To the people following me :D

To anyone still following this blog :3 I have finished A2 Media Studies! I attained an overall B for my AS and A2 coursework and my exams, which I am super happy about!

For anyone interested, I have just started taking Digital Animation to degree level, so I now have a new blog for this kind of thing! You can find me at http://www.Charimation.blogspot.com/ :D Just started this blog today, hopefully in the next 3 years of my course, you'll see a lot of improvement over there in terms of Animation technique and skill :3

But yush :D If you're interested in my newer work, go follow my ramblings over there xD Because I only just realised I have access to this blog still o-o; ...was pretty sure we were gonna be locked out of it during marking, but yaay, apparently not :3

Media Evaluation

 Advanced Portfolio in Media Studies - Question 1 by Charlotte Grant

 Advanced Portfolio in Media - Question 2 by Charlotte Grant

 Advanced Portfolio in Media - Question 3 by Charlotte Grant

 Advanced Portfolio in Media - Question 4 by Charlotte Grant

Audience Survey Results

After advertising my survey monkey on Facebook and to my Media Studies class, I received 11 responses, these are all shown below. 

It is clear from my survey monkey results that the majority of people thought that my magazines advertisements positives were the colour usage and the drawings, they thought it was well presented but most were unsure about the layout and feel of the text and the simplistic background.  

 Most people who took my survey liked my cover, the majority of commenters felt it was professional looking and they could see it being in the shops. Some negatives about this cover was that the black text doesn't stand out amazingly well against the dark blue background. Some people wanted more screenshots and less writing on the back and one person mentioned that they didn't think an indie publisher would use the 'games for windows live' overlay.

The main positive view mentioned by my respondents to my survey was that the music/soundtrack was one of the best parts of my TV spot. The liked how the music fitted with the evaluation and liked the quality and style of the animations. Hardly and faults were pointed out for my ad, the only slight ones being that my advert was a little jumpy at points and they would make the animations a bit brighter. 

Again, the views for my second TV ad were positive, most people preferred this advertisement to my first one, they liked the review information from critics, felt it was fresh and interesting and could see it on TV. The two improvements I were given were that there was not enough information about the game itself, one viewer was confused about the aims of the game and felt more was needed to explain this to the audience. 

Audience feedback survey

I created an audience feedback survey to see what people, overall, thought of my final product. This was a very simple, 4 question text based survey which can be found below.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

TV Advertisement #2

TV Advertisement #1

Final Cover

Working with Flash

Below are some screenshots showing my progress when using flash, I worked using frame by frame animation and edited in layers. The below frame shows the world becoming shrouded in greyscale, something I drew out each frame for, rather than tweening. 

I used tweening on the hand a animation, making it reach in and grab the gear, before picking it up and leaving. I used motion tweening for this, converting the hand to an object and then slowly changing the position and combining the frames, this allows me to get a very smooth feel to the animation.

For the below, I used yet another tween. This time my object was much longer to allow me to scroll the stars across the screen. I used the sides of the telescope as an 'overlay' for this.

Working with SAI

After, once again establishing what my audience wanted in terms of a video game cover, I began work in Paint tool SAI. This was much the same process as my poster's progression. 

I began by creating a new layer and sketching out in blue, (using the pencil tool) the design on my flat plan. I sized the page to the size I would need for a DVD cover and split it in half so that I knew where I was working. 

After this had been done, I created yet another layer, this time enlarging the size I was drawing in, and using Pen, for smoother lines. I outlined what I had drawn in neat and then hid the sketch layer.

Next I started colouring, to keep my style relatively similar to that of my poster, I used the marker for colouring, this meant that I could work with the pressure on my tablet pen, to lighten and darken area's of colour, making it very similar to colouring on paper. I created a new layer for every new colour and section. 

Once Zed900 had been coloured, I began work on the background, this needed to be somewhat built up in order to make my box art interesting, so I worked with shading in the background to add some depth to my picture. 

I used the water tool on large to colour in the background a dark blue, using the water tool is more effective due to the fact it does not use harsh lines (As the flood fill bucket tool would) and it is very easy to just rub out bits that have gone over the lineart.

I used the rotate canvas tool to allow me to colour the house in an effective way (so I could colour it horizontally) 

The final thing I had to do then, was to draw out and colour the foilage in the bottom left hand corner of the page, this was once again done with the marker and I feel overall, my final DVD box art looks very effective. 

Game play trailers and TV spots

Some more style models I have found to help me conform to conventions, when creating my final products.

TV Spots -

Trailers -

Limbo from Pixel Harmonix on Vimeo.




Super Meat Boy Trailer from Nightnome on Vimeo.

Working with Graphics Gale - Spriting

Below are all the sprites I created in Graphics Gale for my game. I made three colour schemes for this, a heat zone, cold zone and a normal ground level zone. The green background can be transparented when imported into Game maker, allowing me to place them on any background. When creating these, I tried to stick as carefully as possible to common conventions of retro platforming games and I feel I achieved this. 

Working with Game Maker

For my second TV spot advertisement, most of this relied on me having a working game that I could screen grab from. I started out this project by having