Inside the Dragon's mind

2009-12-23T19:26:00.005Z

I will start with my Visualisation Project "Up above down below”.

Task:
Design and model the ultimate roller-coaster. Set in either outer-space or underwater or in-between. Design both an environment and track that is both imaginative and fun, but with an accurate grounding in your worlds' physics.

For this after a bit off thinking about settings for it:
Space Station
Minning Field
Underwater anicient Remains
Space Fight
Underwater Expedition

Then running over many ideas in my head i decided that i would most like to build an underwater scene, and with that in mind i first looked at excisting RollerCoasters for principles, limitiations, track desgins, car desgins, immersion settings. I have actuwally done a bit off research into rollercoaster's before, With that i had a shortlist of coasters to look into further;
X/X2 (Six Flags Magic Mountain, USA),
Tatsu (Six Flags Magic Mountain, USA),
Kingda KA (Six Flags Great Adventure, USA)
Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit (Universal Studios Florida, USA)
Air (Alton Towers, UK)
Nemesis (Alton Towers, UK)
Manta (Seaworld, USA)

I will also be looking into underwater scenes from films, underwater excavation, archeology, wrecks, sea life.

The Return

2009-12-08T23:27:00.003Z

Right this is long long overdue, but its about time i updated this. Right now am on Year 2, and Taking the Virtual Enviroment pathway.

Year 2 Term 1 Projects;

-Visulisation: RollerCoaster.

-Animation: Of Bot And Bananas.

-Game: Card Game.

-Network Essay.

-Seminar Work.

I know i am late for all this going up lets just say medical problems and leave it at that. As i can i will be updating my process for these projects.

RocSoc PR Position

2009-04-20T14:55:00.006+01:00

I am Running for the PR executive position next year and this is my Assault poster to help with my campain.

Research, Written Task

2009-02-24T14:57:00.002Z

Creative Origins:
Over the Past few years my creatvie projects have mostly just been for my self playing around with ideas and developing my abilities however these have usuwally been little projects that took a back seat to the projects i was doing for Graphic Design and Design Tech in collage. However last year was a bit different with not being in collage and working for most of the time, my work became a source of sanity and release from the rountine of being a salesman. Other work came up like precents for people and requests from friends to make certain things for them. Other than that it was all just for me. I did it like this out of necesity over anything else, if i didnt keep doing it my ability would drop and i wouldnt have been ready for uni.

Future:
I see the future of my creativity in the world of animation/storytelling/artist, wether using 3D or hand drawn animation, or both combined. I guess its easier to say to be graphic artist working in the graphic novel industry/ concept art, with influences from 3D design. It makes sense to me.

Research:
I find that resarch can help me achive inspiration as well as somting to strive for. But i guess its biggest purpose for me is understanding i need to know the reasons why behind most things, for example if designing a character i want to know there background, manerisums, personality, lifestyle bofore i can imagine what look suits them, i can come up with lots off ideas without that information, but that information helps me focus my designs. I guess it is with this that i see myself drawn to the Explanitory starting point. I guess that i am most wary of exploritory resaerch as you cant always end where you want to, theres no overall aim to understand or find something, just to search etc, i think. Interim Resaech is the most irrelevent to me i think as i dont view progress as a part of resaech, i view it as a holding point, where you re-evaluate you research and see if there is a new direction you need to go in or what areas you need to expand on. This to me is an evaluatory method.

The End of Second Life

2009-02-24T12:20:00.038Z

I probably should have updated this by now but just talking about second life bores me so every attempt to finish this has failed, so here we go.

My avatar had many iteration of itself before i settled on my final self some where just for the simple purpose of that looks cool but not what i wanted to appear like, although i probably would appear as them from time and again, if i continue to use second life, so no. Here are a few of my possible looks.

Weird Skin and Tail:

Samurai:

Master Chief:

Chibi Prime:

Cool Meerkat:

This Avatar i really liked, and was using for awhile until i occurred a foxes tail and added this back to my original avatar with some new trousers and boots and the Fenrir seen in second life was Finlay born. The Car shown is a Ferrari599 GTR for scale, as well as for me driving it around.

Well now that my appearance was finalised, time to show the exploring that i forced myself to do. In all i found a few interesting places, and some buildings i would love to see in real life if created, but i doubt that they would be.
A trip to Berlin:
In all fairness i was completely disappointed with this visit as i was expecting so much more from a virtual Berlin. There was no Brandenburg Gate, no Reichstag building thus no great glass dome on top of it, no East Side Gallery, the only thing that was there was the Alexanderplatz which has the Fernsehturm and the Bahnhof, but this was no consolation for the many other major buildings that i would expect to see in a virtual Berlin.

