Chris Blair DES512J2

Self-promotion

I have done a number of things to promote myself, first of all take a look at this social network website that I have branded in my logo and colours.

my bebo

I have submitted my website for review at designers network, an online site used to promote designers from all around the world, check out the screen grabs:

And the thankyoupage:

I have also made a poster and placed it in newsagent windows in an attempt to promote myself. The idea is that customers will come in for there loaf of bread or pint of milk and see the add, and hopefully they will then check out the website.

Check out the sample pic:

Appropriate use of technologies

For my Major project I have built my Game using Flash and Action Script 2.0. Action Script 2.0 was used because I did not have access to a version of Flash that supported Action Script 3.0.

My website has been built in XHTML and styled with CSS, it also uses JavaScript and PHP. I have also made good use of Photoshop for all the graphics of the website.

Week 12: End of an era

Well it truly is the end of an era, this week sees my last week in university, my last every lectures and lab classes.

I have continued to work on my website this week building the pages and adding in content to them to fill up the website and it’s coming along well. For the download page I have also decided to add in a back-story for the game.

This is just an idea I had to try and develop the characters along a bit further and give a bit more depth into them. I didn’t make it a big part of the website because I don’t know if people would like it or not but I thought that it was an interesting idea so I went for it.

I have also added in detailed instructions into the game page for users who are unclear of how to play, but I have set the page up so that users don’t have to read it all if they don’t want to!

I have received positive feedback from the user testing questionnaires that I gave out to friends and family. I wanted to test run the game before I put it online so that I could work out any bugs and kinks that may have been there.

The feedback was positive and there were a few suggestions that came back, they were:

Add some sort of music
Fix spelling and grammar issues

I know you can’t see all of the questionnaires so you will have to make do with my sample photo below:

I have gone back into the game and added in the final touches according to the feedback I received. Adding music to the start of the game is something I had always thought about but I wanted to see how users would react to the game without music first of all, so I made one of the questions “Do you think there should be music at the start of the game?”

I considered sound effects as well, for example a sound clip plays when a user finds a clue but I thought that this would be very repetitive and annoying so I decided to leave it out. I didn’t want music added to the whole game because it would be distracting even if I gave the user the ability to turn the music off. I decided it was best to leave the music to the start of the game.

I found a website that offers free sound clips called soundsnap.com. This is a very good site with a wide range of free sound clips and loops all intended for free distribution and use on the web.

Of course I have also gone back and fixed up the spelling and grammar in the game.

I found a nice PHP e-mail tutorial that I have made into the contact instead of just having a list of details. This code lets the users e-mail directly from the site and sends them information about the e-mail they have just sent, very nice and very handy. I have also included this into my portfolio site.

I have added in all my meta tags and submitted the URL to google but I know it takes ages for new sites to be picked up by the google bots so I just have to play the waiting game. I was a bit sneaky with my meta tags and I added in “Northern Bank robbery” hoping that somebody looking for info on this will stumble across my site, although when my site is picked up by the bots it will be way down the list.

Marketing

To market my site I have been doing a lot of word by mouth to colleagues in work, and friends. This is probably the best way to spread the message about my website, now hopefully they will all log on.

I have made an advertisement poster and decided to keep it mysterious and not give away too much. I want people to visit the site wondering what it’s all about; hopefully they will like it and stay.

I have displayed this poster in newsagent windows along with a poster for my portfolio website, see the picture below for evidence of this:

I have also submitted my website to all the major search engines on the web, below you can see the screen shot of submission to MSN.com.

I have e-mailed the Northern Ireland tourist board and gotobelfast.com to see if I can get my website linked on there’s. I used my student e-mail account rather than my websites e-mail account to play the student card and hopefully generate more sympathy to my cause. I have received the following e-mail from gotobelfast.com:

This would help to promote traffic to my website but I just don’t have £130 to spend, so I won’t be taking up the offer. I have not received a reply from the Northern Ireland tourist board

This is great, turn your car into a mobile advertisement for your website. I printed out a miniature version of my poster and stuck it to the inside of our car, now when my mum goes to Tesco to get the shopping people will see this add in the car window.

