The last couple of weeks - James Howard-White

The last couple of weeks of our assignment we all seemed to really pull together as a team. When I last blogged I had finished a few musical ditties for the congratulations segment of our quiz. It was Wednesday the 3rd of November and Callum, Tony and myself were working to a self-imposed deadline of Friday the 5th to have the congratulations segments completed so that James Medd would have the weekend to incorporate them into the patch before visiting the museum on the Monday.

Late Wednesday night I received a text saying that the requirements had changed, the musical ditties I had made previously needed to be six seconds long along with a projector sound, a projector burn sound and a congratulations voice-over. Not only that but that he needed it as soon as possible on Thursday, to which I replied that I would have it ready for him by 2pm that day. Thankfully some of the original tunes could be edited to the new specifications but some had to be remade. A projector was put together by recording a fan heater which was effected and filtered to create a low rumble and a regular fan with cardboard stuck in which was also effected and filtered to create the high click effect.

Once it had been completed I had the audio ready on time and arrived at university to find Tony had postponed his voice syncing my dialogue to the Vendor animations (also needed by Friday) in order to help Callum as they had decided to really go all out on the Congratulations videos. Callum was busy putting together the videos and Tony was painstaking animating a highly detailed drawing of a large wicker basket that Callum had previously drawn onto the computer. Having added the audio to some of the videos Callum and Tony had decided that the Amber charm video needed a little extra and included an owl. So I spent a few minutes creating a improvised owl sound using a mac laptop mic and Audacity. After I had left a received a text later saying the urgently needed a snake sound, which (after a few experiments) I managed to email back to them after about 10 minutes. Thankfully we had it all finished by the self-imposed deadline.

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After our first museum meeting we all met up during the week to iron out the creases with the patch. Our main issue was that we didn't have the processing power to incorporate everything we had created. James Medd had experimented in news ways to streamline the patch so we had some scope and spent the afternoon discussing what should be included and omitted and some last minute tweeks. This involved regular rounds of tea, ideas being batted around and James working frantically on his laptop. After about 5 or so hours we finally had (barring a later discovered typo or 2) a completed patch.

To conclude, I'm delighted at the way in which we worked together the create our exhibit. We all seemed to work to each other's strengths, met up together regularly and imposed and kept to our own deadlines. I find the sheer volume of the video work done by Callum and Tony quite staggering as well as the fact that they managed to maintain a high quality. I'm sure I'd also feel the same about James Medd's interface work if I can ever figure out how he managed to do it.     

Project Overview and Evaluation - Callum Ward

The extremely collaborative atmosphere in which this project has been undertaken has been present ever since James Medd, James Howard-White, Tony Ball and myself first convened to discuss our ideas and objectives for the coming weeks. 

After viewing the interactive exhibits already on display at the Rotunda Museum we had a basis for development and we outlined what we believed to be the most important concepts to bear in mind whilst designing the exhibit; these were that it be clear, concise and engaging to users across our target age group of fourteen to twenty-four year olds.

With these things in mind we explored many possible routes for development before deciding upon the apothecary scenario. We felt this idea was a suitable platform for displaying the information about the charms in a readily accessible fashion whilst also offering ourselves a large area for experimentation with interactive elements and the audio/visual experience.

We sketched out our respective ideas for the visual layout of the program and discussed what environmental sounds would be required and as soon as we had come to an agreement we started work.

All the animation that appears in the final exhibit has been created using the same production technique; I designed and illustrated the graphics freehand before they were scanned in and coloured digitally by Tony. We have worked together closely and Tony has several times asked me change aspects of a design or create supplementary elements to incorporate into it, similarly I have often discussed changing colour options, styles and other factors with him. 

Both James M. and James H-W. have also been on hand throughout the graphic design process to offer their thoughts and opinions on its direction. 

Tony and I were in constant dialogue with James H-W. who was responsible for audio production as we needed to keep him informed of any design elements that would necessitate the use of foley sounds such as the opening of a chest, rain on the windows or bubbling liquids on display in the apothecary. 

