Friday, 29 February 2008

Dark horse

Although i woke up at 1pm and didn't even start work till 2:30ish, i've got through an awful lot today, but not without its problems. From what you saw in yesterdays post i've got the right hand side all dynamic now which basically means you can goto "create new post", type some stuff in and it appears on the front page.

Things i need to do are -
* upload an actual image
* get the date working
* edit and delete posts
* background shadow
* full screen page

Once there all ticked i can start adding extras like a more complex image upload and search via usernames.

Problems i've had these last couple of hours are -

* Arrays
* pushing info into Arrays
* for loops
* string values (length and characters etc)
* array values (-"-)
* inserting Now date which i'm working on now (* EDIT, sorted.)
* and image in php. Annoying symtax's

Anyway, heres where i am now :) A trained eye will notice typical html to a photoshop.





Thursday, 28 February 2008

Colourful box's rock my socks

Very quickly the presentation went well today, nothing strange happened.

But as promised i got straight onto content management today and decided to create the site using CSS. My reason for this is because i for one know css fairly well due to my previous work and two i think its excellent the way its all set out and how you construct it. So heres what i got so far,




The colourful box is going to be the repeated region. This is possibily the most important part of the site as this will be the only part that needs to actually work!

Wednesday, 27 February 2008

Fin

Well i'm happy to annouce my Virtual Environments project is completed. Presentation, journal/research and the acutal thing itself is done and dusted. hooray

I'm gonna take a break for the rest of the night but its straight onto Content Management tomorrow.

I'm hoping for a better mark with this one :/

Tuesday, 26 February 2008

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming

It's the final couple of push's for thursday presentation and i can offically annouce my vizard project is working and presentable! Now is just a case of buying an A3 sketch book and paste all my sketchs in and blog enterys (with a few notes on the side explaining whats going on) and do the same find but on the computer to present along with the vizard. All the content is collected and ready, just a case of doing it once i get this sketch book (no thanks to the unis shop being closed today) i'll be happy bunny and straight onto content management again.




On that note, while i didn't have my A3 sketch book i've been busy recreating my content management site. The lectures want it fully realised so thats what i'm going to do. Heres what i came up with today and you can find previous screen shots in an eariler blog entery.

Monday, 25 February 2008

Its the coil train!

Today was a good start to the week as i finally got my vizard script working! You simply point and click the mouse at the screen and it shoots a ball into the stage. If this ball hits any of the 3 screens, depending on which one it hits, will make either a guitar, snare or piano noise. It is still a little sketchy as the balls sometimes fly through the walls but its progress. I think the problem is the fact that i'm importing the files as .wrl and not something else. I'll look into this as it will be someone else testing it on the final day.




Also made a video representation of what it would ultimatly look like. The youtube like is here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIhENiJsXXg

Finally i got the base code down for my presentation too. I wanted to do this for my last presentation but never got the time and actually thought of a just as nice idea. But basically it was a screenshot of the program "Vizard" (which is what i'm using to create this project) and on a mouse click, the presentation lines got typed out as if it was being typed out in the coding screen. Looks really nice and its dynamic so its easy to update now. Just gotta put it into some kind of structer for thursday.

I'll work on the structer now but also compile my journal together. Lets hope i complete it before i get a headache.

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

What happened to 20 Minutes?

well after my (pretty damn awesome) presentation i was expecting a couple of questions, which i was prepered for.... but i wasn't prepared for the next hour chat the lectures decided to do about potental for my content management project. Was only mean't to be 20 minutes! taking into concideration it was uber hot and i hadn't had a drink in ages, i almost laid an egg.

But i think it was pretty positive, although the lectures want this and this and i just don't think i'll be able to do everything. So regardless of what i'll do, they will just be disapointed that i didn't get everything else done.

Who knows

Monday, 18 February 2008

Is it a blog? Is it a Site? No, its....

