Water Colour brushes preset

Starting playing with water colour brush presets I downloaded and working them with layers and blending options. Idea came about after looking at some graffiti, and I thought this might be an interesting idea to recreate. Below is an image of my house mate; I have removed the original background, changed some of the lighting and added some brush effects, along with some filters to create this effect.



This is no purpose to this, I just like experimenting with colours and felt it was reasonably relevant after Jools lecture on colour.

Interactive Narrative

I have finally finished my Flash project for the interactive narrative assignment. Overall I am happy with the way it turned out. The only aspect of flash I really struggled with was the implementation of the buttons, however, after playing around with it I discovered it was more of a temporary bug with my software than an overall issue.

I really enjoyed this project and will probably be doing more in my spare time. Below is my finished piece, however I haven't decided whether I want any sort of background music playing. I think it is fine without but it might add to the effect having some horror-themed music for backing.


Uni - Interactive Narrative by ~Cdawilliams on deviantART

Microsoft's Project Natal

Found this whilst browsing the web having heard about it in work.

"Project Natal is the code name for a "controller-free gaming and entertainment experience" by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game platform. Based on an add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 console, Project Natal enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller through a natural user interface using gestures, spoken commands, or presented objects and images.

The project is aimed at broadening the Xbox 360's audience beyond its typically hardcore base. Project Natal was first announced on June 1, 2009 at E3 2009. Microsoft said that over a thousand software development kits began shipping to game developers that same day.

Though Microsoft has not officially announced any price or release date projections for Project Natal, it is expected to be released in late 2010. Project Natal will reportedly also serve as the basis for a "new" Xbox 360."

Taken from source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Natal

It also goes into more detail about it on there.

I like the concept, and the trailers I have watched about it seem very impressive. However, I think the whole thing is being exaggerated slightly. It's taken the idea introduced with the Nintendo Wii and adapted it, as I said, it's an interesting and fascinating concept but realistically I don't think it'll work as expected. I've heard rumours of a release date in November 2010 (just in time for Christmas funnily enough). Waiting to see what happens.

Flash Project - Zombie Nation - Short Explanation

My idea was to have a short, user-interactive story in which you control the decisions of the main character during a zombie encounter. It will consist of several real-time photos that have been manipulated for effect in photoshop. The user will then have to navigate the character through the attack with different choices effecting the eventual outcome. Drawing was an option with this idea but given the fact I'm not the greatest of artists, and I rather like the use and finished look of digitally manipulated images I have chosen to do it this way, despite it probably taking a little bit longer to produce. Throughout the encounter, the user will have the opportunity to flee the scene or stand and fight, making their way through different rooms and having different options set for them.

Zombie Attack! - Draft Images

Having decided on roughly what will happen as the Flash plays through I have decided to create a few draft images to see if my idea is feasible. The first images have been solely produced on photoshop having taken the real-time images with my camera, however I am also contemplating just using some clever make-up and touching up the images with Photoshop to reduce the workload when it comes to editing all the frames.

Below are a few images I created to see exactly what the final piece my look like if all images follow the similar pattern. All the images are fairly large in dimensions at the moment but will be reduced later to fit the flash slides.

Original Image:


Draft 1 - Natural


Draft 1 - Altered


Draft 1 - Leftside Human


Draft 1 - Rightside Human


Draft 2 - Natural


Draft 2 - Altered


Draft 2 - Leftside Human


Draft 3 - Rightside Human


If I continue with this idea and spend a little time on each image I think it could work rather well. The images above are just draft images, both have their good qualities and bad, this will help me to better the design on the next.

Below is the third draft, using the best features from both and ignoring the bad.

Draft 3 - Natural


Draft 3 - Altered


Draft 3 - Leftside Human


Draft 3 - Rightside Human

Flash Project - Zombie Story Idea

Having been to both flash seminars I have started to gain some sort of understanding of what flash can do, and how I can go about achieving what I wish to. I don't think I want to stick to a linear route as I would like the piece to have some form of user input navigation, allowing the user to decide the routes they wish to take during the narrative.

I have always liked the idea of Karma, in terms of your good and bad actions in life can ultimately predict the outcome later on. This is occasionally used in modern video games, titles includes; Fable 1 & 2, Fall Out 3, Infamous, etc. This allows the user to have some sort of control of their character, allowing you to make good/heroic choices or bad/evil choices, which in turn effect the outcome of the game.

This I believe, especially at my level of experience with Flash, would be quite difficult so I think simply giving the user some sort of self-chosen navigation will suffice for now.

For my actual Flash piece I have been toying with idea of a Zombie-like attack, in which the user plays a main character and has a run in with some particular nasty specimens, and from there can decide which routes to take, e.g. Flee, Fight, Allow yourself to be eaten! This I believe will be fairly easy to do, given some practise, and will still be quite an interesting story to play through.

One Shot Short Film - Editing the finished piece & Final Views

Editing the final piece, in hindsight, was relatively easy. We all still have much to learn when it comes to Adobe Premier but I felt that what we did learn in that relatively short period of time still made for a reasonable edit of the film.

We attempted to edit the film in the 3 hour session, however, the University computers were a little too slow to do anything too demanding, taking 40 minutes to render a 4 minute video. This resulted in me taking the a copy of the video home, having captured it, and editing it there as it took just under 3 minutes to render on my desktop.

We had already decided that blur/double vision style effects would be used on the video to give the effect of someone relatively ill slowly diminishing in condition and that a fade out/zoning type sound effect would be a good choice for some parts of the video to simulate other types of symptoms. So using this I just through in some effects here and there to make it more realistic, dropped in some closing credits and a title screen and left it like that. Hopefully when I get time at a later date I will do some more in depth editing as I felt there was more I could have done.