James Medd, who has been responsible for the design of the MaxMSP interface, was also frequently in touch with Tony and I ensuring images were the correct resolution and letting us know which items needed to be created as separate sprite objects as opposed to static elements fixed in the backdrop so he could incorporate them into his programming.

In addition to feedback from within the group itself, we also reacted to feedback from Rob Mackay and Mark Hildred as well as from staff at the Rotunda Museum with whom we met several times throughout the production process to discuss conceptual progress, factual content, graphic design and interactivity within the program.

I wrote the information segments about the charms which appear in the exhibit. After initially writing these information sections and meeting with museum staff they expressed concern that they may be too difficult to understand for people who wish to view the exhibit but who fall below the fourteen to twenty-four year old target age group. I subsequently rewrote the information sections omitting any vocabulary which may have been confusing and separating the content into smaller statements which can be scrolled through by the user at will.

James H-W. and I researched the charms and thought out potential questions for the quiz before I worded them and provided them to James Medd for inclusion in the program. We had two options for how the quiz should operate; trial and error or sudden death.

The trial and error option gives the user as many attempts as they need to answer each question therefore the user always ends up winning. Sudden death would allow the user only one attempt at each question and subsequently if the user answers incorrectly they would not be shown the congratulatory video. We decided on the trial and error option for a number of reasons but two reasons in particular stood out; firstly the museum staff had already made clear the need for the exhibit to be appeal to users below our primary target age range and as a group we felt that the trial and error option was more child friendly, always offering a reward for persevering with the quiz. Secondly, our exhibit is competing for the attention of museum visitors against larger exhibits that the museum places more focus on. Failing one section of the quiz could be all the incentive someone needs to abandon our display, referring back to one of the key objectives we outlined at the start of the project, keeping the user ‘engaged’ is paramount therefore we didn’t want to risk giving the user this incentive to leave.

The quiz questions are separated into categories about each individual charm and as well as writing the questions themselves I was responsible for the creation of the congratulatory videos which play upon the user’s successful navigation of each category. I used Adobe After Effects to create the videos and Adobe Photoshop to create some of the elements used within them (for example the scratches that flicker frame by frame). I asked James H-W. to create several separate sound files such as the projector starting, the projector running, the film burning, appropriate music for each scenario, the character saying congratulations and a few foley sounds specific to each environment and requested that some of these sounds were of a specific duration. I then arranged these sounds alongside the video content. The illustrations used in the videos were created using the same animation technique as the rest of the program with Tony digitally colouring the illustrations  I designed for the videos and providing me with them as soon as they were complete so I could incorporate them.

James Medd asked Tony and I to then create MaxMSP patches which would play our sections of video (Tony having created videos of the apothecary character that were lip-synched to match James H-W.’s audio files) upon receiving a bang from his main patch. As we had planned for Tony’s video of the apothecary character to play continuously on the main screen and for my videos to only appear when the user was playing the quiz, after completing my MaxMSP patch I passed this on to Tony so he could incorporate it into his own. After trying this new section of patching with James Medd’s main interface we found it didn’t run as efficiently as we might have hoped.

We got together as a group to discuss our options for improving the efficiency of the patch and how best to work with the hardware that the museum was providing. We found that it wouldn’t be possible to utilise all the ideas which we had generated and so decided upon the substitution of the lip-synched video Tony had created for a still image and the alteration of the MaxMSP patches Tony and I had produced, previously based around the ‘movie’ object, to now be based around ‘jitter’ objects making more efficient use of the computer’s CPU. The decision to omit the lip-synched video as opposed to the congratulatory videos was taken as we felt that the lip-synched video wasn’t integral to the overall experience of the exhibit. The congratulatory videos offer a reward to the user upon completion of each section of the quiz and an incentive to complete the other categories. The lip-synched video, whilst impressive and certainly more desirable than a still image, has far less a significant impact on the user’s experience. With this decided upon, Tony made the necessary alterations to the video patch and after James Medd had incorporated all the proposed changes to the program its functionality was greatly improved. 

