For this assignment, Tom Wickham, Fran Pugh and myself will be looking at how Joanna Lumley's backing of the Gurkha justice campaign is a form of 'media activism'.
Help(s/d) the evolution of an independent and participatory media;
The Gurkha justice campaign was set-up to provide all Gurkha veterans who served the British army before 1997 the right to settle in Britain. Joanna Lumley became the public face of the campaign in 2008 and brought high public attention to the campaign.
She offered a no holds barred way of fighting for the issue by pushing it into government and held a march with members from all political parties and including Gurkhas from Parliament square to Downing street with a petition signed by 250,000 people. She offered a face and leadership to the campaign that would not lie down and take it, she would fight no matter what and bring the ugly truths to the public's attention by stunts such as her following of Phil Woolas around the BBC Westminster offices until he stopped and held an impromptu press conference which could be seen as "Ms Lumley appearing to be leading the government a merry dance on the issue." - BBC News
This campaign united media attention from all angles because of her forceful approach and no fear of humiliating the government.
Guardian.co.uk has an article stating: “What's unusual about this campaign is that it is supported by newspapers – such as the Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph – that are not normally in favour of relaxing rules on immigration.”
Newspapers reportings of her actions and high public interest in the campaign meant that it trended on news sites and twitter. The campaign's official twitter page allowed for people interested in the campaign to be updated directly with all developments as the campaign progressed, and videos posted to the campaign's official YouTube. The youTube profile allows for uncensored personal messages directly from Joanna herself and help to rally-up support for the campaign.
Friday, 12 February 2010
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Critical Writing Essay
Contemporary media offer unprecedented opportunities for a variety of content-producers. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this development?
The internet is a platform which in recent years has seen a growth in multimedia content being produced, not just by professionals, but also by amateurs. People who perhaps have never made anything like music or video before. There are expanding opportunities, but it’s not just the internet which is a platform for content production, there is a fast developing adoption of mobile technologies which allow for new ways to produce and distribute content to reach growing audiences. The main underlying reason behind the growth of content produced on, and for contemporary media platforms is the expansion and evolution of new technologies that are accessible and affordable, which allow any user with basic digital literacy skills to participate in creative ways of self-expression at a low cost.
There has been an eruption on a vast scale of new forms of creative content, due largely to advancements in technology. First of all the introduction of broadband high-speed internet connections which half of the populations of Europe, Americas, Asia etc. have access to, that can handle large sized files like video and audio content.
Typical content that you would come to expect being produced include video, audio, blogs, games, applications, social networking profiles, photographs and images, creative writing and anything that can take advantage of the platform it is on.
The internet as a platform for distributing and hosting media content has the potential of content producers being able to reach very large audiences over a large geographical area, and they incur very low costs.
Secondly, the technology to produce this content has become widely available and due to affordable prices, is very accessible by the public. Individuals have available access to a computer in developed countries, there are cheap recording devices, storage space is ever dropping in price, and affordable editing software has made it possible for individuals and bands to create and distribute their music and other works without the high costs of professional equipment or complexities of a ‘middle man’ between the producer’s content and distribution to the consumer.
These factors are helping individuals create projects straight from their bedroom. In October 2006, a woman named Stevie Ryan became a star through the uploading of a video to YouTube. She has become one of the top 100 video producers on YouTube of all time and her videos have been viewed well over a million times. Her fame came without the help of powerful, big-name producers, and due to her independent production and publishing of the content, she managed to reach totals of 25,000 viewers a week, without having to spend very much (Palfrey & Gasser 2008).
The iPhone is a perfect example of opportunities open to individuals and content creation for mobile devices. There are 30% more web searches from iPhones over rival smart-phones (Sweney 2009) showing a large mobile web use from owners. For development of applications directly for the platform, the software development kit was released free, meaning that anyone with a computer and broadband internet could download it and start developing for the iPhone and iPod touch. This gave opportunity to individuals who had never developed for an apple product, and individuals who had never developed software before, to start learning something new and open up endless creative possibilities with the devices. Apple launched an online store for the sale of submitted applications which has allowed for developers creating applications from their bedrooms or garages to sell their content on a global scale, serving the best and direct way of developers getting their content out to the collective tens of millions of users. There have been applications submitted to the app store by large game companies down to people who don’t have a large budget and big market plan.
One negativity to this is the restrictions as to what Apple will allow for submission to the store. Many apps have been rejected because of content Apple deem unsuitable, or for other reasons. They run a controlled system censoring content which restricts some developers from releasing their product
A young Malaysian boy of 9 years old, Lim Ding Wen, caught the attention of world press when he created an application for the device. In less than two weeks it had more than 4000 downloads, which shows the advantage to iPhone development is that really anyone can do it (BBC News 2009).
Websites such as YouTube, Vimeo or MySpace amongst others have helped many launch themselves as artists and find fame.
But alongside the advantages that these sites have for users creating work to express themselves and their beliefs and opinions and share them with others, there are negatives in how a large amount of content producers are motivated by the possibility of financial gain, and others are motivated to produce content purely aiming for fame.
To find material that is of high quality and is something special that stands out, there is a large amount of poor quality amateur work to get past.
But despite this, there is a wealth of choice to be found in content offered online.
If we follow video as the content produced by an individual, television is one means of distributing this content to an audience, but it is a medium that falls into Adorno’s ideology that it’s not effective at reaching people’s interests. It is produced following what is popular in culture, there is minimal choice and its distribution via a non-interactive, one-to-many medium doesn’t allow for any user participation. Television broadcasters manufacture content to reach a large scale audience whilst attempting to cater for broad tastes.
John Fiske’s view (1989, p.24) supports distribution and creation of content over contemporary media, with reference to the quote: “Popular culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry.”
With mobile and online video opportunities, individuals are offered activity that goes beyond just consumption of content, they can use a multitude of technologies now and access and produce content themselves to suit their tastes and identity. Althusser’s ideology of interpellation allows us to see that the content a user is consuming will only be of use if it matches with their interpellated identity unconsciously. The media produced by individuals can connect to other people and be meaningful to them if it appeals to an assumed identity the user has adopted. The interpellation on an individual links them to a larger social grouping of others similarly interested in the same content.
There is diversity in the content available and advantages of being able to see other cultures and content suitable to your interests and tastes, although a disadvantage is that with the continual creation of more and more new content, there is beginning to be too much diversity, leading to an overload of information, and without viable resources to validate the information individuals consume, multiple perspectives may gain acceptance and cause social fragmentation (Palfrey & Gasser 2008).
Wikipedia is an example of an ongoing debate of quality as a source of information. Wikipedia and Wikis are a fantastic tool in multi-user authorship allowing different individuals to write/edit an article on a topic, collecting human knowledge digitally, although if one person writes a statement that can’t easily be verified, it will easily be accepted as the truth. A lot of young people, students and even businesses have come to rely on Wikipedia as a primary source of information, and it ranks among the top 12 most visited websites globally. The website has aroused concerns though regarding plagiarism and cheating, lack of credibility, slander and more.
Online collaboration does have some advantages. Virtual worlds can be created featuring a full operating economy and business structure, with users interacting simultaneously creating the experience.
Second Life is the biggest example of this working massive online community. The whole experience is created by the user, the game developer just offers the tools for the users to create their own virtual items such as tables, buildings, clothes, art. In this game users have an advantage of being able to be someone different, they are anonymous and can undertake any role, be it community leaders, game designers, entrepreneurs or DJs to name a few.
