Development as a Practitioner

I have been asked to consider and write about what I have been doing outside of my university work to develop myself as a multimedia practitioner. At first I didn't really think I had been doing that much, but when I consider some of the things I do in my spare time I suppose they do help in their own way. I have already decided that I plan to take the online environments pathway in my second year at university, to help me towards a career in web design. Some of these activities are specific to this chosen pathway and some are not.

First of all I have helped create the website for the company my boyfriend works for, which is called Per-Snickety, and can be seen here. I created the basic layout, including the images, headings, HTML etc. and my boyfriend edited it to fit his own and his boss's needs. Personally I would've kept the actual background black rather than using the distressed green image that is currently there, but I suppose that's up to them. This website is best viewed at a fairly high resolution.

I have also just started to research and look at websites for web design companies in the Nottinghamshire area, as can be seen from my previous post. I have decided to do this through the advice of the course leader, Simon, and personally I think it is a very good idea.

I tend to watch a lot of films during my spare time, and though this is not directly related to the online environments pathway that I have chosen, it is an area of multimedia. By watching films you can gain inspiration and knowledge, and it is also an opportunity to relax the mind. I personally enjoy most genres of films, and will usually give anything a chance. Some films I have watched recently include Prince Caspian, Pineapple Express and Withnail and I, one of my favourite films. As you can see this is quite a varied selection.

I also play a lot of video games, including World of Warcraft as you can see below, though of course Daksha is not my only character. At the moment I'm also playing Fallout 3 on the Xbox 360 as well as a number of games on the Nintendo DS.

Something most people do, simply browsing the internet can also help my development as a practitioner. By doing this I can see how a website has been designed, and I quite often view the source code of a website to see how it's been done.

Using Photoshop is something I have been doing for years, but I still enjoy learning new tricks and techniques. Following tutorials is a great way to do this, and I often learn new things or better ways of doing things from websites such as tutorialized.com.

I soon hope to buy a domain name and hosting so that I can build a website of my own, rather than just using this blog.

Nottingham Web Design - Petrol

While looking up web design companies I came across the website for Petrol, a Nottingham based graphic design company who work in many areas of multimedia including graphics, exhibitions, advertising, new media and of course website design and development.


Their website is very nicely designed, being quite simple but still attractive. It is very easy to navigate and has all the information you'd want if you were looking for a company to design something for you.

While looking through their portfolio I can see there are a number of websites for local businesses that I have already heard of or know about, such as Jacks Hairdressers and Austin Blowers. It is quite clearly demonstrated through their portfolio that the company can design a website for any genre, from the professional looking Searchworks to the funky flash-based Nottingham Hi-Fi Centre.

Overall this website gives of a very good impression for the company, and I think it would be the kind of place I would like to work for one day.

Identities Part 2

I have been playing some more World of Warcraft and my character has developed a little more since I my last post. The screen shot below shows my characters current stats.


This information is taken from the World of Warcraft Armory, a website that allows you to look up characters, items and other things that are in the game.

While I was last playing I went to the capital city for my race, which is called Silvermoon City. Here I was able to learn some professions, which are skills that you use in the game. I chose to learn herbalism and skinning, which are both gathering professions, so that I can sell all the items I find and make lots of money. While in the city I was also able to visit the bank, where you can put items you don't want to carry around with you but may need later. I then went to the Auction house, which is where you can buy items from other players, or put things on to sell. Unfortunately I was too poor to buy anything and had nothing of value to sell, because I was still pretty low level.

In the Auction House

After leaving the city I did some quests and eventually reached level 10! All characters get their class special skill once they reach level 10 and will have to do a quest in order to receive it. This meant that, since I was a hunter, I was able to get a pet who followed me around and helped me fight and stuff. I had to talk to someone and practice taming some creatures before I was allowed to have my own, but finally I ended up with my pet kitty, who I named Fritti. You can see him in the screen shot below.


Isn't he a nice cat? During this time I still haven't really seen many other players in this area. When I went to the city it automatically joins you to the global trade chatroom and there were lots of people talking who were clearly in the other capital cities, so I know there are people out there! I guess it's because I'm still low level at the moment, so I suppose I'll have to keep playing :)

Web design and stuff

I am quite certain about the fact that once I've finished this course I would like to have a career in web design. I plan on taking the online pathway in my second year to help me towards this goal, but in the meantime there are other things I will be doing that will also help.