Portfolio work

We had a crit on portfolio sites last week and I have decided to add in some additions according to Chris and Nicklas’s suggestions:

Added in a Blog page
Added in my RSS feed to the home page to show new work
In RSS feed added in *NEW* to all newly added work

Week 11: Squeaky bum time

First of all this week we are getting hit hard with assignments in the other module and we have been informed that there are more to come, not good when the hand in date for the Major project is on the Horizon.

I am still unable to get proper Action Script code to restrict users going to the suspect page before they find a number of clues.

The plan is that when a user starts the game and they try to access the suspect’s page before they find a certain number of clues they won’t be able to get into the page. This is starting to take up far too much time.

I have been speaking to a friend in uni and he was suggesting making a XML file to store the clues because in the game each page is a separate .swf file, this reduces the file size of the overall game. The Action Script code that I have loads in the requested .swf file when a user clicks on any link to any page.

So this week I have been attacking the work on two fronts, mainly the game and the website.

The build of the game is coming along well and now I have got all four pages completed linked together and working. Now there’s just the suspects page to build and I have been thinking about it and gone back to basics, I have drawn up a storyboard for the suspect’s part of the game.

So what happens is that each suspect will lead to its unique page once the user has clicked on whatever suspect they think committed the heist. This page will then tell the user if they are right or wrong and then give information saying what each suspect was doing at the time of the heist.

There will then be a continue button which will lead the user to a final thank you for playing page and the opportunity to play the game again.

Once I had the storyboard done and knew exactly what way the suspect’s page was going to look like it was just a matter of going into Flash and getting it done!

I knew exactly what to do and went about doing it, below you can see a picture of what the suspect’s page looks like.

All the pictures you will notice of people are my friends and family. I asked them all before hand if they were willing to let me take their picture and place it on the Internet, and well obviously they said yes. All the details however are fictional, that’s not their actual names, shoe sizes or height and all the information that appears is in no way about that person, again it is all fictional!

Now I can just get laid into making the website, the game is in a good position for user testing which I want to well and really need to do before the final deadline.

The layout of the website is good and I have been playing about with it and tweaking it and I have come up with a sidebar to add into every page. I don’t want this side bar to always stay the same so I am going to change it for every page and make it have relevant content for each page.

I have now decided that the fifth page of the website will be a download page where users can download stuff, all imbedded with the Belfast heist logo of course. The main things to download will be desktop wallpapers. I was looking at my photos of Belfast and I thought that they would make nice desktop wallpapers so I resized them and added them in.

I have now uploaded a holder page as the index for my website but I also have uploaded the proper home page just to see the way everything is going to look and play out, have a look:

Every time I test my game online using IE I keep getting that stop pop-up blocker yellow bar thing, so I have decided to add into the game page a little warning or instructions on what to do if this happens to them. I know it’s simple enough but I don’t want people leaving the site because they think the game isn’t working.

Everything is starting to come together nicely even though I am spending about 10 hours a day on my computer doing work, but it will be worth it in the end. I just need to hammer on with the build on the site and I have arranged for some friends to test my game out for me next week, I have even come up with a questionnaire for them.

My questionnaire for using testing

Hopefully I will get positive feedback on the game.

One more thing this week, I still can’t find any good websites for this Action Script to stop users going to the suspect’s page until they have found a certain number of clues. I think I’m going to have to leave this out of the game, it’s a good idea but I can’t spend loads of time on it when there is still loads to be done. Instead I will put a warning on the rollover telling users not to enter until they have found clues, it’s a shame because this would have been a nice addition to the game.

Week 10: Ten down two to go

So this week I have been extremely busy with work for other modules and my major project it's all go go go at the minute but I just have to get my head down and buried into my work.

To be honest the work for my major project is coming along nicely I now have 3 pages of the game built but I still have to finish the game of and build a website, so I'm over half way in the major project but because I have prepared well I'm confident that I will have all the work completed and on time.