Digital creations and contemporary media is starting to focus around sharing. We are in a social and collaborative society and runs on the power of communities. The texts that are found on the web are not only shared by peers but are able to be manipulated. With access to technology and software, mixes and mash-ups have become common practice.
A lot of derivative works shared between peers consist of cut-ups, spoofs or parodies, machinima and fan fiction.
Sourcing for digital materials that can be mixed has allowed for digital content producers to develop and enhance their research skills. Even though these enhanced research skills and new forms of creativity are advantages, law plays a role.
There have been many court cases over the infringement of copyright, YouTube was sued by Viacom because users had uploaded clips of television shows to YouTube without permission, and the founders of thepiratebay.org have recently been caught in a legal battle with large media and film companies over the violation of copyright by users distribution of copyright material via BitTorrent.
There are still no clear legal issues surrounding digital content, which means that digital content producers are at risk for ongoing copyright liability.
Problems can arise from the creative re-use of copyrighted materials and the distribution via the common practice of illegal file-sharing. Which means that small individuals are constantly being targeted by the large corporations.
In conclusion the advantages for opportunities presented by contemporary media consist of public creation and contribution, wide range of views and perspectives able to be viewed by large audiences, accessibility to global content and an ever increasing list as new technologies arrive.
Disadvantages will always occur though through people’s misuse and defamation, constant regulation by law and appropriate bodies, and a constant reliability of online communication.
Word count: 1,655
Bibliography
BBC News, 2009. Nine-year-old writes iPhone code. BBC News.
Available from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7874291.stm [Accessed 24 March 2009]
Gauntlett, D., 2002. Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
Palfrey, J. and Gasser, U., 2008. Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives. USA: Basic Books.
Sweney, M., 2009. Apple iPhone creates surge in mobile internet use. The Guardian.
Available from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/19/google-uk-street-view-iphone [Accessed 24 March 2009]
Further Reading
Bennett, W.L., 2007. Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age. Massachusetts: Institute of Technology.
Available from:
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.001 [Accessed 21 March 2009]
Tyron, C., 2007. New Media Studies and the New Internet Cinema. Michigan: University of Michigan Library.
Available from:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=postid;view=text;rgn=main;idno=pid9999.0005.102 [Accessed 21 March 2009]
The internet is a platform which in recent years has seen a growth in multimedia content being produced, not just by professionals, but also by amateurs. People who perhaps have never made anything like music or video before. There are expanding opportunities, but it’s not just the internet which is a platform for content production, there is a fast developing adoption of mobile technologies which allow for new ways to produce and distribute content to reach growing audiences. The main underlying reason behind the growth of content produced on, and for contemporary media platforms is the expansion and evolution of new technologies that are accessible and affordable, which allow any user with basic digital literacy skills to participate in creative ways of self-expression at a low cost.
There has been an eruption on a vast scale of new forms of creative content, due largely to advancements in technology. First of all the introduction of broadband high-speed internet connections which half of the populations of Europe, Americas, Asia etc. have access to, that can handle large sized files like video and audio content.
Typical content that you would come to expect being produced include video, audio, blogs, games, applications, social networking profiles, photographs and images, creative writing and anything that can take advantage of the platform it is on.
The internet as a platform for distributing and hosting media content has the potential of content producers being able to reach very large audiences over a large geographical area, and they incur very low costs.
Secondly, the technology to produce this content has become widely available and due to affordable prices, is very accessible by the public. Individuals have available access to a computer in developed countries, there are cheap recording devices, storage space is ever dropping in price, and affordable editing software has made it possible for individuals and bands to create and distribute their music and other works without the high costs of professional equipment or complexities of a ‘middle man’ between the producer’s content and distribution to the consumer.
These factors are helping individuals create projects straight from their bedroom. In October 2006, a woman named Stevie Ryan became a star through the uploading of a video to YouTube. She has become one of the top 100 video producers on YouTube of all time and her videos have been viewed well over a million times. Her fame came without the help of powerful, big-name producers, and due to her independent production and publishing of the content, she managed to reach totals of 25,000 viewers a week, without having to spend very much (Palfrey & Gasser 2008).
The iPhone is a perfect example of opportunities open to individuals and content creation for mobile devices. There are 30% more web searches from iPhones over rival smart-phones (Sweney 2009) showing a large mobile web use from owners. For development of applications directly for the platform, the software development kit was released free, meaning that anyone with a computer and broadband internet could download it and start developing for the iPhone and iPod touch. This gave opportunity to individuals who had never developed for an apple product, and individuals who had never developed software before, to start learning something new and open up endless creative possibilities with the devices. Apple launched an online store for the sale of submitted applications which has allowed for developers creating applications from their bedrooms or garages to sell their content on a global scale, serving the best and direct way of developers getting their content out to the collective tens of millions of users. There have been applications submitted to the app store by large game companies down to people who don’t have a large budget and big market plan.
One negativity to this is the restrictions as to what Apple will allow for submission to the store. Many apps have been rejected because of content Apple deem unsuitable, or for other reasons. They run a controlled system censoring content which restricts some developers from releasing their product
A young Malaysian boy of 9 years old, Lim Ding Wen, caught the attention of world press when he created an application for the device. In less than two weeks it had more than 4000 downloads, which shows the advantage to iPhone development is that really anyone can do it (BBC News 2009).
Websites such as YouTube, Vimeo or MySpace amongst others have helped many launch themselves as artists and find fame.
But alongside the advantages that these sites have for users creating work to express themselves and their beliefs and opinions and share them with others, there are negatives in how a large amount of content producers are motivated by the possibility of financial gain, and others are motivated to produce content purely aiming for fame.
To find material that is of high quality and is something special that stands out, there is a large amount of poor quality amateur work to get past.
But despite this, there is a wealth of choice to be found in content offered online.
If we follow video as the content produced by an individual, television is one means of distributing this content to an audience, but it is a medium that falls into Adorno’s ideology that it’s not effective at reaching people’s interests. It is produced following what is popular in culture, there is minimal choice and its distribution via a non-interactive, one-to-many medium doesn’t allow for any user participation. Television broadcasters manufacture content to reach a large scale audience whilst attempting to cater for broad tastes.
John Fiske’s view (1989, p.24) supports distribution and creation of content over contemporary media, with reference to the quote: “Popular culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry.”
With mobile and online video opportunities, individuals are offered activity that goes beyond just consumption of content, they can use a multitude of technologies now and access and produce content themselves to suit their tastes and identity. Althusser’s ideology of interpellation allows us to see that the content a user is consuming will only be of use if it matches with their interpellated identity unconsciously. The media produced by individuals can connect to other people and be meaningful to them if it appeals to an assumed identity the user has adopted. The interpellation on an individual links them to a larger social grouping of others similarly interested in the same content.
There is diversity in the content available and advantages of being able to see other cultures and content suitable to your interests and tastes, although a disadvantage is that with the continual creation of more and more new content, there is beginning to be too much diversity, leading to an overload of information, and without viable resources to validate the information individuals consume, multiple perspectives may gain acceptance and cause social fragmentation (Palfrey & Gasser 2008).
