Identities: 3D Avatar Diary (Frenzoo) - Day 1 (Read Previous Blog First!)

Okaay, I just had a look at the website, and I'm already pretty impressed with what I'm seeing. The website is still in it's beta stages, but there is still a fair bit you can do at the moment, and as I am chatting to Simon now, he's saying they do have big stuff planned for its future! It's a pretty wicked feeling to be part of a huge website/game project that's still in development, I love things like this as I find great joy in see how they develop over time, which is also something I do with my own skills, I remake my old videos in the future to see how much I'm improved and so on.

As you can see in the screenshot above, I immediately decided to create my own "Ztylist" on the site, and what you see there, is the default avatar you get before you customise it. Just before I started work on customing my character's clothes, Simon recommended that I should try creating my own clothes from my character instead and he also showed me a custom shirt he had made, using textures from a recent video game called Street Fighter IV.

As you can see in the screenshots above, that is Simon's character with the Street Fighter design on, but unfortunately, you have to upgrade to a VIP account in order to be able to add any textures of your own onto your clothes. I decided to give the clothes creation system a try anyways, as I would prefer to have my own designs rather than premade ones to wear.

As you can see in the screenshot above, this is the shirt design creator on Frenzoo. Along the bottom of the editor where the green area is, these are premade graphics that you can use to make your shirt with. There are 3 parts to a shirt that you can edit: Pattern, Detail and Cut. There is a Advanced tab too which is only for VIP members, and Im guessing it involves the ability to upload any texture you want. In the light reddish area on the left, you can edit the variables of the graphic, such as width, height and rotation.

Being a massive fan of flame designs on clothes and such, I set out to create my own flame design on my shirt anyways.

Using a seaweed graphic from the preset list, I got creative and decided to clone the graphic a fair few times, and thus resizing and flipping some of clones horizontally to create the flames you can see in the screenshot above. I didn't know at the time that there were premade flame graphics, so I could have saved myself some hassle, but I did like how I thought on the spot and made best of what I had, which is a vital skill to have.
Eventually, I did discover the flame graphics, but instead of getting rid of the flame that I created using the seaweed graphic, I decided to add them alongside on the shirt as well.


This is my shirt with the premade flame graphics added on. I quite liked the idea of having flames circling the bottom of the shirt, which is similar to some shirts I used to own and kinda gives them impression of the shirt being on fire. On the back as you can see on the blueprint, I've also added some flames on there too to fill up the space anyways.

With the clothes editor, the Pattern tab will of course let you create patterns on the shirt, so any graphis that you choose, will automatically be resized and duplicated in the style of a normal pattern onto the shirt. The Detail tab lets you edit the graphic as a proper item onto the shirt like what I did with the seaweed graphic to produce the flames, hence it basically lets you place and edit your graphic on the shirt. And the Cut tab lets you cut away parts of the clothing depending on the shape of the graphic, e.g. a crescent moon or a star graphicused on this tab will cut out a crescent or star shape on the shirt and thus showing a bit of skin. This is something which will probably used more for feminine clothes of course, but I think I could see it being used jeans somehow.


After the shirt had been made, I decided to see what hairstyles I could get for my character. Unfortunately, due to being the site still in it's beta stages and thus new, the catalalogue was a fair bit bare of clothes, hairstlyes and the like. Therefore, I just opted for a plain blue hairstyle for now, as you cannot get red or blue spikey hair yet as far as I know.

Moving on, I decided to design myself a pair of jeans to wear, with a flame them too, hence I decided to create a range for my clothes called "Raging Inferno".

I love how my jeans turned out anyways, particularly the red flames at the bottom of them, I feel that they do look pretty awesome, even I must say so myself lol. After making them, I moved on to designing the boots for my new range, which soon turned out to be a big problem...


Notice anything missing in the above picture? Yep, that's the problem right there. Apparently as I discovered from Simon, you cannot wear these boots with jeans -_-'... After getting a bit annoyed at that, I tried to rectify the issue by designing some trainers instead...(In retrospect, it was yet another mistake for me). Before that though, I decided to make my character wear the shorts that he started off with to save him any prolong embarassment...poor fella.


Thankfully, as I found out, the shorts can be worn with both boots and trainers, hench I'm free to wear either of them now.


And now in the screenshot below, you can see the current outfit for my character due to the current limitations and issues with Frenzoo. I will speak to Simon about resolving this issue with the jeans as I would like to be able to wear them with shoes, and I also will eventually change my hairstyle once a wide range of spikey hairstyles are available.

