Nyssa's Digital Media Design Blog

In today's lesson, we were learning basic HTML code script. We firstly covered the different layers of code you can have and their tags, such as Paragraph (p/P), headers, and text. We then learnt how to open and close each section with <> and </>. We also covered how to indent more work, which is how you create paragraphs within the HTML page. We then continued working on whatever work we needed to be getting on with. For me, this meant adding more features to my monster design in Blender, and beginning to find some different sources for my theory Literature Review.

In today's lesson, I was continuing to create the monster model on Blender. I started by creating a pelvis resembling bone , which I made by first adding in a new circle mesh, filling in it's face, and moving around it's different vertices, to try and curve around at the front, and curl around into a rounded back. I then placed this at the bottom of the spine. I felt that this made the pelvis sit too low on the body, so I cut down the length of the spine, and also adjusted it's curvature to be lesser, as I felt that the pelvis was sitting very far forward in comparison to the ribs. I then duplicated the arms and hands, re-scaling them to be longer and thicker, to create the legs for the monster. I added in and scaled down an new UV-Sphere mesh as well, to create a leg socket joint, which I then duplicated and placed one above each leg, to connect it closely to the pelvis gaps. I also rotated the legs, as although initially I made them straight, I felt that they would lo...

In today's first lesson, I was continuing with my app design. I had been working on my app throughout the week, so I had improved it since the last class, by adding in the pages to actually play the songs, and make sure that when you press the play button, it causes the  progress  bar to move along, and stop if you then press the pause button that it will change to. I also scaled down this progress bar and play/pause button, so that on my main screens, I could also make it look like a song was playing. I had also added in next song and last song buttons, and connected up all of these pages on the prototype settings. Because I wanted to be able to play the songs from my opening and playlist screens as well, I had to create multiple copies of these screens to play the different songs as well. As an added little feature, on the queue add i ng pages, I added in a little "Added To Queue!" popup, that shows briefly when you hit the add button. I also added a "Added To Play...

Today, was the University's second 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 set up the green screen set up that we were gong to be showing, by helping put together the lights and cameras, connecting them up to a monitor and editing suite so that visitors could stand in front of the green screen and see themselves keyed into a background image. I also helped to set up the VR headsets that we had, so that the visitors could use them to see what kind of things some of our students have been able to create for the virtual world. 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...

In today's lesson, we had our final presentation for our Global Charettes Project work. As I was in Group A, after the initial introduction, we were asked to go first to present our work. Before the presentation started,  my group  and I had finalized our Google Slides to only show our main work, so that we didn't talk for too long, and also decided in which order we would discuss our work's progress. I believe that our final presentation went really well, although we did feel slightly rushed due to the time restraints, so we probably could have done better, although I think it still went as good as we could have done. Watching the rest of the group's presentations was really interesting, as I hadn't yet seen any of their posters, so I was really intrigued to see what topics each of the other groups had chosen, and how they had decided to represent these topics, with the posters and other items that they had all created.

In today's lesson, I was making more Blender models, and began working on my design for our game's monster. To start off the lesson, I decided that I wanted to upgrade the barbed wire that I had previously created. I was following along with a YouTube tutorial on how to do this using geo nodes, which I hadn't previously used, however, very soon into the video, I realised that although I had followed the directions exactly, my work didn't look like the one from the original creator. I think this may be because of the fact that the video was quite old and the software has changed quite a lot since the video was released, so this could cause these differences. I decided that for now I would leave the barbed wire, as I really needed to start working on our monster, so that others could add it into the game mechanics. So if I get time after finishing the monster, I will return to this barbed wire work, but if I don't, I will just have to use the previous version that I c...

In today's first lesson, I was working on my app design. I had been working on my app between today and the previous lesson, I had managed to almost finish my search pages, which I completed in class, so that on my search pages, I could like songs and add them to playlists. I also organized my pages so that they were all spaced apart equally, to look neater on the page. I then started to work on my profile pages, so that I would be able to "personalize" the account that I was showing. I wanted to be able to type in a name and change the birthday section of the page, so I created multiple pages, each with an extra name letter added, so that when connected together I was able to type in my name. I also added in a new page with a calendar, which was a part of a component to change months, to be able to choose my birthday. I was able to connect my pages, so that the profile was only editable once you've pressed the Edit Profile button, and would save when you press on the...

Over the weekend, I was working on the Global Charettes Project with the rest of my group. I was tasked along with Mosad to illustrate the sketch that had been drawn for the UK representing social media post, and come up with a description to go alongside it. I began creating my design on Adobe Animate, as that's the software that I felt most comfortable using. I decided that I would work on illustrating the background and puppet, if Mosad would work on the surrounding objects representing the other countries' cultures, which he agreed with.  I started by working on the background, as I thought that this would be the easiest section. I followed the suggested wooden unit background of the sketch, which was based off of the main poster, and tried to keep the same colour palette and artistic style as what others had used, so that all of our work looked as similar as possible. I then started working on the puppet's design. To do this, I used the design that other group members ...

