Nyssa's Digital Media Design Blog

In todays lesson, we were all continuing to work on our teamwork projects. For me, this meant that I was continuing to create models within Blender, for us to use in our game. To start with, I followed along with a tutorial which taught me how to create an realistic looking chain link fence, by using modifiers, which I then played around with until I felt it looked best. I also then added in the posts, as it would need a structure to place it into the ground. After I had finished with the fence, I moved onto another tutorial, which showed me how to create an effective looking strip of barbed wire by also using modifiers. I think that both of these designs ended up looking quite good, although I do want to edit the barbed wire to be able to loop around itself.

In today's first lesson, we were working on our app designs. I was working on trying to get a music player progress bar to move along and change between playing and pausing, so that when I pressed the buttons it looked like it was working properly with the bar slowly moving along as the song progresses, stopping when the pause button was hit. I also tried to alter the design of my pages, to make it look more attractive and modern. I was recommended to change the plain white background, so I played around with different designs, and decided that I quite liked the look of a dark grey and blue gradient, the blue being an exact colour match to Eurovision's 2023 colour scheme. During the second lesson, we firstly collected into our groups, to discuss some more ideas for our games, and then separated to actually start on our individual roles.  As I am creating model designs for our group, in this lesson, I decided to start by modelling some different streetlamp models. I created thre...

In today's lesson, we firstly had a careers representative come in to talk to us about the ACE event that we will have to attend later in the semester. She covered what will be involved in this, including a one on one interview, a group project, and a seminar. She also told us about how we will need to prepare for this event, by researching a topic and questions that may be asked based on it, and also how we will need to dress/act etc. After this, we began our game development work.  We did this, by going over the controls within Blender again, which jogged our memory on how to use the software. We practiced by creating some basic shapes and using the available tools. Within Blender, we were then asked to create some different shaped and sized rocks, as we would all need these for our games, and they are simple to create and play around with.

In today's first lesson, we had to show what ideas we had come up with so far for our apps, so I showed my logo design and the wireframe/prototype that I had created for my app. However, as many of us were, I was advised to change the name that I had come up with "Euro Listen", as it was too long for a name, so after some thinking and discussions, I came up with "Eu-Eu" (Pronounced You, You).  I liked this name change, as it was much shorted and catchier, it gave the user some sort of personal feel due to the pronunciation sounding like the word You, aimed at the user, and after looking it up, the name was not used for anything else, as many other name suggestions had been. Because of this name change, I also had to re create my logo, as I had used the name within it. I still have not come up with a final design yet, but I am working on it. In the second session of the day, we started by beginning to look into our different personality types, to see how well we ...

Today, was the University's first open day of the semester, to bring in new students who may be starting in 2024 onwards. As I had on the previous open day last month, I once again came along to help out , as I wanted to help represent our course. To begin the day, I helped to put up some posters on the wall, to show the visitors the work that the recently graduated students had created for their final projects within the course, which I quite enjoyed doing, although, they kept falling down which was a little bit annoying. Throughout the day, there were also two presentations to try and sell the course to the prospective students and their families, showing them some of the best work that previous students have produced, as well as letting them know how the course will be changing next year into an exciting new hybrid of DMD, Fine Art, and Photography. Unfortunately, not many people turned up, a total of four students and four parents showed up collectively between the two presenta...

In today's lesson, we first went through what we would be covering in these classes throughout the Semester, as it is linked in with our Teamwork Practices module, although these sessions would be more focused on the actual game design. We got into our groups after this, and began discussing any ideas we had for what we wanted to add to our game. Our team decided that we wanted to create a horror themed game, similar to Slenderman, but based off of Dr. Who's weeping angels, where the monster can only move when not being looked at. We also decided that we would have the player carry a torch around, to be able to see the enemy, and there would be small challenges that they need to overcome to get from the starting point at one end of the board, to the end at the other end of the board, such as a barn to walk through to collect batteries, and a breaking rope bridge that you will need to carefully walk over at the end of the level.

I wanted to begin creating my app before we returned to class next Monday, so I researched into some Figma tutorials, so that I was able to start creating a basic app wireframe, so that I could see how I wanted my app to be layed out. I created many pages, such as a Splash Screen, a Profile Page, and Playlists, a Player Screen, and a Library. I then was able to continue watching these tutorial videos, to add filler images and colour in my wireframe, to make it look more like a completed app, compared to just the plain wireframe's design. I was also able to create a basic prototype for my app design, by connecting up my pages so that when you click on something, it will take you to another page, just as I want it to do when completed.

In today's first lesson, we each had to present to the class the PowerPoints that we had been working on throughout the week, about an app that we use that inspires us. For my app, I chose Amazon Music, as it is an app that I regularly use and like the way that it is layed out as it gives me recommendations based on what I have previously listened to, as well as having a really nice design and colour palette. It was really interesting to see everyone's presentations, as it let us know more about everyone and what apps they like to use in comparison to others. In our second session of the day, we  began working on our Teamwork Practices module.  To do this, we had to get ourselves into two groups, where we then picked a word from a list on the board, and the opposing team had to create a level on Super Mario Maker 2 for us based on that word. Our team chose the word Amusing, and the other team chose the word Long. This was a good and fun way to start working in teams, as we all...

In today's lesson, we went through and introductory PowerPoint presentation on what will be expected of us within our Teamwork Practices classes. We looked at the different roles within teams, and had to decide where we fit within this list. We also covered other forms of personality types such as the Myers-Briggs scale. After this, we looked at some work completed by a previous year, on how to write a good synopsis and treatment, as we will need to create these artifacts for our own projects, and apparently these are very commonly mixed up and completed wrongly, so we wanted to see how to do them correctly.

In today's lesson, we were introduced to one of our new modules, User Experience Design. We learnt that within this module, we would independently have to come up with an idea for an app design, and then create our ideas using our choice of software, however Figma and Protopie were recommended for us to use. Within the lesson, we aslo covered what UX and UI Design actually is, as well as what the differences between them are.

Over the summer break, I was assigned the role of Web Chief by one of my archery clubs.  For this role, I had to create a website from scratch for my club, to help people learn about and be able to contact us. To do this, I used WordPress, and customized the whole site to represent the colours and styles that represent our club. I really enjoyed the tasks that I had to complete to create this website, and I am quite proud of how it turned out.