I'm gonna call it a day from here anyways though, but i'll continue to post entries on my experiences on here, especially with what happens as the site develops furthers and so on.

A Very Helpful New Friend And Thus Awesome New Opportunities!

I just recently got added on MSN Messenger buy a guy by the name of Simon, who so happens to be an Engineering graduate from Melbourne University in Australia! He moved to Hong Kong about 5 years ago, and now works for a company, which is building it's own 3D avatar site, similar to sites like IMVU, VSide and Twinity! Now isn't that pretty damn convienent for a Multimedia student like me, who so just happens to be studying 3D avatars as part of their Identities module? Here is the link to the website they are building anyways: Frenzoo.

If that wasn't already an interesting and potentially helpful opportunity for me, the best part is yet to come...Simon is friends with people who have graduated from Multimedia too and also knows some students still studying the course! Now, how awesome is it that I now I can meet Multimedia graduates and current students from across the world?! I'm going to see if I can get in touch with these Multimedia people anyways, and see what knowledge they can bestow upon me, but I just hope that some certain lecturers from a certain course I'm studying read this blog anyways...

I will be posting a blog detailing my experiences on the new site being developed by Simon's company anyways.

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (IMVU) - Day 2

As soon as I logged into IMVU today, I received a note saying that I had two friend requests from other users pending, which after accepting them, takes my friends total to 11 now, which is a not bad start at all :P
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Sorry for the small screenshot, I keep forgetting to mention this, but as you may have noticed in my blogs, some screenshots get cropped out on the right hand sidefor some odd reason as part of their size, hence I can onlymake them so big. You should be able to click the pictures to make them bigger, I can at the moment so it should work.

You most likely will have noticed that my appearance has changed a fair bit here, but I will explain that later on anyways. Before I talk about my change in appearances, I would like to show you the changes I've made to my apartment so far and just generally give a tour of it, as I haven' t done that yet. Anyhoo, starting with the living room, I've took out 2 of the armchairs there as well as the table and replace them with a japanese bushido table as you can see below.

Moving on, I took out some bean bag chairs from the TV room/front room area and replaced them with a "Love Couch" for a laugh XD. Like the busido table, it was another purchase from the IMVU store anyways. Despite the name and the awkwardness of it's intended purpose (before you ask, it has some erotic/romantic poses for your characters to do whilst sitting on it, no "hurrah!" is involved thank god), I do like the colour scheme of it a lot believe it or not, especially since it matches the other look for my character.

In the outside area, I haven't done any customising yet, but at the moment as you can see below, you got a pool with inflatable chairs, some deckchairs and tables and some pretty nice plants too.

I love the outside area of my apartment to be honest, the inclusiion of the huge pool and the plants was a nice idea, especially since it reminds me of a my holiday home back in Mombasa in Kenya, Africa. I'm going to show and explain to you about my character's new appearance anyways.

As you have already seen, and can see in the screenshot above, I've been busy customising my character's appearance with some very pleasing, excellent and surpising results! The look you see above and the look I'm about to show, are the EXACT ways I absolutely love to look! Maybe with very slight changes here and there, but to be honest, these digital recreations are definitely the closest you will get to seeing who I am on the inside, and the person I'd love to be.

And in this above screenshot, you can see the other look I created for myself, which the one I prefer personally. Although to think of it, I think the first one reflects the more innocent, optimistic and crazy side of me, where as this look represents the darker, more serious side to me that your very seldom see, unless you happen to get on the wrong side of me fairly often XD.

I was absolutely amazed after making these, I'd never imagined that I'd be able to create such accurate reprensations of who I truly want to be in an online game or whatever, this is definitely a fantastic achievement for me. I'm sure the reason for this though is in the IMVU store, users can submit their own clothes, pets, furniture, rooms etc to be sold to other users via the credits system, and I think it's safe to say there are plenty of awesome, highly skilled anime fans on there! Any anime fans may recognise parts of my outfit actually, especially if you like Naruto or Bleach. Parts of outfit are actual digital recreations of the respective parts of certain characters from Naruto and Bleach. The characters who I have "borrowed" my look from are Hatake Kakashi from Naruto, Ichigo Kurosaki (In his "Bankai"state), and Zaraki Kenpachi from Bleach.

I think you can see how each character has influenced my 2 different looks anyways, but the whole outfits weren't just made up of their clothes and such, I chose some regular clothes as well, which so happen to match my tastes very well :P.

