Continued at http://blog.jcrobinson.net/

The elements project is now named “Presence” and can be followed at http://blog.jcrobinson.net/

Project Name: "Clothing Shop"

Project Description:

The Client wants an online shop to extend her existing e-bay shop. The objective is to provide a more specific and professional web application that can be used to provide existing and new customers with more flexibility while purchasing products.

Meeting One: June, 2, 2007

In this meeting the general structure of the navigation and some of the clients demands has been outlined:

We looked at some page spreads and the existing e-bay shop as a pointer in what she expected. From here I will start making a concept design (Photoshop .PSD file)

The shop must use PayPal to process the orders
There must be similar functionality to e-bays listing system

The application is going to be built under visual web developer using ASP.Net 2.0, C# and XML maybe MSQL but not sure of it just yet, seems that it may be excessive if there is another means. After thinking about PayPal I realised there should be a .Net library that can be used (library most likely consists of .cs files) to easily connect e-bay to .Net.

Recap:

Produce concept design using Photoshop
Find out what is needed to connect PayPal and .Net

DFIM Final Blog entry..

The information held on this blog is relevant to The Design for Interactive Media (DFIM) at UWIC. There has been another project running along side the DFIM course, called elements, which has taken dramatic transformation through out this academic year. With all the DFIM course work out the way I’m now going to hopefully do a bit of magic and produce something quite unique. In light of the DFIM course I’m impressed on how well Stuart and Simon cover the areas of New Media and the technology that surrounds it. The DFIM course has opened up my scope to what is going on in the world of interactive media, it’s been a good opportunity to research the field and find out where it is that fit in to this young but rapidly growing industry.”

It’s been fun, now for the really hard work J… keep track of my developments at www.john-robinson-ip.blogspot.com

EPP – London, Social Networking

Venue’s based in London known for hosting large social networking events, like the institute of contemporary arts and the business design centre have previously hosted some large creative new media conferences. Creativelondon.org.uk has a large directory of projects (http://www.creativelondon.org.uk/server.php?show=nav.009008) which seem to be based around the idea of showing work and networking. I believe if any city of the UK has potential in making useful connections via a project show or an event, London would be the place to be. The drawbacks I believe to be the notion of social networking being dependent on participation, in other words if no one turns up then no one is interested. My idea of a social network model would be to remove the reason for it to be held as an event only means of transferring information. For example MSN, is a huge social network and is dependent on being active 24/7.

EPP - Business

We were recently asked to visit some banks and retrieve information relevant to opening a business after university. I have retrieved information in this area in the past and come to relise the only reason a business would be needed was to employ someone else. Other than that I can declare my self employed and declare tax plus get a part time job. However this suits my personal needs. I skipped quickly between HSBC and Barkley’s. I really wanted to see the attitudes towards the students by the bank. I joined Mark and Logan in HSBC then quickly run to Barkley’s to meet Paul and Nigel. HSBC where very informative relaxed compared to Barkley’s, I’m still not sure exactly why this is but HSBC always seem clued up on investing in Business. I have a meeting soon with HSBC to discuss possible account options for being self employed, I might add the resulting information to the elements blog. Apart from that I was more than impressed with the meeting place after our little adventure around the city. The Plaza hotel café, will have to arrange a talk to someone there about my project.

YCN - Brief Project, Windows Live.

Ha, ambition!

I attempted to produce a WPF ad for this brief, however with time restrictions it was not possible to be achieved. The WPF platform is still in use for my final project at university.

Asking People

Before proceeding to produce a visual for this brief, a simple questionnaire was presented to 10 individuals within the age group of 14 to15. The objective of this questionnaire was not to obtain specific information that the visual would be based on. But to get a rough understanding for what this age group thought of MSN and what they used MSN for. The questioner can be reviewed here: http://reaction-one.com/survey.rtf

Stage One. The Idea

Here is the original idea developed on a white board at the lab.


