SPP2 - Task For 27/11/09 Seminar

I was asked to write a few lines about a Multimedia practitioner based around my pathway and there is one I've known for a long time now who I am going to show you.

His name is Simon and he is the CEO and budding creator for a 3D avatar based social networking website called Frenzoo. I actually mentioned Frenzoo and Simon during a blog in my first year on the course but I never got to spend time on the website as promised due to numerous extreme difficulties I encountered up till now.

The site is all about creating your own person 3D avatar to represent yourself and communicate with other members on the site, thus making new friends and discovering people from around the world. You can buy new clothes for your avatar using thei

r currency system on there from the online shops set up by members and staff. Pro Members can create their own clothes and soon furniture, pets and so on. It's been a long time since I went on the site truth be told, but Simon told me progress has been good for them, they are expanding the site including Pro Members being able to create more types of objects and also securing a big deal.

Although Simon is the CEO, he does contribute his own fashions for his own online store on there and it can be viewed via the link provided below:

http://www.frenzoo.com/beta/shop_store.php?bazaar_id=23

As well as that, one of the animators/meshers from the company created a new look for his avatar for Thanksgiving Day but it has it's own personal twist as you will see below...

I asked Simon for a brief summary of his background before Frenzoo and this is what he said in response anyway:

Me: Can you give a brief biography of your career pre-Frenzoo?

Simon: Sure, before jumping into the online 3d world with Frenzoo, I worked in Internet networking with Juniper Networks, the upstart competitor to Cisco.

There I was leading the Emerging Technologies team for Asia. That was a great job, dealing with customers in Korea and Japan through to emerging countries like India and Vietnam. Learning how and how not-to introduce new solutions to market, winning over early adopters, feeding requirements back to development teams – a lot of fun.

Before that I was in Melbourne with Juniper where I worked with Telstra to help design their 2nd generation broadband infrastructure (their DSL network). That was a great job for a young engineer, although I recall a lot of late nights living in their labs

As you can see, he's had quite a lot of experience working with networking in particular, and has experienced and gained a lot from his prior jobs. He also has had the opportunity to work in different parts of the world as you can see as well as interact with customers from other countries from where he was at the time. At the moment, he is working in Hong Kong with some Multimedia graduates on the Frenzoo website.

It is quite fascinating seeing what he did previously as he did get to travel around the world, interacting with people from different countries and learning a vast number of things whilst trying to emerging countries and also as he said, having a lot of fun along the way.

Even though dealing with networks isn't something I'd do, it's inspiring to see how Simon built his way up to where he is now and what he experienced along the way. He ended up doing online 3D in the end and the 3D industry is what I'm currently studying as well hoping to have a career in one day.

Also, our current essay is all about networking and building up our networks of contacts to help promote ourselves, so I think talking to Simon has been pretty beneficial for me especially seeing as he works in the 3D industry now. To have someone I know who works in that particular industry can always be very helpful for me, because I can gain advice from them, get a good insight into the 3D industry, show them my portfolio to get some feedback on it and also get references for any future jobs I want.

If I could get the references, it would be excellent as it would be from someone in the industry I'm trying to get into so getting a recommendation from someone like that would have a lot more weight to it I imagine and also show a lot more promise.

Looking at what Simon does now, I wouldn't mind doing 3D work for a site like this if I didn't make into the games industry as planned, by getting to know other areas more where 3D is used in apart from games and films, it helps me to understand how much more open my possibilities can be and it gives me more options for my future should getting into the games industry not work out, or if I need to build myself up in terms of my experience, skills and portfolio before I join a games company.

Even though Simon is based in Hong Kong, this is a great start to building up my own personal network of people to help promote myself and I hope to be able to gain more contacts like him in the future to help promote myself as well help me to learn the necessary skills and knowledge that can help me with getting the jobs I need in the future.

I am going to try and find people nearer to me as well, preferably ones who know me in person if possible as that can help, but the more people I can meet, the bigger my network can get and the more opportunities that await as a result of that.

Disaster Looming

I should have good news to report but I'm afraid I don't really. Just earlier this week, I discovered I have 2 separate viral infections to fight off and I've been off uni again for the whole week due to being severely ill.

Due to my condition, I've been unable to work as well. 3DS Max finally arrived on Tuesday but I feel so crap it's difficult to work. I have insomnia again and my stress really is peaking, I'm going to have to go back to counselling to be truly honest.

As it stands, I don't have anything built for the rollercoaster project. I've modelled a bit of water, island and city but thats it. I'm still kind of figuring out how to build parts of it.