When having my review the other week Simon gave me some suggestions on how I could help myself towards a career in web design. Once I finish university I will probably be staying in Nottingham for a while and so it would be wise to do some research on web design companies in the area now to prepare myself. I will also try creating some websites for myself or others in my spare time. I have done this before and am competent at using HTML and some CSS but I would like to improve my skills and be able to use other languages.

3D Animation

In our seminar with Andy yesterday we had to create a simple 3D animation using 3D Studio Max. I have a bad history with this program. It doesn't like me... Anyway, I managed to make a couple of animations, using the bouncing text technique Andy showed us.

Identities

So following my failures with Second Life, as well as Twinity, vSide and something else I can't remember the name of, I've decided to try using World of Warcraft. Although it's obviously different from programs like Second Life, which are supposed to be somewhat realistic, it is still an online 3D environment, which is what we are required to explore.

Character Creation Screen

First of all I had to create a character. The character editing options in the game are fairly basic, with the option to choose your character's race (Human, Night Elf, Gnome, Dwarf, Draenei, Orc, Troll, Tauren, Undead or Blood Elf) and then some appearance options such as hair style and colour. I chose a female Blood Elf hunter as my character, and gave her the fantasy-themed name of Daksha.
I logged in for the first time and found myself in a place called Sunstrider Isle. This is the newbie area for the Blood Elf race, which is really just to get you used to the game and easily level you up a bit before you can continue on to more difficult areas. It was pretty empty when I logged in so I started to do the first quests by myself. These early quests are very easily done alone and people will nut usually join a group or anything to get through them. Generally I was required to just kill a certain number of monsters and then would be rewarded with gold, weapons and armour and experience.

Battling a monster

During the time I spent exploring this area I met another person doing his own quests. He challenged me to a duel, which is a fight between two friendly characters that ends when one person is nearly dead. I won! Yay! But he was 3 levels below me. I tried to talk to him afterwards but he just walked off.

I finished all the quests in the newbie area then went on to the next place, Falconwing Square in Eversong Woods. Upon my arrival I had reached level 7. This is where I decided to log out for the day.

Killer Fish

Just wanted to post this cutout animation I made. Apologies for the bad quality, I blame iMovie for now...

Second Life

I have a question - why is this 'game' so popular?

I downloaded Second Life a few weeks ago and am mostly unimpressed. At first I quite liked the fact that you can make up your own first name then pick from a list of generated surnames, as it eliminates any characters called krazygurl1987123 etc. My character turned out to be named Scarlet Foxclaw which I thought sounded pretty cool. From there I think it all went downhill. Haha. I logged in with no clue about what I was doing, and started off in the newbie support area. A tutorial pops up for first time users, which showed me how to fly around and move the camera about but didn't really help with anything else. My character looked like a bit of idiot in the preselected 'gamer girl' clothing so I wanted to change it to something a bit better. I successfully ended up with an ugly bald woman walking around in her underwear. The inventory window told me I was wearing certain items of clothing when I clearly wasn't. I also found the character editing tool quite confusing, and although it looks like their are lots of options I don't really see the need for a tool to change how far your forehead protrudes. Amid my struggles trying to create a decent looking character there were also plenty of morons constantly spamming the chat window with gibberish. After all this I got a bit annoyed and decided to log out for the time being.

I logged in again last week, still bald and naked, with more morons spamming the chat window. Or perhaps they were the same ones, who knows... A window popped up in the corner saying that someone had invited me to a new place so I accepted, and after a loading screen was transported away from the newbie area. The new region I was in did not work properly, and I found myself just standing in the middle of the sea with nowhere to go. Still in my underwear I might add. My brother then told me at this point that Second Life clearly was not working on my computer, and since he used to play it quite a lot I think i trust his judgment...

I've now been using a different computer and can't even log in, just keep getting different error messages. I give up... Can't I just play World of Warcraft? No?

One last thing, an amusing article I found about Second Life you should all read. It's from The Daily Mail, but give it a go here.