Wikipedia is an example of an ongoing debate of quality as a source of information. Wikipedia and Wikis are a fantastic tool in multi-user authorship allowing different individuals to write/edit an article on a topic, collecting human knowledge digitally, although if one person writes a statement that can’t easily be verified, it will easily be accepted as the truth. A lot of young people, students and even businesses have come to rely on Wikipedia as a primary source of information, and it ranks among the top 12 most visited websites globally. The website has aroused concerns though regarding plagiarism and cheating, lack of credibility, slander and more.
Online collaboration does have some advantages. Virtual worlds can be created featuring a full operating economy and business structure, with users interacting simultaneously creating the experience.
Second Life is the biggest example of this working massive online community. The whole experience is created by the user, the game developer just offers the tools for the users to create their own virtual items such as tables, buildings, clothes, art. In this game users have an advantage of being able to be someone different, they are anonymous and can undertake any role, be it community leaders, game designers, entrepreneurs or DJs to name a few.
Digital creations and contemporary media is starting to focus around sharing. We are in a social and collaborative society and runs on the power of communities. The texts that are found on the web are not only shared by peers but are able to be manipulated. With access to technology and software, mixes and mash-ups have become common practice.
A lot of derivative works shared between peers consist of cut-ups, spoofs or parodies, machinima and fan fiction.
Sourcing for digital materials that can be mixed has allowed for digital content producers to develop and enhance their research skills. Even though these enhanced research skills and new forms of creativity are advantages, law plays a role.
There have been many court cases over the infringement of copyright, YouTube was sued by Viacom because users had uploaded clips of television shows to YouTube without permission, and the founders of thepiratebay.org have recently been caught in a legal battle with large media and film companies over the violation of copyright by users distribution of copyright material via BitTorrent.
There are still no clear legal issues surrounding digital content, which means that digital content producers are at risk for ongoing copyright liability.
Problems can arise from the creative re-use of copyrighted materials and the distribution via the common practice of illegal file-sharing. Which means that small individuals are constantly being targeted by the large corporations.
In conclusion the advantages for opportunities presented by contemporary media consist of public creation and contribution, wide range of views and perspectives able to be viewed by large audiences, accessibility to global content and an ever increasing list as new technologies arrive.
Disadvantages will always occur though through people’s misuse and defamation, constant regulation by law and appropriate bodies, and a constant reliability of online communication.
Word count: 1,655
Bibliography
BBC News, 2009. Nine-year-old writes iPhone code. BBC News.
Available from:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7874291.stm [Accessed 24 March 2009]
Gauntlett, D., 2002. Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
Palfrey, J. and Gasser, U., 2008. Born Digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives. USA: Basic Books.
Sweney, M., 2009. Apple iPhone creates surge in mobile internet use. The Guardian.
Available from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/19/google-uk-street-view-iphone [Accessed 24 March 2009]
Further Reading
Bennett, W.L., 2007. Changing Citizenship in the Digital Age. Massachusetts: Institute of Technology.
Available from:
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dmal.9780262524827.001 [Accessed 21 March 2009]
Tyron, C., 2007. New Media Studies and the New Internet Cinema. Michigan: University of Michigan Library.
Available from:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=postid;view=text;rgn=main;idno=pid9999.0005.102 [Accessed 21 March 2009]
Evaluation
This overall project has come together fairly well. I feel that I’ve created a product that meets with my target audience but will also transfer into one or two other audiences also.
Originally I had aimed to create an animation that was simple in visual style and movement that focused mainly on one character. My intended target audience was people interested in cult retro television shows, mostly cop shows, probably aged in their early twenties or people that grew up in that period (early to late 1970s), aged in their mid 40s to late 50s, people who listened to funk and soul music or who have an interest in blaxploitation styled cinema, and It has also turned out to be suitable for teenagers, young to older, because of the level of difficulty of the game, which makes it less suitable for younger children.
It is a simple style of animation which caters for a universal audience, and follows influence from the animation featured in the Wario Ware Smooth Moves video game.
I felt that the animation featured in that game was successful in expressing movement from minimal animation, using still images with parallax sliding and changes in facial expression. I wanted to include that uncomplicated movement in the movement of my minor characters. My main character however i felt needed to stand out, so i used keyframe and posing animation to create a more fluid movement with him at times, but kept with the same visual style of still images at other cuts.
With the visual aesthetics, I aimed to have colours suitable for the time period in which it’s set, but solid to keep a simple cartoony style.
For my soundtrack, I created an instrumental funk track in Garageband from the apple loops that took influence from 1970s funk and disco. After researching, I developed influence from artists such as Kc & the sunshine band, Jackson 5, Charles Earland, Edwin Starr, and the Commodores to name a few..
This style of music for my soundtrack also supported the style of animation whilst remaining true to the animation’s setting and intended time period and following the influences of 70s television and cinema, associated with the interests of my target audience.
I decided to incorporate a dancing game to the animation to add interactivity to my narrative. It fitted with who the main character was... A 70s streetwise crime-fighter who loves disco. This is what created a more universal target audience. The idea of a dancing game would incorporate younger gamers who like flash games. I tried to keep it simple with the only objective being to keep the coolness bar up.
I came across a few issues along the way. My first issue I encountered was due to the construction of my character and trying to rig up an IK bone structure to animate him, but it kept falling apart, so I stuck with key-framing the character into poses.
My other issues centred around the construction of my game actionscript code. I couldn’t work out what was going wrong when leaving main game into consequence screens, so I replaced the code with URL requests to link to new HTML pages.
Time was eventually against me, so I had to cut back on a few areas, but otherwise this end product works successfully, and is visually quite appealing.
Originally I had aimed to create an animation that was simple in visual style and movement that focused mainly on one character. My intended target audience was people interested in cult retro television shows, mostly cop shows, probably aged in their early twenties or people that grew up in that period (early to late 1970s), aged in their mid 40s to late 50s, people who listened to funk and soul music or who have an interest in blaxploitation styled cinema, and It has also turned out to be suitable for teenagers, young to older, because of the level of difficulty of the game, which makes it less suitable for younger children.
It is a simple style of animation which caters for a universal audience, and follows influence from the animation featured in the Wario Ware Smooth Moves video game.
I felt that the animation featured in that game was successful in expressing movement from minimal animation, using still images with parallax sliding and changes in facial expression. I wanted to include that uncomplicated movement in the movement of my minor characters. My main character however i felt needed to stand out, so i used keyframe and posing animation to create a more fluid movement with him at times, but kept with the same visual style of still images at other cuts.
With the visual aesthetics, I aimed to have colours suitable for the time period in which it’s set, but solid to keep a simple cartoony style.
For my soundtrack, I created an instrumental funk track in Garageband from the apple loops that took influence from 1970s funk and disco. After researching, I developed influence from artists such as Kc & the sunshine band, Jackson 5, Charles Earland, Edwin Starr, and the Commodores to name a few..
This style of music for my soundtrack also supported the style of animation whilst remaining true to the animation’s setting and intended time period and following the influences of 70s television and cinema, associated with the interests of my target audience.
I decided to incorporate a dancing game to the animation to add interactivity to my narrative. It fitted with who the main character was... A 70s streetwise crime-fighter who loves disco. This is what created a more universal target audience. The idea of a dancing game would incorporate younger gamers who like flash games. I tried to keep it simple with the only objective being to keep the coolness bar up.