With the robot animation project I am fine thanks to Andy's completed file but I need to animate it. That's the problem, I'm struggling to animate it as I missed the seminar on it. I can understand what we need to do, but I'm having problems posing the robot right to begin with hence I'm already sunk and stuck.

I'm stressed out as high hell at the moment, my sleeping pattern and diet are destroyed again and my deadlines are less than 3 weeks away now, I'm terrified.

On the upside, I've rung the office and after messages were passed on, I got emailed by Jools asking for me to book a surgery as soon as I can, although I think I'm going to need a voodoo ritual to resurrect me after these projects are over xD.

I need to speak to my tutors for Virtual asap but it's going to be hell trying to go to uni in my state, I may email them and hope to get a response. I already emailed Andy so he's up to date, it's just contacting Simon now.

There's a reason I haven't mentioned Games Design yet and it's actually my shred of good news amongst the hell...

I've completed the project! Just typed up my foreword and rules for it, and it's all set to be handed in whenever. I wanted to write an evaluation for it tbh, the lack of an offline journal is a problem and I need to rectify that before I hand it in although I have plenty of time.

This project has gone amazingly well for a change but it seems too good to be true although it's my ray of hope in all this darkness right now.

But yeah, I wanted to show my ambitions with the project and how versatile it is, I couldn't really as I already hit the 1 page limit for both the foreword and rules but ah well, this should be good enough hopefully.

I'm really excited about the card game project and hope it does do well otherwise I will cry D:.

I'm going to get extensions for the other 2 projects, I'm going to need to hand them in after the holidays if possible, my illness isn't exactly going away quickly and I even had swine flu scares and being rushed to A and E for nothing so my stress is being intensified hugely by the illness alone right now :(.

Roller Coaster Designs: Car

I hadn't really thought about the car's appearance to be honest so I thought I would get round to visualising it immediately so I can start modelling it. I only have 4 weeks left on the project so I need to crack on with modelling asap, hence instead of drawing up designs for the car, I decided to do a moodboard different rollercoaster cars and try and get a design from that.

The idea is that I can get inspiration from their designs and mix and match elements from them with my own design. The moodboard c

an be seen below anyway.

The designs I am most keen on are the blue one in the bottom right corner and the little grey one in the middle. I particularly quite like the design of the blue one actually, it reminds me a lot of a hovercraft type vehicle and I wouldn't mind modelling something similar to that, but it would need be as transparent as possible, so the passengers can look out all the time.

I would probably opt for modelling the bottom half of the car to something like that but having a huge glass screen to cover the top half so people can look out of it.

I'm going to try modelling it now and see where I go with it, improvisation is something I do a lot of and I'm good at, I'm always adapting as I progress so I'll be adapting my design as I model it.

A Sudden And Very Fortunate Windfall?

My 2 seminars today actually went really well! For the Visualisation seminar, we had to present our work on the rollercoaster so far, the designs, research etc and my presentation went better than I thought tbh. It was credited to being a good concept which Im happy with and I agreed with the feedback I received as it was what I needed to do with the concept, which includes reducing the amount of things I include due to the time frame I have left to work in.

Simon also recommended I work on each of the areas of the track as separate files to make it as a lot easier for me and connect them up in one file later on instead. Or instead of connecting them, I could just render a movie clip for each file and compile the final movie using the clips, making sure the transition is as smooth and unnoticeable possible otherwise that will ruin it.

The Games Design seminar actually really shocked me because I was pretty stressed about the card game. I was struggling to get a decent design and I even came up with a 4th idea, but that was too similar to Blackjack and Solitaire in all honesty. The reason for the shock is what happened with my 1st design actually. None of the 3 original ideas I came up with were anywhere near complete and they had their major flaws. We had to test the prototypes for our ideas so I just went with my first one and decided to improvise as I went along.

Me and a friend of mine tested my first idea and we ended up improvising as I hope, we actually made a much better design in the end! Brad sent someone called Matt I think to give us feedback as we played, and he gave me some pretty helpful feedback and also found my project to be really damned good which what cheered me up so much! I already was happy with it but then he made a couple of minor suggestions to improve it and he said the idea was one of the most versatile and unique ones he's ever seen. He's never seen a card system like it before, he designed 3 in 3 weeks that all failed in their first week, and he said the card game was so simple yet strategic and fun, it was brilliant! Matt pointed out that the card game is easily adaptable for all ages by changing the rules slightly and thus creating a range of difficulties.

The fact that I used original playing cards kept it simple and I didn't go down the path of designing a completely new card game with it's own characters, cards etc, it's a new game that utilises the original playing cards in a new way. He said is actually quite educational as simple maths is involved in it with a frantic pace which adds thrill and excitement to it as well. Due to the educational factor, it can be used in schools by teachers and seeing as the difficulty can be altered based on the ages playing, it can appeal to anyone too and also he said there is a good market for this as there's nothing out there that is like this really!