So Another thrilling adventure in the land of second life involved a theme park.
Nothing more to wright really that was it, is was nice that some rides worked, many worked incorrectly and had glitches throughout, notice the direction of travel in image 3 compared to the previous 2, again another evening well spent.

Well enough bad as there isn't enough space on here for that, the only place i found interesting on second life was a Steam punk world, which in all fairness if this wasn't good would have made me want to kill the inventors of second life for ruining such a culture. Lucky for them it was decently done.

So In my response to second life i would give it a 2/10 and it only gets that due to avatar customizations you can get for free and the steam punk world, other than that it wouldn't get a score, as way too many things pissed me off explicitly about it. On a lighter note of insanity, who the hell spends there actually money on this shit, who on this damn planet would buy a new hair style on here, In all fairness am surprised its not run by EA as there master as flogging pointless crap at people when it should be free to begin with.

That's it I'm free and to celebrate i am uninstalling second life and never letting it touch my computer again until drastic improvements are made, and by which i mean it becomes a high graphics, 3d virtual environment with an actual VR simulation machine thingy.

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Now playing: My Dying Bride - The Scarlet Garden
via FoxyTunes

Moodboard

2009-02-06T14:23:00.002Z

This is the moodboard for my box/showcase.

Second life

2009-02-06T13:27:00.003Z

Well i guess its about time i mentioned my wonderfull time in second life. Ive been bumbling about with it for a few weeks now and so far can only manage 20mins a go before becoming so bored that i need to go punch a camel to keep my brain from stroking. Yes im probabliy being harsh as it is very vast and theres bound to be something on there to keep me interested for an hour but if there is i failed to find it. Right anywya lets start from the beining, Avaatar/ Alias, i chose an alias id been using for afew years now of Fenrir Ragnarok, but upon finding out you couldn't create your own last name i was thoughrally annoyed at this early stage of the lack of complete user customisation, so with that i settle on one of the pregenerated ones for me to chouse from of Roecastle, close enough i guess, buts its not really. right next avatar creation, i simple picked the musican skin as a base when i created m acouunt and started from there, (See First image)

One Shot Short

2008-12-14T19:55:00.002Z

Well if you read the last yourll be happy to know its finally up, and b4 anyone says you should have compress it, this was the compressed file, it took that long to upload 94mb. yer its that bad.

right anyway. the ammount off problems involded in gettin this film finished was unnbeliveable, and needless to say i am not overlypleased with it but its the best it can be at the time being, as my skill with preimer improve etc i will most probably re visit this and touch it up once i know how, my first would be to completely re edit the audio, as dispite all the tweeking i did, the voices are lost in the background, background noice was too loud that i couldnt cut out as it was mixed in with dialoge etc, so yer, enjoy.

I hate Halls interenet

2008-12-14T19:32:00.002Z

Ive been waiting to upload my one shot short for awhile now, but my halls internet is so slow its making me want to just go out and punch the server box in our common room, well as you guess my next post will hopefully be that.

Red Dot Test

2008-12-12T03:21:00.003Z

Yes thats right my flash prject is a red dot eye test, or so you would think by the first frame. This little baby will either calm you with the lovely music, drive you insane with the never endingness of it or boggle your mind as to how you didnt see the it comming, and not that is not giving anything away. when or if you get to the end youll understand.

This is my third flash project, my First was an Animated version of the card game munchkin and after many an hour off trail and error, uploading images, gettin code to work, in places, and each time involved a revision of the complicatedness of the game it finally resulted in the project being put on hold until my knwoledge of actionscript is imporved as at this time i simple could not comlpete the project the way it was ment to be. The second was a "simple" survival game involve crawling through a dungeon as a kobold to collect Cheif Breeeeeeeeeeessss lost sandwhich, without dieing but for it i wanted to create a acoring system for it marking efficentcy, deaths, times fallen over, times killed by chickens, and any other random thing that may befall a kobold in a dungeon. But again due to my lack off Actionscipt knowledge i had to simplify that project. Then while i was taking a break the other night i was atching Derren Brown and sundly had the idea for this red dot test, and low and behold my action script knowledge supported it production, although attempts to simplify the ammount off codding need resulted in multiple errors and looping but anyway. enjoy.

Red Dot Test

Massive update

2008-12-12T03:19:00.002Z

I havent updated this in a while due to forgetting to, so its about time i did, over the weekend i will be posting all the updates i need to post on here, starting with my final flash project.

Parkour and the War on Physics - Pixelation

2008-11-04T12:07:00.002Z

I thought its about time i upoaded the project video, it would have been up sooner if it wasnt for my crappy halls interent speed, right anyway.

