End of the Year

today on the last day of college for the year i got a lot of writing done in the form of a small tutorial that shows how i built my music project in Cubase

i had one of the teaching assistants come over and read through and got a lot of good feed back from her. she even went as far as saying that it should be used for the next years class.

well that's it for the year.
Have a great Christmas and an even better new year

Monday (after the weekend)

today i finished a piece of music and have decided to call it "George Bush Makes me Laugh"
from what started as a piece of dark sounding heavy metal now works as a backing track to some "bushisms"

as it stands i still don't think I'm very good at the music side to this unit but i feel like i am overcoming this and as i practise i seem to be getting better and more confident.

after asking some of the class members and the tutor for there opinions about my work i am happy with what i have done.

This afternoon we continued with our work on Cubase as a class and i finished my research part of the assignment.
the research was fun we had to come up with a sort of dream home studio.
after finishing the research portion of the assignment i continued to experiment with what could be done with Cubase.
i plan to spend the weekend gathering samples and loops for for this project with a bit of work i should be able to bring in a DVD of samples and loops that should help with this task.
it helps that my dad can play a guitar so i can try to get some samples from him playing

Thursday

so the last 2 days we have been starting to learn Cubase.
Cubase is an audio sampiling and edditing softwear that allows the user to import and create loops of simple rifts that can then be used in larger projects for full music tracks.

here is a quick tutorial for matching the tempo in cubase to the tempo of your loop.
how this works is by setting the project grid to match your first loop.

(1) you will need to count the number of beats in the loop and make a note of it
(2)select the loop and go to the project menu and select beat calculator
(3)enter the number of beats that you counted in the first part and click on the At tempo track start button. this should set the tempo for the hole project from the begining.

that should be it

Monday Unit7 Start

Today we started on Unit 7 audio Sequencing this is a bit daunting for me as i consider myself to be tone deaf but i still hope to learn something from the experience.

I have used some audio editing software in the past but this was done without any guidance and was just cuting out sounds for use in a Mod for starwars empier at war( the mod was called Stargate empier at war)
I hope that this unit will be as interesting as the last one , i already know that i I'm going to fined this unit harder.

This morning we had to give a presentation on the websites we made for the last unit of study i think this went well for me as i was one of the only ones to have completed this task for our key skills.
the hardest part was that i went first at giving my presentation.

finished my website

today we finnished our websites
things did not go well witch is a real shame as i realy enjoyed this unit and think that i am quite good at using dreamweaver.

to start with i spent far to long trying to make the site do fancy things.
if i had more time or i could try again i would plan out my time much better and wouldnt spend as much of my time helping other members of the class.

another thing is that i didnt refer to the design bref enouf and as a resault i ended up rushing in pages that where needed like my forum page.
my plan originaly was to link to a proper forum with redirecting page warning the user but on reading the breff i realised that i needed to atualy design it

so here it is my website
click here

please be honest and tell me whats good and whats bad

yet another monday

today i have achieved allot of work.
my website is coming in leaps and bounds with the content i am adding.
the tutor showed me how to add a flash animation for my splash screen and now it looks really good
i have also started adding content from the official fallout website and i feel that this looks as good if not better than the site I'm getting it from.
i plan to Finnish of the little bits on Tuesday while I'm off

That afternoon

so this afternoon i learnt how to use an iframe this was quite an acomplishment as i figerd out how to do it myself.

the code to put an iframe in to your site is:


and the code to link a button to an iframe is:

i haven't updated this blog in some time so i felt that now was as good a time as any.
this week we have been working on web design. this is a very fun unit of work and i feel that i am doing very well already in it. i started by drawing up some mock sites on photo shop to give my self an idea of what i would like my site to look like.


after this the tutor came and showed me how to use frames to better organise my site. using frames is a good way to make sites as for each frame you create a separate page this is good for keeping the site organized .