I know the design and layout of the website already because I am going to be consistent and use the same design as the game. In fact I've done a muck up of what it's going to look like:

I have tried looking on the Internet for a variable or some thing in Action Script that will let me restrict access to the users until they have found a certain number of clues but I haven't found anything relevant so far.

I have e-mailed the dude who took the Flash course I was on over Easter to see if he can help me out or if he knows of any websites that can help me with this, I just don't want to be spending too much time on this one thing, and it is vastly running out!

Domain names!
I now have the domain name www.belfastheist.com go and check it out!
I also have the domain name www.chrisblair.org also go and check it out!

I have decided this week to try and get a good bit of my portfolio website done and then return to my major project later on in the week. So:

Portfolio work

It’s important to mention the progress of my portfolio work to give a clear indication of what stage I’m at, at any given time, but it’s also not necessary to include all my paper based work or “pre build” work if you like, just as long as I have all this stuff in for the major project, that’s the daddy.

I have come up with a layout for my website and now I just need to think of what content to add. I am going to have the usual page showing my work and a c.v and contact page, but I will have to sit down and think of what else I can add into the website.

I found a nice Photoshop brush online which is free to use in designs and websites and stuff, I checked before I used it. I have made a number of designs with this Photoshop brush and I also have a nice piece of JavaScript, which will load a random design in every time a user logs on.

Below you can also check out what the screen layout looks like now that I have uploaded my website to my new domain name.

Back to the Major Project

I have started to build my website and although there’s not much time left I think it’s ok because I now know the layout, and I have been having a think about what content I will add into the site, so far I am adding in my game obviously and a gallery page.

I am going to make a page all about the game and explain what it is and how to play it and the gallery page will contain images of Belfast. Also included there has to be a contact page and well my home page, 4 pages all together, but I think I would like another in there just to beef the site up a bit this, I will have to think about.

I already have all the images which you can read about in week 5 and also view some examples so I am about 85% sure of what content is going into the website and that’s a good handle to start with.

One other thing this week I was looking back at the design layout of the site I have decided to drop the grey bar with the silhouette of Belfast from the site, instead I will use images as a header for my layout. I just think that the site looks better without it, but I like it in the design of the game.

Although I have dropped this from the website, the game and site still have a consistent design to them even though they don’t look 100% the same. I think the layout of the game works and the layout of the website works and they aren’t completely different but the same.

Week 9: Does any one else have any hair left? Mine is in chunks on the floor

This week I have just been working away on my game but the other module is starting to poke its head in the way. Just got an assignment for our COM module and I could really do without it, but any way back to the good stuff!

So I continued to work on my game this week and added in little minor details to the game. I have changed the wording when the user scrolls over something that is not relevant to the clues to relate better with certain objects. Before I just had “this did not prove vital to our investigation” as a standard remark to place in when something wasn’t of relevance.

I have now decided to change the word for each individual item, thus adding a bit more user-friendly aspect to the game. Lets face it people are going to get fed up reading this same remark over and over again!

I took a look back over the clues that I am going to add into the games and I have realised that when I wrote them out way back in week 1 that all the clues are for the city hall. I have taken some of these clues and placed them in other pages because I can’t have everything in one page, so this week I have decided to write out a full clue list and each location they will be found at. Going along with the storyboards I know how each individual clue will be played out for each page.

City hall

Paper found in bin
Empty beer bottle found on grass
Smudged fingerprint found on railings

Albert Clock

Chewing gum wrapper

Queens

Footprint
Money bag

Odyssey

£10 marked bill
Paper with one of suspects mobile number on it

I may add more clues to the list if anything appropriate comes up.

I have also been continuing to build my game this week and I have started to make another crime scene. I have begun work on the City hall crime scene and I have to say that it is coming along nicely.

This is due to being so well prepared before the build. Credit goes to taking my time to get all the storyboards together and the layouts done on pen and paper. By listening to Nicklas and taking his advice I know what I am doing before I do it. I’m not starting to build the game without direction and I know what I’m going to do before I do it, and if I need direction I simply refer back to the storyboards.

