Welcome to the D.A.R.W.I.N and Beagle Blog

Here's the link to the new up and running D.A.R.W.I.N. And Beagle Blog.
This is where the majority of new posts will be up as this e learning resource scrooges on all my free time.

Enjoy

a link to a website i designedd

http://mylittlescrapbook.zxq.net/dwassignment/index.html

Showreel

Eoin O Sullivans Showreel

Creative Process Review

The creative process was incredibly enjoyable to me. This is probably due in large part to the fantastical and fictional elements in the material i chose to create. I took great pleasure in pushing my writing ability. I was in a lot of ways taking steps out of my comfort zone. In a sense the writing style I have been cultivating of late has been highly critical and satirical due to the fact I’ve been writing largely for my stand up and a black comedy radio play. This project however is the polar opposite of such an approach. I forced myself to write in a more upbeat optimistic and positive voice which at times I found awkward. This caused me to try and redevelop my vocabulary and find and use words that i generally wouldn’t use to help contribute to this awkward style. And to do so they seemed like natural choices when in the truth is without my handy thesaurus I would in actual fact have let the narrative drift astray and into a tone that didn’t suit it.  

I suppose the earliest difficulty I encountered was letting go of my cu chullainn idea, this was not a new idea like my D.A.R.W.I.N. and Beagle game and has long been a pet project of mine morphing from an animated short pitched in 2^nd year of animation to a web comic ditched in 4^th year due to time restrictions to the form of a computer game pitched for the original peer review process. The background of the project was probably quite clear in the story format in submitted as i had decided to focus in on a key scene and elaborate upon, leaving all of the reviews to assume it was a short story and not a computer game I was pitching. A lot of my apprehensions in leaving this project behind comes from the longer time it’s been swirling around in my head and the vested interest that creates, also i had several early blows to my D.A.R.W.I.N. project and at that point hadn’t worked out who the characters were well enough to have formed as strong a connection to them.

The biggest and most disheartening set back in the whole creative came from five words “have you heard of Spore,” this came from a conversation with the group an evening just prior to first peer review. After a quick synopsis from the group I frantically looked it up and there it was, I fantastic entertaining computer game with evolution at its core. I was gutted, in its form at the time my concept was a very distant second place. How I had missed this product dumbfounded me, i felt like a cartographer who was convinced that the world was flat and had just seen Magellan or Columbus sail triumphantly back into port. The proximity of this discovery to the peer review and the early stage of the D.A.R.W.I.N. project probably explain why i had such hesitations leaving Cu chullain behind.

In retrospect though this discovery has been by far the most beneficial thing to happen to my project, it caused me to move away from the technical mind frame I was approaching it from and try and concentrate on who the main characters are. This feeling and awareness of of being outclassed in the original goal of the project was the grain of sand that help form the new pearl, the new more personal connection to my project.  

I’m relatively happy with the way I’ve broken up the workload to my project, however in what is becoming an apparent aspect of my work across the board I found it hard not to move away from visual elements to my work, maybe after all this time handing up story boards and being assessed on visual content it’s hard to leave that frame of mind behind, particularly as that is the medium I feel more comfortable expressing myself in. A lot of time was wasted on unnecessary visual factors; however that is not entirely true seeing D.A.R.W.I.N. and Beagle pictorially in front of me helped me to understand them, get under their skin and see through their eyes.

Marketing

In the description of these blogs assignments it’s asserted that, “since the beginning of this module[I’ve] come up with an idea,[ I’ve] written text for it, modified based on feedback from various sources, done research on topic around it, and figured out how to market it”. The truth of the matter is that’s not true, its 80% true, it was going so well all the way up to the marketing section. I haven’t really taught about how to market it at all, well that is up until just after that was published on the digital media blogs. In fact I’m slightly at a loss when it comes to developing a marketing plan. I will hopefully have a better understanding of marketing in semester two when we start into our e business module, (god I hope so).

We’ve been given a good grounding in distribution from Web 2.0 and the freed up distribution allowed by it and I know we’re allowed to dream big and imagine we’ve an unlimited budget and that should be liberating but in truth that seemed more daunting. So I will try to ground my marketing plan based on what I know. Unfortunately, however because my end product will be for children and young children at that there will be a need to in a way insulate them and protect them from the well publicised dangers of this level of interaction. First thing I would develop the drupal site I created as a hub,

http://eoinosullivan.zxq.net/drupal-6.14/,

I like drupal as a platform because it allows you to set up forums and blogs and polls and this allows for a high degree of interaction, which I would aim towards parents and primary school teachers. This would create I hope a strong sense of involvement for the parents and teachers in the shaping of the program and what inclusions are made to newer releases. This use of web 2.0 technologies and the ability for parents and teachers to work together in shaping this e learning tool will define it as unique in the market place. I do not mind taking part in a more communal creative process and I feel building on this sense of ownership on the product on the end users and nurturing this sense is what will hopefully give my product longevity.

