Friday, 1 March 2013

recent research/main points

since doing research into volcano's ive been researching the main volcanic points to focus on;


  • erruptions
  • how they are made
  • natural disasters they have caused
these main points are the most interesting and also have the most information.
i want to create a website/ibook thats navigation acts as if you are going through the layers on the volcano. our age range we're focusing on is 16-18 year olds so an interesting navigation is key to also keep them focused on the product. 

so far some of the main information i have found includes:

What is a pyroclastic flow?
A pyroclastic flow is a fluidized mixture of solid to semi-solid fragments and hot, expanding gases that flows down the sides of a volcano. These awesome features are heavier-than-air emulsions that move much like a snow avalanche, except that they are fiercely hot, contain toxic gases, and move at phenomenal, hurricane-force speeds. They are the most deadly of all volcanic phenomena.


What is lahar?
A lahar is a type of mudflow or debris flow composed of pyroclastic material, rocky debris, and water. The material flows down from a volcano, typically along a river valley. It is very dangerous because it's consistency and the way it acts is very much like cement. It is liquid when it's moving, but when it stops, it solidifies. This can cause just as much devastation as lava itself.

What is the Ring of Fire?
The Pacific Ring of Fire is an area of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions encircling the basin of the Pacific Ocean. The Ring of Fire has 452 volcanoes and is home to over 50% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes. Ninety percent of the world's earthquakes and 81% of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire.


A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet's surface or crust, which allows hot magma, volcanic ash and gases to escape from the magma chamber below the surface.
Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. A mid-oceanic ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates coming together. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the Earth's crust in the interiors of plates.
Erupting volcanoes can pose many hazards. Volcanic ash can be a threat to aircraft, in particular those with jet engines where ash particles can be melted by the high operating temperature. Large eruptions can affect temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the sun and cool the Earth's lower atmosphere or troposphere; however, they also absorb heat radiated up from the Earth, thereby warming the stratosphere.
natural disasters
the story of hundreds of mysterious deaths that occurred on 21 August 1986 in villages near Lake Nyos, Cameroon. Lake Nyos sits in the crater of an inactive volcano. It was later found that a landslide disturbed volcanic gas - carbon dioxide - that had dissolved in water at the bottom of the lake and sent it down the slopes of the volcano. Approximately 1,700 people in nearby villages were asphyxiated in and around their homes. The event at Lake Nyos is a rare type of natural disaster called a limnic eruption or lake overturn.





Tuesday, 26 February 2013

interactive websites

ive been looking at interactive websites to try and find what unique styles other designers have come up with the produce an effective intereactive website.

http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/new-fantasyland/


this is the new website for fantasy land at disney land florida, it has an interactive map on the home screen where you can click on different characters and find out why they are featured on the map. when clicking on 'the beast' it gives you information of the beasts castle restaurant. this works well for children but slow and uneccessary for adults, apart from this is does work well as a website. 

http://wechoosethemoon.org




this website was a website built dedicated to the apollo 11. you can play around a launch your own rocket and go on your mssion to the moon, the only problems with this website is the slow loading and also some of the graphics are quite pixalated at times, apart from this the website is a wonderful idea for children and adults alike. there are voice overs from the astronauts who were on the rocket at the time, image galleries you can look at and you can skip certain stages of you 'mission' 

http://www.mono-1.com/monoface/main.html



this website was created by an advertising agency who live by the motto "simpler is better" in the case of this website i agree, this really is pointless yet engaging fun to have at your computer screen, the endless possibilites and the occassional snigger from the website user are effect enough for me to be seen as a genuis intereactive website. 

http://waterlife.nfb.ca






this website was created as part of a documentery called waterlife. it shows humans how important water is to us and each section of the website has its own specific shape e.g. water is healing, so the shape is a cross. the animation to this website has been to a high standard there is no pixelation at all. 




All of these websites were done in flash, although im not using falsh as part of my brief i feel looking atthiese websites has helped me gain a greater understanding of a unique interactive website and how i can attract my clientel. 


Brief

we were given our new brief yesterday (monday 25th february) 

In this brief we are designing and producing our own website and an Ibook for iPad all on a series of natural wonders.

i have been given Volcano's as my natural wonder and i was really pleased about this. 

on my website i want to create something that will be educational as well as asthetically pleasing to look at, we have looked at the 'beer camp' websites and i love the design for their 2011 website 

http://2011.beercamp.com

i want to create something similar to this, but it depends on how difficult it is going to be with the coding because our coding has to be done by hand. 