Oh yeah before I forget, I wanted to show off something neat I found in the IMVU store anyways. All I can say about it is..."Kamehameeeee haaaa!" Or even..."I'm A Firin Mah Lazor!"

For any Naruto fans out there, you can also get the Oodama and regular Rasengan to pull off during converastions for a laugh, and I'm pretty sure you can get Itachi's Giant Katon attack and Chidori/Lightning Blade too.

I wanted to show off all the pets I have by the way, so here they are XD. The little kawaii orange blob is a chibi style fox anyways. I do have other pets like a wolf, dophin and panda too, but they are classed as furniture due to that they wander round the rooms themselves and can be interacted with seperately.

I forgot to show off the rest of my apartment earlier somehow, so here is a couple of screenshots of what I missed out. You can see the dining room over there, and the kitchen area to my character's right anyways.

This room here, is my bedroom anyways. I added a picture on the wall on the left, but I haven't customised this room either to be honest. Just I was finishing my tour anyways, one of my good friends popped online after getting my invite to join IMVU. She used to be on IMVU till sometime last year, but she quit using it until now, so I decided to chat to her on here rather than MSN Messenger for a change XD.

Her avatar does resemble her fairly well, which is just more proof that IMVU is definitely the game/messenger/thingy to go for if you want the most accurate recreation of your ideal self :P.

Unfortunately, she had loads of work to do being in uni like me, so we had to cut our conversation short for now, but it definitely was more cooler talking on her rather than MSN, the added interactivity and visuals helps to make things a fair it more interesting than just a standard text based chat.

For my next entry anyways, I'll try to give a tour of all the rooms I've bought neways, so you can see what I wasted my points on XD.

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (IMVU) - Day 1

In one of my recent blogs, I talked about deciding to play 2 other online games and possibly do diaries for them documenting my character's experiences in them, like I'm doing for Twinity. I've had a look at IMVU so far, and I will now show you what my 1st session was like on it anyways. I've known about IMVU for years, but it never really appealed to me, but upon sudden realisation that it was all about 3D character based messaging and such, I decided to finally give it a go and see what it was like.

After I signed up to IMVU, I soon received a variety of messages from IMVU, but some of them were quite helpful for me, as some of them came bearing free gifts like a top and a baby green dragon pet, which was a nice surprise :P As you can see in the screenshot below, that is my inbox on my profile with one of my free gifts there too.

In this screenshot below, this is what my homepage looks like on IMVU, with my main window present which is similar to the window MSN Messenger has when you load it up. Since I've just signed up recently, my profile is still quite bare at the moment, and I will give it a make over in my next session.

When you start the game, you have to choose a basic, premade avatar to use, the one I chose can be seen in the screenshot above. I noticed the character seemed to resemble one of the main characters, from an extremely popular anime show that I am watching...

It's the character called Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto and Naruto Shippuuden anyways.

Moving on, I loaded up my room for the first time, only to receive a visitor immediately! I just sat down on one of the armchairs, when suddenly, a girl literally just appeared on the left armrest.

Even though I was quite suprised by her sudden appearance, I immediately started chatting with her and the conversation actually went quite well, which was a great start for me. Whilst I was exploring the available premade animations you could try, my new friend Clare decided to teleport me to a very girliesh room and also show me how "cheesy" some of the animations were lol. As you can see in the screenshot below, whilst I was commenting on the air guitar one she showed me, she caught me off guard by giving my character a friendly kiss (it was a pleasant surprise though) XD.

As we continued our very interesting, fun (and pretty funny too) conversation, she teleported our characters into a new area, which had quite a romantic feel to be honest.
The area was the rooftop of a tall building at night within a city, but I felt it had a romantic style vibe to it, maybe I've been watching too many superhero movies, particularly Batman? XD So far, I was actually enjoying my time on IMVU, which was mostly due to Clare's company but also due to that it's quite a different experience creating a character and watching it interact with other people's characters, whilst you are chatting to the users themselves. I've always been used to chatting over instant messaging rather than in games, so this was a refreshing change for me.

Whilst we were chatting away, Clare decided to show me some more of the outfits she has for her character, she actually had some pretty awesome outfits to be honest, which meant if the girl's avatar's clothes are this good, then surely the boy's avatar's clothing range must be awesome too.

