Final Report!

The final presentation was today which means it is the end of a project! Here is my report that I submitted today. I am a creative digital media student so therefore I needed to have some design element that is not a template from word. I researched Pinterest for inspiration because I am new to designing reports. Here is one design that I found intriguing and attempted to recreate that design:
https://www.pinterest.ie/pin/AbOIzt83GL0PiiaVvUdmYIDMaANQVxcbkiP6wNfduJ80_Ip6oypzmkA/ I created the design in Photoshop and then saved it as an image and brought it into Word.
With this design in mind, here are a few pages from my final report:

Poster Design!

Afternoon! After finishing my video yesterday, I decided to design a poster for International children's book day just to make it clear what this video is for. This project is about creating an interactive product that promotes International children's book day. Therefore I needed to add a poster at the end of the video.

Product Complete!

It took while to render but my product for my project is finally complete. I used code to add it to my website.
Here is a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT_bdtGIiD0&t=2s
Here is a screen shot of the website:

Next step/ Final submission!

Now that the video is complete, I must add the link to my website so that it will interactive. I will polish the website and save it onto a USB. I am in the middle of writing my report and have evaluated the video. Once the report is complete and printed, I will focus on polishing up on my presentation, write my script and learn it. My presentation is tomorrow at 17:15 so I have plenty of time to practise.

The Power of Books!

This week is exam weeks so the pressure is on and there no time to waste. I've spent the past week working on my video in After Effects. I had difficulty with the animation of the text. Poster design and displaying text in a neat and interesting way is not my strong point. Therefore I asked my lecturer of for feedback last Thursday (7th December) and it was suggested to display it like someone was saying the words out loud and to be animated in a way that they were being said.
Therefore I recorded myself reading the story out loud and tried to animate it so it looked like how it was sounded. However I wasn't happy with the result and it just looked messy. Also my text was very boring and just in a basic line.
Here is a screen shot of what it looked like:

I made a kinetic typography for another assignment in the past so I decided to animate the text in that kind of a style. It looks neater and it's a little bit easier to read. I added effects to the text like typewriter, dissolve and changing the color. 

Here is a link to my final video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT_bdtGIiD0&feature=youtu.be

After effects editing! Feedback on text!

I have reached the stage of the project where I have completed the 3D environment in Game Launcher. I researched how to screen recording and found a tutorial to screen record using the Xbox app.
Here is a link to the tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfPbr1mRDuo

I filmed a walk through of the environment. I opened After effects and created 8 scenes in the composition. I divided up the story into each of these scenes and typed each word onto its open layer. I have started animating and adding effects to the text.
Feedback: I received feedback on the text so far and it was suggested to animate the text in a way so it appears as though someone is saying it. Also to change the font color and animation so that it is clearer to read. The deadline is approaching fast so I will aim to get the animation of the text done for next Friday.
Here is a screen shot of the After effects file:

E-books

This evening I researched interactive E-books. Here is a video I found showing off one interactive e-book. To be it looks like an interactive website with videos embedded into it. The graphics are lovely and clean.:
https://vimeo.com/48353067

Additionally I explored the Pottermore website because it is similar to an e-book. You get to explore the website, read extracts from the books, read about the character, environment of the world and objects in it. Additionally you can sort yourself into a house and take a quiz to get a your wand and patronus. It is an enjoyable website that lets you explore more of the world of the book.
Link: https://www.pottermore.com/book-extract-long/platform-puzzler

One thing I noticed about e-books is that the children's ones have animations that are interactive. The images are quite colourful. All the electronic books that I have on my mobile are text only. So perhaps they have included interactive animations in the children's one so that children would be interested in reading the e-book.

Prototype Presentation

Preparing For Prototype Presentation

The prototype presentation is this week so I need to edited my scan photos of the prototypes. After I scanned them you could barely see what they were. Therefore I used the editing technique we learnt in class with the threshold and curves tools in Photoshop. However they were still not clear enough after editing them so I opened each of them in Photoshop and created a Photoshop version of them. Here are the edited versions:

Interactive book research

http://stepinbooks.com/?portfolio=wuwu-co
Wuwu & Co. – A magical picture book

It is an award winning interactive picture book you follow the adventures of five odd creatures, who need your aid during the coldest winter in 2.000 years.

Here is a short video I found on an interactive ebook for children. By the looks of it they can use voice recognition and movement to the iPad causes something to happen in the world. Now if I had the skills I would apply their technique to my virtual reality story. Also what's interesting is the art work as well and how the characters are animated. 

Changing perspective to first POV!

I was in college this morning working on the environment of the video. I now have a roof on every room and the lighting looks good. I still need to sort out the book doorways between each room and create the 3D sword in 3D max. Animate the sword and fire in game launcher using code. But I believe that once all those tasks are complete it will be finished. ( Fingers crossed). Additionally I followed a tutorial on how to change it from 3rd person point of view to first person. The tutorial made it seem so complicated but all you had to do was open the blueprint for the 3rd person point of view and move the camera so its in front of the avatars face. Here are some videos I recorded of walking through the environment as first person POV:

Font style

My video is going to have text because it is a prototype of a virtual reality story. In my last blog post I looked at the position of the text. Today I researched the different font styles. I'm leaning more towards a typewriter kind of style. I like the old-fashioned style of it and it is clear to read as well which is important! Here is a mood-board I created of styles I like. I show it in black and white just to see which is clearer. I may have to have two layers of it, one black and one white which would cause a shadow. This is because my environment is full of color and a single layer of text might not be visible enough.

Testing position of text

Because my idea is an virtual reality experience of a story, there needs to be text on the screen. This would be the text the user would need to read out load in order to move forward in the story.
I used Photoshop to test the position of the text. Here are my examples:

Testing walkthrough of environment.

My 3D environment isn't finished yet but I filmed this walkthrough on my phone just to test it out. One thing that I found was that it was not smooth walking around. I did have my phone in one hand filming and was using the keyboard and mouse to move around with my other hand. I still need to learn how to record it on the computer but hopefully when I am filming it that way it will be easier to control and move smoothly around.
Here are a few videos of my test footage.

Update on 3D environment!

I was under the weather this week so I didn't get to work on this project until this morning. I went into college at 9.30 am and started working on the other rooms in my projects environment. The prototype presentation is just around the corner so I'm working hard to get the environment finished before then. I designed a 3D book in 3D max and imported it into game launcher. I added lighting fixtures and ceilings to nearly all of the rooms. I still need to add a ceiling to the library room but I'm nearly there!
My goal is to get it finished in week 10. That leaves 2 weeks to add the text in after effects and film the walkthrough.
Here are some shots of the environment so far:

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