The Ibook i'm going to be producing is being made in Ibook author and this will be really interesting to do, for this i am going to have to consider a background for my Ibook as well as a fun navigation system. 

this brief is a double project brief and we have double the time but its going to be alot of work to do, i'm going to be learning more on this brief than any other because i've never done any websites/coding. 

Sunday, 24 February 2013

Evaluation

my evalutaltion for my video is quite hard to write out because im not sure on the video itself. i wanted to try to do a fully kinetic type video, although this didnt work out due to technical difficulties so that was a shame, as i wanted to broaden my knowledge into motion abit more, i was looking on youtube for tutorials and found a really good one for motion 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZMmn7dmPmY&feature=related

this helped me to figure out alot of the basics as well as the tutorials that had been put on the server for us to look through. one difficulty i did have was using the keyframe editor and adding keyframes in the correct places and the actually working correctly.

when i got the hang of what i was doing i think it started to come together well.

i didnt get any comments on my footage in my crit so i didnt know if it was relateable or not, but i do think it relates well and has that moody, depressing feel which would of been the feelings of those times. the class had said that my music matched the mood perfectly which i was actually unsure about to start with but this helped to sway my decision so i stuck to it my other choice was
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLPJc71Osvk

because of all the technical troubles i had in the holidays i started working on my original video to mix in the text aspect and try to get it to fit together, one problem i did have was pictures not being the same size as the footage. unfortunatly i didnt realise when filming that the footage would be either landscape or portrait and this does show as a weakness in my video. but from this i can learn to be more careful and choose how i am going to film and finish my video to suit. 

ive changed the beginning of my video from an image to kinetic text. alot of people in the class have used the bbc4 logo yet i couldnt find where this was located so unfortunaelty i havent been able to find this? it does make the video look more proffessioal so this is yet anouther flaw to my film.

anouther thing that didnt go quite to plan was trying to find the images of martin luther king and the archive footage in a good HQ quality, i purchased a dvd from the interent but after several attemepts to try and get the dvd footage onto my mac with no success i gave up and used footage downloaded from the internet. maybe there is certain software to convert dvd's to .MOV format???

apart from these i am happy with the outcome of my video and feel i have achieved a film that fits with the time era, and also a short film which i think is interesting to watch (hopefully!) although i have less blog and sketchbook work which isnt good, ive been finding it harder to time manage with this project as its going out and filming, then if its not right refilming and all my attention is on the film and not on blogger, also im not sure what you can really put in  a sketchbook on film making. maybe screenshots of the building proccess but i can learn from this in future and show a step by step guide to my final outcome. 

overall i found this a really fun project and one were ive learnt the most. 

kinetic type





these are some screen shots from my video. the kinetic text was done in motion which i have learnt quite abit about as iv have been experimenting quite a lot with effects. although with my text i wanted to keep it nice and simple so i used basic effects which stand out. i have used singular words on their own and with these i have kept the same effect on all of them so they link through within the video. 
ive kept the black and white theme of my film, becasuse of the era, colour was available but it was so expensive people just wouldnt of used it. i feel my kinetic type has worked well, although i think it would of been helpful to see other peoples kinetic type, because youtube and other sites only show high quality and high end styles which people have been doing for years, apart from that im happy with mine!

Pitch





these are all some screen shots from my pitch, whilst giving my pitch i was talking about my ideas to use kinetic type to produce martin luther kings face, unfortunately whilst trying to do this i couldnt open motion and couldnt work on the idea for several days, for this reason i have kept his face but the text does not build to make up his face.

this was going to be an idea for the whole video and have the whole video as kinetic type. i have a few seconds of this working but not enough to be able to finish in time and get an idea of how the video would of worked. i have my other video i had produced and i have edited this to have kinetic text and also the final image on martin luther king. 

i was trying to burn a dvd i bought onto my computer so i could use a good HQ video of footage from him speech, unforunately after numourous youtube tutorials i wasnt able to do this because the disc was copyrightd!



Music

Researching the musci for my video took a long time i needed to find music that fit the fear/need/desperation of the times martin luther king was in. 

i looked on youtube to find music that had been produced without words and was just backing/ orchestra music. 

i found these songs to be the most interesting 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLPJc71Osvk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuAGGZNfUkU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquWvQMMNKE

in the end i went for the mount legend track from the world war 2 soundtrack.