update:

i must apologise in advance for my lack of activity. I moved house a week ago and have since been without internet. despite this, however, i have been incredibly busy. My work with Embrace the Culture was put on hold while they worked on other things but will be commencing in the next few days. i have designed and had printed and fitted vinyl signs to the shop front of my familys business and began working for the Nottingham Philosophical Review, a student run magazine that wants to set up a website and publish its magazine more regularly.
once im back online ill upload work that i have produced over the recent weeks.

Part of the Culture

The great collaboration begins. The website is coming along well, i have the actionscript all working and the layout set, just waiting for the content and it'll be go go go!
In the meantime, Embrace the Culture and I agreed that i should perhaps market myself a little more, since my website is empty and i dont market myself in any form.
As a result we have been brainstorming ideas and Ryan sent over a design he'd been working on, merged with my idea of using a Blue Jay in my name in some form to tie in with my initials.

The end results have been as such:









This is tied in with a new blog design and a new website on the way. Im thinking of getting the business cards printed, 2 sided with my details on the back.]
What i like about the logo is its flexibility, not only is the way hese tied all 3 of my initials into it is a stroke of pure genius, but i can change the colours of my initials as i see fit and rearrange the text too.

Hopefully ETC will be happy with the end result of my website, as i am hoping that i will receive further work from it. Which will be a dream come true, since it is what i would love to, one day, be doing full time.

Embrace the Cultures New Website.

Been given the momentous task of rebuilding Embrace the Cultures website, which can be found here:
http://www.etcfashionhouse.com/.
The final layout is to look like so:



My job is to make it work, in lehmans terms. Not. an. easy. task.
Anyways, very exciting.

The websites being created in flash and then sent over to dreamweaver. Deadline is the end of this week.
Ill show you more when i have more to show, at present i have just recreated the layout in flash and am now animating it.
Allwood; out. x

Virtual Environments;

I have finished my virtual lair, i am just waiting for it to upload. I shall write about it now and then post it afterwards.
I struggled with the virtual environments pathway, learning to use the software was a huge learning curve that i never really got round. I did extensive research into a wide range of media, i looked at comics, tv cartoons, tv drama, games and films to influence my designs and although the work is weak, i feel you can see my intentions within it. My biggest influence was the sinister layouts of map design in the game Team fortress 2, while also looking at the set design for Torchwood. My lair was to be a sinister alter ego of myself, and set in an underground bunker, and so that is where my decisions to base my ideas on them came from. Effectively i have practiced all areas that were expected of me. I have modelled, i have textured i have used lighting and i have shown an understanding of the cameras. I dont feel that i could have made a better job, it was my first time and i struggled immensely despite putting a lot of hours into it. As stated, my intentions were to create a lair to suit a sinister alter ego of myself. I wanted to create a "dr strangelove style" war room, an innocent looking waiting room, a hospital bay and a garage for my car. I was able to model the layouts for the rooms quite well and i feel for that the garage and medical wing worked well. But i struggled with modelling furniture and i was unable to scale things down having made them.
I am pleased that i managed to deliver something. I am disappointed with the outcome, but i did put a lot of effort into it. I wont be taking it as a pathway, ive known all along.

Interactive Quiz, Final Edit.