I came across a few issues along the way. My first issue I encountered was due to the construction of my character and trying to rig up an IK bone structure to animate him, but it kept falling apart, so I stuck with key-framing the character into poses.
My other issues centred around the construction of my game actionscript code. I couldn’t work out what was going wrong when leaving main game into consequence screens, so I replaced the code with URL requests to link to new HTML pages.
Time was eventually against me, so I had to cut back on a few areas, but otherwise this end product works successfully, and is visually quite appealing.
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Some mint blaxploitation research
Haha excuse or not, i've been trawling youTube for some reference material of blaxploitation movie opening credits.
They originate from the 1970s and feature ace funk soundtracks so i felt that they were worth taking a look at in helping me with my animation.
I love the retro quality and pure nostalgic factor to them, plus their cheesiness works well on so many levels.
There's something pretty cool about the mixture of funk music and black dudes doing kung-fu.
First up is the intro credits for a movie called black belt jones
Shaft in Africa
Foxy Brown
Now i know this isn't blaxploitation, but Starsky & Hutch fits my theme and target audience perfectly.
Which brings me to a great clip which influenced me and gave me some ideas originally...
They originate from the 1970s and feature ace funk soundtracks so i felt that they were worth taking a look at in helping me with my animation.
I love the retro quality and pure nostalgic factor to them, plus their cheesiness works well on so many levels.
There's something pretty cool about the mixture of funk music and black dudes doing kung-fu.
First up is the intro credits for a movie called black belt jones
Shaft in Africa
Foxy Brown
Now i know this isn't blaxploitation, but Starsky & Hutch fits my theme and target audience perfectly.
Which brings me to a great clip which influenced me and gave me some ideas originally...
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Character completed
My character, now given the name of Jiggy Square, has been completed and is ready for animation now. It is drawn in separate sections (head, body, upper arms, lower arms, upper legs, lower legs, feet) so there will be the ability for some dynamic keyframe animation..
All that's left though is to draw sets of hands and mouths.
All that's left though is to draw sets of hands and mouths.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Character production...
Here's a screen-shot of the creation of my main character in flash.
He is drawn in separate elements on separate layers (arm, lower arm, body, leg, lower leg, feet, head..) so are all posable and can be animated easily.
One drawing of him in this image, i have experimented with the bone tool to see if it is easier to animate my character using an IK bone structure or just by positioning the elements and keyframe the animation.
He is drawn in separate elements on separate layers (arm, lower arm, body, leg, lower leg, feet, head..) so are all posable and can be animated easily.
One drawing of him in this image, i have experimented with the bone tool to see if it is easier to animate my character using an IK bone structure or just by positioning the elements and keyframe the animation.
Animation in relation to audience
Presto
Pixar (2008)
This animation appeals to an audience of both children and adults as usually all pixar films do.
The cute loveable character of the rabbit appeals to children of a young age and will find the slapstick humour quite funny and will keep them entertained.
Adults will also enjoy this because of the slapstick humour involved but also because the style of the introduction is styled upon early Disney cartoons of the 1950s-1960s and will make them reminisce of when they were children watching similar cartoons of slapstick values, featuring appealing characters.
The CGI style of the animation is typical of a modern animated feature, and is smoothly rendered and pleasing to the eye. It features dim lighting as it’s set in a theatre and spotlights focus upon the action of the main characters. It is fast paced and full of action, keeping everyone entertained.
Love Hina
Xebec (2000)
The suitable audience for this animation is teenagers aged from mid to late teens, most likely male. This is because it deals with subjects of university entrance exams, dating and a male living in an all-girls dormitory, and all are shown in a comedic style.
It features a lot of innuendoes and quick rude humour which again would not be suitable for people younger than mid-teens.
It is made in the style of Anime as it is of Japanese origins, so more of the slapstick humour and witty lines are more understandable by a Japanese audience and their culture, but Otaku who follow Anime and Japanese culture closely will be able to understand.
It is very eccentric, full of colour and features a range of varied characters all with funny characteristics.
Robot Chicken
Williams Street Studios / Ghost Planet Industries (2005)
Robot Chicken - Six Flags Guy from SpeCT on Vimeo.
This is a stop-motion animated series shown on the Adult Swim channel. It features short comic sketches acted out by animated dolls. These comic sketches usually mock popular culture and references toys, tv shows, films and popular trends. Topics that would be found funny by teenagers in their late teens to young adults.
The use of dolls who have cut-out mouths are posable in positions and can move in quite comic ways. This gives the animation a visual style not found in any other animation out there.
It is original and gives a suitable amount of entertainment whilst remaining short (episode duration of about 10-15 mins).
Babar
Nelvana/The Clifford Ross Company (1989)
This cartoon is aimed at a very young audience. It follows simple styled characters following the adventures and challenges undergone by Babar the young elephant. It is colourful and the stories contain morals for growing and developing children.
Pixar (2008)
This animation appeals to an audience of both children and adults as usually all pixar films do.
The cute loveable character of the rabbit appeals to children of a young age and will find the slapstick humour quite funny and will keep them entertained.
Adults will also enjoy this because of the slapstick humour involved but also because the style of the introduction is styled upon early Disney cartoons of the 1950s-1960s and will make them reminisce of when they were children watching similar cartoons of slapstick values, featuring appealing characters.
The CGI style of the animation is typical of a modern animated feature, and is smoothly rendered and pleasing to the eye. It features dim lighting as it’s set in a theatre and spotlights focus upon the action of the main characters. It is fast paced and full of action, keeping everyone entertained.
Love Hina
Xebec (2000)
The suitable audience for this animation is teenagers aged from mid to late teens, most likely male. This is because it deals with subjects of university entrance exams, dating and a male living in an all-girls dormitory, and all are shown in a comedic style.
It features a lot of innuendoes and quick rude humour which again would not be suitable for people younger than mid-teens.
It is made in the style of Anime as it is of Japanese origins, so more of the slapstick humour and witty lines are more understandable by a Japanese audience and their culture, but Otaku who follow Anime and Japanese culture closely will be able to understand.
It is very eccentric, full of colour and features a range of varied characters all with funny characteristics.
Robot Chicken
Williams Street Studios / Ghost Planet Industries (2005)
Robot Chicken - Six Flags Guy from SpeCT on Vimeo.
This is a stop-motion animated series shown on the Adult Swim channel. It features short comic sketches acted out by animated dolls. These comic sketches usually mock popular culture and references toys, tv shows, films and popular trends. Topics that would be found funny by teenagers in their late teens to young adults.
The use of dolls who have cut-out mouths are posable in positions and can move in quite comic ways. This gives the animation a visual style not found in any other animation out there.
It is original and gives a suitable amount of entertainment whilst remaining short (episode duration of about 10-15 mins).
Babar
Nelvana/The Clifford Ross Company (1989)
This cartoon is aimed at a very young audience. It follows simple styled characters following the adventures and challenges undergone by Babar the young elephant. It is colourful and the stories contain morals for growing and developing children.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Bust a move!
It's one day project time again. Today I have the task of developing a character/style sheet for a key ‘character’ in my proposed animation idea.
I've been going through some ideas recently but the main one that's stuck in my head is an idea of a 70's disco guy who busts moves on people's asses for disrupting the groove. Basically he resolves situations and fights crime.