On Monday the 15th of November we presented the fully operational exhibit to staff at the Rotunda Museum.

If we’d had more time to work on the project I would have liked to expand the content of the exhibit to feature a greater range of charms. I would also have liked to experiment with a broader range of challenges and games for the user to experiment with as well as a greater range of multimedia content. I would also have liked to create quiz sections of varying difficulty designed to appeal to different age groups allowing us the freedom of using the ‘sudden death’ quiz format as well as ‘trial and error’ allowing us to cater more specifically to different users. Whilst the time scale of this project played a part in our not being able to implement some of these ideas, the hardware we had to work with also impinged on what we were able to achieve. If we were to design another exhibit, I would prefer to use more powerful hardware capable of supporting a great deal more multimedia content. If given more time and the benefit of such hardware I would link many more objects in the apothecary environment to audio and video content that we couldn’t have justified including with the current set up.

That said, I feel we worked well as a team to draw as much as possible from the available resources, we kept ourselves well informed of each other’s progress and activity and we have consequently been able to offer each other advice on all aspects of production from start to finish. I feel extremely pleased with what we have achieved in the time frame and now the project is completed I would like to thank James Medd, James Howard-White and Tony Ball for all their hard work on the project and thank the Rotunda Museum for the opportunity to have our work displayed. 

Animating Chemist Brown - Tony Ball

After processing our Vendor through Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator I exported a series of 30 Images, each displaying a unique expression from our Vendor. By this stage of the project, work had really mounted as we aimed to have our patch completed by Monday 1st November. After a short discussion, Callum and I decided we would push to achieve the congratulatory videos we desired rather than settling for the next best thing. This took 24 hours of solid work leaving me with but a couple days to get the Vendor Lip synced and exported ready for the large display.

Due to the organisation and preparation of the audio created by James Howard-White I was able to get started as soon as my task to aid Callum with the congratulatory videos was complete. I imported the audio file created by James into Final Cut Express and then dropped it into the time-line. By slowly scrolling over the audio file I was able to place appropriate expressions that best suit the syllable sound. Preparation on my own part ensured that I had very little trouble when applying the images to the time-line.

 Here are the final drafts of the lip synced Vendor ready to be placed within the patch.


Chemist Brown's Introduction


Chemist Brown's Introduction To The Quiz

Large Display - Tony Ball

Videos - Callum Ward

Here are the five videos I created for the exhibit.

The Skin of an Eel

The Amber Heart

The Bleeding Tooth Shell

The Mother of Pearl Fish

The Red Coral

Finishing The Installation - James Medd

Planning For Completion

As a group, we spent most of Thursday sitting down with all the final elements of our installation to take a look at our options and complete the piece. Having encountered a few small issues surrounding the integration of large amounts of animation and activity on the larger screen - slowdowns and lockups due to a high amount of required processing - our video and graphics duo had spent a couple of days refining and optimising the way in which the big screen elements worked, as well as coming up with potential contingency plans.

Final Experiments And Decisions

Upon experimenting with using our interactive screen patch with the optimised video patch, we were very close to having them both work together as we wanted. Unfortunately however, we were just not quite close enough. We believed that, for the sake of what we outlined in our early plans and presentations i.e. an interactive installation that operates in a slick and functional manner, dialling back the additional features for a balance between something very 'pretty' and ornate and something smooth and functional was a necessary compromise.

Our Reflection

The fact is that we are all, as a group, very happy with our final piece. We feel we have met all of our aims outlined at the beginning of the project and created something that the museum staff are happy to display. Any of the features we are missing out, whilst being extremely nice, do not in any way hinder the overall piece and in a way show that our piece has had clarity and functionality right from its core, rather than from any additional elements we could have thrown on top.

