Update

I have decided on an idea for my game I am creating in AS 3.0, and actually intend to stick with it. Today I have spent finishing most of the design work for the game as well as starting to actually code the game.

As I am unfamiliar with AS 3.0, it has taken me an afternoon just to set up the drag and drog functions with some transitions.

I will be posting more information on my game as well as some examples and playable alpha/beta types to have a go on.

Today's lecture

This blog post is to summarise and reflect on today's lecture about the interactive media industry.

You may have seen that earlier I blogged an example assignment brief. This is because lately we have been learning about how to understand elements in the industry that we are hopefully going to make a career out of.

For an assignment set by a company, the following are key points to address before even considering actually making the product. The following stages are for when you have pitched and got a project to work on.

• Research the audience. A key step in creating your multimedia product will be to research your audience, in fact you will probably spend more time planning the product and time on research than you will actually creating the product. If you are doing work for a larger company they will probably have sufficient audience research of which you can use, otherwise you will have to do this yourself. The key points in defining the audience you are looking to aim for will include knowing what pshycographic and demographic profiles the clients' product is for.

A little more information is needed to explain the profiles of potential audiences. A demographic    profile means knowing the age group, gender, culteral background and economic social classes people fit in to. A pshycographic means knowing about the personality of those people. This is things such as what are their interests? What products have they previously used? When and where do they like to use them? What kind of person are they?

• Another stage relating to research will include researching exisitng products. You can gain research for existing products and research for audience profiles by contacting other companies who have this information or doing it yourself. The drawback of contacting another company is that they will probably want money for their research work, but also doing this yourself takes more time out of your schedule.
• Find out what budget you will be working to. Also what will you be signing? Will you have to provide more elements of the project, cutting into your profit, or will the company you are creating the product for provide these elements.
• The schedule. How much time do you have to complete this project? Make sure when you make any deadlines that you can abide by them; if you miss a deadline you will have to pay compansation fees and you will  have the title of 'unreliable' attached.
• The above two points make up the most part of the contract. Once you sign a contract to do a job by a certain date for a specified budget, you have to work to this. As mentioned before if you do not complete the project sufficiently for the deadline it will cost you dearly in money and reputation.
• The creation stage begins.

To expand on the points covered, the reason that the time schedule and budget are two of the main parts of the project specification because if they go wrong, the project can fall to pieces. For example if a company who makes deodrant for instance is set to release their deodrant product in a month and you have been asked to create a website for them and finish it two days before the release of the product, if you are late the marketing campaign can fail. Or say another deodrant company is to release their product on the same day and you fail to meet your deadline, that competitive company will already have the upper hand, meaning that the company you are working for has lost out on much profit.

In terms of the project budget, this can differ in relation to the size of the project and your previous experience can all change the hourly rate that you get paid. For example a student doing a website for a local B&B would probably get on average £30 a day, working an 8 hour day. A proffessional web designer who has completed larger projects in the past and has wealth of expierience in their field will probably earn aroun £70 an hour, or more. So you can see the differences in relationship to the type of project/client you are dealing with and your experience also.

Much of what I have talked about in this blog post will become all the more relevant to me later on once proceeding into the industry, but also in more recent times as our class have been told we will have client based work to complete later on this year. This means completing work for clients for a set deadline and possibly a set budget. The reason it is in some cases more important is because it is not a college briefed assignment, basically if we mess it up it will be our reputation on the line. My lecturer also suggested that if we get too many jobs to do in the future, or a job that is too advanced for us then you can hand it on to another person or company, but shadow that company. Meaning that you follow what they are doing every step of the way, acting as a superb learning tool, learning from proffessionals to boost our own knowledge.

A new project, my explanation.

You may have wondered why I seemingly randomly have posted some information about Action Script 3.0, and a flash game review. This is because for my next college project I will be creating a drag and drop style game.

