After contending with problems with both the hardware of my laptop and the software for the best part of a month and going on a much needed break surfing down in Cornwall for a week, I have finally ironed out all the issues, have returned from the South-West refreshed and I am happy to once again provide an update to my blog and portfolio.

A lot has happened over the past month; my latest University grades have been released following my hand-in of my four pieces of work, which included a CD-ROM based Interactive Magazine called ‘Flying The Nest‘, which used videos to teach the user about leaving home for the first time, a PHP website on the theme of a restaurant, which I will go in to more detail momentarily, a mock Project Management task which involved organising a team of four to build a website for the London 2012 Olympics and documenting the events and emotions encountered and an essay based around a news article I found which reported the statement made by Baroness Greenfield, who recently claimed that social networking website such as Facebook and MySpace were harming our children’s physical and mental development and I challenged these claims within my essay.

I was delighted to say the least with the grades I received and was proud as I really put in a hell of a lot of time, effort and dedication over the past four months in to my work as I knew that the grades I got now would be taken forward to my final year, which starts in September. I got an A15 (First) for my Project Management skills in organising my team towards our goal, I landed the same grade for my PHP and web designing skills while making a website for a Restaurant and I got a third A grade for ‘Flying The Nest’ with an A14 (First), for my Essay I was rewarded with an A14 (First) however my presentation alongside this piece of work was graded in the 2:1 category and so I was very slightly disappointed to hit a B13 for this module. But with five A’s and a B to take forward I am going to try my very hardest to keep up this level of dedication and get a First Degree.

I have added a new piece of work to my portfolio for everybody to take a look at, it comes in the form of a PHP website, my second experience with this form of computing programming language and my basic brief given to me in Week One of the module demanded that I research, design and build a PHP/MYSQL powered website on the subject of a Restaurant which could be any type of Restaurant of my choosing, I decided to do a Steakhouse set in America, the website had to look and feel professionally made, the “owner” of this website had to be able to edit, delete, create entries in to the Restaurant’s menu through the website which would update and link back to the MYSQL database and finally an attempt at a booking system for customers was also mentioned as a final area to consider developing.

“Uncle Joe’s Texan Steakhouse Restaurant PHP Website”

To view the piece in my Portfolio simply click here.

In other news I was sad to here about the death of singer/performer Michael Jackson this week, he was despite his obvious personal flaws a great showman and will be remembered in history I am sure; his performance at the 25th Anniversary of the Motown Music Awards (below) was when he first cemented his place as a solo performer and did his infamous moonwalk, good stuff.

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I have neglected updating my website for literally months now - well no more - after what has felt like a barrage of work in my in-tray I have finally found a spare few days to adjust a couple of things on the look and feel of the site as well as adding some new projects.

The first change, which you can’t miss, is the addition of a JavaScript/CSS based scroller which now houses some portfolio shots of my work I have done over the last two years. I think this is a welcome change and it stems from reading an article which stated that on entry to a website the user will cast their eye to the top of the website and within 5 seconds they will decide whether to move on to a different website or scroll down and explore further and with these large vibrant images I think I have improved on this area, as previously my portfolio shots were at the bottom of the website and quite small in size.

I am also in the process of slowly adding pieces of my work to my portfolio, I have added a piece called ‘Flying The Nest‘ which uses video and teaches the user certain life skills and I am also going to add a PHP/MYSQL website that I built for a fictitious restaurant in America and this will be added at the start of June as it is currently being moderated by my tutor and given the nature of adding and removing data I want to have the website remain as I intended it until marking is completed.

So I am back and hope to add some more blogs in the coming weeks as despite a little bit of commercial work I now have a very large amount of time on my hands!!!!

Filed under: University, Video by Joel Reed
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Well I am five weeks in to the second Semester of my Interactive Media degree (second year) and have just reached the designing stage for all four projects.