It'll lead through a variety of choices in the narrative of whether you groove to resolve or to chill and let things flow. Depending on the situation this could have good or bad consequences.
It'll lead to a boss mode at the end of the story where you have to do some dance dance revolution style button pressing in a game to beat the boss level and finish the story.
So for the one day project, here's my initial character idea showing the key character in front, 3rd, side and back facing positions. He is currently unnamed at the moment, so if anyone can help me out with some ideas for a name, post a comment or email me.
Character Bio:
White
Early 30s
Single
6'5" (-6" for platforms)
Favourite music:
KC & the sunshine band
Jackson 5
Bill Withers
(Anything with funky bass)
Favourite films:
Starsky & Hutch
Charlie's Angels
I've been going through some ideas recently but the main one that's stuck in my head is an idea of a 70's disco guy who busts moves on people's asses for disrupting the groove. Basically he resolves situations and fights crime.
It'll lead through a variety of choices in the narrative of whether you groove to resolve or to chill and let things flow. Depending on the situation this could have good or bad consequences.
It'll lead to a boss mode at the end of the story where you have to do some dance dance revolution style button pressing in a game to beat the boss level and finish the story.
So for the one day project, here's my initial character idea showing the key character in front, 3rd, side and back facing positions. He is currently unnamed at the moment, so if anyone can help me out with some ideas for a name, post a comment or email me.
Character Bio:
White
Early 30s
Single
6'5" (-6" for platforms)
Favourite music:
KC & the sunshine band
Jackson 5
Bill Withers
(Anything with funky bass)
Favourite films:
Starsky & Hutch
Charlie's Angels
Friday, 20 February 2009
Let's hoist the jolly roger and set sail in Piracy
I have recently become very engrossed with following the ongoing trial in Stockholm, Sweden against the website thepiratebay.org which is probably going to be one of the most important cases ever witnessed by the file-sharing community.
The basis of the case is that the major media corporations: Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal are suing four of the people behind The Pirate Bay for "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws".
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is leading the charges in the trial which started on February 16th and is scheduled to finish on March 4th and is being broadcast live on Swedish public radio.
34 cases of copyright infringements are listed, 21 of which are related to music files, 9 to movies, and 4 to games. On the second day of the trial 50% of the charges were dropped.
The pirate Bay has received a huge level of support that has taken everyone by surprise. They are the biggest BitTorrent site in the world. Hackers attacked several of the IFPIs websites today and there are people outside the court translating the case for others, others have released a documentary, whilst many others have been following the events and every development online and posting words of support on blogs and forums.
A news report of the website hacks can be found here.
To read an overview of the trial, its history and to get an understanding about the whole case, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial.
Or follow on the Pirate Bay's Spectrial website trial.thepiratebay.org
This case provokes thought and shows how American media corporations and government feel that they can police the internet and control everyone's activities on it. These US businesses are suing over what is illegal in America but in their ignorance have not taken into account that it is not illegal in Swedish law.
What I find quite interesting is that in Sweden, there is a political party called The Pirate Party, who support people opposed to current ideas about intellectual property. They believe in freely sharing information and culture, although are not involved in illegal activities. The party has 9,000 members and its youth organisation has just over 4,500 and they are currently in the process of preparing for the 2009 European Parliament elections.
Some noteworthy documentaries to check out on the subject of copyright and piracy are Steal this film and Good Copy Bad Copy. Both are free and legal to download and distribute and I thoroughly recommend watching them.
some interesting links:
Torrent Freak: torrentfreak.com
Timeline of file-sharing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_file_sharing
Piratbyran: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piratbyrån
The Swedish Pirate Party: http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party
Steal this film: http://stealthisfilm.com/trial/
Good Copy Bad Copy: http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/
The basis of the case is that the major media corporations: Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal are suing four of the people behind The Pirate Bay for "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws".
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is leading the charges in the trial which started on February 16th and is scheduled to finish on March 4th and is being broadcast live on Swedish public radio.
34 cases of copyright infringements are listed, 21 of which are related to music files, 9 to movies, and 4 to games. On the second day of the trial 50% of the charges were dropped.
The pirate Bay has received a huge level of support that has taken everyone by surprise. They are the biggest BitTorrent site in the world. Hackers attacked several of the IFPIs websites today and there are people outside the court translating the case for others, others have released a documentary, whilst many others have been following the events and every development online and posting words of support on blogs and forums.
A news report of the website hacks can be found here.
To read an overview of the trial, its history and to get an understanding about the whole case, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial.
Or follow on the Pirate Bay's Spectrial website trial.thepiratebay.org
This case provokes thought and shows how American media corporations and government feel that they can police the internet and control everyone's activities on it. These US businesses are suing over what is illegal in America but in their ignorance have not taken into account that it is not illegal in Swedish law.
What I find quite interesting is that in Sweden, there is a political party called The Pirate Party, who support people opposed to current ideas about intellectual property. They believe in freely sharing information and culture, although are not involved in illegal activities. The party has 9,000 members and its youth organisation has just over 4,500 and they are currently in the process of preparing for the 2009 European Parliament elections.
Some noteworthy documentaries to check out on the subject of copyright and piracy are Steal this film and Good Copy Bad Copy. Both are free and legal to download and distribute and I thoroughly recommend watching them.
some interesting links:
Torrent Freak: torrentfreak.com
Timeline of file-sharing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_file_sharing
Piratbyran: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piratbyrån
The Swedish Pirate Party: http://www.piratpartiet.se/international/english
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party
Steal this film: http://stealthisfilm.com/trial/
Good Copy Bad Copy: http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Webbernet Stumblings of interestingness
Whoo. New post. First in a while.
Been wasting some time tonight browsing around sites of interest and random webbynet-ness.
Although i have come across it before, tonight i have been hooked on the wonders of Vimeo. I love that it is a gold mine for creative wonders and inspiration for dull, uninspired individuals like myself. There are so many fantastic videos to be found on there. Check it out.
Oh and along with my random weebbynet browsing i have come across a new music artist i quite like. Coeur de pirate produces such aural satisfication from the beautiful piano melody and aurgasmic sound of French singing.
Again, check it out :-)
Been wasting some time tonight browsing around sites of interest and random webbynet-ness.
Although i have come across it before, tonight i have been hooked on the wonders of Vimeo. I love that it is a gold mine for creative wonders and inspiration for dull, uninspired individuals like myself. There are so many fantastic videos to be found on there. Check it out.
Oh and along with my random weebbynet browsing i have come across a new music artist i quite like. Coeur de pirate produces such aural satisfication from the beautiful piano melody and aurgasmic sound of French singing.
Again, check it out :-)
Monday, 1 December 2008
BAIMP Narratives Out of class assignment
"According to your interpretations, break the narrative of each image apart into ‘nodes’ of action/events and come up with alternative ‘interactive’ variations to this narrative of the group's own choosing. How would you be able to play with or tell an alternative story interactively?"
Lil' Red Rides da Hood
A late post but this marks the start of my Narratives unit work and our group project based on a fairy-tale.
Exactly a week ago today i met with the other members of my group to start discussions on ideas for our project on exactly the same seats in The Loft as we are this minute.
Anyhoo... We got discussing through a variety of ideas and thinking what fairytale we could adapt into our interactive narrative.
We all agreed upon Little Red Riding Hood.
Exactly a week ago today i met with the other members of my group to start discussions on ideas for our project on exactly the same seats in The Loft as we are this minute.