After chatting for in this area for a while, and sampling the delights of her new outfits (XD), Clare took us to a Ferris Wheel ride next, which to me is definitely a romantic location too :P.

As you can see in the above screenshots, I received a display of more of her outfits, getting skimpier each time (but I didnt mind) XD. Our conversation came to an end here anyways as I had to go, but I have to say, I've never enjoyed talking to someone in my life before, online and offline! Meeting Clare a been a real highligh in my life for me, and after our serious, down to earth and heart to heart conversation, I'm pretty damn sure she will definitely make an excellent and treasured friend for me or more! She's a big fan of parodies, which is a huge bonus for me, and she lives in Wales so meeting up in the future is a good possibility. To be honest, if I hadn't bothered to sign up to IMVU particularly at the time I did, I most likely would never have met her and thus probbaly never experience a conversation and friendship as enjoyable as this one! It's funny how life works isn't it? But from the way I'm talking anyways, I think you've probably realised that IMVU is a real winner for me, and I definitely will be sticking it for for social and personal reasons as well as to continue my avatar diary work in it.

Identities: A Photo Based Summary of Me

After seeing Tebby's blog, and what he did, I decided to try for myself what he did. I've taken a photo of a lot of items that I believe can summarise who I am pretty well and reflect my personality as a Multimedia practitioner.

1. This is a giant white tiger plushie I won during a raffle at a Diwali festival at my local temple, and it's one of my most prized possessions. I love animals like white tigers, huskies, foxes, wolves and so on thus you can probably get an idea of how much I'm attached to this.

2. This is a collection of games and DVDs I took out which I believed could summarise my personality due to what genres they are. I do like a fair few action films as you can see, but I do prefer comedy films the most, particularly spoof ones such as Kung Fu Hustle, Kung Pow and Shaolin Soccer. There are also a couple of Tim Burton films there, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Corpse Bride. I am a fan of of his work, and I finally got to see what inspired him to create his style, after seeing the film; "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari". There are also some "Point-and-Click" PC Games there which I am a keen fan of, I particularly enjoy playing the ones shown, due to their brilliant, unrivalled humour.

3. This is the official manga series of the "Legend of Zelda" game series, which I'm a massive fan of, and hence decided to try reading the manga for it, as I'm extremely keen on reading manga and watching anime. I love the uniqueness of the games, I started playing from "Ocarina of Time" on the Nintendo 64 and fell in love with the series from there.

4. Over here, we have a doll made for me as a Christmas present back in 2007, by my best friend. This is another treasured possession of mine, as my friend spent a week making this, in order to replicate the look I had at the time. I treat it as a mini version of myself anyways, and it's a good way fo symbolising my personality.

5. This is a Christmas card I received in 2008 from the same friend, and I chose to show this because of the Japanese design of it. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, I'm very keen on Japanese anime/manga, music, culture, history and so on, hence this card was a nice gift for me.

6. This shirt is one of the many Wolf shirts I own, as I said earlier, I love animals particularly the canine family such as dogs, wolves, foxes and coyotes. I love Native American shirts and jewellery, so when I discovered them on eBay, I was in paradise! To be honest, this is something that I cannot be described without mentioning, I am fairly keen on Native American culture too.

7. And over here, we have one of the most important items to describe me, Phoenix Wright. Anyone who follows my blogs or work on Youtube, will know about my tribute to the Phoenix Wrong spoof series and this is the official manga of the game series anyways. I'm extremely passionate about the Phoenix Wright games, hence why I went onto making my Phoenix Wrong spoofs, and also one of the reasons why I chose to become an animation artist for the games industry now.

8. I think it's safe to say I'm a fan of Chuck Norris here XD. Just like Mr T, I have a lot of respect and admiration for him (believe it or not). I love making Chuck Norris and Mr T related jokes, and hence I link this to my life long passion for comedy. I've alwasy been passionate about comedy, and making people laugh with what I do whether intentional or not, has always been a life long priority for me. If you miss out my passion for comedy, you practically removing my entire personality away from me as at least almost everything I am and do, is related to comedy in one way or another! I'm also very keen on martial arts, both practising it and watching it, which can also link me back to the Kung Fu films from earlier. I've only ever done Karate for one year-ish, but I'm keen on learning Tai Chi after picking up a book on it.