There just seems so much work to do this semester and so little time to do it all in (partly due to work at a certain Supermarket and the structure of my Semester timetable) but I am trying my best to keep on top of it all and my ideas for each of the projects I have undertaken have began to take form.

Below I have placed a couple of design visuals and these will turn in to fully working artefacts by the end of May.

“Flying The Nest” - Digital Video for Interactive Media

“Uncle Joe’s Texan Steakhouse Restaurant PHP Website” - Dynamic Web Content

“Tennis - London 2012 Website Project” - Project Management for Interactive Media

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I have posted my first project that contains both web and video production, which was completed as part of a University module last semester.

My brief for this project was simple - ‘create a 30-45 second advert which will document and promote the Digital Media division at the University’, this was to be filmed in anyway that I saw fit, making use of totally unique sound effects and music and then streamed within a website of my design.

You can see my solution in my portfolio.

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Well I am a week in to the second semester of my third year at University and already the work load is beginning to creep up with an array of new projects falling in to my in-tray.

I have four exciting new modules to contend with and hopefully by the end of the next 13 weeks I will be able to have produced some well conceived and executed pieces of work.

The four latest modules I am studying are Dynamic Web Content, which is a PHP/MYSQL project, Digital Video for Interactive Media, Project Management for Interactive Media, my first piece of group based work and finally Theory Context and Digital Practice which will once again be my essay based assignment.

For Dynamic Web Content I am being reunited with a subject I have studied in the past - PHP - and the art of linking it to a MYSQL database to retrieve records and display them on a website, the subject is restaurants; so we have to design a website in this area, picking what type of restaurant it will be and what sort of food it serves and then make it look professional, I have put the finishing touches to my idea, which will be a Texas steakhouse restaurant in the “deep south” of the United States of America.

Digital Video for Interactive Media has thrown up some interesting elements; my brief is that I am to create an online magazine which is to be around the subject of leaving the parental home for the very first time; I have to come up with a suitable interface which I am currently researching and also have a strong usage of video to put across some of my ‘How to…..’ features.

The Project Management module of all the four I am studying seems the most interesting simply because it is an area fairly new to myself, I have been put in a team of four people, two that I don’t know too well and between us we must create four separate website projects on the subject of the London 2012 Olympic games, each of us must fulfil the roles of Project Manager, Art Designer, Programmer and Video/Audio Creator, we must keep in close contact to one another making sure that we deliver the projects successfully and each of us must chair formal meetings.

Finally in Theory Context and Digital Practice I will have to produce an essay of around 2000 words on a subject to do with digital media, I will also have to give a 15 minute presentation to the class backed-up with some media footage - scary.

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I today got back the grades that I received for my most recent University work from the first semester of my second year of my BA Interactive Media degree.

I am absolutely delighted with the grades that were awarded to me by my tutors and they are of extra significance to me as they now firmly begin to contribute to my final degree grade, where as before in year one this wasn’t the case.

I put my all in to last semester working extremely hard producing better work than I have done in previous semesters in my view and now with an extended winter break I hope to go back and do the same next semester, which starts at the beginning of next week and I am looking forward to some new projects going in to the in-tray.

I landed my first ever A16 for my lingo scripting game Jail Break, an A15 for my narrative concept The Interview, a B13 for my streaming media video called Time Is Precious which promoted my course and was based within a website I made and a B12 for my road safety campaign game Up Your Street.

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With around three-and-a-half weeks left before I return for my second semester at University I decided that I needed to start spending my time more productively and so I set about looking at my current portfolio website and thinking how I could improve on it.

I wanted to keep the essence of what it looks like already, keeping the current colour scheme for example and the content I want to display, but I wanted to address things like Typography and how I set out my information.

Here is the outcome (below) and I am currently experimenting with this mock-up in view to making a fully working website in Dreamweaver, so keep checking back regularly and who knows, next time you visit a new look may be waiting here!

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone; I have today added the most recent work I completed from my first semester of my second Interactive Media year at the University of Wolverhampton.