I am still thinking of things along the way to add into the game to improve it but all the major bulk of the work has been prepared, drafted and scripted before it’s built. Everything that has been added in extra is still being added into the game in ways that have been covered in the storyboards.

I also got speaking to Nicklas this week and he was going over the progress of my game. He told me it would be a good idea to add in some sort of variable to the Action Script code to stop users from gaining access to the suspect's page until they have found a certain number of clues.

I am going to have to try and find a tutorial on the Internet for this but I thinks it's a good idea.

Week 8: It's the Final Countdown

It’s the first week back from the Easter break, it’s the final countdown, there’s only 5 weeks left, bit shocking that in 5 weeks I’ll be done with this course and pondering my next step along the road of life, hmmm I guess I better get cracking on then.

This week I was playing around and I found a nice little piece of JavaScript thanks to tizag.com which will open my .swf file in a pop up window. This is better because before I was using the Flash projector and publishing it was a .exe file which meant that the user would have to download the file when they wanted to play, but this is better and faster for the user. Also I know Mac’s never used to be able to play .exe files but Im not too sure as to whether they can now

I have checked the JavaScript pop-up in IE, Firefox and Safari and it works in all of them, although my site for some reason appears in bold in Safari but everything else appears to be working so in all it’s good, I’m really pleased with that bit of Java, its more user friendly and looks better than a window popping up asking you to download the file.

One little thing is that the mouse cursor doesn’t change to a little finger letting you know that it’s a button, I don’t know why this is but the button is working so if you didn’t click on the link because you thought it wasn’t working then click it now. *Update I got the finger pointing!*

As I said last week I wasn't happy with the layout so this week I have decided to go back and change the layout, but this has to be the final layout because the dead line is fast appraoching and I can't spend time fiddling about with layouts when I have to be getting stuck into building the game.

So you can see from above that I have changed some things about. Most noticeable is that I have changed the navigational buttons. I have made them look more like buttons rather than just some text that written in a line. The buttons change colour when you roll over them just to give that little bit more interactivity and usability for the user.

I have taken parts from the first and second design and put them together to come up with this new layout. I like the simplicity of the design, it’s not over complicated and it’s easy to follow and understand, I also added in a suspects button which I had forgotten to do in the other design layouts, woops my bad.

I have gotten rid of the red curvy line that theprevious buttons used to sit on. I felt that this wasn't visually the best thing to have because it might distract the user's attention, and well I now think that it looked a bit crap.

Also I have changed the silhouette of the city so that whatever page you look on the colour will be different aacording to where you are.. There is an outlined silhouette for for each scene in the game, City hall , Albert clock, Queens and the H&W crane. I am using the crane for the odyssey because this is the most noticeable landmark of Belfast and the odyssey is located down at the old Harland and Wolff shipyard.

Click on the image above to view the flash file for the Albert clock. I started working on the Albert clock page first because I just randomly picked it, but it doesn’t matter what order I make the pages in because they will all be linked together and accessible from every page.

I decided to add in interactivity with parts of the image that aren’t clues. For example if you scroll over the bottle in the above link a roll over will appear telling you that this isn’t vital to the investigation, this adds in more interactivity, like I said and expands on the game. Rather than just having one or two clues on each page this lets the user explore more.

Also this week I got the little finger pointing when you scroll over the images that use JavaScript to open the .swf files in a pop-up. It was a really simple thing in the end and now it’s working it’s all good, apart from one thing, I have made the pop-up so that the user can’t resize the window but in Safari the user can resize the window. I don’t know why this is but in IE and Firefox you can’t which is the way I want it.

The Easter Break

While everybody else takes their time out to eat Easter eggs and have fun I am stuck at this flipping computer hammering into my work, that’s got to be worth something don’t you think?

This week I attended a Flash intermediate course in Queens Street, Belfast in the Queens street studios, along with some fellow students. I first heard of the course from a mate in uni and I mentioned it a few weeks back. I was speaking to our class president who was sorting out all the details and told her to stick my name down for it!