Anyhoo... We got discussing through a variety of ideas and thinking what fairytale we could adapt into our interactive narrative.
We all agreed upon Little Red Riding Hood.
Saturday, 22 November 2008
AAAAARGHHH
Right, this should have been added on here on Wednesday....
This is my contextual analysis essay:
Matthew Barnstable BAIMP1 Images 2008 Contextual Analysis
For the images unit I have looked at the way technology has integrated with human operations and evolved through discoveries in advanced communication techniques and to assist general human functions. Through looking at these topics, I have created a series of images that portray a historical evolution and predictive ramifications on nature and ourselves through our use of technology.
We perceive images as a representation of reality that reflect the likeness of the object featured within. They are an optical counterpart produced unnaturally by human devices, advancing in simulation by the progression of technology.
Technology is the concept of our knowledge to create and use tools to better adapt to our environment and aid in the completion of tasks, and perhaps our intervention with nature. Nature and technology are therefore two conflicting elements within our ever developing and evolving society.
The definition of technology has evolved by way of the creation of mechanical items.
In the nineteenth century, technology referred simply to the practical arts used to create physical products, everything from wagon wheels and cotton cloth to telephones and steam engines. In the twentieth century, the meaning of the word was expanded to include everything involved in satisfying human material needs and wants, from factories and the organisations that operate them to scientific knowledge, engineering know-how, and technological products themselves. (National Academy of Engineering, 2008)
As it states, technology satisfies human material needs and wants. Civilisation's growing dependancy on technology is a cause for concern. In our continuing quest to further enhance the speed, efficiency and reliability of our technical equipment and products, we are fast consuming the Earth’s natural resources, damaging ours, and Earth’s creature’s inhibitable environment.
According to Moore’s law (a trend observed by Gordon E. Moore, cofounder of Intel), the number of electrical transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. This observation was first made by Moore in a 1965 paper, and after almost half a century the observation shows the trend doesn’t appear to be slowing.
Moore said “Integrated electronics will make electronic techniques more generally available throughout all of society, performing many functions that presently are done inadequately by other techniques or not done at all.”
Society having access to and use of electronic equipment means that there is a great demand for production and supply. With the constant evolution of technological products for our entertainment and productivity, we are psychologically besieged by media and advertising to keep our needs satisfied. We upgrade our technical products with new models, constantly feeling the need to upgrade every time there is a quicker or easier way of performing tasks introduced. This has turned our society into a disposable culture, constantly discarding our outdated, unfashionable and unwanted equipment, and then introducing newer versions slightly superior in effectiveness. The only way to dispose of them is by returning them to the realms of our natural environment, traditionally finding a location uninhabited by humans to dump our waste, further destroying our habitat that has already been damaged by obtaining materials to fabricate the products.
Image 1, It came from the deep, focuses on this event of disposing consumed products upon our natural environment. It uses an imaginary concept of our discarded items gaining life, taking human form and returning to frighten us all into stopping our wasteful behaviour.
The series of images I have created keep to a consistent visual style trying to be realistic, and follow a narrative throughout the embedded text flowing from the first image through to the last. The images focus on the ideology of technology’s assistance in our day-to-day lives and living habits, mainly in tasks such as transportation and navigation within our surrounding environments. They look at how technical equipment integrates with the world around us and our lifestyles, and try to communicate the messages clearly through the content.
It came from the deep doesn’t focus on technology’s integration with society like the other images, it sets the narrative and the main message behind the series, the message of the impending chaos due to ensue from the constant updates in technology we frequently adopt into our lifestyles and disregard for our outdated items.
In a way, by using this image as my start, the message becomes less vague and the narrative flows logically. By starting at the end we know what to expect, to which we can then work backwards finding the cause of the encounter.
The first image has been given a dark shade and saturation to give the connotation of a desolate and unhappy feeling. The shipwreck at the side of the image adds to the dead and cold feel of the image, and evokes the thought that there is nothing good or cheerful about the content. The dull, gloomy feel interpreted by the viewer from the cold colours used can also construct the idea that it is early morning on a cold autumn or winter’s day, dawn is breaking on an unhappy event - Nature is regurgitating our waste to seek revenge.
Inspiration for this image came from looking through photographs that I had taken in an attempt to find a suitable image for nature. The beach, rocks and calm sea allowed me to imagine something creeping out, in a monsterly behaviour. This thought of a monster made out of discarded electrical products, creeping up out of the ocean like a swamp creature in a 1950s B-movie gave way to the thought of a flowing paragraph throughout the images: It came from the deep, travelling through the lens, interacting with surroundings, evolving technology, on a journey travelling from one place to another.
I had the idea of what to say in this serialised sentence, but needed to create images based upon this idea and to then further shape the words used.
The second image Travelling through the lens was created after reading this quote:
The rapid development or contemporary technology opens up the possibility that, in the next millennium, nature will be less and less constitutional, as it is more and more modified, in the increasingly technologically sophisticated world of the future. (Holmes Rolsten III, 1998)
My image challenges the basis of his statement by taking current global fears of resource consumption and setting my image in the very same time period but showing how the world may not be as technological as everyone predicts now.
Travelling through the lens continues the theme of water and the sea from the first image and as the title suggests, symbolises looking back in retrospection. The woman looks out across the sea at a sun setting behind the land of what used to be. Before we used up Earth’s natural resources and were dragged back to the foundations of civilisation. How we used to travel symbolised by the ferry and plane, and how she now uses a row boat again to travel around in the future without fuel or man-made synthetic materials.
Throughout the images, there are certain elements that capture the viewer’s gaze. The production principles lectures taught that colour and their associated moods play a part, but compositional elements such as lines, depth, value, and picture area assist in guiding the eye to certain focal points of interest in the image.
A design that has been composed well, leaves the viewer satisfied, urging them to view more.
In the composition production theory lecture, learning about the rule of thirds helped when designing evolving technology, to create a visually appealing composition to the image and to create a suitable layout to position the characters.
Designing the image around this concept keeps the layout clean and simple.
Lines play a very important part within an image, guiding the viewer’s gaze across the compositional features and can control how a viewer studies the image.
Interacting with surroundings features good use of lines to direct the viewer’s gaze from the bottom of the image into the middle of the crowd on the lower third proportion. There are then curved lines following the rooftops of the buildings and along the wall in the bottom left corner to the hand holding the phone.
Also with this image, studying and experimenting with typography after the typography lecture allowed me to decide upon a suitable font style that allowed me to re-create the text found on Google maps.
The requirement of text within the images helped in some respects with the development of ideas, as it allowed the integration of the serialised sentence within the images, creatively using the distort, perspective and scale tools featured in photoshop to merge the text into being an element within the design.
Over the unit, there were initial difficulties conceiving a consistent theme or idea throughout to feature within the images. This obstacle was overcome eventually through the idea focused around the integrated text and a set of image ideas were produced. There was then further difficulty choosing how to best visually represent the serialised sentence segments.
The overall theme and image ideas turned out extremely well, however due to novice knowledge and careless use of perspective and distort tools, text wasn’t merged within the images quite as had been intended.
Given an opportunity to do this unit again, the same theme would be kept and some varied images would be produced, perhaps even a longer series of images.