The reason that I feel this is such a significant project and requires some explanation is because I will be working in Flash Action Script 3.0, which I have not done before. Our media class has had a couple of lessons in 3.0, learning the basic functions of a drag and drop game, I will need other features than this though. I will be learning this myself. The other features will probably include tweens, some 'move to position' type code, scoring and a timer. I think most of this will just be working off of variables of which we have learnt about. A few online tutorials should help, and I'll be on my way with the game.

I have been reviewing games because I'm in the process of researching other existing online games in order to see what works well and what doesn't basically. This means that I can then include good features from many games to try and include in my own (obviously not directly as this would be in violation of copyright, and plus I want my own idea and design). I am probably going to be aiming for a demographic age group of 12-18 year olds.

So this is just a quick overview of what I have been/will be doing currently. I'll keep updating this blog frequently...

Flash ActionScript 3.0

At college we have begun learning some AS 3.0 in Flash, as opposed to the 2.0 we learned last year. We have learnt some basic functions including importing movie clips/bitmap images to the stage, and code to create a 'drag and drop' style game.

The advantages of using AS 3.0 is that you generally have more control over functions and it runs quicker. Furthermore there is more demand for people who can use AS 3.0 in today's interactive media industry. What is also helpful is that there seems to be so many more online tutorials concerning AS 3.0 as opposed to AS 2.0, I'm sure this will come in handy in the near future. Although ActionScript 3.0 is a harder language to learn than 2.0, I believe the benefits of using 3.0 will make using 2.0 somewhat pointless, in my opinion. I have used AS 2.0 for around a year now and I think this was a great way to get into flash, but to make some more complex applications AS 3.0 is definately necissary.

Here is some of what I have learned in todays lectures concerning ActionScript 3.0, I will explain what each part of the code means as I run through it:

var mc:MovieClip= new MovieClip();

This means that we are creating a new variable called 'mc'. And this variable can hold movie clips (A type of symbol used in Flash.). Then, it creates a new movie clip which we use in a little while.


mc.graphics.beginFill(0xFF0000);

This line of code firstly specifies what variable we are dealing with, this is 'mc', the variable we created earlier. Then it is telling it to set a colour to any graphics that are drawn. The colour set is the part in brackets, '(0xFF0000). This is what is called a hex colour code. This particular code is for a red colour, every colour you can see on your screen has a hex code, so to change it you simply change the colour code.


mc.graphics.drawCircle(50,50,50);

After setting the colour, we tell our variable 'mc' to actually draw a graphic shape. In this case it is a circle. Also we can see three numbers in the brackets being shown, '(50,50,50);'. The first two numbers set what is called the 'reference point'. This is the shape's point of origin, but just for drawing shapes it is not too important, but if you set the shapes position on the stage it will be relative to it's reference point. The third number inside the brackets refers to the size of this particular shape. Because this is a circle, we only need one number to specify it's size. If we used another shape such as a rectangle (drawRect) then we would need two numbers which in essence set the width and height of the shape.


mc.graphics.endFill();

This will stop the shape from continuing to be filled. Unless you have other functions in your project, this is not too important.


mc.x=80;
mc.y=50;

This tells the variable 'mc' including our circle shape to go to a set position on the stage, in this case, x = 80 and y = 50.


addChild(mc);
 Finally and perhaps most importantly, this line of code will actually put 'mc' on the stage when it is run, and this will draw our circle.

Drag and Drop game review

The assignment brief

This piece of homework is all about how in the 'real world' companies will write briefs about what projects they want done to anyone whom it may concern in the media industry. This is a fake one I created to try and show what you should include in a project brief, and the importance of them. Basically, the more information you put into the brief, the less questions and hassle you'll get later on in the project.

My name is John Smith and I specialise in selling computer related goods. I’m the MD of ‘CompTech’, a small business which sells computer hardware to a variety of different audiences including other media based companies and to consumers online. My company is always pushing forward in terms of creating better and more affordable computer technology for every day users and other companies alike. Our previous products include external hard drives, computer monitors and keyboards which have all sold successfully to our target audiences. I have operated in the computer based industry for over five years, and have kept the idea to always endeavour to improve current technology; ‘CompTech’ has gone another step forward with our most recent product the ‘USB Master’ USB drive.

