My Podcast Evaluation.

For the Digital Cultures brief we had to create a visual essay considering on how Leeds can be an 'Ubiquitous City'. There were many choices to choose from, I wanted to do it on futuristic cars and all sorts but I chose to do a podcast on 'The Octopus Card' which is used by the citizens of Hong Kong. I chose this because I had the oppotunity to use it when I went there and I'm quite familiar with this revolutionary technology.
This card already existed in 1997 and I was wondering why can't it be launched in more countries. It was able to make payments in transit fees more quicker therefore queues and traffic congestion might improve. Today you can even use it to pay for food in restaurants and supermarkets. I found it really fun to use in Hong Kong and it was more convenient. I wanted to compare some events in Leeds such as going on the bus with the life in Hong Kong as they use the card. I had a friend to film me getting on the bus and using the vending machine. We also tried to film in zara but got kicked out by the security guard and people delibrately got in the way of our filming when I've only got one chance to film it. Filming the vending machine was a little hard and we had to do it twice because the first packet of crisps got stuck in. I went on youtube.com and downloaded the methods of using the card to get drinks and transit as the comparison to my filmed videos. I love the speed of the card transfering wirelessly the sums of money when purchasing something. It takes about 0.03 seconds which is so much faster than credit cards. The downside of these is that it doesn't store any information of the card holder therefore when it's lost, someone else can find it and use whats left on the card.
For the podcast, I used Final Cut Pro to assemble all my research into one video. I still can't use it that well and I always had to render everything. I decide not to use a voice over and used subtitles for my video. The background music is from a korean film soundtrack and I thought it matched my podcast very well. After creating the podcast, I was able to learn alot about the idea of making travelling and everyday life more simple and functioning comfortably. I realised there were other cards similar to the Octopus card such as the Oyster card in London and the Suica card in Japan.
The podcast lasts to 2 minutes so I wished I could of done more like try to film more videos to compare it to Hong Kong. It was very time consuming when I had to try and make the timing of the film clips match the pace of the music, but I thought it flowed quite well. Overall I was quite happy with what I have done and I hope the podcast was able to convey to the viewers the idea of how the Octopus card can be used in Leeds when we approach to the future.

Old and New Animations

We've been asked to look into animations of historical and recents animations. For the new animation I've chose the opening footage trailer of the upcoming game by Square Enix, 'Final Fantasy 13 Versus'. I'm very excited about this game and I can't wait until it releases next year. I guess I have to save up money to get a PlAYSTATION 3 first. I love the main character Prince Noctis with the navy black hair and the red eyes. The part where he blocks the bullets with his swords were so fascinating! It showed many scenes in slow motion and the detail on the characters and the background are stunning.

The older animation is a episode from the series 'The Clangers'. I chose this because I still remember it from childhood. By looking at this, it should be done by a technique called stop-motion animation where every movement is created frame by frame with photography. I think there's alot of effort been put into this because it can be very time consuming although sometimes the viewers aren't aware of their hard work.

I prefer CG animations because I love looking at different special effects and Square Enix did a really good job with it.

FINAL FANTASY 13 VERSUS:


THE CLANGERS:

Vector !

It took me so long to actually make the vector versions of these objects. The pen tool was fun to use and I would like to be more skilled at it.

Storyboard Pylones 0_0

I thought it would be fun to do a very short narrative. For some reason I really like the cup which is one of the objects from the kitchen collection because it makes me laugh. I'm trying to keep it simple so then it would be easier to animate in flash. I'm like a novice at Flash and I still find it difficult to operate. I probabily can only use 1% of Flash's potential.

PYLONES

For the animation principles and techniques brief, I will be doing an animation for the plyones.com website. I had a look in to it and I especially like the 'Kitchen Collection'. I'm interested in the characteristics and facial expressions on these objects. Because of this, I thought I could create a short narrative for the animation.

=This screenshot shows the website of the kitchen collection. The website itself is very vibrate and colouful, in my opinion Pylones is more for a female audience because of the cuteness of the objects and its own stylistic designs.

NISSAN PIVO 2~

I have an interest in cars and this one called the Nissan Pivo 2 really fascinates me. This motor vehical makes parking so much easier. Its similar to the nissan micra but this futuristic concept cars is very unusual. I like the little robot inside the vehical which can communicate to the driver.

Vending Machines in Tokyo?

quick and easy! no time wasted^^

PET SOCIETY

Pet Society is a game found in Facebook. This is one of the online games I'm currently obsessed with. It's similar to TAMAGOCHI, but there's more features such as shopping for food, clothes and furniture for the pet's house. I love playing these games because it's like presenting yourself for others to see.

Appleseed 3-D!!!!!

I'm a great fan of Masamune Shirow's work (the creator of Ghost in the Shell) and I was totally excited when this new movie came out. It was one of the first anime/ 3-D animations created for viewers.

When I head about the Digital Cultures brief, it reminded me of this movie because the story talks about a Utopia that was created after the great war. The artwork is brilliant and I love the action sequences within the story.