After just coming back from Cardiff, I felt like diving into doing some work. So here is the process of my content management site. But while doing this i realised many problems i will either have to encounter or design my way round them. Issues like dates, categorying (by dates/style), dynamic spacing, username, password, search and security. We'll see how it turns round in the following weeks.

I was going to try and photoshop the images into a browser to get a better feel for it. But my print screen button doesn't seem to work, so you'll have to do with the big images for now.

* the numbers in the white box's are the date of when it was posted.

01 ..



02 ..

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Funky Super Cloud Designs Inc

Small update but today i drew the character designs for the clouds. Inspired by Chiho Aoshima and Takeashi Murakami (two excellent japanese artist that you should defently check out), these will be projected onto a smoke screen when something is bought from the vending machine. Sounds weird but either by tomorrow or friday, i will upload the final concept.

Tuesday, 12 February 2008

Vending Machine

First thing i done today was write down in bullet points, what i need to do and have finished by the end of this term. That may seem obvious but i need to manage my time better than i have been. Looking at everything on paper doesn't seem too bad concidering i have 4 weeks to finish the projects.

But the reason for this post is the 1 week project we started yesterday. Now at first i didn't want to get involved due to the amount of work piling up but due to my little list, i feel i made the right choice in getting involved. We need to create a vending machine... Sounds stupid enough but my group came up with loads of great ideas and some really random ones. Like one that gives you epilepsy and another vending babys. But we settled for a vending machine that venders clouds. Its still a little skeptical but basically you purchase your own cloud. I love it and can't wait to see the results friday.

So far we have all sketched different ways of creating this vender aswell as a quick render to get an idea on how we're gonna present this.


Sunday, 10 February 2008

Virtual Enviroments 02

Although i done the modeling and render a couple weeks back, i completely forgot to upload it here. So below is my new idea which isn't as good (i think) but much more realistic and maybe even more enjoyable than my previous efforts.

The idea is (baseing on the three huge screen that it will be presented on) three screens, with high and low tones on each one. One screen will represent a piano, another guitar and the last will be drums. Where this comes into play is either with a mouse or wii remote, the user will throw tags at the screens and have a musical response. So for example i threw a tag at the high note of the piano screen. A short, high pitched piano track will play but the interesting part comes in when you start to throw tags at all screens and start creating something musical.

The multi coloured tags in the render represent different users. So i will be aiming to get multiple action in there. 4 people playing this at once will be really interesting!

On a sunday! Are you mad?

After going through the php tutorials handed out to our class the other day, it was important that i learn't how to get information from a database, display it on screen, then input data and send it back. After some help from my brother i have just finished a successful transition of information! What this means is the potental blog i will be making finally has its backbone structor. Which is excellent because i can get on with making it look pretty. At the moment its a complete and utter mess.

Also the other night, i got loads of research in for the same project. I searched loads of other artist showcases which is the competition of my blog idea and the results were very interesting as most of hideous and very unprofessional. The few that are really inspiring though are of course http://shop.deviantart.com/ and http://www.conceptart.org/ but also the unregulated http://www.4chan.org/. Enter 4chan at your own risk as there is some nasty stuff there! Searching different types of blog layouts too was interesting.

Will hopefully get time to sketch out templates and reasons why due to this and this and so fourth i have done this. But ultimately even though i'm not out of the deep end yet, the light is shiny through, now that a good chunk of research is done and the php connections are finished.

I'm sure my enthusiasm wont hold up for long.

Saturday, 9 February 2008

The Chase (Balloon Project Berlin)

Heres a completely random but awesome idea that you always seem to find on youtube. Its called the chase, which is a couple of guys attaching a video camera to 30 helium balloons and chase after it! While captureing footage of course. Its so random and doesn't really have a point but its an excellent idea. They've even done a New York one and hopefully many others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND06VRnuelY

Friday, 8 February 2008

3DS Max Tutorial. Lighting & Rendering

While i've been busy bullet pointing what needs to be researched for my content management assignment like problems, competition and improvements. But I thought i'd do a tutorial on what i've learn't from the virtual enviroments assignment and hopefully using this method in some wayto improve my final efforts.