*original idea

Basically we have a person looking through a window. At the other side of the window is a world. The world itself is constructed of people’s faces, embedded within a messenger window. Within each web cam windows is a persons face. This could be looked at as a metaphor of a person looking through a webcam and also seeing other people on a screen.

Stage Two. Changing the idea

After looking at the photos, the original idea has been changed. The change being the use of a reflection of a city rather than a reflection of a world constructed of messenger windows. The reason for this change is that cities contain buildings that have thousands of windows. In result I present this question, “who are in these windows and how would we be able to see everybody?”. The main image responsible for this change is:




however the messenger windows will be used to provide the relationship between the city windows and the messenger windows.

Stage Three. Obtaining Resource to be used

There are two forms of resource that need to be obtained, resource one: Photography resource two: 3D Model. The photography resource brings the slight problem of licensing and needs to be obtained from a legal source. “www.dreamstime.com, www.sxc.hu and getty.com” where used to gather the photography that could be used without licensing conflictions. Most of the photos can be seen here:




The other resource being the 3D model, this was constructed within 3D Studio Max and mapped with faces within the windows live messenger video box. In result this gives the sense of thousands of people’s faces suspended in the air. This becomes an interesting feature of the visual but also representing the relationship between the city windows and the messenger windows.



Stage Fore. Constructing the Visual

Photoshop is the main construction tool used here, but the freedom of creativity is in play. However I believe one individual simply inset enough to finalise the visual, its presence will almost become single minded. So I referred my developments back and forth between peers at university to obtain another point of view.

My developments: from start to finish:

Stage Five. Finalisation and Archiving

There have been a number of variations over the period of the visual development. however the base idea has been solid throughout. Here the final result can be seen bellow. Also the working folder that contains all projects content is now archived within an existing project back up structure onto Hard Copy DVD.

EPP Vallywood Studios…!

Dragon studios known as Valley Wood, is £330m pound project to construct a film studio which can be found at Llanilid, Rhondda Cynon Taf. The complex will create more than 1,700 jobs. Oscar-winning “Lord Attenborough” (the old guy from Jurassic park) is the chairman of the project.

I have listed some quotes from the articles I found, for quick reference:

Lord Attenborough

“The first phase of five studios for making TV drama had been brought forward due to demand from the industry and the largest studios, capable of film-making will be built as the scheme develops. This will mean that we are able to offer a whole range of further facilities to house television production, international feature films and multimedia businesses by the spring of 2007," he said.”

The Developer of the project, Stuart Villard,

"I would like to emphasise that this facility, to be known as Dragon Plus, represents just the initial phase of a far larger major film studio development at Llanilid,"

RCT leader Mr Roberts said.

"This is one of the largest inward investment projects in Europe and we can all be proud that this scheme is being created here in Rhondda Cynon Taf,"

Welsh Economic Development Minister Andrew Davies

Said the studios would become "a major economic catalyst for the area".
The money has come from Objective one funding that is provided by the Welsh Assembly Government.

Lord Attenborough

"People will come here because, apart from anything else, there is a great move to take production out of London, out of the metropolis. And they are going to Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, why not here to Cardiff? I think when these studios are built, the work will come.”

Its interesting to see such an advancement in the area of new media being brought forward into the area of Wales, personally from the above I believe there to be a very good reason for this to exist, I believe the reason is most likely to be related to production expenses. I did notice the term “multimedia businesses” used above which is mainly the reason I have researched Valley Wood Studios. Valley Wood could be a very good source to get direct contact to industry.

Sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4697485.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4700143.stm

Developments, 2007

What a strange month for the beginning of 2007. Relating to professional development, I’m noticing a high increase in development skills and a low increase in academic achievements. Back at UWIC, academics are at the up most as expected it’s a university after all. I really need to find out how to swing this research paper my way, its not going to look good if I don’t. The question that keeps running around in my head is how can I explain something that doesn’t exist, every time I talk about my project I get this strange blank confused look from most people, I tried to outline how I got from A to B with the research proposal but think I lost everyone before I got to A. Maybe the line of communication needs to be cleared.

