Nyssa's Digital Media Design Blog

In today's lesson, we were working in Unity Engine again. To begin the lesson, we first had to download some assets into our world documents, to use within the lesson, including a gun, gunshot sound and some grass/rock images. We then had to take the gun asset, and place it into the hierarchy, as a child of our Main Camera. We then had to alter the size and position of this gun, so that it looked like our character is holding it in place. We then had to create a new C# code script for this gun, within our Scripts folder, named Pistol Logic so that we could make it playable. Once we had written out this code, we had to drag it into the Inspector settings of our Gun option. We changed the features of this setting, by changing the Range to be 100, and the Damage to be 10. We also then had to drag in our Main Camera tab into the FPS Camera option, to connect them together.  After this, we had to create a target to hit. To do this, we created a cube within the hierarchy, and made it hav...

To help us with our work, we had to look at the  book ' 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People'  - Susan M. Weinschenk Ph.D, and make some notes on particular chapters. This would give us some guidance on how viewers see things, to get us to make better choices when designing our posters. I think that looking at this book really healped with how I was going to design my poster after reading about how we as humans see things within a computer screen. Peripheral Vision (chapter 2) : From looking at this chapter, I took notes on the fact that  Peripheral Vision, describes  what you can see but not looking at directly, such as when you glimpse something out of the corner of your eye. Web ads use this peripheral vision to make you notice them more, by flashing lights to catch your attention, as even if you are looking at something in the middle of the screen, you will notice and get distracted enough to eventually look at the lights within the ad. When ...

In today's lesson, we began by looking at some examples of posters, which were quite effective at getting across the information that they needed to, as well as looking appealing to the viewer, to catch their attention. We then had to open an Animate Project File, which contained all of the components needed to create a poster for The Science Museum, which did exist a few years ago. Without looking at the original poster design, we had to take these components, and create our own versions of this poster, making it as effective looking as we could, in our own personal ways. Later on in the lesson, we then had to start working on our final project posters. I had a certain design that I was going to work on, however as I started working I came up with some ideas that ended up changing how my design looked overall. I was going to go for a very monochrome look as I thought this was very modern and stylish, and seemed quite scientific. However, I designed a VR Headset as a title holder, ...

In today's lesson, we first of all were given some time to work on our blogs, or any other work that we needed to catch up on. I worked on my OpenProcessing work, to try and get my robot to work, which I did manage to complete. We then had to watch 'Kill Your TV: Jim Moir's Weird World of Video Art', to give us an insight on some of the background of Video and Digital Art over the past few years. This was a very interesting documentary to watch, as it gave us a lot of information about the type of work that wee are starting to learn how to create. After this, we went back to Davinci Blackmagic Resolve, and continued with editing our Strangers In The Park videos, from our last lesson. We had to finish colour correcting each individual clip, so that they were all easier and nicer to look at. After doing this for a few clips, it became much easier to know what to do for the remaining ones, so luckily it didn't take too much time to finish.

In today's lesson, we were continuing the work we were doing previously in OpenProcessing. We started off by looking at some images on Pexels, and used some of these images to play around with the code to add tints and adjust the size of the. With this, we were than also to duplicate the image, place it in a different part of the screen, and make each image have a different coloured tint placed over the top of it. We then went from here, to learning how to add in text and colour it to have different effects. We also then returned to our shape works, to learn how to use the blend effects, like how you can use them in Photoshop and Illustrator, to create new effects when different shapes overlap each other. In the afternoon, we then had to take all of the skills that we had learnt over the past couple of lessons, and create our own piece of work. For my piece, I have started to create a robot face, and I aim to make it so that the different facial features, such as the eyes and the m...

In today's lesson, we were looking at the software of OpenProcessing, which allows you to create artwork, fully made with code.  To begin with, we learnt some of the basics, such as how to draw a line, and some basic shapes, as we also had to learn that compared to a normal graph, where the bottom left hand corner is normally (0,0), on a computer screen, it is the top left hand corner that has these coordinates. We then used this information to create a grid of lines, which we were then taught how to fill   in  with colour, as well as changing the stroke colour and size. When creating this grid, I accidentally typed in the wrong code, however it created what I thought was quite an interesting curved grid shape. We then learnt how to create a circle that we would be able to code to move across the screen. With this circle created, we were then able to make it grow in size as it travelled, and on another document, allowed it to bounce off of the edge of the screen. Aft...

