Self Identity

During my research on self-identity one thing that stands out above all is that it is argued that self-identity is not a concept or self-image or self-esteem, rather what a being knows about itself. But self identity is defiantly close to self-image, it is known however that self-identity is influenced by other sources so can it be questioned that do any have self-identities true to ourselves or can self-identity exist without influence from another source or from oneself. In regards to this in today’s media and in the past altering or influencing a persons self-identity has been an essential part of selling to the consumer. For example modern pop-rock music conveys a heavy message of identity, wearing certain clothes and listening to certain music is a perfect way to control a large group of consumers and to make the purchase the produce companies want them to buy.


When these concepts are reflected in something like Second Life a whole new door is opened in a persons self-identity. A person can now choose what to look like, how to talk, what to own where to go in this new person that they control online. Despite this door-way for consumers to pretend like there lives mean something in an online game, this has opened a window for the stereo-types and current identities from the real world, which are still reflected in this online game. Despite this being called second life it is a business non the less, it doesn’t really offer a second life because this world reflects back too heavily on the real world. The concept of a new identity through second life however is still strong. How a person might behave in real life, such as buying a big house or the latest dress is all to show off and feel bigger and superior to the next person. The same is reflected in the online games, a person is willing to sit for days on end just to be the best at something which in the end means nothing. If a person had an identity which suffered sociably in real life then where better place than to hide yourself online.


Self identity means to me what a new pair of trousers mean to me, the only real time I consciously consider my own self-identity is when I do such things as buy clothes from a shop. This is because when I buy clothes I first consider if this reflect me as a person, going off the typical ideal of what a piece of clothing make a person look like to another random person. I always decorate my life with thing the reflect who I am, my personality and my interests. I could dress up in clothes that are more acceptable to my peers, or even purposely not acceptable. But at the end of the day I go for things that mean something to me as a person. Although it could be argued that my choice in decoration to reflect myself would appeal to what is sociably acceptable or what society identifies a piece of clothing or a poster too in my personality .


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-concept
[2] http://secondlife.com/
[3] http://www.testcolor.com/languagecolor.html
[4] http://www.bath.ac.uk/management/research/pdf/2003-17.pdf

Clerks 2

I watched Clerks 2 for the third time yesterday, its not like me to watch a movie repeatedly for fear of it loosing its edge. But in this case I can't help it, the problem is that I have fallen in love with the message that this movie gives out, its all in the climax of the movie and the ending sequence, what it tells us is that who could want a better life than what they have? Who could ask for more than working in your own shop and hanging out with your best friend for the rest of your life? And I think they are completely right about this, what I mean is that a person could take up his/her whole life in the pursuit of success and happiness when (as in the case of Clerks) what more could you ask for that the Quick Stop.

What I like about what they have done is that they have purposely made this movie very different from the first, the first was an hilarious situation comedy where they lead there lives rather than the second in which this so called "harmony" is broken. I am sure if anyone asked themselves if they had an opportunity to buy a shop with there best friend and embrace the kind mishaps that happen in daily life, who would turn it down? Simple living, you could do whatever you wanted (whilst maintaining the shop of course) and hang out with your best mate and who knows who else.

The movie achieves this message by very easily implanting story imbalances and situations (Quick Stop burns down, has feeling for another woman, hates new job, will be moving to Florida from everything he knows.) leading to the characters self realisation that he has the opportunity to have a perfect life with a rich and beautiful woman, where he wouldn’t have to worry about problems ever again. But he would be far happier with his best friend, a woman who loves him and the Quick Stop. (Which is essentially even better).

When I ask myself the same questions about what I would rather be doing with my life, well there is a much bigger force keeping me here at university, not because its expected of me, not because I think I have to got to university, not because my qualifications allow me here, not even because I have an interest in media, in fact I hate about 80% of the media and would gladly take it down if I had the power. My own personal reasons are more instinctive.

First Half Week

3rd February Sunday

This is my second day on second life, I have spent the whole session today looking around Avatar Island (the place I chose to start on,) among the things I found there were a dance floor and objects such as cars and boats to ride on. These things all seem very fun but it makes me think that I should first turn myself into a hardcore city person first, a person who has never actually been in a boat or wandered through a forest, rather sat in an office 9-5 or hanging out at a skate park all day trying to impress the girls with my low hanging trousers, but this is slightly off topic. The point I was trying to make is that despite all these amazing features nothing seems to appeal to me personally to make use of my time on here. I shall aim next time to look for further things to do and find out how to teleport to another place in second life and look at some more of the things this game has to offer.

