understood in the lecture, Modernism is an ordered, linear way of understanding things. It’s a way of thinking in which everything is correct and in the right place if thought about when using one method. Up until the renaissance, modernism was the primary way of how we saw things. At that time, from the late 1800's to the mid 1900's, Christianity and classical science were the most domineering ways of seeing things. These things were art, literature, architecture and music.
Post modernism on the other hand is different. Simply put, it means there are a lot of different ways in which we can observe and understand something. Instead of having just one way of thinking, such as religion, it has multiple ideas coming from different areas, for example, modern science.


Since we now live in a Post Modernist world (well, Modernism is still around but not as much) everyone has their own voice, their own way of thinking. So how can we link all these ideas up? How do we each become an interstitial node?


A quote that will make this clearer:

"Cultural codes rather than individual voices"

It is basically saying that to become connected and to be able to understand each other we must speak a cultural code. If everyone has an individual voice, then no one will understand or link together what has been said, this is where my next quote comes in:



"There is one common language, the language of the hypertext [the culture of real virtuality]. Cultural expressions left out of the hypertext are purely individual experiences. The hypertext is the vehicle of communication, thus the provider of shared cultural codes" (Manuel Castells)

In our modern society this hypertext is a way of linking our ideas together from person to person. If you are able to speak it, use it and manipulate it, then you will be able to get your "individual voice" and your ideas across using this common language (also referred to as culture code in the first quote). You can therefore become and interstitial node. However is also says "Cultural expressions left out of the hypertext are purely individual experiences". So how do you get these cultural expressions and ideas into the hypertext and onto the cultural code highway.

To explain how you can link ideas from one to another I will use a basic story. Let’s say your name is A and you’ve met someone called C. C can talk to you and respond to you. However, there is an idea you have, a new way of thinking; you’ve come to this new thing by the influences and experiences you have had. C has not had these influences and experiences and can therefore not understand your new idea. You are both using cultural codes so can understand each other and you are using this common language as a tool for getting C to understand A. However there is a piece missing, a link in between the two which will bridge the gap. This is where B comes in. B has had the influences and experiences of both A and C. He can therefore link the two together by describing A's new idea to C in a way that he will understand.

That’s what I think is meant by becoming an interstitial node. By networking and growing these networks, making more and more links between the different nodes is how you project your ideas across. One example of a network/node like system is a rhizome. This plant has no beginning or end, instead it grows by sending out roots/shoots from its nodes in any direction, linking them up for more strength.




Another quote from the lecture:


"According to Armin Medosch, in an interconnected environment, individuality or expression are neither important. What's important are the new forms of sharing, spreading and planning the digital work. With collective actions this cultural domain progresses in its entirety, because sharing and collaborating mean learning from each other."

This is trying to explain the finer points of progression and development in digital work. It is saying that by combining and sharing ideas, we are able to make new and better things. Evermore reason for having lots of interstitial nodes. By sharing with other people in these networks of nodes you are able to bring your own "cultural expressions" (from the second quote) and mix them with the current nodes to make something new.

Here is one last bit to add to all this reflection about being connected. I’ve taken this from the lecture itself.


“Weblogs: Content Is King
Weblogs have shifted the focus away from personal presentations of content to personal collections of shared meaning.”

This is an example of how our sharing and combining of ideas has created something new. Our weblogs could be total tosh and completely irrelevant to anything. However fortunately we’ve come to understand that by picking and choosing parts of a network (which for us is the internet) that they will link our personal ideas to the rest of the network.

Anywho, that was fun, but it also took about 2 hours to get my head around. At least it’s much much clearer in my mind now. Happy days!

Online avatar diary - part 2

I’ve still been persevering with seal online for my avatar research. All I can say is so far so good. It’s much better then second life in many ways, but mainly because it doesn't crash and is dead easy to gain access to. Another thing to mention is that I re-downloaded fraps again, and its working like a charm. Fraps is a program which allows you to record in-game footage. This allowed me to take a few clips of my adventures!


This week I have been travelling around the bigger towns of the online world. The two main towns are Elim and Lime. I first travelled to Lime after reaching level 11 to see what was what. Turns out its kind of a ghost town there, very few people to talk to. That was a shame, it was a quaint little town ^_^.
After trying to have a civil chat with anyone, I gave up hope with Lime and travelled to Elim. Upon reaching Elim, I was shocked at its cartoony beauty. A nice big ol stony town with tons to do and people to see. I ventured round and started trying to talk to people. Now, this is a fairly hard thing to do it seems since people don’t want to sit still for very long.