Little foot (Adam Phillips)

this is a really good series(Bitey of Brackenwood) done with flash by Adam Phillips. I like how all the objects, chancters and backgrounds can move so fluently.

Current Idea 0_0? OCTOPUS CARD!

I've been to Hong Kong a couple of times and there's the existence of this card called 'Octopus Card' which was first launched in 1997. I found it really interesting when I used it for traveling around the city therefore I'm going to investigate it for this brief. It's a contact-less card used for electronic payments online and offline. It expanded widely and now used for the payment of a mass transit system (underground trains, buses etc). Besides transit, this card can be used to pay for food in supermarkets, vending machines, fast-food restaurants, convenient stores, parking tickets within Hong Kong. This card is able to make things so much easier and it transfers the payment in 0.3 SECONDS! You can always top up the card at the MTR traveling stations.




Less fuss and no going through your change to see if you have enough.





It can be used in unexpected places...........



http://www.octopuscards.com/consumer/en/index.jsp

Has anyone played Shenmue?

After the briefing, this was the first thing that came into my head. This clip is from the RPG game 'Shenmue' and it stood out from other Dreamcast games because of it's way of involving the player. The outcomes of the story can be different depending on which options the player chooses. I played this game quite a while ago and I find the story very well scripted and the extra mini games separate from the original scenario just adds more fun.

Final Video >.<

After all the effort, I've finally finished my video production (done on 20th October). My skills were very limited when doing this by myself such as moving with the camcorder. All of the clips were static shots but it was clear and neat. Many yellow pages were used to stack up on top of tables to get the camcorder to balance on the right height. 'Background music credit to: Full House OST'. Overall this was a really good experience, I enjoy making videos and using hi-tech equipment ^_^. 

Video Production development

Based on the scenario of the animatic, I tried to film the process of making the Coffee Float. I spent some money on preparing the props and I borrowed the coffee glass from my work placement. I rarely used the HDV camcorder and I didn't attend the tutorial so I was a little confused but it was very fun to use. I couldn't estimate on how long it would take to film the footage. I was worried about my teammate not coming in to college so I wasn't sure about the location on where to film my project. Later on thursday I decided to do the filming at home T_T. In the pictures are images of my props. Before filming I did a lot of cleaning on the tables and the kitchen work-tops. 

It was difficult trying to multi-task (filming and making the coffee at the same time) so I did a lot of takes. I think I made about 3 or 4 Coffee floats when trying to record a good shot and trying different angles. The coffee in the glass is hot which means the steam kept on appearing on the side. I had to wipe the sides numerously before recording the clip when I pour the cream on top. In the end it took me about 2-3 hours to do all the filming and I had to return the HDV camcorder back to college before it closes. It was fun.... and tiring at the same time. ^^

Coffee Float XD

This is a short animatic video of how to make an irish coffee. It was done on Final Cut Pro. I drew around 25+ panels but 8 on each page so I can scan it all at once without changing the sheets too often. The colour was done by Photoshop on a different layer. The sound effects were difficult to find (especially the stirring tea sound) so it was rather time consuming. In my opinion, I didn't like the organisation of the panels since it didn't flow to the next one fluently. In the end I added a background music from the Final Fantasy VIII game (Breezy.mp3) to take away the silence of the video.

If I had more time, I would draw the panels more carefully. The quality of the images were too light and faded. I should of used photoshop and adjusted the contrast slightly. 

Flash: There she is Step 3: Doki & Nabi

I saw this a while ago but I really like this series by a group of Korean artists--> www.sambakza.net. It's called 'There She is'. The story starts on a world with 2 races: Cats and Rabbits but its prohibited to have mixed couples. The video here shows my favourite episode of the series when Doki (Rabbit) tries to express her love to Nabi (Cat). Their love slowly progresses deeper and stronger but the public finds these couples revolting and disgraceful.

I like the story because it's simply amusing and it conveys the issues of people discriminating and not approving different races being together. The movement of the animation is very fluent and smooth. I'm interested in how they only use a certain group of colours like beige. This animation motivates me somehow so I wonder what others think of it.

My characters

On the internet I'm usually known as Yuichi.

The following images are my most recent character designs hahaha. The orange dude is called Clover-kun and the other is named Skull-san (both male). I've always enjoyed drawing manga but in the past, art teachers disliked my work and giving me comments about not creating my original style etc. They thought my work was too specific on anime and I should try other methods of drawing such as paint splats, pottery, CHARCOAL. The sound of paints scares me... I never liked messy mediums that's why I prefer to use pencil and pen to avoid any dirt. Up until Foundation course, they wanted me to use other mediums and working on bigger scales to explore different ideas. When I do that, everything I produce looks 'CRAP'. My Fine Art teacher thought I should leave my comfort zone...

I did consider about creating something different which has more potential than just drawing manga. That's how I took the interest of looking into character design.. there's other character designs before Clover-kun and Skull-san but these two are my current favourites. XD

After creating characters I get the urge to make a comic strip about them..