It has been a long and hard 13 weeks since I started back at University in September, but I have given all four modules my absolute all and hopefully this is reflected in some of the work I have produced, I feel as if this has been my most productive semester so far and hopefully the grades will reflect this come the end of January.

I have posted four new projects up under my Portfolio, these include a Director game called Jail Break which I did for my Scripting Interaction module, another Director game (prototype) for teaching children Road Safety, which was done for Interaction Development, an interactive narrative concept I came up with for Narrative Forms alongside another Director prototype and finally a website containing a streaming video, both of which I created for my Streaming Media module (although this module is waiting to be posted to the University server by my tutor).

Hopefully you like what you see and feel free to leave a comment - I aim to post the flash files of my work so you can play through them instead of the current desktop captured videos but this won’t be ready for a while - that just leaves me to say “Happy Holidays people”.

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Today I finished the first of my four projects which are all scheduled to be handed in over the next fortnight.

For my Streaming Media module, in which I have had to storyboard, film, edit and produce a 30-45 second promotional video for The University of Wolverhampton Digital Media department, I today, after 5 hours straight of sitting in MK515 in front of Adobe Dreamweaver to the point where I think I was going cross-eyed, managed to finish my website interface in which my video sits and streams.

As I have mentioned on previous blogs, the subject of the piece is how time is precious to students and so I decided to place my promotional video in the square-face of a watch. I spent a fair few hours trying to create my interface image in Adobe Photoshop, taking shots with my digital camera in Wolverhampton city centre and importing them in to Photoshop and adding a few after effects and other imagery to create the look I imagined.

But the most pain-staking thing I encountered was getting the interface and video to sit identically across the main browsers (Firefox, IE 7, IE6 and Opera) on my website and this proved to be very difficult especially with IE6 (of course); but after lots of Div shifting in Dreamweaver I finally managed to get the website and video in the right place across all the browsers I wanted (I only need it to work in Firefox as part of my specification from this module, but that isn’t the most accessible of things is it?) and I also got my links working.

So on to my other projects now - my director Jail Break game is near completion with just the documentation to type up, my narrative concept for another module is progressing nicely and my prototype for a road safety game for kids is also nearly finalised - so keep an eye on my blog and portfolio over the next couple of weeks and roll on Christmas I need a break!

Filed under: General, University, Video, Web Design by Joel Reed
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Last night I put the finishing touches to the first level of my Macromedia Director game Jail Break.

Jail Break is far from a masterpiece, but what it is, is a 2D interactive game that has stayed true to it’s original design and concept throughout, using all of the Lingo script techniques I have learned over the past several weeks and some others I have explored and come up with myself, to finally arrive at a working artefact which I am satisfied with and which meets all the targets set by my tutor for this module of work.

The goal in Jail Break is a simple one - escape - but to do this you have to use both of the main characters selecting between the two of them at will to get past the threats to the escape (spotlights, guards and their dogs, soap (don’t ask), CCTV cameras and electric fences). You are also faced with situations in which each of the two characters will need to use their unique ability to aid the escape attempt, for example Melvin is very strong and can bend fences or dig tunnels but he has no idea how to hack switches or computers, Larry is the opposite specialising in technology while being weak of body.

When the character arrives at a certain coloured switch on the compound floor they have to hit the switch in order to use their ability and move the escape attempt onwards, above is a shot of Larry hitting his red corresponding switch and hacking it to green earning 50 points on the score in the bottom right hand corner, he also turns one of the three small red switches at the bottom green, he must turn all red switches to green, including the CCTV switch to turn off the cameras; once he does this task then he opens the gate in the bottom left corner and the ‘portal’ to Level Two becomes active, Melvin on the other hand has to hit blue switches which require strength, once he hits his blue switch he bends the fence in order for the two inmates to progress to red switches two and three. Hitting any of the above named obstacles will result in GAME OVER.

Well one level down - one to go!

Below is a video capture (though not of the best quality) to document how the game works -

Any comments on this project would be great!

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