9 and 10. Over here, we have another manga volume and an anime dvd. Manga and anime have a very important role in my life now, and I always feel that I can connect with and thus relate to the characters in them, especially since of them have gone through similar experiences to me. I love their sheer randomness, hilarity and their uniqueness, which are all very important factors in describing who I am! Being as unique as possible, without following the crowd whenever possible, being who I am and as funny as I can be for others are extremely important objectives for me. The manga volume shown is I swear one of the most random anime/manga series ever, if not the most! It has no real plot most of the time, the characters are literally everything and anything, and that principle also applies to what will happen next. You really cannot predict what this anime/manga series will throw at you, it's pratically the embodiment of randomness!

11. Yes...it's hair gel. Since I had my hair restyled, having "funky", "wild" and "crazy" hair is a non-negotiable decision for me, which is partially influence by my love for anime and manga. I'm not me, if I don't have a ridiculous hairstyle involving spikes in it, and colour too preferably.

12. Ah my MP3 player, this is my equivalent of Oxygen! Not the MP3 player itself, but music. I definitely could never live happy in a world without music in it. Music is as important to me as Oxygen is, and as you've probably guessed, I'm extremely passionate about it too! My music taste is very wide ranged now, due to experimenting with several genres over the years and having an open mind. I use music to help me get through life anyways, from helping me to revise, to lifting my spirits when I'm depressed or stressed.

13. Seeing as I've already made my point clear about loving almost everything Japanese, I shouldn't need to explain this, except for that it is the textbook we use for my Japanese course at NTU which I study alongisde Multimedia as a supplementary course.

14. This is my Nintendo DS Lite, which I have redecorated using some free Zelda stickers I received from a games magazine. Games are extremely important in my life too, they are also like Oxygen to me (Wow, I have so much that I can't live with, by the looks of it! XD), I only really got into them when I moved to the United Kingdom, as I was a sporty person before I came here (yeah, you better believe it!). My ideal career that I'm aiming for no matter what now, is to become an animation artist for a games company, hence games are important for my career too now.

15. I'm very keen on drawing actually, I can draw a lot of existing manga/anime characters fairly well, although my skills do need a lot of refinement. My feelings about drawings do vary a lot like a stormy sea, but I would love to be able to draw professionally, even though I do not want to become a character designer anymore (which was the reason I took Multimedia before I started the course!). I'm so busy with university work as well other things going on in my life, it's very difficult for me to squeeze time in to do drawings, hence I cannot make a regular commitment to it which I need in order to continually improve my skills further.

16. Finally, we come to the rabbit mousemat (yeah, go ahead...laugh), but I do love rabbits a lot, and I used to own 2 of them back in Kenya, but unfortunately I lost one of them on the same day that I got them, due to one of my stupid dogs and it just happened to be my 7th birthday too... But yeah anyways, as you may have noticed, it says Krazy Kakashi on the mousemat, which is my new nickname for myself, one that I am very attached to. Its is the nickname I used for my Phoenix Wrong series, and I've had people saying to me what an awesome name it is! XD

Here is my logo for my work anyways, which will appear in my portfolio for this module too:

Actually, there is one more thing that I could mention, that would summarise me well...I forgot to include it in the picture >_<. I own this reprint poster of an original painting of an African Masaii sitting underneath a tree in the Savannah. I was born in Kenya in Africa, and lived there for 8 years before moving here, hence Africa has had it's important role in my life.

Rising From The Ashes Like A Phoenix (Wright)

A couple of blogs ago, I mentioned a Youtube related incident involving my video tributes to the Phoenix Wrong spoof series, but I said I would explain what happened in a future blog, hence that is what I am going to do now.

Anyways, the whole shebang started with me logging into my Youtube account a few days ago, only to discover one of my videos has suddenly had it's audio removed due to a copyright claim. If that wasn't bad enough, I checked on the rest of my videos, only to find the 7th video removed for the same reason! The same people who made the complaint about my 3rd video over the Sailor Moon (oh yes) sketch UMG, complained about my 7th video too. This is not the first time it's happened to me, especially since I used to make parodies of anime shows, but it greatly distressed me more than ever this time. The main reasons were that I worked really hard on this series, and I was hoping for it to stay on there without any problems, as well as the fact that I use the same account to upload all the videos for my university work. Hence if my account got suspended, I would have lost all the video links that I used for all pieces of work, and it would have caused me fairly unbearable stress, hassle and grief.

