I’m extremely proud of the resulting work of both projects. Project 2 in particular has helped me gain confidence with Flash, and I’m now excited about using the software. I think my work for that project was professional, and well polished. Making use of sound elements, a good deal of actionscript, video elements, 3D modeling and traditional 2D content I feel it’s the best piece of multimedia work I have created. The 3D elements wouldn’t have been possible without the work created in project 1. Again, I was very impressed with what I managed to create. Reflecting on that project now, I do see some room for improvement but I look forward to improving my 3D skills, so much so I’m considering taking the Virtual Environments pathway next year. If I was to do that project again I’d maybe dedicate more time to creating the work in 3D and less time in the research phase. While it’s good to research, I believe I’m still at a stage where I need to understand 3D Studio Max much more.

Project 2 became a little rushed towards the end, and this is reflected in the quality of the final interactive object. The coca cola object was my least favourite, and with better time management I could have created it entirely in 3D. I may have also made a smaller version of the site, to allow more people to view it as intended. I’m still very pleased with the outcome, but as always there are possible areas for improvement.

http://www.philiphowlett.com/ident

I decided to publish the completed site to a different directory with a smaller URL. The html file in which the swf is embedded is now an index so that directory shows the finished site. I also made some changes to the code that flash outputs. I now have a title and meta tag within the head of the script. Hopefully some of the search engine bots will reference my site when certain key words are input to their engines.

All that's left to do now is complete my evaluation. The user testing has been carried out throughout the project, so I just need to compile my results in to something a little more presentable.

I actually really enjoyed this project, especially when I grasped flash a little more. I definitely have more confidence with it, and I'm looking to create a flash website over the summer for a company. By the time we begin University again I should have quite a special portfolio as well.

Seeing as I need to get some user testing done, and complete my evaluation I thought I better wrap things up. My final object is now finished, and to test out the whole thing check out the site here:

http://www.philiphowlett.com/identity/Site.html

I'll be honest, I don't like this last object as much as the others. It works nicely, and it's fairly interesting, I just wanted to spend more time on it. I wanted to render all the elements in 3D, but seeing as my site is now a fairly hefty 2.3MB its becoming a little slow to load. I decided to cut my losses and go with simple 2D images. The interactivity is still there, it's just not as pretty to look at as it could have been. I've still got one thing left I want to do to get the site fully presentable, but until then visit the link above. Phew!

I've got another object completed and published to the site. If you want to test it out visit the site here:
http://www.philiphowlett.com/identity/Site.html

I've spoken about my love of films when I made the wallet object. To go in to this a little further I took a picture of a few of my DVD's. The ones in colour are the interactive ones. The idea is that you click on the spine of the DVD and some information on why I love that film appears in the space to the right. To close the information on that title, simply click the green X symbol.

There's some sound elements added in there, and a few simple animations. Just one more object remaining!

My interest in games and everything associated with them spawned from the day I had the original Nintendo. Since then I've spent the majority of my spare time enjoying them. One series of games in particular has dominated my life more than any other. Unfortunetly, my life is about to take another set back on April 29th when the next one comes out. Grand Theft Auto, made by Rockstar games is probably one of the most eagerly awaited games of all time. My fondness of Rockstar games goes beyond the games they make however.

Rockstar have a particular attitude towards the games they make, and it sets them apart from much of the competition. Their catalogue of games set out to shock more often than not. Manhunt, Bully and GTA have all had their fair share of negative press. None of this has prevented them from creating hugely successful games, and instead it's made them one of the major players in the gaming industry. They're now a world wide company with offices across the U.K, U.S.A and Japan employing hundreds of people.

When researching Rockstar I was amazed to find they actually have offices based in Lincoln and Leeds. Not very far away at all. It's encouraging to see that games companies aren't concentrated mainly in the States or Japan as I expected them to be.

I like the bravery of Rockstar, in that they'll put content in a game which most developers would shy away from. They're the rebels of the gaming industry, and not only do their games shock, they also take advantage of the latest technology. GTA4 in particular is set to contain the largest gaming city in the series so far, containing more detail than ever before. NPC's think for themselves and the city should feel more alive than ever. They've even created their own game engine, named RAGE which I've seen in action once before in their table tennis game. My last point of interest is their use of the Euphoria animation system. Where as most games make use of predetermined/drawn animations and a physics system, GTA4 will let Euphoria process any animations. Rather like the rag-doll engine seen in Unreal games, bodies will now react in more realistic ways.

I respect Rockstar for their determination to takes things slightly too far. While they might be slightly arrogant and unprofessional at times, they know how to create a successful and enjoyable game. Sandbox environments and the latest technology. Thats the kind of company I'd one day like to be involved with.

