Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner: Client Project WOW potential clients for my project: Kadromah94

One of the other locations I investigated for my client project was the media cafe the Kadromah94 located at 94 Alfred Gelder Street Hull, I went to investigate this as a potential client that would be able to host my project since it host a wide range of Media based events. When I visited the cafe, I asked a member of staff if I could talk to the manager of the establishment. I was asked why and I told them that I was a third year Animation student at Hull School of Art and Design and that I was looking for someone who could host one of my works to public as it is part of my course.  I was given a email address that the manger prefers to be emailed and that he is all ways busy so this is the best way to reach him. I email the manger of the Kardomjah94 once I got back:

I received a response two days later requesting that I send a MP4 format of the file and that I should try Humberfilm. Once I received this email I began to trying to find a way to converted my file for famous women of Hull into a MP4 unfortunately SWF files and FLA files can’t be tranfered into these formats without loosing actionscript3 which is a key component to my Famous Women of Hull Project, so my Tutor Gareth suggested that I do a screen recording of it and send my client that instead.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner: Client Project WOW potential clients for my project: Maritime Museum

I have written a proposal to the Maritime Museum asking I am able to show my interactive animation to general public at the Maritime Museum. This form not only stated what my intention was with presenting my project but also gave my potential client a way to contact me about my project. A day later after I handed in my project proposal to one of the members of staff at the Maritime Museum I got a response.

The response I received for my proposal was from the curator of the Maritime Museum Robin Diaper stating that at this present time the sites that were under his durastriction were unable to show my project to the public but wished me luck in my future endeavors and my project. So I will not be able to show my project at the Maritime Museum unfortunately but I have at least got some more experience in this part of been an animator.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner: Client Project WOW potential clients for my project:

Since this is my client project I need to find a suitable client who is willing to show my animation to the public, as I have already failed to see my first client I had chosen and organise to show my project at the Women of the World event, I have to find I new client. The other day I went around hull trying to find suitable locations and clients to allow me to show my interactive animation, unfortunately the downfall with such a project is that I need to find some where that is suitable for this sort of animation.

Hull and East Riding Museum:

One of Hulls major museums that has a wide range of art exhibits form across different time periods that are both interactive and attract a wide range of tourists mainly children which is a plus in this as that is one of my main target audiences.

The Maritime Museum:

Another good example as the Maritime Museum has a section dedicated to the public to allow artists to show their work to public but you have to put your name forward first and state what you want to show to the public. One of the Hull New Media Students has already held and exhibit here called Lou in Games design.

 

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner: Client Project WOW Animation Changes 2

This next post came up when my project of Women of Hull or WOW! as it was originally known as, had to have few more modifications, according to my tutor Sally the project wasn’t quite their yet so she suggested that I make it interactive to the target audience. Wen I asked Sally how I could go about this she suggested that since I was using Adobe Anime/Flash I should install buttons that the audience could click or press in this case on an interactive board or tablet of some sort. I began to look up to how install these button or at least create them for this project, while I did find the way how to do it on the official Adobe Website Help Page and several other websites and youtube videos, the way it was explained still made it very difficult to understand as well as some of the video qualities been quite horrendous. I eventually learned how to stop the animation on Animate/Flash but after that you could do nothing unless you had a button or another command in to tell it to play after so long. The basic command to stop Animate/Flash on Action Script 3 is to type in the actions command box on the desired lay and frame is stop(); . That took me about an hour to get right and finally understand, after words I started to create buttons for the animation, this took me at least two hours to learn how program correctly before I managed to set them all up correctly through out my Women of Hull Animation (The coding I couldn’t hand type, fortunately both Animate/Flash comes with instant commands that can be tweaked ever so slightly to change which frame the button jumps to. This can be seen in the images  below:

This first image is of the button that allows the target audience to start the animation, it will also change into a different shade of orange when hovered over when or pressed and then vanishes.

These two buttons allows the user to jump back to the introduction of the animation and to the animation associated with the introduction of the women that the button is linked too.

 This button is at the end of the animation and allows the user to jump back to the introduction animation.

The names on the intro have also been turned into buttons and allow the user to jump to the women who name has been clicked.

This makes the animation not only a lot more user friendly but also fun as it has become interactive and makes the educational aspect of it a lot more effective to the target audience and hope they will begin to learn more about the city of Culture and who has originated or been educated here.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner: Client Project WOW Animation Changes

My Women of the World Project is almost complete but I have to make several changes as it didn’t tick the boxes for this course in order to pass my final year. These changes were pointed out to me by one of tutors Sally who said that the animation is within the video are good but I need to introduce another way of showing which women is which instead of just allowing the target audience to guess of just the animation and sounds that they produce. Sally suggested that I make information pages within the animation to replace the portraits that I was originally using to introduce the famous women of hull. These information pages consist of two pictures of the Women showing them doing what made them famous or at least what was associated with them. The information pages also included there names in a colour based on what they had done and a short description about their life. 

This made the animation not only look a lot more appealing to eye but also made it look a lot more professional as well compared to the previous versions of the animation as each introduction of the famous women of Hull, where it was just a portrait in black and white and a basic font in colours of the city of culture logo. Which back then, now that I think about it made it not only hard to read but also quite bland and not very professional and this wouldn’t have made it easy for me to find someone who would be willing to take my project and present it publicly. The next thing that I was told by Sally is that since I had got rid of my original introductions for each women and replaced them with these much more effective ones I should also change the opening page and animate it.

