Dairy of an avatar - Part 2

After exploring what seems like an endless virtual world, i finally got a job dancing at a 'popular' virtual bar. This job paid me 6 linden every 20 minutes and after i was about ready to do my first real shopping trip.
Many of the shops dotted around offer premium clothes/skins/hairstyles ext ext ext. One i found even offered the chance to give me a real looking genitals. Fantastic.
Then i found something which really intrigued me. A shop selling vehicles.



Well the above car costs about 500 linden. Looks like iv got much more dancing to do.

3D Holographic Projection - The future of motion picture

Today i was thinking about the thing that intrigued me the most about the multimedia course. I have to say, my best memory of open day is Simon showing us the 3D projector.

Looking through you tube i found a few clips that demonstrate the technology and its possible advances. The first is a Virgin Media showcase, in which Richard Branson gets 'downloaded' right onto the stage. Check it out below:



Then I came across this catwalk show featuring kate moss' holographic twin. This really blew my mind (even though my opinion on kate moss isn't exactly positive) and seemed somewhat beautiful.



Imagine the possibilities of this within commercial use.. far distance communication will never be the same again, not only will people be able to talk to each other from around the world, but actually see a 3d representation on them... Meetings wont have to actually be attended, advertisement options will increase ten fold... new art will litter places without actually being there... interior space and design would be changeable at the touch of a button, I MEAN IMAGINE! As above in the kate moss video, there definitely would be an audience for a artists use of this projector... and I'm not even going to talk about what it could mean for the games industry. It would take literally days to finish this post.

Some more examples are below.

Dairy of a Avatar

Ok so i finally got the chance to fire up secondlife, make an account and attempt to rule the virtual world. AS IF.

After completing the short registration, and throwing myself into the THEpond community, i quickly realise how im going to need alot of money, patience and ego to become even the slight bit successful. After struggling to create a avatar that resembles me in any way i decided to really try a '2nd life' and i recreated my character into a girl, a much easier option (as most male avatar look quite femine anyway).


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The next half an hour was filled by bumbling around, getting to know the controls and realising that this virtual world offered everything a real one does... and more.
Apart from the obvious social interaction, scripting offers the user the chance to build anything they want... from mansions to shops, which can even sell virtual things to other users.
At first i hated the system, as i thought i would have to buy 'linden' (virtual currency) for real money. After a while a few friendly people (bearing in mind my avatar) showed me that virtual currency is obtainable through job seeking, survey taking and much more, which opens this virtual world into... well... a 'real' world.

Did i mention you can fly?

Even with all this in mind, im still not sure the average joe needs a program like this. I know that for some people social interaction is daunting, but something like this doesnt solve any problems, its surely unhealthy to spend all your time playing with your 2nd life rather than dealing with problems with your first. The question im really asking is... When does a SecondLife become a persons first????????

Anyway the program is quite fun and slightly addictive... but i cant see myself loggin on every night. In my opinion people should lead a successful real life... before concentrating on a second. I can see that some people would just use this as a social site, but with the likes of facebook.. why bother?

I think thats enough virtual living for one day... ill try and keep you updated on the happenings of my second life within the next four weeks... After then who knows, it could grow on me and completely destroy my first life, but, somehow i doubt it.

The Meeting

Here is my one shot film entitled 'The Meeting'

Changing Colours - Photoshop

My selected image to manipulate is one of my friends from back home.



I then used photoshop to change the colour of his guitar.



This is done in many different ways, the easiest has been introduced to CS3. There is a colour replacement tool within CS3 that takes all the ballache out of layering up colours and carefully cutting (or rendering) parts of the image. All that happens now is you choose your colour, click on the part of the image you want to change and the tool automatically changes it for you.

I decided to change the guitar colour as green and pink are two colours that complement each other, rather than blue and pink.

One shot film - Prep and Shoot

As a group we decided on intrepreting the title of 'The Meeting' as the awquardness of meeting new people.

The shoot will be silent so that music can be overlayed, which also gives members of the group chance to write in 'thoughts' of the characters within the film. These thoughts will hopefully show how people will try avoiding making the first move when meeting new people.

I created the following image as a plan to shooting the film.



The camera (inspired by that 70's show) will be panning to each character sat round the table. It will stop on each character for about 5 seconds so it would be possible to add the thoughts in through the edit, plus body language of each will be portrayed properly.



After we completed the shoot I realised how interesting this idea could exactly be. Each person within the film acted differently, some alot more than the others. This is perfect as each group member will interpret the body language differently, meaning there is a possibility of 6 totally different films coming out of one shoot.

After studying the footage, i began to draw up characterisics and personalities for each character, making it far easier to add thoughts into the film. Below is a sort of outline of what i came up with. I must stress that these outlines are based on the film and not what i actually think of my group members!

Imogen - Flirtious, bitchy, IT girl
Grace - Lazy, unenthuseasic (however you spell it)
Dan - Hungover!
Will - Stereotype boy (makes excuses to why the situation isnt his fault???)

The final edit of the film be up as soon as i get enough time to let youtube upload it (my pix project took 4 hours! these film is about 2-3 times longer!!!!!).

The rule of thirds

The rule of thirds is a commonly known rule relating to camera position within photography and film. As you can see from the example above, this rule uses two horizontal lines and two vertical lines to split the image into thirds. This gives a basic outline of where the focal points and horizon lines should fall.
It is my understanding that a interesting focal point will fall into one of these thirds directly, with the main components of this point falling to the left or right vertical third. The horizon line should then be shown on either the top or bottom (horizontal) third.

I took a photograph (of the one and only Luke Burton) to try and describe this rule.



The focal point (Lukes face/eyes) fit within the top right third, and the horizon fits on the bottom horizontal third.