Word count: 1,565
My project website can be found at: http://www.freewebs.com/barnopolis89/index.html
This is my contextual analysis essay:
Matthew Barnstable BAIMP1 Images 2008 Contextual Analysis
For the images unit I have looked at the way technology has integrated with human operations and evolved through discoveries in advanced communication techniques and to assist general human functions. Through looking at these topics, I have created a series of images that portray a historical evolution and predictive ramifications on nature and ourselves through our use of technology.
We perceive images as a representation of reality that reflect the likeness of the object featured within. They are an optical counterpart produced unnaturally by human devices, advancing in simulation by the progression of technology.
Technology is the concept of our knowledge to create and use tools to better adapt to our environment and aid in the completion of tasks, and perhaps our intervention with nature. Nature and technology are therefore two conflicting elements within our ever developing and evolving society.
The definition of technology has evolved by way of the creation of mechanical items.
In the nineteenth century, technology referred simply to the practical arts used to create physical products, everything from wagon wheels and cotton cloth to telephones and steam engines. In the twentieth century, the meaning of the word was expanded to include everything involved in satisfying human material needs and wants, from factories and the organisations that operate them to scientific knowledge, engineering know-how, and technological products themselves. (National Academy of Engineering, 2008)
As it states, technology satisfies human material needs and wants. Civilisation's growing dependancy on technology is a cause for concern. In our continuing quest to further enhance the speed, efficiency and reliability of our technical equipment and products, we are fast consuming the Earth’s natural resources, damaging ours, and Earth’s creature’s inhibitable environment.
According to Moore’s law (a trend observed by Gordon E. Moore, cofounder of Intel), the number of electrical transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. This observation was first made by Moore in a 1965 paper, and after almost half a century the observation shows the trend doesn’t appear to be slowing.
Moore said “Integrated electronics will make electronic techniques more generally available throughout all of society, performing many functions that presently are done inadequately by other techniques or not done at all.”
Society having access to and use of electronic equipment means that there is a great demand for production and supply. With the constant evolution of technological products for our entertainment and productivity, we are psychologically besieged by media and advertising to keep our needs satisfied. We upgrade our technical products with new models, constantly feeling the need to upgrade every time there is a quicker or easier way of performing tasks introduced. This has turned our society into a disposable culture, constantly discarding our outdated, unfashionable and unwanted equipment, and then introducing newer versions slightly superior in effectiveness. The only way to dispose of them is by returning them to the realms of our natural environment, traditionally finding a location uninhabited by humans to dump our waste, further destroying our habitat that has already been damaged by obtaining materials to fabricate the products.
Image 1, It came from the deep, focuses on this event of disposing consumed products upon our natural environment. It uses an imaginary concept of our discarded items gaining life, taking human form and returning to frighten us all into stopping our wasteful behaviour.
The series of images I have created keep to a consistent visual style trying to be realistic, and follow a narrative throughout the embedded text flowing from the first image through to the last. The images focus on the ideology of technology’s assistance in our day-to-day lives and living habits, mainly in tasks such as transportation and navigation within our surrounding environments. They look at how technical equipment integrates with the world around us and our lifestyles, and try to communicate the messages clearly through the content.
It came from the deep doesn’t focus on technology’s integration with society like the other images, it sets the narrative and the main message behind the series, the message of the impending chaos due to ensue from the constant updates in technology we frequently adopt into our lifestyles and disregard for our outdated items.
In a way, by using this image as my start, the message becomes less vague and the narrative flows logically. By starting at the end we know what to expect, to which we can then work backwards finding the cause of the encounter.
The first image has been given a dark shade and saturation to give the connotation of a desolate and unhappy feeling. The shipwreck at the side of the image adds to the dead and cold feel of the image, and evokes the thought that there is nothing good or cheerful about the content. The dull, gloomy feel interpreted by the viewer from the cold colours used can also construct the idea that it is early morning on a cold autumn or winter’s day, dawn is breaking on an unhappy event - Nature is regurgitating our waste to seek revenge.
Inspiration for this image came from looking through photographs that I had taken in an attempt to find a suitable image for nature. The beach, rocks and calm sea allowed me to imagine something creeping out, in a monsterly behaviour. This thought of a monster made out of discarded electrical products, creeping up out of the ocean like a swamp creature in a 1950s B-movie gave way to the thought of a flowing paragraph throughout the images: It came from the deep, travelling through the lens, interacting with surroundings, evolving technology, on a journey travelling from one place to another.
I had the idea of what to say in this serialised sentence, but needed to create images based upon this idea and to then further shape the words used.
The second image Travelling through the lens was created after reading this quote:
The rapid development or contemporary technology opens up the possibility that, in the next millennium, nature will be less and less constitutional, as it is more and more modified, in the increasingly technologically sophisticated world of the future. (Holmes Rolsten III, 1998)
My image challenges the basis of his statement by taking current global fears of resource consumption and setting my image in the very same time period but showing how the world may not be as technological as everyone predicts now.
Travelling through the lens continues the theme of water and the sea from the first image and as the title suggests, symbolises looking back in retrospection. The woman looks out across the sea at a sun setting behind the land of what used to be. Before we used up Earth’s natural resources and were dragged back to the foundations of civilisation. How we used to travel symbolised by the ferry and plane, and how she now uses a row boat again to travel around in the future without fuel or man-made synthetic materials.
Throughout the images, there are certain elements that capture the viewer’s gaze. The production principles lectures taught that colour and their associated moods play a part, but compositional elements such as lines, depth, value, and picture area assist in guiding the eye to certain focal points of interest in the image.
A design that has been composed well, leaves the viewer satisfied, urging them to view more.
In the composition production theory lecture, learning about the rule of thirds helped when designing evolving technology, to create a visually appealing composition to the image and to create a suitable layout to position the characters.
Designing the image around this concept keeps the layout clean and simple.
Lines play a very important part within an image, guiding the viewer’s gaze across the compositional features and can control how a viewer studies the image.
Interacting with surroundings features good use of lines to direct the viewer’s gaze from the bottom of the image into the middle of the crowd on the lower third proportion. There are then curved lines following the rooftops of the buildings and along the wall in the bottom left corner to the hand holding the phone.
Also with this image, studying and experimenting with typography after the typography lecture allowed me to decide upon a suitable font style that allowed me to re-create the text found on Google maps.
The requirement of text within the images helped in some respects with the development of ideas, as it allowed the integration of the serialised sentence within the images, creatively using the distort, perspective and scale tools featured in photoshop to merge the text into being an element within the design.
Over the unit, there were initial difficulties conceiving a consistent theme or idea throughout to feature within the images. This obstacle was overcome eventually through the idea focused around the integrated text and a set of image ideas were produced. There was then further difficulty choosing how to best visually represent the serialised sentence segments.
The overall theme and image ideas turned out extremely well, however due to novice knowledge and careless use of perspective and distort tools, text wasn’t merged within the images quite as had been intended.
Given an opportunity to do this unit again, the same theme would be kept and some varied images would be produced, perhaps even a longer series of images.
Word count: 1,565
My project website can be found at: http://www.freewebs.com/barnopolis89/index.html
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Aaaargh!! Deadline Approaches!!! 9hrs and 45min to go!!!
Right, well my website is finished with all completed images hosted there. I have edited the two images which were last posted on here (just minor things like text...) and have since since completed 3 more images.