In today's lesson, we began learning about Davinci Blackmagic Resolve video editing software. We did this, by first downloading the software, and then importing our clips from when we filmed our Strangers In The Park video, into a new document. We then took these clips, and recreated our full Strangers In The Park videos, using the available tools to edit these clips together, just like how we did previously using Premiere Pro, however I personally found it much easier to use Resolve, as I could see which parts of the clips I was editing a lot easier than I could when using Premiere Pro. After this, we began using the scopes that were available and the curves feature, so that we could colour match all of our clips, to make the colours look more natural and easier to look at. We also played around with the speed of different clips, slowing some of them down, and speeding some of them up from their original speeds.

In today's lesson, we continued using Unreal Engine, learning how to add in a gun which can shoot bullets out of it, that are able to hit surrounding objects. To begin with, we first had to open up our Unreal projects that we had previously been working on, and then we had to download a gun .fbx file, which we had to drag into our contents folder within our project. From here, we then opened up our project settings and added in two new  action mappings, for Fire and Alternate Fire, connecting these with the Left and Right Mouse Clicks, respectively. We then  added in a new Static Mesh component, to the Camera component that we had previously worked on, and named this new component "Weapon". This new component, we then found the settings for, and changed the Asset from None to Gun, so that it looked like a gun. We then had to resize and move this gun on our viewport section, rotating it to be facing away from us, at an angle that looked as if our character was actually hol...

In today's lesson, we started to work on how we will make our interactive posters, focusing on creating the buttons that we would need to move around our documents. To begin this, we first created a new document, making the size 640x960px, and making sure it ran at 25 frames per second. We then on this new document, had to create different layers, which we then added keyframes to, every 10 frames, up to frame 50. On the layer we named Actions, we then opened the Action code page, and copied in some code to stop everything from playing, which we had been given to copy in. We then created a new button symbol, which opened a new page, where we had to make a main menu button, that we would be able to press to get to our other pages. We got to change the colours that this button turned when hovered over and clicked on. We then had to return to our Main Stage, and open the Library tab. Within this, we then had to duplicate this button page, and rename it to make the remaining number of b...

In today's lesson, we first discussed about theory work, and the discovery of free-will and determinism. This was a very interesting discussion, and I believe that we learnt a lot from it. After this, we then had to finish off the work that we had been editing, making sure that it was completed to our best attempts. We then had to use the same techniques that we had learnt within our previous lessons, to add in another clip into the same sequence that we had been editing. The new clip that we had to add in, was of a man jumping up and down, which meant that we had to create a mask around the man, and alter all of the mask points for each different frame, so that we could see him jumping when the green screen had been Ultra Keyed, to see the background behind it.

In today's lesson, we were learning how to use Unity Engine to create games. We did this today, by first of all downloading a folder full of assets, and creating a new document within Unity, where we could then use these assets later on. On this new document, we first had to  add in different components to our character, including a Capsule Collider and a Rigid Body, to make our character playable.  We then had to select the Main Camera option, and dragged this camera into the place of where the eyes of our character would normally be. We then had to take this Camera folder, and place it into our Player folder. Then, within our main folder options, we opened our S cripts folder, and within this, created two new folders named Movement and Camera Movement, and within these we would create the programs to move our character as well as how the camera can move and see different things. We then had to open the coding software Visual Studio, and had to type in our code, which would a...

For this work, we have had to research into two different examples of iconic tech innovations that we found interesting. The topics that I have decided to research, are  Apple I-Pods , and  the Atari 2600 Console. 10 interesting iPod facts (webdevelopersnotes.com)   - The iPod was first launched on  October  23 rd   2001. - The iPod was advertised as being able to fit in your pocket to carry around your music, which people liked as they had not been able to do this previously. Amazing Facts On The Atari 2600 - The Fact Site - The Atari 2600, was released on September 11 th   1977. - Whilst the Atari 2600 was being produced, there were about 30 million units of the console sold.

In today's lesson, we were continuing to expand our knowledge on how to use the different available uses of Animate. To do this, we created a bug character and animated it. To begin this design, I first decided that I was going to create a butterfly character, so on a New Symbol layer, as a Movie Clip, I designed my buttterfly, making sure to keep the wings, body, and legs as separate layers, so that I could edit them apart from one another. I then had to create some new keyframes within the timeline, and on one of these, I changed the positions of the wings and legs, so that it would look like the wings are flapping together, when played consecutively in the animation. On a new Symbol layer, that was on the Button option, I had to then create a Go Button, that when pressed, would set off my character design. To do this, I had to create three layers on the timeline, one for the main button, one for the text, and one for the button in a down position, and then in their respective la...