Character

Ok so here is a couple of renders of my character and the scene, any thoughts?






Part way through i decided to drop the light beam picking up dust particles. Although visually it is really nice it increases the rendering times by a significant amount so i decided i will use it on some large renders for the boards and do the animation without it. Although i do really like the light beam :(

insertsilence

Insertsilence.com seems to be a very website but i think its awesome. I really do not have a clue how this was made. I sometimes am able to get my head around how atleast part of things work but this has me really well stumped. For that reason i really enjoy this site. I am not going to say to much as this is the site i am using for my presentation...

Insert Silence

ZCam

This is so cool. I think of it like a mega updated version of that playstation eyecam thing. the camera monitors your finger tips to see how you want to interact with the current interface. Click the link to take a closer look, its even being used for a boxing game by the looks of it, could this rival the wii? seeing as you dont need a controller i think if a gaming platform introduced this it may just do that...

Read

Surface

Ok its something i should have put up ages ago but something stopped me, i don't know what because this seems like it will be absolutely awesome in the long run.

MS Surface uses a very cool and by the looks of things simple touch interface. The interface is even that simple that to add music to your zune all you do is stick it on the table and drag them to the actual device. It all seems rather ingenious assuming the get it to work. It will bring a new element of interface design once this technology starts to develop. People may no longer have to worry about explaining interfaces or making them simple. You could in theory start to go crazy because as long as the basic gestures remain you cannot really lose.

On another note i actually liked the site as well. Visually it is appealing to me, its a simple interface and i would be shocked if anyone could get lost. Granted it uses flash which not everyone will have, but in there defense anyone i imagine who would be taking a interest in technology like this wouldn't have such a old machine that it would be without something as everyday as flash now is.

BD Recruitment

This is a site i have been looking at to find out what sort of thing the industry is looking for within creatives etc.. thought it may be worth a look for anyone that needs it.

BD Recruitment

Gish

Found a really nicely done flash game called Gish. It has some very nice physics involved such as making our ball of tar heavier, sticky and slide. The way it moves around is very fluid and the transitions between different maneuvers are really nice. Felt this was a very nice piece of interactive flash work and i imagine it has taken a lot of work.

Huge Interactive Goodness

Stumbled across an article on engadget. Huge interactive multi touch screens. These things would be so handy used for navigation (such as in the image), as help desks in shopping centres, interactive maps. This could have such a big impact on a public usage scale. I know the tech has existed for a while but it is still nice to see it being implemented in a sensible way.

Article

Cow Shed Productions

I really do normally hate flash sites... honestly... but i can make an exception this time because i think this is beautiful :-)

I find the illustrations simply stunning and beautiful. It has a very appealing interface using the "landscaped" to navigate around but for anyone who this may confuse they have a quick links section at the bottom to help speed things it. Its just a rather quirky site that i enjoyed playing around with for a while. I may actually consider making a flash site for my second part of personal development and actually see what it is like. I have always had problems with them mainly due to limited target audience and the fact that they generally can take a while to load... hmm to be considered...

Cow Shed Productions

I think i love this site...

and the car :P

I love the look and feel of the site. Normally i would dislike a flash only site but this pulls it off rather nicely. It loads rather quick due to it being clever. It firstly loads the interface and then piece by piece loads up other elements of the site, I imagine this is done using flash projectors? I can tell it is doing this as i can only click the text that turns white.

I love how smooth everything seems to move from one to another. It has some beautiful transitions and some rather nice yet basic animations. I seem to be a sucker for animation within a website....

now only if the web and world was ready for a 3D internet... oh well one day



Click for site

PACMAN TREE!!!

OMGZ i want one..

Cinema Room

Shiny :D

Idea basically is that when in the cinema your walking on water. You then sit on fio's funky chairs and watch some immense college videos.

Idea Mock Up

This is not what we are doing for our final build but i thought it would be a good idea to mock up any ideas we have so we can see roughly what they would look like and look at any problems we may have with some builds.

Second Life Houses. . .

I found this nice piece within second life. It is nice to see people not taking such a litural approach to builds in second life. By this i mean most other people would have built actual houses rather then simply a few images chucked together to make a town.

Second Life Galleries

Well i decided to have a look at some galleries within second life and took a really good look around the Odyssey build we were shown during the briefing.

I first looked at Chris's gallery on the college island though because it slightly steps away from a traditional building and has a large open space in which to view work.




Then i had a look around a gallery i found a long time ago called space gallery. It has nice big open spaces but still remains traditional in the sense that it uses floors and stairs. This to me seems rather pointless considering we are within second life.






Then i looked at the Odyssey build as well as social network and had a little delve in to how the social network and second life interact with each other but i am going to take a closer look in to it before i post about it. I like the way it uses space though. It has nice open plan areas to view videos, shows and work. It is generally just a weird place with very few real life rules being brought in to second life. A tap dripping objects such as cars, floating seats and lights. Snapshots below.

Sneaky Advertising

I went on Rainbow Six Vegas to play some games on live with a couple of friends. There was a update to the game so as usual i installed it as there always very small and take about 20seconds to install. When playing through the casino vault map i noticed what seemed like a new addition. Every 5 minutes the wall poster would change and it advertised movies and games that are coming up.

Advertising is everywhere. . . .

>>Cowers<<. . . . .

Billy Bussey

Another rather nice website incorporating some simple animation. This guy (Billy Busey) intends on stepping outside the box on web design and wants to make it 3 Dimensional. My main grief with the website is the loading time between pages but this is made bearable by the nice animations to keep you occupied while all this is happening. I highly recommend anyone who is interested in interactive or animation to take a look. Also instead of just pressing enter press the intro button at the side. It is very nicely done as a piece of moving image and gives you a great feel for the work he produces. The website feels very peaceful to navigate around. Has very minimal feel and a rather calming soundtrack that shockingly enough does not get annoying unlike most sites with music (cough cough myspace) Take your time and have a careful look around his site.

Overall this is much better done then the previously posted Heeleys Gamer website. Let me know what you think.

Billy Bussey

dontclick.it

So you have likely all seen this before but i am going to post it anyway. Its basically a website based around a theory that people cannot help but to click when navigating. It uses flash rollover interaction to help you navigate around the site. Any clicks detected will pop up with a question and from then on with a fuzzy screen. In a sense telling you off.

I really enjoy visiting this site from time to time. Its nice to see someone taking what we already have and having a different approach to it. Once you get passed to clicking stage you can play a few simple games that has been created and eventually using a mouse only interaction can become rather fluid.

Now obviously there is issues with this type of interaction as you may rollover a link or content you do not want and up it pops thus getting in the way. So i cannot really see this type of functionality taking over the old click method, especially in website design.

Anyway check out the link below and give it a spin.

dontclick.it

Interactive and moving image.

Sort of what i am interested in doing. I want to go down the interactive design route but i enjoy my 3D modeling still so this site is a rather nice example of how them to pathways can mix in with each other.

Heelys Gamer

Next Gen Screenshots

I know we have all seen them QT Virtual tours online but when it comes to upcoming games all we ever see is flat screenshots that do not really do a game much justice (or in some cases it does it more justice thanks to a little post work) but this was a first for me to find.

A 3D screenshot from the new COD4 game. Just download, open the zip and open the .mov in quicktime to rotate around. I may be alone in the world on this but i was rather impressed.... yet i am also rather sad haha

Download

Flight Sim in Google Earth?

So i just recieved an email directing me to a post on Mac OSX Hints about an apparnt flight sim in google earth. Well a hidden one anyway.

Check out the article here

As i do not really bother with google earth can anyone confirm what this is like and maybe grab a few screenshots of it?