I didn't want Youtube to get the better of me though, especially since I'm so passionate about this series, it's one of the first and only things I'm good at, and it makes hundreds of people laugh! I set to work devising an alternate method of publishing my work, and then it hit me...Newgrounds! Newgrounds is a Flash and Audio sharing website dedicated to hosting Flash and Audio submissions by people and sharing them with millions of other people worldwide, a lot like Youtube in face. But here's a very critical difference, it's completely fan-based unlike Youtube, so I will not have to worry about petty, selfish corporations attacking me for my work on there, its a safe haven for people like me.

I also discovered the Phoenix Wrong series on there, and it's a site I've been using for many years now. The reason I did not submit my work to there instead of Youtube is (as I've mentioned before), because of my lack of skills with and also reluctance to learn Macromedia Flash at the time. I do regret it now, as it could have saved me so much hassle, grief and so on, if I had put in the time back then to learn it, as things could have turned a lot differently for me now. Anyways, like my other mistakes from my past, I'm solely determined to redeem what I did, and set it straight, which yet again, taking this course is really helpful for me.

I pulled off all my videos except the ones for my course off Youtube anyways, and I posted a new video detailing to my fans what had happened to me, how to keep in touch with me and to continue seeing my work and so on. The video generated a lot of controversy with my fans, and I received a lot of positive responses from my fans saying how heartbroken they were that this had happened to me, as well as support with what's happened, where I can be found now (the new website), and also their Youtube related horror stories. Here is the video for you to see anyways, although it just echoes what I already have said:


Unfortunately, I cannot show you the content of the personal messages I received on Youtube, but I think you can get a general idea of the response of my fans from the comments on the video. My fans have been really supportive me of anyways, and it's thanks to them, I'm still making Phoenix Wrongs now and still finding the courage to do it as well, despite the situation.

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 6

In today's session, I thought of exploring the Welcome Area in the game as I mentioned I would in the previous diary entry. As you can see in the screenshot above, this is the outdoors part of the Welcome Area anyways. What caught my attention here, was the appearance of James Bond in a billboard in front of me there, as well as the Britfilm 2008. Since the little blue squares are present, it is evident that you can click on them to go somewhere, but I haven't tried it yet, although it is a possibility for the future. I decided to go into the large building nearby instead and explore what is inside it anyways.

The inside of the building was a fairly impressive sight actually, as you can see in the screenshot above, there is a pond in the middle of the room on the ground floor with a tree in it as well. I really liked this touch actually, as I am fan of landscape scenery and all that. The fact that there were also little streams flowing around the room was a pretty cool touch, and the abundance of lily pads everywhere just added to the beauty of the room.

After having a walk around on the ground floor, I decided to have look at the upper floor too and found out something quite amusing.
You may have already noticed it in the screenshot above, but I'll say what it was in a second. I sat down at a chair neways, and I randomly just right click on everything around me to see how I could interact with them...only to find the report abuse option that normally is used for reporting abuse related to other users, was available for inanimate objects too! It was tempting to try and report abuse on the plants, but I just wondered if the support staff would really see the funny side of it XD.

Anyways at that point, I remembered I was supposed to visit the real estate office to try and get my own place as I said I would in the past, hence that became my next destination. The real estate office had to be accessed via the website for Twinity, and I soon discovered that getting my own place might be an idea worth reconsidering to be honest. You can buy apartments for an astonishingly low price, but you have to upgrade your membership to premium first though. I'm not too keen on upgrading to be honest, as I only go on this game every now and then, I'm not a serious user of it, hence paying to use it would most likely end up with money being spent for next to no reason to be honest. You can rent apartments though, but then again like I thought, Im not a serious user on this game, so it wouldn't be worth it really, as I would need to keep earning Globals (the game's currency) through doing odd jobs or replenshing the total myself, which are normally things a more regular player would do, rather than such as casual one.

There is another reason for me not wanting my own place here too, there are 2 other online games I want to look at, which are World of Warcraft and IMVU (well its more of just a massive, online 3D chat messenging program but it seems like a game). My attention will be divided between these 3 games as a result, so I cannot undergo hobbies and and such in one game that will require a lot of time and attention, as I will be playing through 3 different games at once, and I know WoW is an absolute social life destroyer, so I'm am not completely sure I will go for it to be honest.

Sorry for the sudden change of plans, I'll have a look what else I can do in Twinity anyways, especially exploring all the major locations and landmarks for a start. I may reconsider getting my own place in the future, but for now, I'm not so sure it is a good idea.

Successful Practise and Principles: What Am I Doing As A Multimedia Practitioner?