If I had slightly more time and a wider knowledge of Premier I had hoped to add some sort of blinking simulation to the camera to really capture the humanistic qualities. I didn't feel music would have been appropriate given the seriousness of the film, despite have a little light-humour, so I did not add a backing track. However, I did spend one evening looking for some hospital ambiance effects, though unfortunately I found nothing that really impressed me.

If I was to do the film again I would spend a little more time on the planning because, although we did meet up outside lecturers, we could have gone into more detail with the story and with props used, and possibly had a better location for the filming. I enjoyed working with my group, with every inputting something to the film - though some more than other - I felt we worked well as a team, all listening, discussing and responding to each others ideas. We all shared the same light-hearted humour towards doing the film and generally had a lot of fun doing it. I would quite like to do something like this again in the future and hopefully more stuff like this will give me a better idea of which path I'd like to select next year.

Examples of Flash

I decided to trawl the internet for uses of flash and in doing so stumbed across a few pieces that really impressed me. The first link below was created a university student, it was pieced together from various clips they'd done in the past and was very entertaining to watch.

http://proffate.deviantart.com/art/Peter-Turner-Show-Reel-2009-143436943

It doesn't follow the same sort of method we're are currently using, in that it just runs through as a long sequence, when we're meant to be creating a piece with some sort of navigation, but it was still a clever use of flash.


The next video was shown to me by a friend a few weeks ago, and since then I've watched it more times than I can remember. There's something rather addictive about it, but again, I think it's a very good use of flash. Like the previous it has no navigation to it but is a clever use of flash.

One Shot Short Film - Finished Film

The link below is the first edit of our groups one shot short film. I like the use of effects used, however I think the way in which the effects were intergated into the film were relatively poor, especially the ghosting blur effect.

Overall I am quite happy with the outcome and will continue to play around with the film until I am fully satisfied. I enjoyed this exercise, especially coming up with ideas with the other group members to find the best possible scenario. I personally believe we worked well as a group, all inputting in some way or other, and would like to try this sort of activity again in the future.

One Shot Short Film - Planning and Filming

Initially, as a group, we had many interesting and unique ideas as to what could happen during our one shot film. However, then we were given a few specifications, these included; the camera had to be on a tripod and the tripod itself was not to move from a fixed position, we were also not aloud to cut during filming then continue. The entire film had to be done in one shot, hence the name. This was relatively simple to stick to, although it meant if we made any mistakes during a shot then we'd have to re-film as we were not aloud to simply edit that scene out.

During one of the 3 hour sessions we all sat down and decided to discuss what could be happening in the film, but although we all had some sort of idea as to what it should be about, only Kieron had put pen to paper, and produced a rough example of what the scene should look like. Below I have detailed the rough idea we chose from Kierons ideas, which we later adapted.



Initially the idea consisted of a patient lying on a hospital bed with two doctors either side of him. The camera was to act as the patients head and simulate head movements. We all agreed this was a clever technique and would like to take it further. However, we didn't think it likely that we could secure a room at a local hospital for the sake of a film so though of possible ways around this. After much deliberation we decided to stick to the hospital/doctor theme, with the camera simulating a patients head, but trying to do it in a real hospital was not that likely.

I suggested that maybe we should have it more like a local walk in health clinic, that way the doctors could look a little more casual and the room would not greatly influence the theme of the film. We all agreed this was a good idea and started planning a rough dialogue, general story and when it would be convenient for everyone to film it.

In the end we had roughly decided that the patient (Michael Close) was suffering from an unknown illness and had decided to visit his local doctor (Kieron Powis), with the company of his brother (Me, Chris Williams) - Accompanying the doctor were two local university students (Gigi Chan & Shelley Yijun), there to watch a doctor at work. Michael also operated the camera to simulate his head movement. Michael's visit to the doctor consists of him getting mis-diagnosed for Swine Flu on a previous occasion (we felt this a relevant topic) and still suffering from several symptoms, throughout the film Michael's condition gets worst and worst - simulated with blur and sound effects done in the later editing stages - until the end of the scene where we collapses, giving a rather appropriate ending to the film.

Having decided on a topic and planned a sort of rough guide of events we thought it was probably best to book the equipment needed, which I will list below, and the booking of the studios for the actual filming.

We requested the following in order the film;
* Sony HD DV Video Camera
* Tripod
* Lighting Set (3 lights + Protective gloves)
* Orange Gel Sheet
* Blue Gel Sheet

The gel sheets for the lights had initially been requested for use to simulate a code blue type effect in the hospital. However we decided against this and after some experimenting used a blue gel sheet on one of the lights as it appeared to give off a more natural light effect.

We also brought some of our props to make the whole film a little more realistic. Fortunately for us, my house mates doing Forensic Science, so acquiring an authentic looking lab coat was relatively easy. Also, Michael works at a costume shop so was able to get hold of a doctors stethoscope with ease. Kieron also brought along some candles and a small fake flower to add to the effect. All of this, along with the use of a computer (already situated in the room), plus a desk made for a fairly reality

After all props were in order, dialogue 'roughly' revised (mostly structured improvisation) we started filming. We thought the first run through was fairly good, however, upon watching it through the camera we had neglected to notice that whoever had used it previously had used an external microphone and in doing so had turned the internal mic down. Thus, had no sound. However, not letting this get us down we decided to go at it again, this wasn't a bad take but we thought it could be better. Having watched it through, we noted and discussed what could have been improved and set about doing that in the following shot. After watching back the third take we thought it had been done rather well, so we decided to use that one for the final editing.

Having filmed everything and decided on the actual shot to use, we packed up, returned the equipment and looked forward to editing it in Adobe Premier the following day.