Euphoria Animation Engine

As part of my user testing I asked people to mark my site from 1-5 on how long it takes to load. 1 being poor and 5 being excellent. Considering the site is a fairly small 2.5MB, it shouldn't take long at all to load with a broadband connection. Even on the slowest broadband of around 2mbps it should only take 12.5 seconds to load. Baring this in mind, I received a fair bit of negative feedback so I thought I'd test the site out on my 10MB connection. It should have taken 2-3 seconds, but instead took about 10. So I got talking to support at my web hosting company. I'll keep things updated.

My Support Ticket
Fri May 02 2008 11:44AM by philhowlett@msn.com FROM:
SITE: http://www.philiphowlett.com
ADDR: 86.10.85.1

It seems that everything on my site is slow. I'm using a 10MB line, which I can max out on most websites. On my own website the maximum download is only 50kbps if I'm lucky. Just wondering why that is? I need the speed as a lot of my content is streamed video and downloaded images so I need fast download speeds.

I know it's not my ISP I've already checked that on my end. It's just all content from bluehost. Where as most sites will allow me to download at 700kbps to 1.1mbps I only get 35-50kbps when testing my site.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Reply #1
Fri May 02 2008 12:22PM by support-other@bluehost.com Try proxy browsing through turbohide.com or megaproxy.com and and test your speeds. If you need help doing this, let us know and we can walk you through it.

Thanks,
James Belliston
Level 1
BlueHost.com
888.401.4678

I've added another object to my box of tricks. This one is my wallet. I spent just about all day yesterday getting it to work like I wanted, and now it's online in its final state more or less. If you go to the site here you'll notice there are still only two objects in the box, but the empty space in the lower right is now clickable. Have a go and tell me what you think.

I was having a problem within my interactive work for sometime. If you clicked on my avatar controls, in particular the 'wave' button, an error message would appear. Apparently there was an error on frame 318, which was news to me, as at no point was the button pointing to frame 318. After having a look at it earlier today, I realised it was a simple problem. I'd missed out a stop frame, so I put it in. Problem solved? No, then I realised my buttons no longer had any functions. It was a simple fix in the end. Have a play around with the site http://www.philiphowlett.com/identity/Site.html

//CLOSE BUTTON//
stop();
function handleClick20( pEvent:MouseEvent ):void
{
if( pEvent.target == close_button )
{
gotoAndStop( 185 );
}
}
close_button.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick20 );

//WAVE BUTTON//
function handleClick21( pEvent:MouseEvent ):void
{
if( pEvent.target == wave_button )
{
gotoAndPlay( 265 );
}
}
wave_button.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick21 );

//LOOK BUTTON//
function handleClick22( pEvent:MouseEvent ):void
{
if( pEvent.target == look_button )
{
gotoAndPlay( 319 );
}
}
look_button.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, handleClick22 );

Here's some of the work we've been doing with AS3.0. I'm starting to get the basic rules, but I'm a long way off being able to sit and down and start typing code. The first example is a multiple choice quiz which you can try out here. The questions are ridiculous, but they aren't what was important in the task. Here's a snippet of the code I've been using:
var score=0;
q1a.buttonMode = true;
q1a.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,
function(myEventObject){gotoAndStop(2);});



The piece of code in bold is something I found myself. I didn't like the way objects were clickable, but they didn't act as a button would. Adding that line of code brings up a hand when your mouse navigates over the objects.

The second piece I did was a simple interface which moves a box around the screen. To have a go with it look here. It was a useful exercise in understanding how to create some simple controls. I'm not sure how I'm going to be making use of it just yet, but I hope to have my flash work completed by the end of next week. Again, a little glimpse of the code:
//UP BUTTON//
my_button.buttonMode = true;
my_button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, function(myEventObject){box1.y = box1.y - 5;});

It would be great if some people could fill out my questionnaire. Just download the word file here. Fill it out then attach it to an email, and send to philhowlett@msn.com. It's quick and painless I promise.


The more I get the better.
Thanks.

I've added one, rather crude character control. Have a look at the site here. If you navigate your way through to my avatar you'll notice a list of controls opens up. From here you'll be able to trigger various animations, for instance, clicking on the 'wave' button will make the site gotoandPlay a video of my avatar waving. I've noticed that with my time line becoming so long, everything is becoming a lot more complicated. There are probably easier ways to do what I'm doing, and when I learn them, what I've done will seem amateurish.