I was going to edit the project we did as a group, but when i went home for the weekend i got talking to a firend and i cam up with this idea, so 3 hours of standing on the cold grimsby waterfront and i had my images, after hours of re aranging and selecting the correct images, half off which where used, i could finaly touch it up in photoshop. After many different attempts and version i was finally happy with one, and so here it is in all its glory.

Assiment New Multimedia Technology

2008-10-27T17:42:00.005Z

Write a 300 - 500 word article that tells the audience about a recent multimedia technology that is being or has been developed in the last six months and explain what you think the impact of this technology will have upon society.

When the Wii Came along in 2005 it was a huge leap forward in immersive gaming. It was such a leap that it was destroying the Xbox 360 & PS3 in sales. However it's not as big a leap forward as you may have thought, as most people who have used a Wii mote will have discover it's not as accurate as you would have liked, as it uses only a 3 axis sensing using an accelerometer and a gyro meter to measure motion and tilt, and likewise utilizes both infrared and Bluetooth technology to interact with a sensor bar to map its location in relation to the TV. This all together is an incredible piece of scientific equipment. But it has a large number of flaws. If your too close to the sensor bar the slightest left or right movement sends the crosshairs from one side of the screen to another with no accuracy. If your too far back or point the Wii mote too far to either side it loses track of its location. Now what would you say if I told you that a company had developed a more powerful motion control for gaming in 2001, but due to market research, the world was not deemed ready for such a leap. Instead the creators of this tool took it back to the drawing board and adapted for sporting uses and it became known as the iclub. The Company in question is MOTUS, and the iclub has become an industry standard in golfing instruction. It detects your motions in real time and relays that information back to the instructors who gets a display all your movements, weight dispersion, swing acceleration and deceleration, body rotation, swing angle, and more throughout each and every swing so they can quickly improve the users abilities much faster than just by simple watching. After the release of the Wii, MOTUS re examined the original ideas and combined them with lessons learnt from the iclub to create the new Darwin Control.

Unlike the Wii mote the Darwin is a multi platform controller and due for release for PC and other consoles in 2009 (date currently to be confirmed) as it has only just been passed on to games developers, that has a 6 axis sensor using the in house 6 (D)egrees (O)f (F)reedom technology that are the motions that represent real world movement broken into rotations and translations, 3DOF represent being able to rotate the controller and have it know what angle it's at, working with the other 3DOF the transitions which will detect its movement gives it true motion mapping in virtual space. Think of it as a GPS system that knows exactly where it is and what position it's in. Another huge advantage over all other motion control devises is that it is completely self contained and does not need external sensors like the Wii mote. The Darwin has a unique gaming feature straight out of the box as well, its best described as two Darwin's in one, it comes in 2 halves that can be used as a combined single unit (2 handed), a multi hand unit (one in each hand) or a basic 2 player unit 1 half for each player, that doesn't mean 2 player control 1 character it has a mode changer to allow for full 2player 2 character action.

The Darwin will revolutionise the idea of immersive gaming across the entire industry not just a single console. This combined with future potential of the product with revolutions many more industries as adaptations are made, already in the works is a medical training aid so that medical student can practice procedures in real space on a virtual patient with a Darwin controller and as a result improve their experience 10fold before they've ever cut some one up.

http://www.motusgames.com/index.html

Rant No.1

2008-10-08T11:57:00.000+01:00

Well this blog's now up and running time for you all to be bored out your minds as I rant for hours about all my own work, work I like, work I don’t like, and anything else I need to have a rant at. So for my first none rant we have all been set questions that I am going to answer now;

What do you want to get out of the course, other than passing?

Well id of course likes to learn enough stuff so that when I leave I can land I high paid job so that I can fund my attempts to conquer the world. On a less dominating note I would just like to pick up all the skills I need to set me on the way to become a successful 3d artist and concept designer.

What did I get up to in my first week?

Well after arriving on the Sunday, 2 days after everyone else, and then having to wait 3hours as 2 female refugees from the great Hampden hall fire of 2008 where waiting for there safety visas to re enter the surviving rooms. That night was spent with my girlfriend and other friends that are studying at NU eating and drinking in Weatherspoons. Monday spent bored in talks, librarians can’t half drain all the life out a room. That night was spent in full British army 95 dpms out drinking all my flat mates and then going off to Trent army of which most of the time was spent queuing as all us brits love to do. Tuesday was spent in course inductions, which included making a beer can camera, mine sucked of course, I blame the Stella can, girly larger, not a real drink. Others though had some really good images, who knew that you a beer can, some card and duck tape could give you just as good a photo as a £300 camera. Up yours photography. Wednesday and im currently sat writing this blog. That’s the week so far. So until next time, do something interesting, and stop stalking me.