Storyboard + Scene Description

I have uploaded my storyboards of my programme. These are initial ideas for the project and my part of the animation. I am the first to admit that my skills do not lie in drawing therefore I have to admit the drawings are very low detail. I have also supplied the actual paper files in the submission so that it is easier to read the text.

Golf Animation

After deciding to change our idea for our animation, we now needed to decide what small animations we were going to create. We held a group meeting to come up with what we were going to focus on.

We all thought about some possible events and activities we were interested in animating. We knew we weren't going to be able to do all of the animations so we decided to pick the one that we really fancied working on. We also needed to consider what transitions we were going to create to allow the animation flow between scenes.

I decided that I was going to created a golfing animation to promote the range of golf courses across Essex. There is a wide range of golf courses across Essex so I felt it would be better to just promote them all and try and gain some interest in the local sport.

New Project Idea

This is a post from our group blog that outlines our new idea for our project. The blog post was made by Tom and you can view this plus the rest of the group posts on our group blog (http://3dvisitessex.blogspot.com/)

[ Tom ] - Group Meeting Animation Discussion

Friday 22/10/10 - 10:30-12

Today we had another group meeting. As it had been a week or so since our last meeting, we went over our idea again and decided to stick with the transition between 4+ areas of Essex idea.

As of today, the 4 main attractions of Essex that we want to animate are the: air show, beer festival, golf course and lawn mower race.

We also decided on what type of visual style of animation we would be doing. We want to do a realistic style mixed with a little bit of a cartoony style. Like in the Pixar films where the humans have a distinct cartoon style, yet seemingly blend in with the realistic background style.

The intention is to each take 1 of the 4 areas of Essex and do a 15-20 second animation of them. We would then create an inroduction and ending to the animation together and stick them all together. We were a little concerned that the animation would not be long enough, so we deicded that if we have the time we would include a fifth of sixth area of Essex in the animation, if need be.

Finally, perhaps the most significant part if the meeting, we came up with the idea of incorporating Flash into the animation. In other words, instead of creating a continous 2 minute animation, we would make an interactive Flash animation. So for example, we could use the map of Essex that Dan created and then place our 4 landmarks on it. The user would then be able to click on a landmark and watch the short animation while having the option to read up on some facts. This way, the user would have more control over what areas of Essex they wish to learn more about instead of having to sit though an entire animation.

If time allows us, we will submit both the 2 minute animation and the interactive Flash animation.

Change of Project Direction

After speaking to Jo and seeing other groups presenting their initial ideas, we realised that the idea we thought about doing was going to be very similar to everyone elses.

With this in mind, we decided to change the idea for our animation. We went back to an original idea that we had thought about, which would be a series of short animations that all linked into each other with a transition. We had originally considered this idea but then went forward with the Essex map idea.

As we wanted to be different we decided to go back to this idea and develop it to make it better and more detailed.

[ Mike ] - Group Meeting To Discuss Final Idea And Presentation

Today a group meeting was held to a) decide on our final idea and b) discuss and produce some presentation ideas for the lecture on Friday. All of us were still not too happy about the idea of making our project about Colchester Castle so we put our heads together and thought about what we all wanted to model. We considered a few different ideas but it seemed that there was no 1 place/thing that we wanted to focus all our ideas on.

This led us to our idea because we were unable to think of 1 idea to do, we decided to do multiple ideas in 1 and look at a few different activities in Essex. This could be a lot of work because we will have to look at a lot of different places whereas most groups will only be focussing on 1.

Our plan is to do a walk-around of Essex and a range of activities that it includes. We have looked at images of Essex as a whole and picked out a few places that form a kind of circle and would all be appealing to people to visit whilst in Essex. We aim to complete all the places we have suggested however with time restrictions this may need to be cut down.

This will include looking at:

Chelmsford Beer Festival

Colchester Castle

Hatfield Forest

Clacton

Southend Air Show

We also want to include some activities that can be done in Essex such as:

Walking

Cycling

Windsurfing

Jetskiing

Horse Riding

Golfing

We are going to present our idea on Friday to Jo and the rest of the groups. Any feedback that we gain will be used to improve our project.

[ Mike ] - Week 2 - Discussing Ideas With Jo Bowman

Today we had our 2nd lecture of the year for Virtual Environments. After having the presentation from Elli on Wednesday, we had met up as a group for a brief review of what we picked up from the talk. This allowed us to discuss a few possible ideas, which we then put forward to our lecturer Jo Bowman. Our only concern was whether we would lose out by focussing on a broader subject rather than focussing in on 1 building or 1 activity. Jo re-iterated that the project was quite broad and that we were able to interpret the brief how we liked as long as the end product was what was desired of the project.

We had come to the conclusion that our best idea was going to be Colchester Castle. We thought about doing a "Castle through the ages" theme where we look at the history timeline of the building and its inhabitants. We all felt that this was a good idea but at the same time voiced concerns over a) the possible lack of excitement and enjoyment of the final video and b) the fact that a lot of people may chose to do a castle as its quite an obvious project.

We put this idea forward to Jo and she liked the idea of it but as a group we decided we would continue to think of ideas and have a final decision by the next lecture.

Jo informed us that the next part of the project would be to make a small presentation to her and the rest of the groups in the next lecture about our ideas for the project. We decided to meet up on Tuesday 5th October to discuss this presentation.

[ Mike ] - Meeting With Elli Constantatou

Today we had a presentation from Elli Constantatou who as the PR Manager of Tourism at Essex County Council would be taking a very keen interest in this project and in the end would be the person who decides what groups will have their work published on her website. She went over the project and the kind of videos that were expected of the groups. We were given a sheet of paper that gave us some information about different events that went on in Essex that most of us were unaware about. She also gave us some facts and figures about Essex that surprised us as a group.

This got us thinking about the different kind of things in Essex that we could focus on. We came up with a few ideas but were unsure, which one would be best at enticing people to visit Essex. We were told by Elli that we could use the brief to get the main idea for the project but could interpret it to whatever extent we wanted. We were contemplating whether to look at a particular event in Essex, a town/city, an activity or a landmark.

The first ideas we came up were:

Event - Chelmsford V Festival

Place - Maldon Promenade

Landmark - Colchester Castle

We had come up with these 3 ideas after hearing what Elli had to say about the project. Our plan was to go away and meet up a week later and have a final idea sorted after discussing it with Jo Bowman on Friday in our lecture.