The course was two days long and ran from about aprox 9.30 – 5.30. It was a good course and it really helped me to remember how to use Flash, we also went over Action script 2.0. We couldn’t use Action script 3.0 because we only had access to versions of Flash that used 2.0 and the fact that the university only uses Flash MX 2004 which supports Action script 2.0. Wwe would have to have gotten our hands on a later version of Flash from some where to use 3.0, but 2.0 is fine for my project so I didn’t mind.

On the course I learnt a nice little bit of action script, which lets the user move the picture around on the stage from left to right. This mean that I can have the images zoomed in and the user can scroll the image about to look for the clues. This is better than having one static image and also allows for more interactivity in the game. It took me a good while to get this script working but with the help from the guy running the course I was able to get it working in the two days and now the script can be used for all the pictures.

The above link is a test page so you can see how everything is going to work. There is still a lot of work needed and I am having second thoughts about the design of the page, but I don’t want to edit the length of the image because it was a pain to get the Action script working but I think I will play about with the design of the game and see if I can improve on the current one.

Portfolio work

I have also spent a little bit of time going over some of my portfolio work now that the major project is well and truly of the ground. So last time I had my logo and colours all sorted out and I was happy with them but looking back over I decided that I wanted to add in a strap-line to go with my logo, not a very long one but something that would sum me up as a designer in a couple of words.

My style of design is based things that are simple and trying not to confuse those who stumble across my stuff. With this in mind I wanted my strap-line to reflect my style, so I decided that the word “simple” and to be in they’re somewhere. So basically to cut a long story short I decided to go with the strap line “simply multimedia” I don’t like these big fancy designs that confuse people and make it hard to navigate a site, and also I don’t see the need for people to fill up space with useless content when there’s no need for it.

I like my designs to “breath” and to be open and I don’t think that a lot of space is a bad thing and I’m not going too fill it up with nonsense just for the sake of it.

Week 7: Whats the sotry?

I wanted to continue with my layouts before I did my storyboard so that I know the way everything is going to look before I do the final storyboard, and this will be the last

The storyboards are now proving to be a pain in the ass and I think they are holding me back but I want to get them right before I go onto build the game, but time is running out so this has to be the last time spent on them.

As you can see from this design I am trying to keep it to the minimum and sticking to the old saying “less is more”. I don’t want the final design to be over complicated and messy. It has to be simple and the user has to be able to easily interact with the game, rather then scratching their head and wondering how to use the interface.

I like this layout more than the other two but it still needs a bit more work done to it, to make it what I’m looking for. In this one I added in a little silhouette, just like the one I had in my other logo. I think it would be all right to put it in but as long as I don’t make it a main part of the page or anything, I don’t want the BMC on my ass trying to sue me. I also like the grey line above the image; there are bits and pieces from all the designs that I like.

For this layout I have taken all the bits I liked from the other designs and put them together. I like this design but I think I can tweak pieces here and there and come up with a final design.

I have made the little silhouette of the main sites of Belfast smaller and placed it under the navigation bar and also added in a coloured background for the navigation buttons.

This is my final layout, I am happy with it; I just hope Nicklas likes it! It’s simple and the layout isn’t too complicated. I changed the border for the navigation buttons, but I simply just curved the lines, I think this makes it look like a more modern design.

I also decided to add in a hint button under the main navigation buttons. This has been added in to give the users a little hint about each page. I zoomed the image more, but I think that it might be zoomed in too much and may need to be brought back a bit, but in all I am happy with this design, oh and I added in the all important copyright at the bottom of the page.

Now that I had my final design layout I could finally get these storyboards out of the way once and for all!

I decided to take Nicklas’s advice and goggled “storyboard template” and I found a template, which I then printed out. I used this template to decide what way each part of the game is going to be laid out and while doing it I realised that I am very well prepared for when I start to make the game.

Instead of the usual “oh what way should I do this and that” I am thinking “right ok I know this is going to look like this and that’s going to look like that”, I feel prepared and ready to start the game.

You can see my storyboard above; I thought it was only necessary to storyboard the intro and the first page, because all the pages after that are going to be the same, with the same layout and style, only the pictures are going to be different.