Hearing that really made my day to be honest and it's given me a lot more confidence with myself and the project! I'm really pleased with how things have turned out as well as shocked still, and I'm actually quite excited about finishing this project and actually playing this game!

My friends liked playing it a lot too and their projects turned out brilliant too, I ended up giving them helpful ideas and advice too and they've used it to help better their projects too, all in all the testing and feedback worked out extremely well!

I actually posted on Facebook that I was on fire due to how well I was doing today and recently, but I'm just receiving replies from friends worried if I'm ok and if I got burned? :S Something tells me, they have never heard of that phrase being used as a way of saying how well you are doing, I cant think why...

Rollercoaster Designs

Click thumbnails to enlarge

Apologies for the terrible quality of my sketches, my presentational skills have always been terrible, I'm quite a messy, all over the place person as you may see. Neatness was never my strong point and hence I emphasise these ar pretty rough sketches.
My rollercoaster is going to have the underwater theme as mentioned in a previous post and it starts on a huge theme park island. Starting at point 1, you have the beginning part of the track where the people board the rollercoaster.
It then starts moving slowly and naturally ends up accelerating as it goes down the slope. A glass tunnel visible in the water is where the track passes through and the car travels in a U shape to end up back outside where it goes up a short slope and then pauses for a second. After the pause, the car ends up moving backwards down the track due to gravity mainly and down a new branching track which also is in a U shape. This was designed deliberately so the car would end up facing the right way after the 2nd U bend. As it comes back down now facing the right way, the track ends up twisting in corkscrew fashion along the walls and ceiling for a certain distance before resuming it's usual form.


This 2nd area comes after the corkscrew part and the car accelerates as it's going up a slope and about to hit a huge jump. The track leads outside once again and the jump takes place in the air as the diagram shows. Once the car hits the jump, time will "slow down" with the sound of screaming drowned out by wind and extreme wide eyed expressions will appear on the passengers too. The camera will pan around the car slowly too and will snap back to the front immediately when the car hits the track again with time speeding up to normal speed again respectively.
The car goes underwater again and hits a huge U turn before ending up going in the opposite direction to where it came from but this is leading up to the last part of the track that is behind the island itself.

After the turn, it hits a loop de loop and then passes through an area with wildlife, plants and possibly a shipwreck too. I was planning on having dangerous wildlife here like sharks and octopi to add to the thrills and scares.
After the first wildlife section, we come to the "Dolphin Jumps" area. Here, the track takes the form of 2 large hills rising out of the water, with a gap at the top. I was trying to recreate how dolphins jump in and out of the water rapidly as they swim, I would have liked to have more jumps here actually.
After the Dolphin Jumps, we come to the Minefield Madness area. As the name suggests, an underwater minefield is located here and the track weaves in and out of the mines before running into the 2nd and final wildlife area. The 2nd wildlife area is a tamer place designed to act like a breather before the grand finale and only features safer animals like turtles. I was thinking of having a treasure chest here too. Here we have the Grand Finale area, featuring a huge loop de loop and an exciting jump to the end platform. The loop de loop rises out of the water and is placed to help gather speed for the jump at the end. After it, the car will accelerate as it will rise out of the water and the back of the island will be visible too. The track stops before the end platform but has a little ramp at the end so the car will have to make a leap of faith to the end platform and stop there. The gap won't be far though anyways.

I really like the ideas I have come up with to be honest and I'd love to be able to make the full thing I designed. Trouble is, there is an immense amount to be built and animated, and it literally would be impossible in my timeframe so I will have to make scarifices, but I am happy with the concept and should be able to pull it off without too many problems I think.

Phoenix Wrong: The Movie!

Hey guys, as you know, I make a series of video game spoofs called Phoenix Wrongs. The last time I posted about them, I had made 12 of them and now I've made 15 of them altogether since that time, with over 200 subscribers to my name now as well! I took a huge break out to concentrate on my course, but I'm planning to go back to making them...in Summer that is D:. It's a long time away and it gives me plenty of time to refresh myself and build up tons of ideas as I've been making them nonstop for 18 months!
Before my break, I really went out with a bang though...As you know from the title of the blog, I finally made the movie length Phoenix Wrong! I collaborated with 14 other PW makers to make the movie over a 2-3 month period and its a Youtube hit, its still to gain more attention before it truly becomes famous and makes an unforgettable stamp, but all 15 of us worked hard on the project and we all are exceptionally proud of how it's turned out! We had to sacrifice some ideas for it and also we are now keen to make a sequel as well as inviting people on board to make it in the future, no idea when but hopefully not till Summer as I'll be free then!
This is part 1 of 7 of the movie and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did making them!