We were recently asked by Jools to blog about what we are doing as Multimedia Practitioners in our free time and how it contributes  to our course if it does. So yeah, here is a list of things I'm currently doing in my free time (or trying to get done) anyways:

My Phoenix Wrong work:

At the moment, I've been working on my Phoenix Wrong series, and I currently have uploaded the 12th video to Youtube recently and working on the 13th. Due to recent problems though, I had to take all my videos off Youtube bar my university ones (which I will explain in another blog), and now I'm going to upload them to Newgrounds which only uses Flash formats, which meant converting all my videos to .flv in order to upload them. I'm also currently trying to figure how to make a Phoenix Wrong video in Flash as I am not very well experienced with it, hence it's proving to be quite a taxing problem for me. 

The reason this contributes to my course is because it's all centered around using animation to produce these videos, and also audio/visual production as I was using the animated gifs from the games to produce spoof videos. I also based my Interactive Narratives project from Narratives around the original series that my videos parody, and thus used the same gif sprites to produce the Interactive Narrative project. This also can contribute to the Games Design area of Multimedia quite easily too.

Anime Studio:

Anime Studio is a 2D animation program, which is very similar to Macromedia Flash, albeit being much, much more cheaper but unfortunately more limited in some areas as a result. I've always been keen on learning how to use the program as I was attracted to the interface of it and also it's features, price and what it is capable of.  I will feature a blog on it soon all about Anime Studio and my experiences with it anyways. At the moment, I'm currently still learning how to use it, as I don't have a massive amount of free time due to studying Japanese as a supplementary course alongside Multimedia. Again, this contributes to Multimedia due to being centered around animation and such, and it also contributes to the games design area as well. 

Vue 6:

Vue 6 is a 3D modelling and animation program which is pretty similar to programs like 3DS Max, Maya and Blender. It is actually designed to work alongside them as when you first load it up, it will ask you on what 3D modelling program you have experience with or still currently use, and it will thus customise it's interface, shortcuts and so on to try and replicate the chosen program. I'm only using the evaluation version of the program at the moment, but I will be purchasing it in the future anyways. It was used in production of the Pirates of the Carribean films too actually, so it's got a pretty impressive background, and current reviews of it says, it works like a dream alongside Maya. Again this contributes to the Animation and Games Design sides of Multimedia, due to being centered around 3D modelling and animation.

Reading Manga, Drawing Manga Style and Watching Anime:

I've been reading manga, and watching anime for a good few years now, so I am very familiar with the artistic style used for them, as well as picking bits of Japanese from watching anime. These can help contribute to the games design area of Multimedia particularly character concept design as they can be used as inspiration and guidance for developing new characters. I also am trying to learn to draw in the manga style as much as possible, but I need to get back to doing it as I have't drawn anything for months. I don't believe my drawing skills are that great at it yet, I can replicate existing characters from various manga fairly well, but I struggle to come up with my own characters, as well draw on a smaller scale and draw more polished, and detailed characters. It's something I definitely need as much practise with as possible, but I'm currently finding it difficult to find time for it as I've got so much going on in life inside and outside of university. 

Studying Japanese:

I am currently studying Japanese as a supplementary couse alongside Multimedia, and it may not have any direct influence on my course, but I'm focusing on it's future prospects for me due to learning it. Once I am fluent in it, I am planning to move to Japan eventually (its a life long dream!), and work as a games designer for one of the bigger games companies such as Nintendo, Capcom or Sega one day, thus this course and learning Japanese will both be vital for this. The idea is to work for a games company here, and eventually work my way up to bigger companies hopefully via experience and skills gained, with me eventually upgrading to the gaming mecca that is Japan. 

Macromedia Flash and 3DS Max:

I don't think these programs needs introducing to be honest as they are pretty well known, but I'm currently trying to learn as much as  I can on how to use them at the moment. This course does require us to be familiar with them in order to build our projects and such, hence as well as wanting to learn how to use them, it's a necessary requirements too. Again, these contribute to the animation and games design areas of Multimedia, but can contribute to other areas too I imagine.

GameMaker:

Gamemaker is a program developed by YoyoGames to enable people of all ages to build 2D games, using a simple interface (there is an advanced one too available), but you can also build 3D games if you upgrade to the Professional version of it. I tried to learn it in the past, but had to leave it due to lack fo free time, and I also went to a workshop on it during Gamecity last year in order to refresh my memory on it. I do want to learn how to use it, but I need to find time for it like everything else. It contributes to the Games Design area of Multimedia anyways. 