I included a screen to show what it will look like when the user scrolls over a clue, and to illustrate it disappearing again, and also for the hint button because it has the same principle as the clues.

Week 6: Um it's gonna look like that one

This week I have been thinking a lot about my time management skills and starting to worry a bit about my project. When planning my Gantt chart last semester there are many things that I didn’t take into account, first of all these storyboards are taking up a lot of time and I also didn’t plan for the other module in our course.

I have to say that the other module is very demanding and it’s hard trying to fit in all these projects along with trying to earn some pennies stacking shelves for Tesco, but I am managing.

I came across this usefully little website from the teal trust and it had a few good pointers. I think that main thing from reading this is that I waste too much time doing silly and stupid things. Focus is needed to really get hammered into the projects that are on hand.

I need to come up with some design layouts, I already have two done but they are simple and to be honest they don’t look like much, there crap and horrible so I’m not even going to bother putting them up, but instead I will come up with some other designs.

So I was thinking that I need to come up with a layout for the game before I actually start building it, I aim to start next week pulling everything together in Flash, which reminds me that I got word of a Flash intermediate course being run that I may attend over Easter.

I went and got out my pen and paper and drew out some very simple very basic layouts, just to get an idea of how everything is going to come together on screen.

As you can see from the above image there are three simple layouts. The reason I did this was because I wanted to place everything about to come up with a general layout that I would stick to when designing the game.

These three simple layouts will cement the foundations of the design process as I develop my layout into a design that I can be proud of.

I decided to go with the 2nd layout or the top right whatever way you want to look at it. I think this is the most logical and I want the game layout to be simple and not over complicated.

I then went and made a couple of simple layouts just to gain my boundaries and come up with a very general idea of what the finished layout will look like.

Well this is a simple layout that I just threw together so I could see what everything looks like on screen. It needs further development but it gives me a general idea of what each page is going to contain. Each image will be the main part of the page and will take up most space, the image I have used here will be zoomed in so that clues will be easier to see.

The above layout is the same as the first one but with the picture zoomed in and long as the stage. I simply did this just to see what the layout would be like with the picture zoomed in like this and longer. I prefer the picture in this way and I think I may add this into the final design.

I also spoke to Nicklas this week, as it was my week to see him. I just went over all my work and showed him my storyboards and he suggested that I hand draw each section out, just like a professional storyboard.

He said that I should go away and make a template, or find one on the internet, for storyboards print out loads of them and just draw out each part of the game individually. This is a good idea but I'm going to do this next week as this week has also been taken up by a very demanding COM assignment, I feel sorry for those who have there presentation this week.

Portfolio work

I had another look at my logo this week and I decided to change the colours about because I wanted it to be fresh and new looking and I have also decided to take away the “interactive multimedia” the reason I have done this is because I was thinking for the web address and I don’t want to have chrisblairinteractivemultimedia.com its just far too long.

I have also begun to think of possible web address and ideally I would like chrisblair.com but some country and western singer already takes it and .co.uk is already taken so I’m going to have to settle for or a .org or even .info I quite like .info but .org is good also. I have decided that I want chrisblair.something rather than chrisblairmd.com etc.

Week 5: Viva Las Belfast

So as you may have guessed from the title, this week is my Viva, and I’m all prepared, well my slides are!

What’s the Viva you ask?

Well for those of you that don’t know we have to stand up in front of the class and give a presentation on our major projects. Each presentation lasts for 5mins and everybody has to use Power point to make it a level playing field, and we are only allowed to use text and images.

I’m not really fused about standing up in front of everyone; I know a lot of people are though, for me I’m just concentrating on not buggering it up. Standing in front of everybody doesn’t really bother me that much. So my slides are all prepared and you can take a look at them if you want to or not, it’s really up to yourself.

This week has been all about the Viva and to be honest I’m glad to be getting it over and done with quickly. The work is really starting to pile up and I’m glad I won’t have this hanging over my head after this week. I know a few people who have to do their Viva the same day that we have an assignment due in for another module, oh dear I feel sorry for them!