Ideas So Far: Term 1

Concerning my 3 main projects, I have come up with ideas for each of them, I already mentioned I had some for the card game project for games design.
With animation, I've got a few ideas floating for the comedic gag that the robot will succumb to and I'm actually pretty excited about it as I'm keen on both animation and comedy especially the latter, so making something humorous is right up my alley! I can actually feel inspiration gathering and I can't wait to see if I can actually recreate my ideas as I would love to! Whether the final idea I choose is going to be funny, unique, creative and memorable enough for the standard required is just a matter of time, but I hope I do well on this to be honest as I'm pretty keen on it.
With those Phoenix Wrongs, I get pretty creative with them and I specialise in slapstick, random humour in them so I'm really hoping to apply what I do there to this project and hopefully make something memorable for the right reasons and good enough to pass with a decent mark.

For the rollercoaster project which is what I wanted talk about mainly, I have 2 main sources of very convenient inspiration actually. One of them is a 3D rollercoaster game on my phone, which I only just realised I had! I play it a lot and have picked up a lot from it through playing it, which is going to be extremely helpful for this project! My other source of inspiration is another game called Audiosurf. Normally, people would say RollerCoaster Tycoon as as source as its a popular and well known game, but here I'd like to focus on something more unique and abstract.
First things first though, we had to choose whether to have our roller-coaster set in space or underwater, and I've opted for underwater which is the harder one as I realised. With underwater, I will have to recreate accurate physics of travelling underwater, but I already have a counter measure against that. I'll probably need to model wildlife and plant life to add to the atmosphere of course, otherwise it will be quite an empty and disappointing ocean. I may have to leave them out due to time restrictions, but I will try to include some in including a shark and a turtle as well as some shells and seaweed possibly.

The counter measure against the water physics I mentioned just now by the way, I will not have to worry about that really as I plan to have the roller coaster go through an underwater tunnel with some "freaky" movement along the walls and ceiling, which is something I picked up from playing a Sonic game called Sonic Heroes.
As you can see from the 2nd screenshot, that is the level that inspired me. Its one of hte bonus stages from the game and you're inside a huge transparent glass tunnel which you need to chase that hot air balloon to the end. What I love about this level is that you can run along the walls as well, other games have incorporated this in their own way I think, actually the F-Zero games do have something like this as well. I imagine the rollercoaster car going down a tunnel like this underwater and it moving along the walls and the ceiling in a corkscrew fashion as the track spirals through the tunnel.
What would be the icing on the cake would be the fact you could see the wildlife outside whilst travelling through at high speed which can be both entrancing and also scary depending on what appears. Actually, that reminds me of another source of inspiration to think of it, the film Jaws 3 I think it is. It's where they are at this water resort and at one point, I remember them being underwater in a tunnel like this and the shark smashing against the tunnel, which could be a good surprise to be implemented in this.

I also got some more inspiration of a friend of mine who said I should have the rollercoaster go through an area populated with underwater mines and have the roller coaster weave in and out rapidly to increase tension and thrills. I'd like to also implement a ship wreck somehow too if possible, but I doubt it will be possible due to time restrictions. For the car itself, I'm probably going to have some sort of submarine/roller coaster car hybrid so that it can travel outside of the tunnel, by automatically closing a watertight shield over the car when it reaches outside the tunnel. I'd like to also have it come out the water at certain times to go through the air and rapidly drop back into the water, with the track ending the back of the island you start on.

Back to the first 2 sources of inspiration anyway. The game on my phone is called 3D Rollercoaster Rush and it is by Digital Chocolate.
I noticed whilst browsing images of the game, that UFOs appear in the background during a nightime setting which is an interesting touch, I'm not far enough in the game to know that but I'm sure I'm close. This game as you would expect gets more intense and difficult the further in and I find it to be a great deal of inspiration right now. They include features like breathtaking drops, very steep slopes, closely put together gaps and huge loop de loops to add intensity to the track and you really have to balance your speed throughout to make it through safely, never mind scoring the 5 star rating!

The other game I mentioned is Audiosurf, a game emphasising use of your own music to produce the actual game! Basically, you ride a spaceship down a track collecting coloured blobs and creating matches mainly, and the actual track is formed by the song used, it changes completely to suit the song loaded, with bumps, tunnels and other features representing particular moments of the song.
The shape of some of the tracks you get can be very wild, twisting, mad and eye-appealing really. The speed you fly down the track is affected by the tempo of the song and also the amount of blocks you have to deal with (the "traffic"), is affected by the song too. I've always felt the game to be like a musical rollercoaster to be honest, it literally is like the sci-fi racing game F-Zero fused with music recognition and a typical puzzle game to me. The tracks themselves are the source of inspiration here as they can have corkscrews, huge drops and climbs, hills and the like, which remind me of a rollercoaster and hence I can get inspired by it too.