The ‘USB Master’ USB drive is a new USB drive that is able to hold much more data, in a smaller sized encasement.  It works just as a regular USB drive would, you can store/change files on it and it is ultra-portable. The difference between our product and a regular USB drive is that our one is much smaller, but can carry the same amount of data as other popular brands of USB drives. By reducing the size of the USB, it is even easier to take with you wherever you go, and whenever you need it to transfer or use files in different places. The USB drive comes in different sizes depending on how much data it can store, although the largest size is still the smallest in comparison with its competitors.

For the launch of our new product ‘USB Master’, we need a professional website set up (Using Flash or HTML) that contains information about this new product, and a sort of training method to educate people on how to use the product. Ideally this should include sufficient media to support the information and the product, this means including professional standard images and/or video elements with the written information. The information about the product also needs to try and sell the product to online consumers, there should also be ‘click to buy online’ option in the site. Furthermore, the primary concern of this website is to promote the ‘USB Master ‘and advertise/sell it to online consumers. The site needs to be clear and have a ‘clean’ sort of design, meaning all of the important elements of the website have very good usability. For example the navigation must be visible on every page, and the whole site must keep a constant design throughout. Moreover the site does not need to have many pages, but must include detailed information about the product and have training on how to use the product with appropriate media. One of the most important elements to the site is that it must have a link to buy the ‘USB Master’ product, as that is the whole aim of the website.  Our company logo and ideals must be present somewhere within the site also, that ‘CompTech’ are constantly pushing to develop better affordable technology. (We will give you any media we want to be put into the site; the rest will be up to you.)  In terms of the actual visual look of the website and its layout, this is also being left up to you as we are hoping to change our visual image as a company.

The target audience for our new product ‘USB Master’ will be a large range of ages and demographic profiles as it is suitable for anyone related to the computing world, aged fifteen to fifty five. Because USB drives are so widely used in the computing industry, and even outside of this industry the product has a design and functions that will appeal to all looking to buy a new USB drive. Primarily this will be aimed at people within the computing/media side of business as they will tend to have a better understand of the information about the USB drive, although in the site, the information and training must be written as if it is teaching someone who has never used a USB drive before to cover much more ground.

Furthermore, the target audience for the promotional website itself for the ‘USB Master’ product will be very similar to the target audience for the product itself, although selling the product to consumers on the website is vital as demographic profile groups outside of the previous target audience scope (For the ‘USB Master’ product) will possibly also be interested. This means that providing important information, selling points and training on how to use the product is vital to its success. These things need to be done in a professional manner and design. (For example having too much information to take on board for the consumer on one page will tend to draw customers away from purchasing the product.) The site’s target audience is similar to that of the actual product we are selling because its purpose is to promote and inform about that product.

The budget for this project will be £4,000 as the website needs to be at a professional standard, but the project is, in terms of page numbers and functions, not a large site. The main elements for the site will include the ability to purchase the main product item online, and information and training of the product supported by relevant media to help portray this. As mentioned earlier in this brief, the design work and information architecture is up to you.

Moreover, the deadline for this website project to be completed by will be on the nineteenth of November, in good time for the actual product launch on the twenty-sixth of November. The site must have been checked and be working without fault by this deadline date. Also it must have been tested on a focus group and had any important changes made it prior to this date.

As we want a new image as a company, and we are leaving the design work and structure up to you I do not think it would be appropriate to show you other sites that we would like our website to look like, we require a completely new design that is based around being clear and clean.

I'm back!

I am back on to the second year of the Interactive Media course at college! We have already had an introductory assignment of which was to make a website in a week, I will hopefully be posting this soon as I will register a domain for it. In terms of the project, I don't think I've ever spent so much time on Flash in one week! It's all good fun and I got good feedback off of my lecturer for it.

Anyway I will be back to posting relevant work material and other things related to my course and possibly some new personal ventures. I am currently on day 4 of learning HTML and have built a simple blog-type site which I will post a link to once I also have a domain for that.

So, stay tuned!