Nyssa's Digital Media Design Blog

In today's lesson, we were continuing to work on our games.  To begin the lesson, we learnt how to properly add textures onto our work, on each different game engine as well as Blender. This helped for what I needed to do for my work, as I needed my tree to look more realistic. For my game, I was focusing on my surroundings today, by editing the tree that I had previously made in Blender, as I felt that it didn't look realistic enough, as well as changing the terrain I created in Unity. I did this, by using the Raise/Lower Terrain, and Paint Terrain tools, and by downloading different textures from the internet, and making notes to reference where I found these images. I used these images to paint my terrain, as they were all tileable, and therefore looked seamless when painted together.

In today's lesson, we started by following a worksheet, to learn how to add sound to our work. We did this, by creating piano keys, which when pressed both lit up, and produced a sound that we had imported in to our projects. The lighting up section, we had learnt in previous lessons, however we were all learning about the sound aspects for the first time. We also had to add play and pause buttons, that when clicked, played and stopped a longer song. After this, we began creating plans for our final story projects, and began to create them within animate. I based my story on a rags to riches theme, similar to The Ugly Duckling, however, I put a modern twist on it, by making all of the characters robots, and making it so that the main character who looks different ends up finding friends and realizing that differences aren't necessarily a bad thing, as I thought that this was a nicer spin on the original story. Keyboard (herts.ac.uk)

In today's lesson, we were continuing to work on our own game projects. I began working on the landscape for my game, as I had built my bow, arrow and target in previous lessons already.  To create the landscape, I first had to create a new Unity project, to create my game in. Within this project, I then added in a new capsule to be my playable character, and to make it have the ability to move, I created new Script folders, and copied in the code from our previous lesson on capsule movement. This then allowed my capsule to be able to move and look around the map, as the main camera was placed within it. I then added in a new terrain into this project, and using the tools available for it, added some texture into the ground, to look more realistic. I then returned to Blender, and created a n ew project, as I wanted to design a tree that I could put into this new map that I was creating. To do this, I added in a new cylinder, and used the extension tools, to create the trunk of...

In today's lesson, we were continuing to work our way through the Davinci Resolve tutorial videos. However, rather than working on Fusion, today we were learning about Fairlight, which is an audio editing section of the software.  We watched through the videos, following along with the tutorial on our own computers as they went along, until we had completed them, and had produced the work to go along with them.

In today's lesson, we started by creating a walking sequence on Animate. We did this, by first copying an image of a walking cycle and opening this as a new symbol in Animate. We then started to design our own characters, making each of the body parts on separate layers, so that they could move independently later on.  By using the guide, and adding in new keyframes every couple of frames, we altered our character's limbs repeatedly at each keyframe, to make it so that when the frames are looped, it looks like the character is walking. We then added in a shadow effect under all of the keyframes that changed size based on where the legs and feet were placed, to make it look more like it was actually walking on solid ground. Then, to finish off this exercise, we moved this character onto the main stage, and added a classic tween to it, moving it across the screen at different keyframed intervals, so that it would look like it was actually walking across the screen. After th...

In today's lesson, we were continuing with the Fusion lesson videos that we have been working through in our previous few lessons.  In the work that I completed today, I managed to change the look of the sky within a video of people walking along the beach, as well as starting on creating a broadcast opening that has a spinning globe, which we had to create from a 2D image of the Earth.

In today's lesson, we started to work on our own individual game ideas. For my work, I wanted to create an Archery themed game, where you will be able to shoot a working bow and get a score based on where your arrows land on the different targets. Luckily enough, I was able to find a YouTube series which goes through step by step how to create a game with similar mechanics to what I wanted to create, by using Blender and Unity, both of which we have began to learn about using.  So I started by following that video, and by using the basic knowledge that I had already developed from our previous lessons, to create a basic bow and arrow design, as well as a target, both of which I coloured in by creating materials within Blender. I also created a design for a target stand, which was not in the video, but I wanted my target to have this feature, as it's what I know archery targets to look like in real life shooting ranges. To finish off the lesson, I very briefly made a start on th...

In today's lesson, we finished up working on our interactive posters, so that they were completed to the best that we could make. I had to change some of the font styles on my work so that it would show correctly when actually viewed, but other than that, my work was finished. Poster (herts.ac.uk) ,  Landscape Poster (herts.ac.uk) After this, we looked at what we were going to have to create for our second project. We looked at the Seven Basic Story Plots and Architypes, and some examples of each of these. We will have to create a story based on one of these plots, that is around Seven scenes long, using the skills we have been learning from using Animate for our previous project.  We then learnt how to create transitions between scenes in Animate, by following a tutorial pdf on how to create a city landscape scene, that could go between day and night. This activity would help us with our next project, as it will give us a way to change through the different scenes that we wil...

In today's lesson, we were allowed to continue working through the Fusion lesson videos that we had been working on within our previous lesson. This allowed us to continue expanding on our skills, and would allow us to know how to create better work in the future, using the Fusion Software. After this, we all watched some clips of video art over the years, including work such as 'Pieces I Never Did'   (David Critchley - 1979),   so that we could  look into how and why they were created, and to give us some ideas for what we could create for our own work, and how we might produce this work.

In today's lesson, we were using Blender to create 3D models of objects that we might need to use for our games. We started off by creating a cube, which we deleted three of the faces of. We then changed the thickness of these walls, and made sure that all of the edges were straight. We then played around with some modifiers for the walls, to curve them, and round out their edges slightly. We then centralized the camera on this small room that we had made.   We then created a new cube, which we shrunk down on the different Axes, to create a thin square. We then used the Loop Cut tool, to be able to Bevel the edges of the shape, so that it had a softer look to it. This shape, we then placed into the corner of our room, on top of the floor, so that it looked like a rug. We then wanted to create a sofa, so by curving the edges of a cube once again, and then beveling it, we managed to get the main shape of a sofa.  We then were able to raise the edges to look like the arms and bac...

In today's lesson, we were continuing to work on our interactive posters. For my poster, I worked on adding in my information, and making sure that everything was presented in a way that I was happy with. I also created a near identical copy of my work but in a landscape view, changing only where some of the text and background shapes were placed. I also had to work on my logo, to make sure that it changed colour when hovered over, and I also decided to do this for the buttons on my menu, so that you would be able to clearly tell which page you would be going to look at.

In today's lesson, we were learning how to use DaVinci BlackMagic Resolve Fusion. We did this, by following along with the tutorials that the software has provided within it's website. To begin with, we firstly had to  download the Project Files for the work we were going to be following, onto our computers, so that we could actually use the images that we needed to use. We then started to watch the first video, which explained some of the basics as to how this section of the software worked and what to expect from it. From here, we actually began following it's instructions. First, we had to rename our first node to 'Actress', so that we knew what we would be editing when using this node, and to this, we connected up a Colour Corrector node, which we edited the levels of to bring out more details within the image, such as the woman's freckles, which you couldn't really see before. We then added a Brightness/Contrast node to the line, and altered the numbers...