Margaret explains natural selection to D.A.R.W.I.N

D.A.R.W.I.N. gears slowly groaned into gear as the light peeped through the window and ran across his solar panels. Slowly his systems started to activate, first his optics slowly blinked in to action and the he vocal unit gave a little yawn. Propping himself up on his little wooden bed he stretched and creaked his little hydraulics.  

Just then Margaret appeared around the corner of the door frame, “oh looks who’s decided to join the land of the living, up and at them lazy bolts meet me down in the garden! You should be excited, today I’m going to show you how natural selection works” The Little android gave a soft little grunt and pulled the duvet over his head. His little processor inside his head could figure out how anyone could be so full of energy in the morning, didn’t it take awhile for her solar batteries to charge? 

D.A.R.W.I.N. shuffled sleepily into the garden, he wasn’t sure if his optics were still a little hazy from his morning start up or if it was actually happening but he could have sworn he saw a rose bush further up in the step to the left. 

“Well about time little mister, come on over and hop in,” know D.A.R.W.I.N. knew he must still be in hibernation mode, the bush just talked to him! Zzzched, a zip opened down along down the side of the bush and Margaret popped her bright blue candy floss hair emerging first. The young robot let out a laugh at the unusual sight. “Well come on, hurry up and get in you can’t go bird watching looking like that,” called Margaret waving the android over.  

The two of the shuffled into position flanked by real plants and shrubs on either side, they were invisible. In front of them they saw a group of kilawath bugs some a deep jade green and some crimson red busstled around. Perched up high in a tree a Juu juu bird licked its lips hungrily eyeing the bugs.  

“Do you see the different colours of the kilawath bugs D.A.R.W.I.N.? Thats called a variation in traits” Margaret whispered.  “Because every environment only has so much food, every different type of creature to keep growing and growing in number because otherwise we’d have a lot of leafless plants and very hungry little kilawath bugs,” Margaret explained “see that juu juu bird up there she acts like a kind of control on their numbers.”  

D.A.R.W.I.N tilted up his head very slowly and looked at the juu juu bird up in the tree. With one stretch of its wings it swooped down and began to happily munch away at the buzz of kilawath bugs. The little android noticed something interesting though, the juu juu bird seemed eating a lot more of the red insects then the green ones.       

“See that, more of the green kilawaths are getting away they’re better camouflaged then the red ones, thats natural selection, do you see? Now because those little guys have genes that make them green when they have baby kilawaths they’ll be green as well, thats called heredity,” enlightened Margaret. “This is known as heredity. If this continues the green trait because it’s the most successful for the tiny bugs after a good long time all the kilawaths will be green.”

“So” supposed the miniature machine his processor firing away quickly, “if you’ve got variation, different levels of different types of babies being born and heredity, that means you’ll have evolution through natural selection?”

“Exactly” exclaimed Margaret loudly, happy with the little android. So loudly in fact the juu juu bird flew away quite startled, much to the relief of the red kilawath bugs.    

Game Visual style

My original idea for a computer game has been diluted somewhat to now being a interactive website or possibly dvd. The main environments outside of the timo- dome will be visualised primarily as long background images. The user will be able to navigate the environments (scroll through the picture) using arrows on either side of the screen. To give the impression of immersion within the environment the background will be on a continuous loop. The extreme right of the picture will blend into the extreme left of the picture and therefore give the impression that it is a point of view set in a fixed position, with the viewer rotating to see more. The backgrounds will be broken up into elements depending on the depth from the viewer, with element further back scrolling slower to give the illusion of partial 3d.
They will be drawn by hand and painted in oil colours, oil colours being chosen because they’re forgiving to the painter and out of personal preference and familiarity with the medium. They style will be quite constrained and photo realistic however as the backgrounds should not be too distracting. In terms of colour saturation and handling will be similar to Disney’s “second golden age” in particular the colour range from Belles cottage in Beauty and the Beast.

I would also try to draw influence from the works of Hergé and Jimmy Corrigan who have what Scott Mc Cloud describe as a “democracy of colour”. I also am a fan of Winsor Mckays dream like work although less saturated and perhaps slightly too menacing for a children’s computer game it share the neutrality between the colours with no one colour being over bearing or dominant over the others. The backgrounds will be in forced perspective and panoramic. The style of these pictures will be highly detailed to help the user feel a visceral sense of other worldliness.