GRAND THEFT AUTO

For all of you that care Rockstar Games have made the first two instalments of the classic Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series into free downloads for your Windows PC (sorry Mac users… suckers!)

The first two games came out in the late 1990’s for the now obsolete Playstation console. Rockstar produced groundbreaking work with the birds-eye-view, open-ended crime world gameplay that is GTA. Reap the benefits with all manner of shady work-for-hire gigs contracted your way. Steal cars, rob banks, drug deal, murder and generally climb your way to the top of the crime pile.

Long time GTA fans can revisit these classic video games and new gamers who missed out on this early franchise title can further discover Grand Theft Auto’s roots.

It’s so addictive it SHOULD BE criminal! - DOWNLOAD HERE

I am considering ‘Games Design’ as a module for my 2^nd and 3^rd year.

PAGE DESIGNS 003

My favourite thus far, its not complete I’m still playing around with it, not today though, its Sunday!

PAGE DESIGNS 002

Yet again today I found myself go ballistic in Photoshop, playing about with more layout designs for my E4 Music website. Observe below…

PAGE DESIGNS 001

Today I have spent a good few hours playing around with possible page layout designs for my E4 Music website. Here is a few screen shots of one design concept that I came up with. I have added some random content just for effect...

IDENTS UPDATE

Since sending off my estings entry’s I’ve been looking into where I can go next with this E4 based project. I spoke to Jools (lecturer) about this and he pointed me in the direction of a news article that was in last Thursdays Guardian newspaper. E4 have just won a bid to launch two digital radio DAB stations of their own.

“A music and entertainment service aimed at 15- to 29-year-olds based on its E4 brand - and Pure4, billed as "a knowledgeable and, accessible radio station for music lovers". – Guardian Media

So I’ve decided to forge the second half of my project around this E4 development. The main part will be an E4 Music website orientated around the new stations. Also in relation to a web site, on-line advertising, in the form of animated web banners / adverts. It already looks like E4 have a new URL reserved and a site on its way... here.

More to follow…

SAME… BUT DIFFERENT (COMPLETE)

After a few weeks of putting together the Same But Different project, it is finally finished.

I spent this evening putting the image files together in Dreamweaver and then uploading it to a friend’s web space (which they have kindly said we could use) Looking back, the work load turned out to be a lot more than I first expected. James (the gentleman who I have been working with) had a very certain minds eye view about how this project was going to unfold, but to be honest I got stuck in when I could and challenged most decisions and ideas where it was due. I don’t think the outcome would have been the same without our collaboration...

Click on the image below to view the project, or click HERE.

ENJOY!

WORKING TOGETHER

Quick update, I have been putting in the hours recently working with James on the Same But Different project. It is taking time but I believe the final product will be worth it, from what we have put together thus far, I think it will be something that I’ll be proud of being involved in. Even if it is a week behind schedule (apologies Jools)

“24 more hours …”

I’m enjoying it very much, eager to input, maybe a bit too much sometimes. Check out here and here to find out more… I have also posted a few preview screen shots.

SAME… BUT DIFFERENT (TIN CANS)

I’m working with my comrade James on a photographic based project, entitled “Same But Different”. We have based our photos around tin cans…

Tin cans (like the ones you get baked beans in) are out there… and they are EVERYWHERE! They are in the shops and supermarkets; they are in the factories, in the bins, on our streets and in our rivers, by the road sides, in land fill sites and in people’s homes… all over the place, the list goes on…

I guess we are trying to show the life cycle of the tin can by documenting some of the many possible routes that a tin can might take. From being made, containing food, being purchased and opened, being thrown away, rusting away in a field somewhere or maybe even recycled.

We have logged certain pieces of information to go along with our photographs; we then plan to arrange them into an order and hopefully develop some sort of interactive web based piece from them and maybe even a print version.

