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.

Interactive Narrative - Character Design

The design of the main character is an important part of this project, as it should look good and appeal to the user. However, as the character will appear throughout the narrative I feel that simplicity will be the key to it's design, as this will make it easier to draw repeatedly if necessary. It will also help when it comes to animating the character as a complicated design would result in complicated animation.

First of all I decided to just start sketching out a few random designs for different cats using a graphics tablet. I love the way you can set the pencil mode to smooth the lines you draw in Flash, it just makes everything look a lot more clean and crisp.


Of course, these ideas are really just doodles, I wouldn't have the character actually looking like any of these in my final project.

I decided to try and develop the design of the cat drawn in orange, as this next image shows.
I like this last development of the kitty, he looks a lot sharper and more detailed, while still retaining the simplicity that I was going for. Here he is, full sized!
I need to add in some shading to the final version, but other than that this is the final design for Ry the cat as he will appear in his first adventure.

Colour Experimentation

I have edited this photograph of a flower using Photoshop in order to change the colours. The petals of the flower are now a bright, garish purple, and the centre is yellow in order to compliment this. I have also made the background slightly orange, as it is a warm colour and so are purple and yellow, so I thought I would stick to this theme.


The colours of this photograph also have a theme of warmth, using the complimentary colours blue and orange. The original of this image was very dull, cold and dreary so to contrast I tried to make it the opposite.

Interactive Narrative - Cat's Journey

I have decided to make my interactive narrative project about the story of a cat at night time. The user will play the role of a cat on his way to the weekly 'cat meeting' and will have to make various decisions on the way. At first I thought I would like the user to have the option of picking from two different characters, such as a male and female cat, with each of them having a different story. However, upon further reflection I think I may be over-complicating my idea, as this would be even more time consuming and involve a lot more images which I will have to draw. I have to take into consideration that we have a very short time scale for this project, so one character will probably have to be sufficient.

Unposted Videos

Final Pixilation video



One Shot Film

Interactive Narrative - Ideas

Just brainstorming a few ideas for my interactive narrative project. Some of these are a bit weak or boring. At the moment I've decided on the idea of a cat's journey at night time. Hopefully I won't change my mind.

The Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds is a compositional rule used in most areas of visual arts and design, from photography and painting to graphic design and cinematography. The rule states that any image, a painting, photograph, or whatever else it may be, can be divided into nine equal parts. This is done by placing two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines onto the image. Important elements of the image should be placed along these lines, as this can make the image more interesting, visually appealing and can also portray a certain theme or mood associated with the image.

The Rule of Thirds is demonstrated in the short video shown below.



As you can see, the statue has been placed (somewhat roughly) along the second vertical line.