As a brief side note, I'd like to write something about our blog posts in general. I have seen in comments recently that the overseers of this project would have perhaps liked to see a few more, shorter posts about each step of development. As part of a general reflection on the process, I'd say that I'd have liked this to be the case also, however in the short time frame that we have had, I think most of the group honestly have been far more wrapped up in working on the piece and co-ordinating with other group members to stop after every small stage of development and post an update. This is especially true of the multiple times during the project that things were changed not long after being implemented, which may have lead to confusion about the actual content of the project. I believe that on a longer term project, regular blog posts may have been easier for us to contribute, I only hope that the final product itself is enough to prove how consistently and regularly hard we have all worked as a group on this project.

Graphics - Tony Ball

Throughout the project so far I've rarely had the opportunity to close down Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. As you can see from interface videos posted by James Medd and Congratulatory Videos compiled by Callum, work is always progressing. As there are a few aspects to our Interface I'd like to address I'll separate this post into smaller subsections, beginning with:

The Main Interface Screen

Previous posts ("Some Of Our Progress So Far/Second Pitch") explain in a broader sense to how all the pages are created. Here I shall explain how I refined my technique to fit our brief. Initially Callum would hand me a fully drafted drawing of the page/room. From scanning these images into my computer I trace over them as accurately as possible in Adobe Illustrator to give myself a plain outline of the room. These outlines provide my images with the cartoon-like appearance which helps me reinforce my aim to create clear and simple-to-understand illustration I discussed in my brief.

After tracing the images I import my new black outlines into Photoshop ready for painting. I colour the image by applying block colours to highlighted sections and applying gradient by using the burn and dodge tool. When looking at screens close up to add texture I'll experiment with some filter effects.


The main interface screen, fully rendered.


Me applying effects to create a wood-like appearance

To create the glowing buttons I singled out the objects James planned to use on the main screen making everything else invisible and applied an outer glow within the blending options. I exported this on the full 1280x1024 resolution meaning James can just lay the image above the original image of the room and adjust the alpha channel creating the glow.



You may notice on the main interface image that I've left the window panes transparent. This will most likely appear black or white when embedded on the blog as it may not support transparencies of PNG files. By keeping the panes transparent this allowed me to create a 360x240 pixel video of rain that I created in Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Express. How I created this was a mixture of "Fibers" and "Motion Blur" filters upon a black layer within Photoshop. By adjusting the position of the 'Rain' layer I could create the illusion of movement. I exported a series of 6 images that I could import into Final Cut Express and animate into a second long loopable video.

I used the same effect at a larger scale when creating the rain for the shop front introduction screen.


360x240 Rain Loop

Screen Shot Of Video Patch For Large Display - Tony Ball

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f289/tony_ball/Picture1-1.png

At the above link is a screen shot of the new patchwork for the large display following Monday's (08/11/2010) presentation. I know the resolution set on the jit objects are incorrect but for the purpose of me being able to test it's functionality on my own screen I've set it as 1280x720.

This patchwork is much more simplified in comparison to the one presented on Monday and is flawless when tested on my own television. I Haven't yet integrated it into the main interface patchwork of James' so if it still causes major issues or not is still undiscovered.

The only issue I have with this patch is the use of delay objects to stop the video from looping. I've noticed from past experience that the delay object can be quite temperamental and sometimes doesn't work. There's also an issue of when I start one video halfway through another and the bang from the first video stops the second halfway through.

I'm working on a solution for the latter problem which I'm sure I'll find one but if there is a way of stopping jitter looping without the use of a delay object that would be great.

Finalising the Video & Graphics - Callum Ward

Tony and I have now finished creating the graphics and video for the installation.

Using the same technique previously demonstrated I designed the required animations freehand and gave them to Tony to be digitally coloured. I then started work on creating the congratulatory videos using Adobe's After Effects software.

As a group we decided on making the videos appear as if they were being shown via a projector; the first action I took was to create this effect.

I asked Tony to create a black frame in photoshop and placed this on the top layer of every video. I then used a number of filters such as tint and grain and applied them to an adjustment layer which I used on all animation layers beneath the frame.
To generate the flickering effect that projectors have, the opacity of a plain grey layer oscillates on a timer. This effect had to be lessened on the darker videos as the effect was amplified by the contrast between the dark and light layers and it became overbearing.