we have also been shown how to make roll over buttons. this is simple as it is only 2 images one for when the cursor is not on the button and one for when the cursor is over the button

another thing we have been shown to use is tables. tables are a good way to keep images and text neat and organized

today we finished the research part of the project and started on the planing side of it.
this is fun looking at how websites work and not just whats on them as i tend to do.

after writing a short comparison of different game sites i went on to planing how my site will look
after a bit of tweaking i ended up with this as an idea
this layout seems to conform with other game sites and i plan to use light colours to show that its a game for the hole family

today i have been continuing with my Internet research history.
even though i know allot about this subject i am still learning things like the first use of the word Internet was in 1974 and the first e-mail was sent in 1972 to a computer next to the one that sent it now this may not sound like much but at the time it was revolutionary

i still feel like i keep wondering of track but i am trying to keep it all relevant. like explaining that a bit is a binary digit (a 0 or a 1) for those that don't know binary is base 2 maths. Base 2 maths is matamatics based on 2 numbers we as humans tend to use base 10 maths (most likely because we have ten digits on our hands)

the websites i have been using in this unit to help with my research are:
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://www.davesite.com/webstation/net-history2.shtml
http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html

i must admit that i am enjoying this unit of study and feel that i will take alot away from this

(also visit my other blog to see my sporegrab project)
sporegrab is a small program that i am writing to gather assets for the popular MAXIS game Spore.

monday

today we started on the web design unit of the course.
whilst i am already well versed in the use of the Internet and the ways the Internet works i feel that there is a lot that i can learn from this unit.

the biggest problem i can foresee is that i may get a bit side tracked in the research over the technical side rather than the visual side

i already feel confidant with the terminology used in this unit and im looking foward to using DreamWeaver.
i have used dreamweaver before but that was when it was made by macromedia now however dreamweaver is made by Adobe but it still looks the same or at least similar

thursday

today i have finished making my bus advert this was a fun assignment but not without its challenges.

during this unit i have learnt that advertising is as much about how a product is branded as it is the product being sold

for my final ad i chose to make an ad for Greenpeace thinking that i would find it easier with more ideas to work with this however is not the case as i found out.

"freedom is the greatest burden" the artist Matisse said this and now i agree

after a lot of work i finished my bus ad with the tag line "deforestation is the beginning of the end"

the idea of advertising on the side of a bus may seem like an easy idea but its not as easy to use the space as you may have thought.

if i was given a choice i would have chosen to make my ad for a billboard as this would be a large simple space to use rather than what i think is a bit of a ristricting amount of space.

Monday after half term

After coming back from half term i jumped straight back in to work.
this was easy to do as i had done most of my work at home during the holiday.
i started by selecting one of my ideas and putting it on the side of the bus template
however the first idea i had didn't look as good as i had pictured in my head and didn't get the point across that i was trying to make so i changed to the idea that i have posted above.

the final ad was based on the idea that if all the trees keep disappearing then all the animals and tribes that live in the forests wont have anywhere to go. i tryed to show this by balancing all the animals and tribes men on one tree in a desert.

Last day befor half term

today we have been working on our bus ads
i have chosen to work on a Greenpeace campaign as this is something i feel strong about
more specifically i have focused on deforestation.

today we were shown how to use the pen tool in photoshop and how to use paths this can be a bit fiddly but is a very powerful tool.i plan to use this technique in the future with textering 3d models

we have also been given our SDS (self directed study)
for the SDS we need to work on our bus ads over the half term

Thursday

Today we have been working mostly on our research for advertisement, more specifically about semiotics and visual language.
Semiotics is a very deep subject that i feel would take years of study to completely understand.
for example Wikipedia puts signs in semiotics as "something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity" now that may be a broad explanation but if you were to go to
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html then you would be able to see just how complex the subject relay is.
visual language is just as wide a subject but is a little essayer to understand. Wikipedia describes visual language as “A visual language is a set of practices by which images can be used to communicate concepts.” This means anything from written language to sign language and beyond can be used as a visual language. the hardest part of visual languages is making sure that whom ever is reading it understands what it is you mean.
But visual language can mean reading someones body language and that can be as obvious as shaking your fist in rage to something as subtle as not being able to look someone in the eye when lieing
I feel that i got too drawn in to trying to describe what semiotics is and that has slowen me down a bit but it wont be to hard to catch up over the weekend.