This opening Introduction page made a huge difference to the whole animation like the individual introduction pages for each women from Hull also adds something to the animation an makes it look not only a more like an educational documentary animation but also much more professional than the previous version which personally (as I have look at it recently) very childish. There a lots of difference between the new intro and the old one, for example the original opening consisted of two different frames (You could say), the first been a bland title sequence that used the colours of the city of culture logo for the background and opening title (Which was in a very generic and universally used font). It didn’t really catch the attention of the target audience, the only thing that sort of made it unique was the colour scheme and even then it wasn’t really my own creation and felt wrong to use it. The next frames of this sequence was the portraits of the famous women of Hull in the middle lined up in an organised manner, which was the only eye catching thing about this set of frames but it was still rather bland and basic. See above for the two original frames sequences for the opening.

The corrections made to introduction can be seen in the image above the previous paragraph. I had made a complete overhaul of the introduction of this animation with slight guidance from Sally my tutor, who told me to be a bit more creative with the images of the women and the opening. So I found  new images of the famous women of hull placed them in photo shop that was set to the size of the Adobe Animate/Flash standard frame size and began to cut and places the images in a unique way before giving it a colourful introduction title and a box with the names of the women I had chosen in order with the background faint allowing the audience to see it. This title and opening not only draws the attention of the target audience in with it’s unique appearance but it also shows the women of hull really well and doesn’t make the project looking boring or over informative.

Their was one problem when I transferred these new introductions and openings to the Adobe Animate/Flash which was that the file refused originally to be transferred over in fragment without having a massive white background with them so each layer would unintentionally cover the previous one,w hen I needed the blank parts of each frame to be invisible. I eventually found a way around this problem but it took along time and a lot head scratching, to be honest I actually discovered how I did to get each other from Photoshop to Animate/Flash by accident. But once I knew how it was a piece of cake to transfer each layer over as it’s own in Anime/Flash and animate them to work allowing each women photo and name to appear in order in the introduction of the animation.

I transferred the sound files over to the Adobe Audition, this allowed me to manipulate sound files to the effects I desired such as speeding up my mouse squeaking file to make it sound like Squeak was getting angry or lower the audio levels.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner, Client Project: Women of the World or WOW!

Unfortunately due to several unforeseen events I was not able to get my Women of the World Animation for WOW at Hull. These events led to my project been delayed and me having to correct and fix several glitches that had occurred in the prototype animation. These glitches varied from my book animation for no reason constantly changing to white for no reason and no matter how many times I changed to colour of the book back to the desired and chosen colour scheme the book would revert back to the white colour. Eventually I managed to get the book to stay the original chosen colour scheme. Other problem that were involved with this project were also minor such as the Bumblebee suddenly become detached from it’s wings and moving a few frames ahead instead of the two frames sticking together. So I had to go back to main frames that were centred around this glitch in Flash and manually correct it, which while doesn’t seem to take long the process can be quite tiring and does take a long time because of Flashes settings. Due to the some of the mentioned occurrences that have happened my project has been pushed back leading to me missing the Women of the World event. I can make up for this by not only finding a new client some where in Hull since it is the City of Culture this year but I can also make more tweaks to the project to make it look more professional and correct anymore mistakes that have happened before I show it to said client.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner, Client Project: Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 41

Here is another prototype version of the Women of the World/Women of Hull Animation:

I corrected the animation so now their are Chimney’s that are smogging up a city which my target audience said connected to Norma a lot better than the previous animation and I made a better animation of a sailing boat that went across the whole screen to show Plain Sailing better.

I created the latest version of Famous women of Hull by utilising the brush tool to draw odd angles such as the sails on the boat, the line tool for the straight lines in the scene such as the phone in Maureen Lipman’s scene. I also used the eraser tool to remove mistakes and the paint bucket to fill in were more colour was desired.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner, Client Project: Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 35

Here is another prototype version of the Women of the World/Women of Hull Animation:

This animation is now now reaches it’s own credits and the animation are all complete. Debra now finishes her performance and poses for the audience. The walking animation is now much longer and does a bit more helping draw in the target audience a lot more effectively. The phone now sits on a table while it rings. Norma Waterson’s animation is based on Dirty Old Town and shows a town that was once clean get dirtier and dirtier. (My Tutor Janis did point out that maybe I should just show chimney’s smog up the blue sky) to save not only time but also make the situation much more believable. Tracey Thorn’s animation shows a sail blowing in the wind but this doesn’t portray the connect to her or her song Plain Sailing very well so I will need to go back to this later on.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner, Client Project: Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 30

Here is another prototype version of the Women of the World/Women of Hull Animation:

I have made several of the changes proposed previously such as the bee now zig zags across the screen not only to give the audience more look at and make the bee look more life like but to also extend the scene. The people I have shown have all like the bees new animation. The telephone is now coloured and it’s animation is now working completely, but I still need to get the table top it is placed on done. The scissors now cut across the whole screen, which make that animation a lot more believable and give the audience time to work out which women was involved with this industry. The Debra animation still needs work as it isn’t long enough yet, but I can fix that. I have also made all the portraits of the women black and white to make sure their colour don’t clash with each other.

Creative Futures: Pro Practitioner, Client Project: Women of the World or WOW! Animation Prototype 24

Here is another prototype version of the Women of the World/Women of Hull Animation:

I still need to make the corrections made in my previous post but I have been more focused on animating the rest of the women’s animated symbols. What I have managed to do since my last post is add three more animations, the first belonging to Stevie Smith based on her poem not waving but drowning, the animation involves a waving hand with the rest of the body hidden from view. The animation still needs a bit of work but it still gives a successful representation of Stevie Poem. The next animation is a wring phone, which is a obvious reference to Maureen Lipman, I do admit that it still needs work such as colour scheme but apart from that the animation works really well. The last animation is that Debra Stephenson with her body-less dooplganer performing on stage although this animation needs a bit more work, it not just right yet.