Luckily I started talking to a knight about 20 or so levels higher than me in nice shiny armour. We talked about ourselves, where we were from, how old we were, what we did for a living etc. Turns out this guy was older than me at the ripe old age of 32! He lived in United Arab Emirates! wow. I asked if he tried to make his avatar to resemble himself. He replied laughing, obviously since the customisability in this game isn’t exactly fantastic, but you can style your hair and choose a class that could possibly resemble the type of person you are. For example a mage is cleaver and intelligent, a warrior is strong and brave; people could choose these classes and have neither of these traits in real life.
But no he said he didn't. He was a nice guy though, even though hiding behind some random made avatar, he seemed genuinely nice. That being said, trying to talk to some high level characters was impossible, they just push you aside as if your scum!

After having a wee talk to the locals I found a huge mass of people. They had setup their character to act like a store. Over their names would be a description of what they were selling. They were all AFK (away from keyboard) as they had just left their characters on to show items they had for sale. All of which sold items at extortionate prices!

So yeah, that’s basically what I did this week on seal online. Update coming next week. Oh I also found some random pigs...

Moveable Projected Displays

In a recent lecture, Deborah one of our lecturers, showed us a clip of a moveable projected dislay:


We were asked to think of ways this new technology could be used in the modern world. As it has not been fully implemented into any product yet, there are numerouse areas which this application can be used.
Firstly it provides a cheap way of doing this actual thing of tracking & projection, all that is needed is a projector, software and of course tracking sensors with a tablet board. Some modern laptops today are tablet based, this provides much more flexibilty in the way you can use your laptop:

You can use this type of tablet laptop to do many things which a normal computer can't, such as write or sketch. This new projected display could be a cheap way of producing a tablet laptop which would still keep the computing power but have much more flexibility and control.

It could also be used as an educational tool. For example, a room could be fitted with multiple projectors. These projectors could be used with multiple display boards for each of the students. Or alternatively, the board at the front could be interactively active. This meaning the board while already being interactive and touch sensitive, could also be moved around to demonstrate concepts. One example could be physics such as gravity. By moving the board around, you could simulate different types of physics.

Other ideas could include simulation and 3d holograms. A way of creating a 3d image which could interactivly be used to train upon, or used. Such as flying a plane or operating on an organ.

Online avatar diary - part 1

As you may have seen what was written yesterday, we were asked to explore an online environment with a 3D avatar, to interact and communicate with its residents and so on.


Now the primary choice given to us was second life. All I can say is that this program is visually displeasing, hard to get onto, and crashes endlessly! So I looked around for an alternative that didn’t require me to make some sort of a blocky human form. Looking round other student’s blogs on my course, I have come across seal online. Now, this game is quite animeish and cartoony, perfect for creating a wee little avatar.


I have to say it was so much easier to download and create an account, something that second life couldn’t get the hang of. But once online, I joined one of the 2 servers (yeah only 2, world of warcraft had something like 200+) and started to create my little me for the first time.



I chose from the multiple jobs that my character could have, to take the one called WARRIOR. I know, it sounds childish, haha but I couldn't not choose it when it came with a big sword the size of the avatar itself ^_^. So this guy has lots of strength, dodge and agility to help him battle evil. Something I am not in real life, but since this is an alter ego I can do whatever I wish, how fun. I named him spunky because that was the first thing that came to my head, not only that but people might have a little giggle over the name and possibly laugh with me and not at me.


On entering the world, I am confronted with a cartoony environment and funky style of shading on everything. I first find out I need to level my avatar in order to become stronger, learn new skills and to gain better armour & clothing. I talked to a few people with difficultly since the interface was all very new to me. But once I worked it out I was chatting to other avatars with glee. Many were new like me and we all ended up asking each other how stuff worked in the game. Contributing to each other’s knowledge until we all had a brief picture on how to do things.