Any way back to my development skills, I’m currently developing my project site with in Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition with a bit of Visual C#. The amount of control I have obtained is astonishing and the results I’m getting are also very impressive.

Actually hang on this might make some sense.

Question for my self…

Why am I using Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition to develop a site, when I have a small time frame?

The Answer…

Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition allows me to develop application for the .net framework. As far as I’m aware this also plugs directly into the WPF/E Platform (I keep shouting about). If for some unknown reason the .net applications cannot be run within WPF/E, I have the Visual C# to fall back on which plugs directly into XAML which is used to develop most WPF/E applications. So why would I bother with any of this, well basically I have good reason to believe the WPF/E platform has the possibility of becoming a main stream format for interactive media, mainly online interactive media.

Also I’m developing skills within:

Augmented Reality (SDK)
Microsoft Expression Blend
Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Microsoft Visual Studio: C# 2005 Express
Microsoft Visual Studio: Visual Web Developer 2005 Express ASP.NET
Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF/E, XAML & .Net3)

Now I’m presuming who ever just read that, is thinking what the hell. But I really need to develop these skills in order to become competitive within industry, and more importantly to produce something that doesn’t exist. Well apart from the Augmented Reality (SDK) that’s just for fun!

Any way thanks for reading my random rambling and you’re more than welcome to ask questions or give comments, use the john@reaction-one.com.

Production Process - Journal

01/01/07

Project brief selected, focus on interactive media placed with the up coming WPF/E within .NET3

02/01/07

List of problems needed to over come before consistent content can be produced with in WPF/E frame work at this point it’s a good idea to state I have a base idea of the environment I’m trying to produce.

1 2D on 3D simplified
2 PNG - File within 2D on 3D
3 Animation
4 Triggers with Max / Timeline
5 Dynamic data
6 External .DLL
7 MySQL Integration
8 Dynamic object preproduction
9 Environmental sound (distance)

08/01/07

2D on 3D simplified
PNG - File within 2D on 3D

The 2D on 3D code taken from codeplex.com is in production frame work, ready for reuse and also displaying the PNG file format correctly.

15/01/07

The animation timeline was originally exported from Max to Zam3D then into Expression Blend. However this is a long winded approach. So Maya has been used to replace Max. The main reason for this is that Maya has the 3D XAML exporter plug available and in result speeds up the process.

Animation can now be imported directly into the XAML Code, allowing the timeline to be manipulated by the WPF/E framework. (Very important)

16/01/07

The animation can now be triggered with the inbuilt XAML triggers present in expression blend allowing a very powerful interactive system accessible by both designer and developer.


17/01/07

Not a good day for me, just had a chat to Stuart and in result I have to temporarily pull the plug on the existing project. The main reason for this is that the current work doesn’t fit into the selected brief which means I only have 2 and half weeks to start and complete a new project, I believe the technology I’m using is quite far ahead compared to what academic standards expect of todays interactive platforms. The WPF/E platform will most likely be well known in about a year or less depending on industries attitudes towards technology’s such as AJAX and the .NET3 Framework. This has kind of disheartened me in the way I have approached this new format for 2007, but it was expected. I’m starting to get a bit worried that I might have to take my work outside of the university time table which does not seem possible at the moment. AaaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHHHH!

24/01/07

Just put together a survey I’m going to post out to ten 14-15 year olds. Should get some feed back that I can use within the project. The survey can bee seen here (link)

25/01/07

Retrieved survey results and formulated the design concept

26/01/07

The work is going to be print based .The idea was formulated earlier today with Stuart in the LAB.

30/01/07

Got hold of some very hi quality photography from http://www.dreamstime.com
Good source for pro quality photography at a good price.

31/1/07

Amending the 5 images produced, based on the Windows Live Messenger - YCN Brief. Today I have also been looking at Microsoft Visual Web Developer. I’m amazed how powerful the asp.net framework is.

