presentation

today, basically about half an hour ago, we had to present how our project is developing and show the first outcomes. Here is the link to our presentation that we did on prezi.com:

http://prezi.com/pes2fgiajkgo/untitled-prezi/?kw=view-pes2fgiajkgo&rc=ref-34597965

We explained how we are moving on with the project, shared some background details about creating everything, showed some of our drawings and finally presented our opening scene to the class to give them a little idea how the final project is going to look like. Here's the little sneak peak in case I made you curious:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_wby-kAASbqRDF6V21yVDJPcUk/edit

We got very good feedback from our tutor and classmates, which made us feel confident about continuing like this. We realised that the three of us really do make a good team and are very proud and happy about our project. It has both a very creative but also good technical side to it and this was only possible with team work and our different skills. I am very glad to have Lotti and Mai as my groupmates and I am confident that we will be happy with the final project. Now all we have to do is keep our time planning in mind and not get distracted or fall behind the plan.

I am looking forward to sharing more scenes with you soon!

As we're all back from the break by now, we met up a few times and had another seminar where we could work on our project, show each other what we got done during the 3 weeks of Easter and discuss how we will manage to get everything finished in time. During that seminar, Mai tried to get used to a sound program, I finished off some drawings of the character and Lotti worked on her blog.
Here are some results of that seminar and the previous weeks:

a break from uni...or not?

So after deciding who has to work on what during the holidays, the three of us parted ways. Lotti stayed right here in Kingston, Mai flew back to Norway and I went back to celebrate easter and spend the holidays at home with family and friends, in Luxembourg. Even though it is called a break from university that doesn't mean we could leave all the work behind. To finish our project in time we divided up the work and everybody knew what has to be done for the next seminar in order to move on with the video.

As Lotti and I like to draw and love creative work, we decided to start making drafts over the holidays and sent them to Mai who would start fitting our drafts into the video by using different softwares. Mai is good at working with video editing programs and photoshop, her task was to get started on the digital backgrounds and once she had the drawings to see how it would fit in with her digital design. Lotti wanted to do the backgrounds which have to be drawn for example; "candyland" and I decided to draw the character from the video.

As days go by I find myself quite often starring at a blank page, a pencil in my hand and music in the background to inspire me. Well that didn't help much! I could say I got a lot of work for digital media done during the previous 2 weeks of break, but to be honest, it was only about 3 days ago that I finally got some characters down on the page, I didn't erase immediatly again. Artists (even though I doubt I could call me one) are complicated. Finally I was more or less satisfied with what I brought to paper and my first drafts of the character are finished! What a relief to know where you're heading! Now I can concentrate on the details and draw the character in every position we need him to be for the video.

here is a little sneak peek to how the character will look like:

I hope you like it! Keep checking the blog for more information on how our group will proceed!

Spice up your life!

It is decided! Our project has a title and it's called "Spice up your life"
we thought this title would be perfect for our project whose aim is to make people aware of their currently boring life and how easily they could change or how we would say "spice it up" a little!! As the shop in our video is supposed to look a little like a bakery, where ingredients can be added to our life we thought the title couldn't be more convenient!

ps: after having thought about why the title sounds so familiar I finally realized (about 5 weeks after having picked it) that it is slightly inspired by the song 'spice up your life' - The Spice Girls. Not that we ever intended to do so! It's a small world, sometimes you think you have this genius idea no one ever had before you and then you realize the words coming out of your mouth are not your own after all. Life's like a puzzle somehow everything is related, so who cares, as long as the project will turn out as fabulous as the spice girls themselves ;-)

working on the proposal

after finally having decided what the project will be about, our group met up to work on the proposal which we handed in a few days later to give our tutor the details about our project and also to present it to our other classmates. Everyone of us wrote their own proposal, summing up the main ideas and defining what we will need to create our video, and then we came together to take parts of everyone's written piece and put them together into one.