Here are a few select photos, more to follow…

COMPETITION DEADLINE

It took a total of five hours today to put my 3 estings onto a DV tape, ready to be posted off to the Channel 4 competition ...

To finally get my 3 idents onto a tape it took an army of computers, which included x1 Apple Mac (appalling machines) and x3 PCs. I had many problems throughout involving the use of different codecs and compression formats. In the end I had to use the audio from one compressed version and the video footage from a different version, it worked, perfectly, but it wasn’t the “correct” way of going about it.

All in all... I achieved the what I set out to do, which was to get my competition entry together. I even took a photo (above) to document what I sent off...

CAT FOOD - E4

This is my final version of the cat themed TV sting for E4 (I might edit at least two more seconds out of it to bring it down to eight or nine seconds) I have developed the starring role of our cat Butters, I went from simply sticking E4 logos on him to actually having the logo at the bottom of his food bowl.

After looking into working with animals and how best to do so I discovered that there is nothing more reliable than bribing the friendly little feline with treats (food).

So that’s what I did… Observe!

ODD REPORTER

I was in hysterics when I first watched this…
... and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th time too!



AdamBuxton - "Odd Reporter (Signing For The Deaf)"
youtube.com

DROP IT!

I was told at my design board presentation to NOT go ahead with producing the vinyl record concept for one of my E4 TV idents.

The test version can be seen here. (its been done before… supposedly)

BUT… I have had nothing but positive feedback and good reactions from the people that have seen it thus far, so instead of "dropping it" I’ve decided to develop it into something more.

I have decided to inter-cut lots quick shots that will illustrate the DJ and how he/she interacts with the instrument that is two record decks and a mixer.

This video here and… here are good examples of what ill be looking to achieve visually for some of these quick cutting shots.

And just for the funk of it here is a quality video I came across whilst doing some research…

NEVER WORK WITH ANIMALS

It’s an old showbiz saying (apparently) that you should never work with children or animals. After filming my cat themed test ident for E4 Stings
- which can be seen... here - I started to consider how I could get the best results out of filming our pet cat ‘Butters’. I came across two very relevant web pages… here and… here, that talk about photographing and filming animals (in my case a pet cat)

The following is what I found significant to my production…

Photograph your pet in great light. In the case of animals, that's almost always natural light, which is to say, turn off your flash and go outside.
The light next to a large window or open door or late day sunlight makes all animals (and people) look great. It's all about the light. I repeat.

Get close to your pet whether it's a horse or a goldfish. Fill the frame with the animal you love and leave out all other distractions like furniture, telephones, and background objects.

Look for backgrounds that will contrast against your pet. In other words, if you have a black dog, look for a light background. If you have a white cat, look for a dark background.

Keep your camera at the animal's eye level. Avoid the view point from a human eye's, which is to say, looking down. Get down on your hands and knees.

You can take wonderful pictures without looking through the camera.
Try holding the camera 12 inches from your pets face without using the viewfinder. Of course, luck is required, but you will be surprised how often this turns out some good results.

When photographing a living creature, it's almost always best to focus on the eyes. Make the eyes sharp. It's where people look first.

Animals may need to be enticed to stand still long enough for you to push the shutter button or for you to record that shot. The easiest way to do this is to use the time-honoured tradition of treats.

ANDY KAUFMAN

The other day a friend pointed me in the direction of some videos on youtube.com... the videos were of Andy Kaufman, an American performer / entertainer / comedian (even though he didn’t like to call himself a comedian) his videos intrigued me to know more about him and his style of entertainment.

After a little reading up on Andy I discovered that in 1999 a film was made about him called “Man On The Moon” starring Jim Carry. Only having seen a few short videos of the real Andy Kaufman on the internet and reading what Wikipedia had to offer on him, I thought that Jim Carry’s portrayal was chilling accurate. There is something that doesn’t make sense about Andy’s humour and entertainment, but I kind of get the feeling I’m not meant to fully understand… see what you think…

Jim Carry (as Andy) – Man On The Moon



Andy Kaufman – Andy’s Fun House

ONE STEP FORWARD, 2 STEPS BACK

I’ve been wrestling with flash for the past few weeks trying to produce my Tetris TV ident for E4 (the video above ^^) I got bogged down in lots and lots of key frames and tweens and it has sort of distracted me from working on much else over the past weeks.