The lecture on the Viva presentations was very good and the main points I took from them where:

Keep it simple
Keep it with in the time limit
Don’t stress
Be yourself

If I stick to these four points then I will be fine. As I said standing up in front of everyone doesn’t bother me, its just not being prepared enough. I have done some practice run troughs and clocked my time at 4mins 56secs and 5mins 3secs, so I think I will be good time wise.

If you look above then you will see some photos of Belfast, that’s right I was out and about this week taking the photographs for the game. Here’s a selection of some of the images I will put into the photo gallery on the website, all the images that will be included in the game are all zoomed in and to be honest these ones make better viewing, but all the ones needed for the game are the way I want them.

I know this was suppose to be done in week 2 but I had set backs with the story boards and pulling a lot of things together, but this was a one afternoon, 2 hours at most job that could have been done at any time, obviously as long as they where done before building the game begun.

Portfolio work

This week I started to think about working on my portfolio. I need to come up with a portfolio website and basically advertise myself. My Major project is far more important but I also have to get this work done. As I already have a logo from this log I am going to use it. I think it is nice and simple but I may reduce the size of for my portfolio site. The reason it is bigger on this log is because I don't have a header along the top.

Week 4: Feed me

So far this week I have added in an RSS feed into my log, you can view it my clicking the RSS logo at the top of my page. I changed the logo from the familiar orange and white to suit the colours of my website. This feed will be updated weekly along with my site.

RSS feeds are everywhere now days and we have just learnt them in another module so I thought why not? This way you can jump to any week you want to from the feed, aren’t they great! So in the feed I just put the week and the title to each one, I know I should have really put more about what I am typing in there but I want people to read the information from the page, the feed is in there because it is handy and I wanted to show that I can do one.

I have also added in anchors which will take you to the top of the page and anchors at each week so that when you click from the RSS feed you will get taken to that week, just a little bit of usability to make the page flow that bit easier.

I have completed my storyboard this week on the computer, and you can see the final version here. Please note that they have been done in word. I think that doing the storyboard has helped me gain more insight into the game and has helped me prepare how I’m going to build it.

It lets me get my ideas down before I forget them and also lets other people see what I am thinking. Storyboards are an important part of the creative process, all movie makers and TV shows use storyboards to get across the point.

Well as much as I would have liked to produce a storyboard as good as this one I’m afraid my drawing skills aren’t that good. This is an example of a storyboard from paramount pictures I got it from this website: http://www.xstudios.tv/images/content/storyboards_paramount.jpg. I have no idea what it’s for I was thinking Pirates of the Caribbean or something.

So I am going away at the end of this week, on a nice wee trip to Spain with my church, but because of this I will not get as much work done this week so I really need to get caught up on that next week.

When I look back to my Gantt chart I see that keeping to a schedule is hard. I hadn’t taken into account on doing storyboards in my chart and because of this I am behind, but give me a break it’s the first proper time schedule that I have had to try and stick to.

Of course I have had many projects to do before in the past but I have never had a week-by-week or day-by-day schedule to stick to before. I have mixed feelings about them.

If they are well planned for in advance then yes they are good and you have weekly targets and if you stick to it your not rushing everything towards deadline day. On the other hand if there are things that need to be done that have been left out of the time management system then it can total bugger up the rest of the system and make it harder to get back on track, as I am finding out.

Week 3: Moving on up

I went back this week and looked over my logo options from the major project proposal to see if I could come up with any ideas on re-designing my logo. Although this should have been done in week one, I intend to settle with the previous logo before I seen the poster in the Belfast metropolitan college. You can read all about this from last week.

Like I said I went back to my major project proposal and look at my logo options to see if there was anything in there that I could use, but alias I didn’t really like anything in there. I remember Nicklas saying it was ok to have a silhouette of Belfast, so I decided to keep one silhouette in the logo.

From looking at my logo options I like the colours from idea 3 and I like the crane silhouette from idea 1, number 3 across. So I was thinking what way could I try and incorporate these into my new logo. I think that the all capitals gives the logo a better feel more suited to the project and not really a simple Miss Marple esq feel.

