Tiger Energy Drinks and Boost bars later, I have finally finished everything.

After a long night drinking energy drinks and eating Boost bars, a run round the block could not put me to sleep, but thankfully I have finally finished everything for my Identities project. All I have to do now is submit it which I will be doing later on today.

So here is my final, complete Identities project for all to see...

http://www.danielryland.co.uk/flash.htm

(SORRY! LONG LOADING TIMES)

Now it's time for some self-promotion! Oh Yeah!

Long time no...blog

Right, its been ages since I last publish an entry so here's the update.

Logo - Complete

Avatar - I have designed my avatar however, still need to animate and stylise -

Website - Complete (Just need to fix a few javascript problems with the lightboxes)

Interactive Box - Audio and design complete. Need to add the three final elements to complete -

Interactive Showcase - Take 3 by ~TheBigDiscoNinja on deviantART

Other Element - My Passport/ID, photo of me morph from my face to the faces of my friends/family.

A/V - New Idea - Words that describe me - translate into Welsh. Make into language learning video see example below -

Identities Update

Here are my final ideas for my identities project -

Showcase - General idea completed, just need to add the elements in.

Logo - Completed.

Avatar - Still not fully sure on final idea, but I want to complete this in the next few weeks. Probably go for the super hero idea. The concept behind this would be a good leader and knows what is right from wrong.

AV - Unsure of what to do. One idea I had was to video people saying words that describe me and my personality. These words would not be my own. I would then make it into a film review/audience reactions trailer of myself. To do this I will film people saying certain words or sentences that describe me.

The idea was a development from an entry requirement project that I had to do for Graphic Design down in UWIC, Cardiff. You had to create 3 image for 3 titles of your choice. I choose 'Your Ideal Self,' 'Yourself as a letter,' and 'Your Nightmare Self.' Here are my 3 entries -

Website - Going to use my current website but need to restyles to link with City&Wool's image and colour scheme. This would highlight my professionalism and quality as a creative practionier.

Last Element - I want to play on the idea that people around you make you who you are. I was thinking of combining stop motion with some sort of morphing program. Passport or Driver's Licence would come out of my wallet then as you would look at the photo it would morph from my face to my friends and families faces and then back to my face. Not sure what kind of music/audio I would include yet.

A Shape That Represents Me

I have chosen a Pyramid because of the followings reasons -

• Solid Foundation in friends and family (Thats who makes me who I am)
• From a Multimedia Practioner's point of few - I have lots of ideas but will develop untill I'm happy with the final idea in a perfectionist kind of way (the top of the pyramid)
• Red because it is a striking colour and a colour that won't just blend into the background. I like my work to stand out and look good and not just fade away into the background.

Moodboard - Avatar

This is a moodboard for my avatar

Moodboard - Interactive Showcase/Box

This is a moodboard for my interactive showcase/box

Identities - Ideas

Here are some images and scans of ideas for the Identities project -

Instead of designing a box, I decided to design a poster that would have different elements that were clickable. This skeleton/body idea came from Omid Djalili's website (http://www.omidnoagenda.com/)

As you would move your cursor over certain areas of the skeleton/body, the red drawings would appear. After clicking on this red writting, another image would be shown (see third image below)

This would be displayed after the red writting has been clicked on -

Identities - Logo Ideas

Here are the logo ideas for my identities project -

I have designed two different logos. One for Kitty&Wool, which is the name of my blog, and the other, City&Wool, as a mainstream design company.

How the names came about...
I wanted a blog name that was witty and cool but couldn't think of anything until I swapped the first letters around. This then became 'citty and wool.' After thinking about my blog name a little more, I saw that I could get two names from it.

The first would be 'Kitty&Wool' for my blog becuase the blog is a way of documenting ideas and the way we play with and develop our ideas. In the same way, kittens play around with wool.

For the second name, City&Wool, (Ok, maybe it does sound a little like the outcome of a random company name genarator but it isn't!) I wanted an original company/brand name. City&Wool is relevant becuase I'm studying and living in a city (Nottingham) and the wool part is relevant because its a connection of people and ideas to produce and end product/design.

Image | Heroes, String Theory

A Diary of an Avatar 04

For my last for diary entry I decided to take a break in Second Life. I found a nice comfortable seat and sat down on it, well, at least I tried to...

And then tried I tried to lie down...

But nevertheless, I also enjoyed a nice warm jacousie...

A Diary of an Avatar 03

Here is my third diary entry for my Second Life Avatar - Steel Silvercloud.

The more and more I play Second Life the more I get board with loading times for graphics and texture. When trying to look at a building you would have to wait a few minutes untill you could see it in its entirety. The viewing distance from my Avatar, at which the server rendors the objects and textures, has a too smaller radius. When flying in paticlular, I approch objects like building walls too quickly for the server to even generate a wall.

A Diary of an Avatar 02

Here's a quick update on my Second Life Avatar after a busy Christmas day... I've managed to pick up a free Santa hat and finally been able to change my hairstyle (After a long struggle in trying to remove the old one) I've also visited a few new places and found some interesting features -

Below is a screenshot of me in the Nike Store. I used their laptop to send myself a email in the real world!

Here is a screenshot of my received email form Second Life -

Here is another screenshot of me flying over the Eiffel Tower in Paris!

If found that using the build-in Screenshot button is very handy since it saves your screenshots straight to you hard drive.

A Diary of an Avatar 01

After having problems with creating an avatar on http://www.doppelganger.com/index.html I have decided to create an avatar on Second Life, which is a 3-D virtual world created by its Residents.

After spending some time trying to think of a good character name, I managed to log in to the Second Life world and start exploring. The first thing I noticed when flying/walking was how slow it takes for the textures and objects to generated. Regardless of this, the fact that your character can fly around is quiet good fun.

Below is a screenshot of the Nottingham University building in Second Life -

When there are quiet a few characters on the screen, Its very hard to find out who is saying what -

A Diary of an Avatar

Create an avatar in an online 3D environments, such as Second Life, there.com or Virtual Doppelganger and spend some time exploring the virtual environments and think about the role of identity in these virtual worlds, try and talk with the virtual residents. Keep diary of at least four weeks of your Avatar’s experiences and post it to your journal, also take screen shoot of your experiences.

• Second Life - http://secondlife.com/
• http://www.doppelganger.com/index.html
• http://www.metaversum.com/content/view/15/47/