In today's lesson, I was continuing to create the storage container model that I was working on in a previous lesson.  I finished watching the YouTube tutorial that I had been following along with, and managed to finish the design aspects of the model. For the colouring, I wanted to find an image material that looked rusty, however, I couldn't find one that I liked, so I decided to just pick a colour that I felt suited the model. However, my teammates asked if I could make it a bright red colour, so I duplicated the model and coloured them differently, including one bright red one for them.

In today's first lesson, I was continuing to work on my app design. As I had been working on this throughout the week, I was organizing my pages so that they were easier to see and work with, as they were a bit all over the place where I'd been creating them. I also then had to make sure that all of my Search pages had working search components, to make it look like it works. After this, I downloaded the Figma app onto my phone, so that I could see what it looked like on an actual phone, rather than just the Prototype on my laptop screen. By doing this, I realised that I'd rather change the frame size that I[d been working on from IPhone 8 Plus, to IPhone 13/14, otherwise on my phone, there was a black bar across the top and bottom of the screen, as the prototype size was smaller than the phone screen. I didn't like this, to I changed it to fit better. I also realised that I had some of my interactions set to when key pressed, however I realised that my phone didn't...

In today's lesson, we started with an early morning to do an intranational Teams call with the Malaysian and Egyptian campuses. We did this, because we were starting a 2 week long project called The Global Charettes. For this project, we were put into groups across the three campuses, and together we would have to create a poster based on one of the given themes to present at the end of the project. My group decided that we wanted to base our poster on the theme of 'Cultural Differences'. Due to the time differences, we didn't have loads of time to talk, but in the time that we had, we managed to arrange how we would come up with some sketches for the next Sunday, so that we could then decide on our final design to work on. In the afternoon, our class had to attend ACE, which consisted of a One-on-one Interview, a Group Activity, and a Skills Workshop. The interview, although only for the skills practice, was based on a job description that we had to previously pick and...

In today's lesson, I started working on a new Blender model asset for our game. I started designing a storage container by following a YouTube tutorial, as I was asked to add this to my list of models. This tutorial seemed quite easy to follow, and the final model looked well detailed yet still simple, and I felt that it would look good within our game's design. I worked on this throughout the lesson, as although it was quite a basic tutorial, the creator went quite fast, and even on a slower playback speed, I still had to continue rewinding the video to recap what I had to do.

In today's first lesson, to continue on my app, I was adding in the content for my data.  During the week between lessons, I created my Design Brief for my app, which included what colours and fonts I was using. For the colours, I had to add in all of the different ways to see the colours, such as HEX, RGB, and CMYK as well as others, and for the fonts, I had to show each letter, some symbols, and Latin letters in each font, as well as Regular and Bold versions if available. I also went onto the official Eurovision website, to make a list of all the countries that have ever been entered into the contest. I then started with the first country, and started making notes within my app, of every song from the country, and who performed it. Within the lesson, I then continued this process for each following country, making notes of songs and artists. I also went through each song and added in a thumbnail image to each one, some directly from the Eurovision website, and some I had to find...

In today's lesson, we were continuing working on what we had to do for our games.  During the week, I had started working on designing a car model to sit in our in-game car park, so during this lesson I continued working on this car model. I was doing this, by following along with a YouTube video tutorial, which I found really easy to follow along with.  I was quite happy with how this model design turned out, and how realistic although still low-poly it looked. Once I had finished building my design, I added in different materials to the different sections, to make it look more realistic. I tried to chose colours that would actually be seen on a car, and made them varying levels of metallic so that it looked shiny and the glass was reflective, and so I was quite happy with the final results. I then added in some lights, to where the headlights would be, so that it will actually look like the car is running.

In today's first lesson, we were continuing to work on our apps. I wasn't fully happy with the design of my app, so I decided to look into Neumorphism, as Dean had been highly recommending that we look into it and try and incorporate it into our own works. I liked the way this effect made apps look, so I decided to change my design to better include this design style. To do this, I changed my background from being white with a blue header and footer, to being all blue, with an added gradient of a darker shade of the same blue. I then changed all of my button designs, by duplicating each one twice, and changing all of the colours, so that one was the same shade of blue as the background, one was the same darker shade of this blue for a shadow effect, and one was a lighter shade of the blue for a highlight effect. On the shadow and highlight layers, I added in layer blur effects, so that they looked more like shadows and highlights, rather than just other coloured button images. ...