Look at the image below if you want to see my new logo design.

Ok so I changed the shade of red slightly because I think the colours blend better with a darker a red. I used the grey for the silhouette of the crane and I put it at the back because I wanted the focus to be on the Belfast.

The specs for my logo are as follows.

THE GREAT, HEIST MYSTERY Font: Verdana, Colour: Black
BELFAST Font: Mekanik LET, Colour: #9E2C34
CRANE SILHOUETTE Colour: #C6C7C6, Image traced in photoshop

I can see that from my Gantt chart that this week I have down to edit my photo’s in Photoshop, I haven’t yet taken my photos because I want to get all the prep work and story boards done first, it won’t, or shouldn’t take me long to get the photo’s. One afternoon in Belfast will sort that out, but this leads me to my next subject, my storyboards.

I showed Nicklas my draft story boards and he thinks I’m making progress but I need to get them sorted out into a final story board so I can develop the project along.

Ok so this is what I am calling my Final draft storyboard. This is the way that I am going to draw the storyboard up on the computer and use to build the project. I want to show it to Nicklas first before I go ahead and draw it up on the computer.

Unfortunately I am away at the end of week 4 and I won’t get to see Nicklas to show him my draft story board, I don’t want to go ahead with it, with out showing it to him first just in case there are any alterations I need to make.

Week 2: Cracking on

This week it was time to go and visit a good old friend that has helped me out in the past, my trusty pen and paper.

From talking with Nicklas he told me that I hadn’t got a story board for my Major project and I thought dang, I’m going need one of those. I had a basic idea of the layout of the game in my head but it was essential that I got it down on paper before I lost all the ideas.

Ok so that image may be a bit confusing but it makes sense to me. Basically the lines with arrows at both ends means that the user can navigate freely between these pages and the lines with arrows at one end means that the user can only go one way. The game is going have a free navigation meaning that the user can freely navigate and go to any page that they want.

The above storyboard is like a site map. I wanted to lay out on paper the structure of the game so that I was clear on what the layout would be like before I begin to build the game.

On my Gantt chart I have for week one that my final logo will be set in stone well I had decided to use the logo that I submitted in the Major project proposal as the final logo for my project, until I was walking past Castlereagh bmc (Belfast metropolitan college) and got a shock. I have been unable to find a picture on the Internet, but it was a poster that was nearly identical to my logo.

You can see my logo above, well this poster was the same but it also had the titanic in there and it was purple. I told Nicklas about this in the lab class and he said that the thing about having a silhouette of Belfast is that there are only about three or four landmarks so it's no surprise to run into this problem.

He suggested however that I change the script text in my logo and try to come up with something that has a better feel towards the project.

Week 1: Now the fun begins

So this is it, the final countdown, the big push, one last huge effort, It's like Star Wars when Luke has to fly his x-wing down the trench on the Death star and fire the torpedoes into the vent. Use the Force!!

So this week we got feed back from our first semester modules and in all I was disappointed with what I got, so I am extra motivated to pull the finger out and get cracking with this work! Looking back at my Major project proposal there is a lot that I could have done to improve it and pick up more valued marks but that’s in the past now, it's time to move on with things and get cracking.

I have gone back and totally remade my site, changed the logo and more or less changed the layout for this weekly diary. From looking at the module website I seen that we have to build a portfolio site for DES513J2 so I got cracking by designing a new log, this is DES512J2 compared to DES511J1 which was last year, 511 512 and 513, this is may get confusing.

So far I have built this website, do you like? I will look back upon the Gantt chart from my major project proposal to effectively manage my time for the final project, I foresee many a late night and Tesco making a lot of money from Kick!

You can see the Gantt chart above. This is what I have to stick to, to get the Major project completed on time, it’ll be tough going at times but if I stick with the program then there shouldn't be many problems, main word being shouldn't!

Looking from this chart I have down for this week to have my logo set in stone, well I’m sticking with the one I choose for the major project proposal and I have down that I will have a list of characters made this week, well I do and you can view them if you want to.