I am currently still writing my essay (yes, foolish matt has been a twat and left it all to the last minute..) which will be posted in a post after this one. But for now here are the finished images:
I am currently still writing my essay (yes, foolish matt has been a twat and left it all to the last minute..) which will be posted in a post after this one. But for now here are the finished images:
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
Images at last!!!
Whoo. After much turmoil and heavy procrastination, I have finally sat down and started to produce my hopefully final selection of images. I have chosen to include my first image produced in the first one day project, and have worked on several other images since.
I would just like to take this opportunity at the moment to thank a fantastic girl, Katie. Without her "nagging" and panicking for me, I think I would still be in the position of not having produced any images still come deadline. (^_^) Thank you!!
I would just like to take this opportunity at the moment to thank a fantastic girl, Katie. Without her "nagging" and panicking for me, I think I would still be in the position of not having produced any images still come deadline. (^_^) Thank you!!
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Progress Report
Today in the practice seminar with Mark, we started looking at typography.
He got us to think of some words and alter the text so that their typography further enhanced their meaning.
Will have to get finished examples from on Mac at uni but will post them on here soon.
Next up, in our theory seminar with Claudia, we were looking at academic writing, but first of all reviewed our creative writing out of class assignment that we were supposed to have done. *ahem*
Anyway here is what I have written so far for my creative writing:
"Darkened skies, crashing waves, the steady creak and scratching of metal limbs. The monster of junk emerges from the tides.
This image deals with the topic of our disposal of old technology and appliances and it's affect against nature, and how nature will send back our waste to get us all. The serenity and peaceful nature of the setting in the image portrays the calmness of our surroundings. It portrays the beauty of our pure and organic landscapes surrounding us but contains a dark meaning contained within the character of trash.
Technology grows old, and so, as we consume more media, technology advances to serve us with new ways of interacting with and accessing information and media. With this continual upgrading of the tools we use, we dispose of our old, outdated systems without any regard to where it goes or how it is disposed of."
He got us to think of some words and alter the text so that their typography further enhanced their meaning.
Will have to get finished examples from on Mac at uni but will post them on here soon.
Next up, in our theory seminar with Claudia, we were looking at academic writing, but first of all reviewed our creative writing out of class assignment that we were supposed to have done. *ahem*
Anyway here is what I have written so far for my creative writing:
"Darkened skies, crashing waves, the steady creak and scratching of metal limbs. The monster of junk emerges from the tides.
This image deals with the topic of our disposal of old technology and appliances and it's affect against nature, and how nature will send back our waste to get us all. The serenity and peaceful nature of the setting in the image portrays the calmness of our surroundings. It portrays the beauty of our pure and organic landscapes surrounding us but contains a dark meaning contained within the character of trash.
Technology grows old, and so, as we consume more media, technology advances to serve us with new ways of interacting with and accessing information and media. With this continual upgrading of the tools we use, we dispose of our old, outdated systems without any regard to where it goes or how it is disposed of."
*Yawn*
Right. It's late and things definitely aren't good...
LET THIS BE A LESSON!!! DON'T LEAVE THINGS TO THE LAST MINUTE!!!!
I have finally decided upon one of my photos to use as the basis of my first image:
I am hoping to create a robot/monster thing that appears to be rising out of the water onto the beach..
I have collected different images of junk and old appliances that i can composite together to create a figure-like shape. I will then cover the creature in seaweed using some stock images i have gathered and change colouring to affect the mood of the image and to help blend in the character making it more realistic..
TIME TO START KNUCKLING DOWN MATT!!! Wed 19th November final hand-in!!! 15 DAYS!!!!!! (>_<)
LET THIS BE A LESSON!!! DON'T LEAVE THINGS TO THE LAST MINUTE!!!!
I have finally decided upon one of my photos to use as the basis of my first image:
I am hoping to create a robot/monster thing that appears to be rising out of the water onto the beach..
I have collected different images of junk and old appliances that i can composite together to create a figure-like shape. I will then cover the creature in seaweed using some stock images i have gathered and change colouring to affect the mood of the image and to help blend in the character making it more realistic..
TIME TO START KNUCKLING DOWN MATT!!! Wed 19th November final hand-in!!! 15 DAYS!!!!!! (>_<)
Monday, 3 November 2008
Uuuurgh...
Things are not going good lately...
First of all iTunes decided it was going to f*** up on me and delete all of my songs and playlists (65GB worth!!!) so i left it for several days and then decided the only way to recover it all was to use the magical Time Machine from Apple. Et Voila! All my music back and working, but now my 1TB hard-drive that it is all stored on has decided it's not going to co-operate :-(
Our house has been getting dial-up speeds on the internet which is not good. It feels like being back home with the poor speed... Seriously, I'm in Bournemouth. No ISP can justify giving dial-up speeds when after checking on our provider we're supposed to be able to get up to 24mb* (*speed varies according to location...) Friggin' annoying!!!
Saturday was not good. I was really ill and stayed confined to my bed all day. Not pretty... So i didn't get any work started or done or anything that day. Sunday i was a bit better but still didn't get around to any work until about 2am when i decided stupidly to start work on creating my website.. That only lasted for half an hour though when i decided it best to go to bed at 3..
Today kicked off pretty craply. I awoke with an extremely bad sore throat and loud cough that must have woken everyone in the house up.. I really didn't feel like going into uni.
Got through today and got home at 3pm, but about 4pm I started to fall asleep on the sofa. Not clever. I need to have an image and a piece of creative writing based on the image done by tomorrow and i manage to fall asleep for 2 and a half hours!!!
I have just decided to start looking through some photographs I have taken and am trying to decide on what to use and manipulate for my project..
Interestingly through doing a search through my pics, I found a photo I took during an art project last year at college. God knows wtf made me take it, but I feel it fits in with the idea of Nature/Technology lol.
iFish
First of all iTunes decided it was going to f*** up on me and delete all of my songs and playlists (65GB worth!!!) so i left it for several days and then decided the only way to recover it all was to use the magical Time Machine from Apple. Et Voila! All my music back and working, but now my 1TB hard-drive that it is all stored on has decided it's not going to co-operate :-(
Our house has been getting dial-up speeds on the internet which is not good. It feels like being back home with the poor speed... Seriously, I'm in Bournemouth. No ISP can justify giving dial-up speeds when after checking on our provider we're supposed to be able to get up to 24mb* (*speed varies according to location...) Friggin' annoying!!!
Saturday was not good. I was really ill and stayed confined to my bed all day. Not pretty... So i didn't get any work started or done or anything that day. Sunday i was a bit better but still didn't get around to any work until about 2am when i decided stupidly to start work on creating my website.. That only lasted for half an hour though when i decided it best to go to bed at 3..
Today kicked off pretty craply. I awoke with an extremely bad sore throat and loud cough that must have woken everyone in the house up.. I really didn't feel like going into uni.
Got through today and got home at 3pm, but about 4pm I started to fall asleep on the sofa. Not clever. I need to have an image and a piece of creative writing based on the image done by tomorrow and i manage to fall asleep for 2 and a half hours!!!
I have just decided to start looking through some photographs I have taken and am trying to decide on what to use and manipulate for my project..
Interestingly through doing a search through my pics, I found a photo I took during an art project last year at college. God knows wtf made me take it, but I feel it fits in with the idea of Nature/Technology lol.
iFish
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