Interactive Quiz Final Edit by ~loveremains on deviantART


This is the final draft of my Interactive Quiz.
I am relatively pleased with the outcome, but had to make quite a few adaptions from my initial plans.
Initially i wanted to present my quiz more as a game show and have every question filmed with me asking it. By doing so it bridged the gap between television game show and internet quizzes which seem quite devoid of excitement. This soon became clear that it was a tough task due to the ammount of memory needed simply filming it. However it is something i am going to attempt over the summer.
For this project however i then decided to change direction. I stuck to the same topic which meant that i just arrange my layout and its design. I decided to base my questions on the history of art and design, an area i felt was quite diverse but something i that interests me and hopefully most people would know at least a couple of the questions. This also meant that by using a subject that was mostly images, i could then have image based answers, rather than just text, which i felt was far more interesting.
My design of the interface was subsequently influenced by the subject, so i chose to use the style of the swiss typographers such as Armin Hofmann while using the image of "lilya brik" by Alexander Rodchenko, a Russian constructivist.
I struggled on the previous flash project as it was the first time id ever used it, however this time i was more comfortable with the software and had longer to execute this project and so feel i have produced something i am personally far more happy with.
I have been able to include multiple sounds, video and animation and show an understanding of how Flash works. As a result i am quite happy with the outcome.

Moving Image project final outcome;

Please find above the final outcome of our group moving image project, "Cough".
I am pleased with the outcome, considering i was extremely worried how it would turn out initially.
I think that above all what is most pleasing is that what we set out to do actually happened.
Having read the script we interpreted it as a bit of a domestic drama. As a result our instant influences were the likes of Desperate Housewives and the Stepford Wives, etc. However having researched further into our own areas, mine being Camera Operator. We were able to find other strong influences. My choice of composition for the camera was heavily influenced by American Beauty and Citizen Kane, both of which had very similar scenes to the one we had planned out.
This meant we also had a strong list of influences for our props.
Obviously, we were limited by location and budget, but i feel we made the best we could of the situation to allow us to vaguely mimic a prim, middle class dining room.
I am disappointed with the outcome of the camera work however and the reasons for the faults i cannot completely place. The compositions used are heavily influenced by my research and as a result i feel are successful. However at times parts of actors are cut off, which really annoys me. I wasnt aware of this happening at the time but it becomes far more obvious when watching it back. It was difficult at times as we was in a very small space too, so the scenes when they are dancing was a nightmare to fit into shot.
The editing by Dora and Jess is brilliant though. I think it en captures the image we were going for perfectly and the dubbing of sound into the film is very accurate.

HTML Vs Flash

Through my research for my visual essay ive really studied into the dispute between Adobe and Apple. I think the subject is a very interesting one with lots of view points, that might come down to a Harry Hill style "only one way to find out... FIGHT!" scene, but the reality is the outcome could produce a lot of changes for web.

From what i can gather, Apple has shown a dislike for Adobe's monopoly on the web industry due to the web's heavy reliance on Flash, and so have thrown their support behind the development of HTML5. However a lot of high up companies have argued HTML5 simply isnt up to their requirements. HULU have recently upgraded their website and have done so in flash, claiming HTML5 wasnt good enough.

""When it comes to technology, our only guiding principle is to best serve the needs of all of our key customers: our viewers, our content partners who license programs to us, our advertisers, and each other. We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn't yet meet all of our customers' needs. Our player doesn't just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren't necessarily visible to the end user. Not all video sites have these needs, but for our business these are all important and often contractual requirements.
That's not to say these features won't be added to HTML5 in the future (or be easier to implement). Technology is a fast-moving space and we're constantly evaluating which tools will best allow us to fulfill our mission for as many of our customers as possible."

I fear that Apple have simply tried to use their weight to topple a bigger giant and may well have came accross a conker too big.
In theory the adoption of html5 is a good one, itll level the playing field between internet on smart phones and internet on a computer. However, since many argue the shortfalls of html5, perhaps we simply rely on Flash too much. Browsers may not adobt html5 or users might simply refuse, since many users still run on old browsers. It also causes troubles for companies on the web who will have to adopt the changes.
This might simply mean that smartphones will just have to suffer a little longer untill theyre capable of supporting flash fully.
Even now, on my htc desire, which is ran on Android which supports flash, it doesnt fully work. Flash videos yes, but fully flash websites will not run, which doesnt form a problem for websites on the web. But since it is a growing market still, there is plenty of time for phones to catch up before the market itself is fully saturated.
Itll be interesting to see what comes of this..