Eventually after trying out many different ways of producing similar results I came to putting together this version (it isn’t the finished version)
I am planning on getting some help from one of my tutors to lend a hand with some of the transition effects, so hopefully it will look a bit more polished but you get the general feel for it. The sounds used in this were produced from sampling a Nintendo DS and then re-making them using Cool Edit Pro, as illustrated in a previous post.

Any feedback or comments would be much apriciated! Please add yours by clicking the “comments” link situated... below...

CHANGE OF SUBJECT?

This is such a ‘Geeky’ subject to be posting about but, oh well… C*CK IT!
Counter Strike - I have been playing this internet based video game for just over a year (it took over my life for the first few months, but now I play in moderation)

CS is basically a FPS game (First Person Shooter)
2 teams... Terrorists Vs Counter Terrorists.
The objective of the game is for the Counter Terrorists to rescue the hostages… which the opposite team, the Terrorists are defending.
The whole game itself is put together around short 3 min rounds, which quickly makes it a very addictive game and has kept millions of people world wide coming back for more and more since the late 1990’s.

During each round any player has the ability to use spray tags around the games level, these tags can be ANY image that the player wishes. Spray tags is something that has been added into the game so players can establish an identity amongst other players in the same game. To be honest, it is something most players don’t really make use of.

When playing the other night, I was lured into a virtual ambush, I got shot then proceed to die, probably by the hands of some unknown 15yr old sat at his PC somewhere across the ocean. He/She used a sneaky tactic that involved the use of spray tagging. They had made a spray tag of another player/character, sprayed it onto a wall within the level, thus distracting the opposition (and me) for just enough time so they could pick off the enemy one by one with a long distance riffle.

*observe the screen shot below… clever boys!

RECORD DECK

Thanks to some help from my man James I have produced another test sting for E4, but this time its for E4 Music!



Had some good fun doing this one, even got to make a little E4 7'' inch...
(as photographed below along with a shot of the location set-up)



“E4 Record” – Gav Cooper
youtube.com

KITTY KAT

Here is another test sting for the E4 project.
I threw this together in the space of about twenty minutes, from scratch.
I'm not so fond of the final outcome but I really like the bases of the idea... ANNOYING THE CAT – HA!

"Animals" was one of the main answers that I got back from my questionnaire (they make people happy).

“E4 Kitty” – Gav Cooper
youtube.com

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

A friend who commented on a previous post pointed out the issue of copyright with regards to a test animation that I had created, which can be seen... here.

I started to look into this further and discovered a very relevant documentary on the Tetris copyright issue. Most people remember Tetris from the Game Boy but few know the context in which that came about and quite what a chance thing it was.

It covers the rivalries between Nintendo and Atari and the absurdities of buying copyrights for software from a country that didn't believe in property (Communist Russia) The documentary also shows just how vast the gap was between the East and West.

TETRIS: From Russia With Love (BBC4)

An important documentary about a very important game.

SOUNDS

One of the key things that was pointed out to myself and others in my narratives team (group work project) when we presented our design board presentation last year, was that we had not considered the audio at all on our film. So for a change... I've decided to learn from my mistakes.

One of the TV stings that I am making for the Identities assignment and also the E Stings competition is going to be based on a video game...
*please see the previous post

Over the past week I have been looking into video game sound effects (mostly retro/puzzle style games) I hooked up my Nintendo DS through my computer (with some help from Matt) and recorded some sound samples from various games. Using Cool Edit Pro to record, edit and alter the sounds has proven to be lots of fun and very successful in producing the desired effect.