Skittles for the last time

Today was the last dat for our stop frame animations, finally seeing the end of skittles! We set the camera up again and took our pictures. We changed the beginning to Tom opening the packet of skittles and the end to him eating one. We also wrote the word skittles with the skittles! This was the most time consuming task EVER, skittle by skittle we took a picture. I twas worth it thoug, I'm happy with the end product just a couple of things to fix up.

I'll upload the animation one day soon!

More fun and games!

Today we had to test our game idea and start putting it together for the final hand in next week. We made a cardboard model of our game, we made a little maze out of a box and had to colour it all in, pretty fun. We used lego people and took snap shots of the lego people 'playing' the game so that we can create a stop motion animation kind of thing to show how to play our game. Obviously the real game is in a life sized maze and is based on a human pac-man version of hide and seek, not a cardboard cut out!

when we were thinking of our game rules and what not we had to take into consideration

Beginning

-How do we know what to do? 

Traditional game Pac-man, so the rules are kind of already set, someone will stand with the costumes who will also explain the rules and there will be a rule board to make it all clear.

-What type of experience is it?

There is an adrenaline and thrill experience, taking you back to your childhood days of hide and seek

Middle

-What raises the tension?

Whether you get the lights out, stuck in a dead end or get caught. This all raises the tension

End

-How do we know when it's finished?

If you get all the lights out and escape or get caught, the game is complete with one winner.

-Is there a winner?

Yes, one winner, either the Pac-man or Ghost, depends if you are caught or get the lights out.

We have to hand the final assignment in next week so the hard work is in progress, I've took on the role of creating the Prezi and putting everything thats needs to be included on it, images, rules, text, the lot! Amy is designing the costumes on Photohop and Rio is putting the pictures together for an animation effect. The link to Prezi will be here by next week, finger crossed!

Editing our film

On Monday we finally started to edit our film and what a disaster it started off to be! Avid is new to us all so it was mind boggling getting round it and working it properly. We managed it though...eventually. Capturing was the worst part and tool us 3 and a half hours! I got so stressed and irritated because nothing was running smoothly and I knew it needed to be done. When we were capturing our footage the computer was jumping and skipping some of the footage. This was our fault because we never left 5-10 seconds free filming before our footage. Definitely learnt from this, never ever want to be under that pressure capturing again. So some of our shots ended up with little bits missing, they were shorter and kind of snappy, completely not what we wanted! But we decided to edit it together for our rough edit, and surprise surprise we needed to film a few bits again. However on the whole the film didn't end up as bad as we thought, which I'm extremely happy with. Definitely learnt from that filming mistake!

Film Language Exam.

Today I had my film language exam, my first proper exam in uni. It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, which I was pleased with. We were shown a 10 minute sequence from a film 3 times which we had an hour to analyse using what we have learnt so far in lectures and seminars. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good. The results are issued on 16th December 16th so we will soon find out.

Animation with Skittles!

On Tuesday we started our animation with Skittles! It was a long and tedious process, but still enjoyable. We had to position the camera and then keep it still. One by one we had to add a skittle to make a picture. We tried to have different patterns and techniques and even managed to create a swirling motion to get the skittles off the page. Just creating a house, tree and taking them off took 2 hours and 150 pictures! But it's a lot of fun. The skittles continue next week.

Designing our own game!

So it's time to create our own game, sounded so fun at first until the thinking part started. Were no going to actually make the game, we just have to design it and somehow present it online. Thinking of an idea was hard, it's just like when you were little and got given a blank piece of paper and told to draw a picture...I felt the same feeling as that! I paired up with Amy and after searching the web and brainstorming different words to come up with ideas we finally got one. An interactive floor game with twenty split screens. wireless controllers, anyone can play and a lot of other too complicated things too. So we went back to the thinking board and remembered about the repetition thing and using something people are familiar with. Pacman! Everyones classic favourite game. So we decided on having a maze room with lights on the floor. When the Pacman runs across them the go off and you have to try and do them al before the bad guy gets you. Its like pacman/hide and seek! Sounds pretty fun to me. Were going to draw the game out and upload it on our blog for our online version!

Childs play

So last week we got to play with games, which was pretty fun. However there was obviously going to be a lot more to it that us juts having fun (unfortunately) We were given a lecture on child's play and how pretty much everyone plays. Whether it's a game, an activity or even a role, the majority of us adults play every single day without realising so.

Play is older than culture, it goes back so many years I didn't realise what was actually classed as 'play'. A good example of play that goes back many many years is the olympics, I didn't even realise that this was a form of play. Things such as the olympics and acting a role as a teacher or a nurse, can also be known as play. This compares to child's play such as a child dressing up as a nurse or racing a friend to the bin. They are all forms of play. Play always seems to have a winner, its a tense competition of who's the best. We always want to be the best and most successful player in the game. Children shout things like 'Last one to the bin stinks' No child wants to be the looser who stinks do they? Play has a tense atmosphere from the beginning.               "Play is tense" - J Huizinga 


Repetition 
Repetition is something that we love in play, once we know how to do something we feel satisfied when it's the same throughout. even down to using the same buttons on a controller throughout a game. When thinking of our own game idea, we should look at using repetition or something that people are already familiar with.