It seems my problems with IE compatibility are down to a problem with my computer, as on other computers it works fine. So that's one less issue to address. The problem with size isn't as big as I feared either. By reducing the flv files from 3,000kbps to 700kbps I litterally halved the sites size without too much impact on quality. I also enabled compression on the SWF and set my jpeg quality to 80%. The site is now floating at around 1.2MB rather than 2MB. Success!

Lastly, the actual dimensions of the site. If you're using a resolution of 1024x768 or lower, you're not going to see the entire site. The site is still very much usable however. I'm considering setting up a low bandwidth version of the site, with reduced resolution and smaller video files. For now, if you right click and choose "show all" then you get the required effect.

I've put my first 2 objects in to the container and tested it out online. If you want to see the results visit here. For some reason the site refuses to work in Internet explorer so I need to look in to that. There are 1 or 2 glitches so far, but I'm pretty proud with the results. My AS3 skills have certainly come a long way in this project. If you're looking at this on a fairly low resolution screen then it's not going to fit, the video is 1000x800 pixels currently. Got a couple of pictures as well.

I decided that my scene needed some lighting to set the mood, as well as make the box look a little more realistic. When I did this however, the box became rather dark and was no longer the focus of your attention. To overcome this, the box is now a pearly white, similar to an apple macbook. It now looks much smoother and appealing.















Updates and work in progess
http://philiphowlett.com/identity/Site.html
Problems: It's a work in progress, and a lot more has to be done. I'm having a couple of difficulties. Firstly the site won't align to the center even though I set it to. Secondly I can't work out how to make it stop on frame 25, and then with a button click play frame 26. I'm sure I'll fix it, but that's all for now.
Update #1 - 1/4/08 - Site is now aligned to the center
Update #2 - 6/4/08 - Button controls added

Problems: File size is a bit of a concern. Currently the site weighs in at 1.5MB. I'll wait to see how big the finished product is before I start using compression. I'm also looking in to sound controls for AS3 as I want my site to contain sound effects but not everyone will want them turned on.

This is the audiovisual piece I've decided to use to go in to my container. I started work on it a while back, and felt now would be a good time to complete it. It was a long painful process making this. The title of it is 'Lazy' for obvious reasons, and you can probably guess what that says about me.

I'm treating the layout of my flash canvas more like a website. Here you can see the look I've gone for, which suits the look of my blog accurately. I've got a functioning preloader now as well which will come in handy later. The gray space is where the video of my container will play, firstly with a camera flying towards it, then it becomes a clickable object. When it's clicked a video of the case opening will then play. It looks empty now, but it'll look awesome when finished. Still got some alignment issues to sort out but that will come in the tweaking stages.

I may well end up using this container. It's got the compartments I need, as well as a cool chrome finish. The idea is to have a video of a camera zooming in on the box, when you click the box it opens to reveal the objects within. I need to work out how best to incorporate the videos. I'll be back later with the flash template and colour scheme I intend to use.

I need a container in which my five identity objects will sit. The first thing I did was go around my house and look at everything which works as a container for objects, and took pictures of them. These scans show part of that research.














This was useful in terms of making me think about all kinds of containers, and broaden the possibilities with this project. I don't however want to work with photos. Firstly I want to create something of my own, rather than use a container made by someone else. This way I can make it precisely how I want it to be in terms of aesthetics. I'd also like to use 3D studio max, so I've got more flexibility. I will be able to manipulate the camera in different ways, as well as set the lighting and mood.



















The second image is a reference from http://www.techrestore.com

I've done some research in to logo's before, and looked at some legends in the Identity field such as Paul Rand. I've never created one for myself however, so I decided to go back to my sketchbook. I've looked at famous logos, presentations on the VLP and had a think about how I should create mine.
























Logo's should be simple, and iconic. If there's too much information then it isn't easily absorbed the viewer. Anything unnecessary should be stripped away, leaving just the fundamentals. I decided that my logo will be font based, allowing me to produce it any size I want. I chose to use my initials, after all it is my identity. The way in which I've used them can be associated with the pH scale. Here's a nice biggun for you to look at. The second image is me forgetting what I'd learned, still, it looks pretty slick.

Just some mind mapping, reading etc. I made a little list of things to do, just so I have some idea of what I need to achieve over easter.
























Reading through the brief it seems I need to do the following:
Decide what kind of container my objects will go in
Choose the 5 different items to go in to my container (logo, avatar and AV item cover 3 items)
Create a logo
Use sound elements
Create a flash loading page
Embed the entire project to a HTML page
Conduct user testing

What other kind of interactive items could I incorporate? That's the hardest part for me right now. I've created a logo, got a rough idea of my container, my avatar is complete, and I've got a really good idea for a stop motion video. I need 2 or 3 more 'interactive items' though.