Twinity, IMVU and World of Warcraft:

I am currently researching online games for my Identities module, and had to produce a 4 week diary (minimum) of my character's adventures in the game I chose. I decided to try Twinity due to a recommendation from a friend, and hence as you can see in my earlier blog posts, I've been recording a diary of my experiences on it. I'm also keen on using IMVU and playing through World of Warcraft too, both which I will eventually produce diaries for too. All these games contribute to the Identities module of the 1st year of this course, but they help to contribute to Games Design in general as well. 

Stop Motion/Pixilation:

I'm currently trying to develop ideas for a new Pixilation/Stop Motion video to contribute to my portfolio for Identities as well as for personal reasons, and hence this contributes to the Animation area of Multimedia as well as Audio/Visual Production I suppose.

I think this is the entire list of everything I'm currently doing in my free time as a Multimedia Practitioner anyway, I cannot think of anything else that I'm doing.

A Couple of Amazing and Random Videos I Found

I was just browsing Youtube out of boredome, and I found a couple of pretty awesome videos on there that I just have to show!
This first one, is a live action parody of Star Wars, starring the video owner's cat and a chew toy with a lightsaber... It's a lot better than it sounds, trust me! XD

I was pretty impressed with the actual editing and creativity of this video. Making the chew toy bounce around like some real life, beanie version of Yoda was a pretty cool idea as it looks like it's bouncing around all over the place like Yoda did when he fought the Chancellor I think it was? As you also saw, he added a mini, hand made lightsaber onto the toy and then got the cat to play with it to make it look like a fight between the mai characters from Star Wars. The way he synched the sound effects from Star Wars was also very impressive, as they work prefectly with the timing of the "Jedi Mouse's" jumping.

And now this one is just PLAIN AMAZING! It's pretty unsurprising that the Japanese did this anyways, but basically it's a chimpanzee riding a segway! Now how awesome is that?^^ Have a gander for yourselves neways, and be amazed:

This one was just a random video I wanted to incldue for it's awesomeness, hilarity and randomness XD.

Some More Avatar Goodness: Face Your Manga and Simpsons Avatar Maker

As you probably can guess from the title of this blog, I got my hands on two pretty neat avatar creating websites. I found them whilst looking for an online game that I knew, I somehow ended up finding them after looking for the game, but I can't remember how now XD. Anyways, I explored these two sites, and to my delight, I was able to create some fairly decent new avatars, but only 2D still ones I'm afraid.
As you can see on the left, these are the results of some quick experimentation on the two websites I looked at. The one on the far left is from a website called "Face Your Manga" and as the name suggests, it allows you to create manga style avatars of yourself. Like I did with Twinity, I decided to create an avatar that is a digital representation of my ideal appearance as well as my personality. Upon experimentation with the fairly decent amount of options available, I created that beauty of an avatar you see up there. Even though it is meant to be a digital representation of me, I can't help but get the feeling it bears a very similar resemblance to the main antagonist of a video game series that I love a lot, and also produce my own spoofs of...

See what I mean? This is Phoenix Wright, the main hero from the game series of the same name. With some slight adjustments here and there, I could end up with a avatar bearing an extreme resemlance to the pointy haired antagonist on the left! In fact, I'm going to do that right now!




-Couple minutes later...-

TAAA DAAAA! Here is my avatar based rendition of Phoenix Wright!^^ I'm quite chuffed with the results actually, it does look a fair bit like him to be honest :P. Here is the link to the website by the way:
Face Your Manga



Anyways moving on, the second website I used was the "Simpsons Avatar Creator" on the official website for "The Simpsons Movie". The link to it is:
Simpsons Movie Site Avatar Maker

On the website as the name suggests, you can create an avatar of yourself as a Simpsons character! On the left here, I have the Simpsons equivalents of myself and one of my friends. To think of it, the avatar for me on the left looks quite familiar, but I don't know why...The avtar maker is pretty good though, unlike the other site which charges you (well its only £1.30ish I suppose) for extra services for your avatar, this one has similar features for it at no extra cost. The previous site does let you save your avatar to your computer though for free which is good, but on this one, you can print it out, make it into DVD box art and embed it with animation into a blog or Myspace profile or whatever as I'll try to show below.


And that's it from me really, you can feel free to check out the websites though and let me know what you think of them as well as showing me what characters you end up developing :P. Peace out, Krazy Kakashi.