A screenshot above shows a typical screen from the game whilst playing on a track anyways. It cant really be seen, but in the top left, you do get a mini map of the outline of the track showing what horrors are coming your way xD. Quite a strange choice of song too there...

Anyways, I am planning to work on some outlines for the track later today, I did try to do them digitally and it went badly, so I may use an A4 sketchbook instead to sketch out designs, as it will be easier. I do have a graphics tablet, but I still find it hard to use in this sort of situaiton so doing it on paper will probably be best, I can try using the mouse with the paths tool in an image editor to think of it, but Ill see how I get along on paper first. I'll scan my drawings in if I do opt for the paper option and I'll post them on here.

Back From The Dead? Progress So Far 6/11/09

Well my 2nd blog is out, much, much later than it should be.
To tell the truth, I've been ill with a nasty viral infection for about sweet sixteen days and it's been a killer. It conveniently happened at the end of my first week at uni which isnt too suspicious at all >_>.

I've made a nearly complete recovery now, still have a chesty cough which tends to pick up once a day but be dead for the rest of the day. I came back to uni this past Monday completely stressed as hell because of how much time I had off and the impact it was going to have on my work especially seeing as my deadlines for the 3 main projects are all 15th December...Just over a month away and Im crapping myself in all honesty.

With my first day back on Monday, it actually went really smoothly. I had my Animation seminar and it went really well, much to my surprise and delight! We had begun building the robot for the project and they had already made the legs and arms. This week was moving onto the spine and head, thus completing the modelling of the robot in 2 sessions including personal time if necessary. I actually sailed through the seminar, even stopping occasionally to help my friend out. I built the robots spine and head easily with no major problems, I was working from a pre-set file where the arms and legs had been already built.
I actually stayed behind at the end of the seminar to finish the final part of the work where we rigged the robot for animation. We had to build gyros which were pretty simple to do, albeit a little fiddly as they involved some rotation but it was doable. Pleased with my results, I had to connect the top and bottom of the spine as well as the head to their respective gyros. Andy already had left so what happened next was quite a problem, the body twisted a fair bit in a corkscrew fashion when I connected the spine gyros and it looked pretty weird. I got confused and frustrated to what had happened and left due to it as I had been working for 3 hours straight. Although, I spoke to a friend later this week and he said that does happen and it is fixable, so it's all good now I know how to sort it. I'll tweak it in next weeks seminar before we do the work and also later in the week if I get the opportunity, to look at and work through the Orrery and Arms and Legs worksheets.

The Visualisation seminar went well too, had some problems but I managed to sort them out throughout the seminar and I also was able to understand the seminar well and also what I missed. I hadn't missed that much I dont think, it was all about working with splines really which is important for the rollercoaster. We looked at light and colour, and my prior knowledge of them from A-Level Physics made understanding it a doddle tbh, although it was the simple version of what we needed to know. Apparently we need to know about Photography too, so I'm going to have to look into that at some point as we need to know about shutter speed, aperture etc.

Games Design was the one I'm most worried about and had the right to be after the seminar. We continued designing our card games or in my case, begun D:. After struggling a hell of a lot, I came up with 3 ideas but there are major flaws with all of them and it's making my life a nightmare, although Brad is speaking to me next week about them which is what I need now. The briefs says we need to make the card game playable for 2 people, simple, fun and strategic plus also be targeted towards the 16+ age range which is where the strategic element is vital too.
Only one of my ideas has any strategy to it and it isn't that strategic either, although it's currently the best one I have as flawed as it is. This card game project is pretty difficult tbh but I do have to try and do well with it as this is what I'm going into, which is Games Design and I'm sure to face scenarios like this even though I'll be working with video games.

I also actually managed to go to my tutorial yesterday with Deborah and Jools' lecture today after missing 3 weeks worth thanks to my illness. The tutorial was pretty helpful for me and it's helping me to get organised within the chaos I am in at the moment. The lecture was done by a guest lecturer who is a Careers expert for Art And Design who works at NTU. She gave us a pretty detailed insight into getting a job including building up your CV, how to compete with hundreds of other applicants and bucketloads of resources for us to look at too. We also had guest speaker from a recruitment company who is a former NTU student and also gave us a informative lowdown on getting a career and the current state of the industry as well as other things.