01/07/06

Writing this 1000 report is a pain, cannot get hold of the required reading materials at the university and only have one day to write it, Hmmmmmm!.

02/07/08

Hand in date, and meeting.

Production Processes (ADM304)

This is the document for the Production Processes Brief (ADM304). The objective of this document is to compare gathered information from Industry with academic theory with a personal note. Towards the end of this document I will add some thoughts on how methods can be adopted, and used within in real world projects. We are required to read England & Finney, Managing Multimedia 1999 (2nd Edition) Addison Wesley Cadle J. & Yeates D. (Eds) Project Management for Information Systems (3rd Edition), FT/Prentice Hall (Pearson Education), 2001. However I’m unable to get my hands on any academic content within my time frame. To counteract this I have taken a brave move and used Lev Manovich: The Language of New Media as a academic source, this is a document that I have had previous time to overlook. The Language of New Media holds a lot of information relevant to Production Process and I believe it can be put to some good use within this document. Also I will refer to the information gathered from a group meeting with Richard Shearman at Sequence on Tuesday 13th December.
Personal overview of Project Process:

Projects can be scaled up from a simple web banner to an architectural building site. I believe simplicity & structure are the keys to a successful project, complicating the process only results in further complication of the project itself, and usually results in extended dead lines and even project failure. However from recent experiences I have reason to believe the ability to rapidly change and redirect a project can have its advantages and could be looked upon as a project management skill. I have also recently understood the difference between Research and Development (R&D) and Production Process (P&P) and how these two very different methods of development hold hand in hand and more so in my case are constantly in focus.

Planning

From past experience planning is most likely the seed of a successful project, in order to produce a consistent and budgeted project life cycle, planning is most likely the first stage of the production process. Richard Shearman at Sequence, didn’t really relate much towards planning of sequences project’s, but emphasised on getting the information needed to create the plan for the projects. I believe this is due to the work load being 70% web based, this some what lowers the need for the project plan as the projects are in most cases similar on a project to project basis. Monavich stated a very interesting piece of information:

“As a general operation, compositing is a counterpart of selection. Since a typical new media object is put together from elements which come from different Sources, these elements need to be coordinated and adjusted to fit together.
Although the logic of these two operations — selection and compositing — may
suggest that they always follow one another (first select, then composite), in practice their relationship is more interactive.” // Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media

The above paragraph is a very good explanation for why we need a project plan, and this is because basically in most cases we have alot of information from a lot of different sources that needs to be collated with budget. This can be seen when looking at the film production, for example we see a film in a linier format that start and finishes, however the film is most likely produced on location bases so lets make a small script to explain.

Character Name: superMe

Script Start
Film Time 00:00:00 = Location One: Desert
Film Time 00.32.00 = Location Two: Forest
Film Time 01:12:00 = Location Three: Desert
Script End

The above basically states there is a character named “superMe” who needs to be at a certain location at specific times “Film Time 00:00:00 = Location”. Looking at the script we can clearly see superMe needs to be at location, Desert at Film Time 00:00:00 and also needs to be at the same location in Film Time 01:12:00. In result to this the needed film (information) would be recorded within the same location regardless to the films actual linier pattern, this will save the money and time by removing the need to move the actors and kit back and forth to the same location twice. So what we end with is the start and the end of a film before the middle, it does seem strange but is logical.

Tracking, evaluation and maintenance

When at sequence I noticed Richard talked about the maintenance of client communication through out the project life cycle. This I believe maybe due to the position Richard holds at sequence, however it did strike me in the impotence of communication with the client. Richard talked about a system where the client is aware of what exactly they are having produced, and at each project phase are required to provide a signature to confirm the stage of the project. Sounds simple but very effective and something I’m going to start using in the near future. I believe project areas can be very large in timescale so the idea of mile stones must be implemented in order to keep the client regularly up to date. Also the ability to provide the client with an uninterruptible line of communication is a very powerful tool. If the client can maintain confidence in the company the company will maintain its clients.