Over the weekend i plan to finish writing about product branding and product advertising.

wendsay

Today we were given our assignment brief for the research part of the advertising unit.
This part of the unit covers learning about visual language(witch even covers the written language), semiotcs and how advertising works (like viral advertising witch works on a one person tells two who inturn tell 2 each and so on)
after the first unit i feel a bit more confident about what im doing.

Monday

today we started on our advertising unit
the task we were given was to take an image (eg. a games console or a musical instrument)
and to wright 4 slogan's for it based at 4 different age ranges only using a sentence or less.
what i thought was an easy assignment turned out to be a bit harder than i thought.
the one i struggled with was age range 10 to 16.
i started with the slogan "fun for the whole family" i asked members of the class and found that most associated this with an older age range so after more thought i changed it to "make playtime fun time" this works because younger children can connect with it as they have playtime at school.

Thursday

today has been a bit of a rush to get things done on time.
using PowerPoint was a bit daunting to begin with but after a quick rundown on how to use it i found it rather easy.
with both my posters done now all i have to do is my sketch book update
i have printed of many of the individual assets to stick in to my sketchbook to help show the prosses used.
thanks to the small extension we have on doing this i think i should be able to get my sketch book looking good rather than just exceptibel.

This is my first complete poster for the first module.

The images used are an eye from the Internet, the smile is scanned from a CCTV poster, the picture of the earth is scanned from a book and the CCTV cameras were photographed from around Brighton.

using the opacity tools i maneged to blend the eye with the globe this is something that i like about the poster however on further reflection i think i should have used a lighter colour to make it feel more of a welcoming poster to look at.

I do think that this would work well as a CCTV awareness poster but i will also try to get some more input from other class members.

Monday afternoon

This afternoon I have been working on my complete posters for the end of this unit.
I have found this task somewhat easy as i know about photoshop the main tool that we are using to make them.
I have however learnt some new things about it that i never knew before like the contiguous option that when used with the magic wand ( a select tool) will select all pixels with the same colour on the enter picture this is handy when trying to remove large sections of colour whilst leaving small detailed parts of the picture untouched.
i also have a greater understanding of the gausien blur tool and how it is used to make layers in photoshop have a similar blur so they seem to fit.
I have nearly finished both my posters now and just have a few small parts left to do takeing the camera home with me helped me to gather the needed assets.
This is my dog Chucky

Monday morning

Key skills:
This morning during key skills we had to discus the ethics of "photoshoping".
Photoshoping is a term used to describe the manipulation of a picture by means of photoshop or another photo manipulation program.
I think this went well (apart from the fact that I left my worksheet on my desk at home).
We all seemed to be of the same opinion that there should be some sort of regulation on photos used by the press.
However art should not be censored and as photoshop is a powerful tool in the modern art world i don't think that it can be censored.
My goal for the discussions was to allow others to have more of a say, this was not easy because when you are being watched no one wants to talk. So i took the lead to try to get the others in the group talking, I think this worked because in no time at all the hole group was ready to have a say.

Thursday

Today we started by looking at scanners.
we started by looking at how to use it through both photoshop and the canoscan tool
there are many things about scanners that i didn't know like OCR which means ocular character recognition that works by reading the text of a page and putting it in a text file for editing.
later we started on our final posters for the unit. I have some what changed my CCTV awareness poster to have an eye behind the earth rather than a CCTV poster as this has less text allowing me to use more images .
before we leave for the weekend i am going to borrow one of the collages camera so that i can collect some assets for my poster.
I also plan to take some pictures of my pet dog (Chucky) as i have no photos of him yet.