1.

Make a plane and a teapot. Chuck the segments up on the teapots modify menu, although this isn't important.

Rendering this will give you this horendous effect.




1.5.

click the top view and put a skylight in there somewhere! very important. Its under the lights tab in create. Will instantly improve your render but make sure you "rendering (top of the screen), advanced lighting, light tracer..." and click render from there. Only need to do this once, from now on just push F9 for rendering.




2.

select the teapot and push m. This brings up the materials menu and from here, play a little with the "specular level" and "glossiness" to give it some shine.




3.

Then you should see a few tabs below, click the maps one and tick "diffuse color" and "reflection".




4.

Click the "none" tab next to "diffuse color" and it brings up a new window. Click "Fallout". Then go back by clicking the small back arrow above the "fallout parameters tab" (small icon, second one in from the right).




5.

Do the same with "reflection". Click none and choose "fallout" but this time when it takes you to the next window after, click the second "none" box down (the one shown in the picture below) and click "raytrace".




6.

Now play with the black and white box's in both, "diffuse color" and "reflection". Choose whatever colours and experiment by rendering.




7.

The end result should look something like this!


Wednesday, 6 February 2008

I've got some ground!

Today has been interesting. The interaction studio got all its furniture moved around again for the better, i think (even know i didn't participate because i'm lazy). But also i felt some progression on the new content management assignment as i decided to brainstorm ideas and came up with a realistic one that could well be possible to do. Even if i had to do it myself.

The idea (baseing it on making the world a better place *puke*) was to make a blog (wow!?) that anyone can sign up to and basically post a link to an inspiring peace of artwork on the net. hopfully including a personal description about it and build up a database of all kinds of inspiring creative work that can be from photography to cleaver advertisment. It really is based on the community and maybe even including a voting system where if that link has 50+ votes, it gets put up the top of the blog as a todays feature or something.

Talking with flo and mark? is it? they really did see potental and talked about how to make some kind of profit from this. This ended up going on for about an hour of different possibiltys but basically i need to research the competition and other simular types of popular art sites and see whats good and whats not. I've got a whole list of things to research its not even funny. It will keep me busy i'm sure but all this thought process made me wonder if learning PHP and mySQL in 4 weeks is possible, let alone this whole money making thing. I'll get the base down and depending on time, i'll build appon it.

Moving onto the other Virtual Enviroments assignment, i downloaded the nessacery program and had a good laugh with it! It's called Vizard, downloaded here > http://www.worldviz.com/products/vizard/index.html and the beginners tutorial is really easy and friendly, so even i flew through it without any problems.

So things are looking up! after my last post of being concerned, i've actually got some ground now. And while i remember, big thanks to Micheal Campbell for giving my a head start on php programing too! http://www.php.net/ has good references on how to bring in data from and to mySQL. Links are below for anyone to ponder at.

http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-connect.php
http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/ref.mysql.php
http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-query.php

If your still reading, then kudos to you as i'm boring myself. Time for some call of duty 4!

Sunday, 3 February 2008

Untitled? Quite possibily.

First off watch this video, it's hilarious http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-8hQh6hdnI

Secondly my progress on the website i'm currently working on, the main codes are in and essentally the menu is fully working. The bells and whistles arn't there yet but that is all done after the content is in. Which is the current situation now, waiting for the client to send over his work and information about himself etc.

Lastly i've constantly been annoyed at myself for not pulling my finger out on my uni assignments.. They need to been moving and i haven't even started one of them, the other is half done. The problem is we're not being tought the essentals to finish the projects. For example we need to learn a program called something or other, can't remember but apparently our personal lecture has bought a few books but i haven't seen them.

Ravensbourne is currently pissing me off because i've got more facilitys on my laptop than i have there. The only thing i haven't got on my laptop is the drinks machine.

Heres hoping monday will be a turn of events and things pick up the pase.