Travelling through this new world, I discovered that I was named as a beginner, and it's not until lvl 10 that I’m allowed to be free in the world. So I travelled around my new beginner’s zone. Discovering that I can alter my avatar with new items from the store, or if I’m lucky items can drop off creatures I have defeated. I started to lvl up to my goal of 10! I did many things, I fished, I fought, I found. However no luck in actually catching any fish (I was using tree sap as bait. Didn't go too well :S). Gathering quest items and random gems to sell to the store vendor for hard earned cash. I then could buy some of the more interesting items. ^_^ oo exciting.










Once I had levelled to my new found glory of the level that is 10! I was starting to get some new items to customise my avatar and have a choice in what he looked like. So I put some earmuffs on him, gave him some nice new armour and also gave him some nice mean metal gloves that makes him look like a real warrior ^_^.

Avatar, The alter ego (Proj 1)

Our first project brief told us to 1) to create a 3D avatar 2) to explore online avatars. To explore these online world environments, I will need to create a 3D avatar on one of them. An example being second life. But first a little back ground.
The Sanskrit word "Avatara" means "the descent of God". Or understood easily as "an incarnation". So, this means an avatar is just a copy of one’s self, another image of how we perceive ourselves.

A definition of Avatar:

“A digital alter ego in cyberspace, or assumed identity used in online chat environments. Some people use several avatars related to different aspects of their on line personality.”

Is this to say that avatars look and relate to aspects of an individual’s own personality and traits?

Thoughts about the concept of an avatar

Reading http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3683260.stm, it shows this may not always be the case. People who participate in online games, also known as massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) choose different avatars to how they look and act in real life.


However here is a good example of a boy who has taken his real life attributes into the game world.


He has taken his ailment of the real world transposed it into the game world as hard metal casing.

That aside, I’m interested why people make an avatar of themselves completely different to how they really are. I think it’s because it’s an escape from reality. Something you can create which can empower you in these online domains, or give you a completely new alter ego which you have always wanted to live out and control. It gives the ultimate freedom and control over how you wish to be perceived and treated.

Something else I have noticed in my time on MMORPGs is the amount of respect and control you have over other avatars. You seem to carry some type of aura depending on how you look and how you act. Clearly since nobody can see the real person behind the avatar, they don’t know what you actually look like or how you act in certain situations. It is therefore possible to act anyway you wish.

An example of this is World of Warcraft. This game probably has the most online users at this point in time, with blizzard (the company running the game) claiming 10 million active users. I myself used to play this game, and would otherwise be using it to explore the concept of avatars, would it not be for that fact that it’s now broken on my computer :( But from what i was saying earlier, the better your avatar looks and acts, the more socially respected it will become between other players. I remember starting out at lvl 1 in the game. As I progressed to lvl 10, 20, 30 and upwards, it was a constant struggle to gain respect from other players. Once at lvl 70, the tables turn and people start to take notice of your character, start to have better conversations with other members and so on. It’s a very odd hierarchical system.

So time to research where I will be doing my online avataring!

Identity

This term our module is on identities. We have been given the brief to make a 3D avatar. This should be based upon what we understand of self identity, how media and technology can have an impact on your identity (such as online environments like second life) and also even corporate identities (such as how a business' would like to project themselves to others). We were also given a second brief to create an interactive box. This box must contain 5 different interactive objects that collectively tell a story about who I am. We were asked to do this so we can explore and reflect on the concept self and professional identity. To understand all of this, I will first have start at the beginning

avatar examples


What is identity?

Simply put, it is a representation that a person holds about him or herself. In the context of others, it is how we are perceived.

“A sense of Identity stems from the human ability from self –reflexivity or viewing oneself from the perspective of the other.”

George Herbert Mead- meadian symbolic interactionism


We can understand our own identity by trying to see ourselves though the eyes of others. How we are perceived by others determines what our actually identity is. Whether this is what we want it to be or not, we have no way of changing an individual’s own perceptions. Visual symbolic clues can also help build our identity. An example: a man often wears red clothing. Red is known to be a warm and strong colour which has often been associated with many meanings such as anger, confidence and passion etc. We could therefore make the assumption that because of his choice in red clothing, he has an angry temperament.
Identity is also affected by consumer culture. Social norms can impact how we want to be perceived and how we change our identities to conform. So do we know who we are? And what we want? We must do if we are to know how to change our identity.

Well that’s enough pondering about identity for now.