To complete the feel and texture of projected film I used Adobe Photoshop to create stylised black scratches on a transparent background and had them appear at just one frame at a time in random patterns and combinations.

Once the projector effect had been created I imported the images for each video and sequenced the automation. I then imported the audio files that James H-W provided me with and arranged them within the video, I asked him to create several separate sounds, a projector turning on, the projector running, the projector turning off and film burning, music for each scenario, and a few foley sounds such as an owl hooting and a snake hissing. Once I had arranged the audio to match the images I rendered the videos to the appropriate resolution.

The initial quality of the videos was extremely high so I asked to Tony to import them into Final Cut and render them to the same quality as all the videos that he had already created using that software.

I will be posting the videos on this blog once they have been uploaded onto YouTube.

Once the videos were completed, James Medd asked me to create a simple MaxMSP patch that would play the videos on the large display screen upon receiving a bang from the main patch. I used the ‘movie’ object as the basis of this patch.

After testing the whole MaxMSP program with all the video Tony and I have created we have discovered that we need to make some decisions on which media we are to include in the final patch. As a group we will be investigating all our potential options over the next few days.

Audio Updates (James H-W)

Been a lot of work over the last couple of weeks or so that I need to catch everyone up on. Firstly having armed myself with a wealth of foley sounds, work has been completed on the environmental audio. The environment is mainly comprise of sounds recording of the hustle and bustle of Scarborough town centre which has been edited so that easily audible passing conversations don't appear. These are then mixed in with recordings of wind and rain which are mixed and EQ'd differently depending on whether the user is outside of the shop (at the beginning) or inside. Inside the store the bubbling elixir experiment is separate to the rest of the background audio and is a mono recording which helps with placement and also helps by looping at a different time to the rest of the audio. Other spot sounds such as thunder and horses have also been created to be triggered separately. Other environments have also been recorded for the origins of each charm. These sounds are mostly made up by foley sounds and some studio magic, but the mother of pearl fishes eastern market environment has had some BBC sounds blended in one comprising of foreign spoken busy streets and a highly edited environment which included an eastern instrument playing in the background where busy road traffic had to be edited out. This was done mainly due to a shortage a busy foreign streets and eastern instruments in the Scarborough area.

Perhaps the largest body of audio work undertaken for the assignment has been the voice over work. The main idea was to go completely over the top with the amount of dialogue recorded often creating multiple takes of the same sentences as seemed better to have too much and scale back than to have too little and keep having to return to the studio. The voice (if I say so myself) seems to work very well but I'm not a trained vocal actor and the recording process was quite painstaking as the longer sentences often needed multiple attempts and a lots of time spent editing out mistakes. After long periods of editing regular sanity checks had to be made as the constant sound of my recorded voice playing over and over in my head was rather maddening and wouldn't stop being mentally replayed during tea breaks. The dialogue itself was a mix of pre-written ideas and some some improvisation, the quality of the audio has been produced to give his recorded voice an aged quality.

Most of last night was spent creating winning musical phrases which are to be played when the user wins a charm which Callum Ward would then use to create congratulations videos. The requirements being that they each had to be about 5 seconds long, reflect the environment in which the charms are found as well as reflecting the fact that the user had won a prize and we all decided that it would be good if the phrases were 'rubbish in a good way'. Having completed the work late last night I hope that I've found a good balance and that there's not too much 'rubbish' and not enough 'good way'.

Time was also spent creating some icing on the cake sound effects mainly feedback ideas we had been given during Mondays lecture which they'd like to see incorporated into our design. These were deemed to be luxury items to be added if we had time once the essentials had been completed. This consisted of little things like a chest opening sound and a dragon growl to go off when someone pressed on the dragon on our map. I actually brought in an out of work session dragon to be recorded, you can imagine the health and safety issues that were involved, hours of paperwork.