Today we had our first go at photography. This was a fun task, working in groups we had to take pictures at different angles and from different places.
after taking the required amount of photos i went on to take a few more artistic pictures of my class mates again using different angles at different ranges and from different positions.
using the camera was easy just a case of point and shoot but i did play with the focus a bit for different effects.

After the photography we sat down for group tutorials to discuss any issues that we may be having on the course, I am happy to say that there don't seem to be any problems yet.

The rest of monday

For the rest of this Monday i have been working on making mock posters of what my final posters should look like. As we are not allowed to use main text (text that we have added to the final design) i found it a bit harder than i had expected, by using only images to explain the meaning of the poster was hard and required alot more thought than i realized.

This is my CCTV awareness poster.

I made this using an existing cctv sign with a picture of the earth as well as many CCTV cameras to try to illustrate that CCTV is everywhere.

This is for my Pro CCTV poster.

This one was made to show that if you are caught on camera it can be used as evidence.

i show this with the judge having a CCTV camera as his head and i portray the criminal as the classic prisoner in the black and white striped clothing.

to help push the point i added another person with a camera head.

This is my Anti-CCTV poster.

For this poster i went for a more minimalistic approach with a map being viewed by CCTV cameras surrounded by barbed wire. i stuck to keeping it simple to try and push across that a CCTV nation is like a prison

I produced these with photoshop mostly using the cut and paste feature's and with images gathered from the Internet (you gotta love that google image search). As well as cut and paste i have used the clone stamp tool and the blur tool, there are automatic tools to do this for you but i like the personal touch. To reposition and re angle items i used the transform tools located in the edit menu , finally to clean up the images i used the eraser tools to remove any edges that i didn't need or looked out of place

all in all i found using photoshop easy but the task a challenge.

Monday morning

This morning we have been doing more keyskills in preperation for next week I have to start aiming to talk less and let others talk more.
Lets hope that i learn to shutup.

Yesterday we started on photo shop

We went over the basics about different types of image files,i have used photoshop many times in the past but without any guidense atleast with a tutor in the room i can ask questions about the tools i dont understand.

we covered resolutions and pixels for example a screen DPI (dots per inch) is only 72

but the DPI for a print is 150 to 300

we then started working on composting our own alien scape as seen above.

as i have used photo shop before i found this task easy but i did learn about quick mask mode,

something i hadn't used before

this afternoon we made mock posters of what we plan to make for our asignement,

im happy how mine has come out but hope to spend more time on the final project.

22/9/09

I have just finished my mood board's.
i ended up basing them on CCTV rather than the war as i felt that it was a subject closer to home.

I'm not so confident about them as i have never made one before but i tyred to make them
based on different aspects of the same theme using different styles for each.
the political concept that i have chosen is CCTV and the big brother culture.
I chose this finally as i believe it covers both political and social concept's.

i can see now how mood boards can be very useful from a design and ideas tool and plan to use similar techniques in the future.

21/9/09

Today we started with keyskils alot of the class moned about it but i can see why its useful. We then handed in our resarch on the history of photomontage and photography. I was surprised at how often the media of photomontage had been used in propogander the nazis and the allies used photomontage in the war.

im confident that i did well but with more time i could have done more.
After that we started our mood bords. I have never used a mood board befor sop this is a bit of a learning curve for me, I have based my mood boards on the cost of the war for oil,
The reasons for for the war on terror and Human rights in the war on terror
I picked these as i know they should have an impact on the people that look at them,
i should have them finished by wensday

After much messing around i have finaly got my first blog up and running.

My name is Robert Pallier and im doing a BTEC 1st Diploma in Interactive Media

through out the duration of the course i will be updateing this blog with work and resarch that i have done.

i hope that this course will lead on to the games development course and that the skills learnt here will be usefull out of the classroom.