As I don't want to bore you with all the details and software requirements (my tutor will have these informations anyways and you will be able to see it in the final draft) the following text is what I wrote about the main ideas and our inspiration. I'm sure it will give you a clearer idea of what we are about to create!

Main ideas : an unhappy person can be seen on screen, walking through the grey city where everything and everyone looks the same. Suddenly between all the grey, plain shops, one shop stands out; it’s colourful. The person enters out of curiosity, and finds himself in what it seems a different world. The shop “spice up your life” is colourful and extraordinary and offers as it says to change people’s life. Different ingredients or complete packages can be chosen and be applied to a person’s life, which will thus change. Due to the interactive narration, the user can chose for the character which offers to pick. These offers consist in fun, luxury, freedom… the additional ingredients which are sold at the counter are for example; love, happiness, colours… After having tried as many options as the user wants the character to, he can click on the “back to reality” button which lets the person leave the shop and go back to his world. The world outside however has changed meanwhile due to the realisation the person had come to whilst being on the life adventure. It is sunny and colourful outside and the character now wears a smile and walks tall, these changes intensify the moral of the story, everybody can change his life and sometimes it just needs a little spice to realize this. After a few seconds when the person steps outside, a voice gives the users a message to remember and take with them, in order to understand the story’s moral and its goal.

Motivations and inspirations: We wanted to tell a story which inspires the users themselves and help them to accept change in life. The motivation is definitely to not just complete a project and tell a basic story, but to push people into thinking about their own life and whether they are happy with. As everybody already experienced a situation where he/she ask themselves if the way they lead their life is right and whether change make them happier, we thought it is a story which people from all backgrounds and age would take interest in.

Target audience: from age 14-100 as everybody faces these thoughts at some point of his life, mainly when growing up or being stuck in a routine at a later phase in life, we believe that this story is appealing to everyone aware of leading the own life.

I hope this more detailed description will help you understanding our project and made you curious what it will look like in the end! I'll keep you posted!

getting started

a few weeks ago when we first discussed the group project for digital media foundations and we were told to team up with 1 or 2 other classmates, it was clear for Lotti, Mai and me that we would stick together and form a group. This decision was not only made based on the fact that we knew each other from previous lectures or seminar but also because we would get along quite well when it comes to deciding on a topic.

After it was clear that we would be a team, we sat together and decided to pick the topic 'fashion' as it is a subject we are confronted with everyday and the three of us really like to deal with. However after another meeting we came to the conclusion that making a video about fashion might be interesting for the three of us but it doesn't have a message nor a real story to tell.
As it was clear for us that we would like to do an interactive narration, we dropped the fashion theme and went looking for another story, something interesting and appealing to everybody if possible and something with a message.

On a saturday, Lotti and I therefore decided to go to Central London to simply look at people and buildings and maybe get some inspirations. Inspiration is supposed to be everywhere, it is part of our everyday life so it was clear to us that we would find some ideas in London. If we weren't able to find it in this crazy, creative, artsy and amazingly busy city, where else could we possibly get some inspirations from?!
So after walking around town, up and down the oxford street and around picadilly circus we decided to go to the modern Tate museum and look at some more or less famous artworks.

Suddenly it worked, after discussing the fashion theme again, an idea struck us. Why not create something what concerns nearly everybody in this city? Walking through London you see a lot of different people but sadly most of them (except the tourists, and sometimes even those) are stressed: running around, getting upset when somebody stands on the wrong side of the escelators, sleeping on the tube to gain a little extra-time and checking their smartphones non-stop in case something tremendous has happened in the past two minutes. Once we noticed that people practically all behaved the same stressed way, it struck us that not only the people look the same but also everything around them. Well yes London is an individual city and people such as shops try to stick out but honestly in the end everything looks the same.
This thought is the basis for our project. We quickly decided to make this our topic for the project, making people aware of what kind of life they are currently living and how they could change it by simpy realizing this.

This is how our project got started and where the idea came from.

I will keep you posted about how it is going to evolve and what it will look like in the end!