5th February Tuesday

Ok now I have figured out one way of teleporting to another place, I used to in-game search engine, found a place, then moved there. I searched for the word ‘money’ because I figured that in order to really get the ball rolling on this game I should earn some money. I arrived at a place called Money Island, which was the first place that came up on my search. At the moment I have had a brief look around this place. I found these ATM machines that offer you free money, I looked at one and it took me to a web page. On this page it offered free money for participation in a survey of the browser’s choice. This turned out to be a gimmick like most things on this game because in order to get this money you had to give away personal details to leading companies like Apple, but in exchange for this information you get your money and are entered into a free prize draw for a product like a Mini or an iMac. So in the end this is internet advertising dressed up.

This kind of attempt at marketing didn’t settle well with me and I am still awaiting to find something useful on here, at the moment I have just left my character dancing in the main Money Island building because that gets you L$ on this game, but in order to do this I have to suffer a barrage of advertisement massages from the building, which is annoying.

6th February Wednesday

After Money Island I wandered elsewhere to a place I saw on an advertisement in Second Life that was about leather clothing. The billboard took me straight there, the first thing I did was pick up some free snowballs that could be thrown around in allowed places. The shop there was empty and wanted money for clothing. Eventually I saw a dragon on a cliff edge near it and then there was this message about a security HUD and all of a sudden I got very confused and switched off for the day, all the time in my head trying to figure out what that meant.

7th February Thursday

I still wasn’t sure what the HUD message was about but I’m pretty sure it was and advertisement for land owners and there security or something like that. Fortunately though this place was attached to what seemed to be some kind of main-land. I have spent the last 45 minuets flying around the place looking at the places I came across. Still though it all seems quite aimless, I have yet to see some kind of motivation for me to participate in some kind of task in this game. All I see is endless empty buildings, the odd person and many opportunities to spend money. It’s a shame that I have yet to experience what everyone else seems to like about Second Life but what I wonder at the moment is: “Is this just like any other game online? Is it simply another way to show off to your friends by having more achievements than them?”

My aim for tomorrows session is to interact with some people on Second Life and find some things to do there.

Second Life

First Thoughts

I have recently tried my first go on second life. I spent at least an hour working on the appearance of my character, I was aiming to make him look just like me, everything went well in that respect but there were 2 problems I encountered and just decided to ignore them later, the first was the lack of customary hair, it had many options but little to no variation, I am fairly sure that there are places to get more appearances though. The second problem was the minimal use of textures, there seemed to be no place which i could play about with them any further than just simply placing them on the object and altering its colour, there should be more options like one to repeat the texture more than once.

The game itself is overwhelming at first, with so many options and the general indirection at the start of the game. I have simply so far just had a look around the islands I started off on, from this i was disappointed at the slow graphical movement (Which preferably cant be avoided at the moment,) also the music that was played was awful, there should be no music at all (except in a players own space) other than ambience because if the player really wants to listen to music they will surely have there own to use, and lastly there is nothing to get the ball rolling here, you make your profile and then left to your own devices. This I feel would deter many gamers at first. There should have been a beginners board with suggestions of things to get started on.

All in all the first impressions were moderate at best. It seems this would appeal more to a person who likes to escape from life more.

Ineractive Narrative

Now that I have figured out how to embed flash content here is my Interactive Narrative. Fans of Roger Dean rejoice.

Things I have been Getting up to.

Ok here are some of the things I have been getting up to over the is past term, sadly I havent been doing much with the projects at hand but there are some other things that I have been doing. For instance:

I have sort of lost my heart to draw lately for some reason. But nevertheless I still manged to produce this from penil. I had to darken it down after i scanned it of course. This image is a homage to one of my faveourite artists H.R.Giger. Although he did lots more than just Alien I still felt compelled to draw this, or at least that was in my head at the time.



Next I had a little fun with Google Sketch up, I thought it would be a good idea to practice my 3D design skills and learn how to use a new programme. I have to say that Sketch up is pretty good for design purposes but I was just playing with all the tools and made a few things which I put on Google Earth in and around my home town. My first attempt was to make a 5 storey dome like structure and submerge it in the ponds near my old village, thus creating something only an Evil Villan from James Bond would even care about. Then I had a go at some kind of evil sinister castle of some sort.

Lastly I took it closer to where im living at the moment and turned my flats (The Maltings) into a fortress, complete with look out towers and a main fortress structure. Students agree that this should be done for real, mostly to keep out those vikings.

Lastly I did some more work on a 2D platform game that I was designing before I came to uni, I simply added some new level designs for Level 6, my theme was aimed to be a glittery underground cavern full of gems and such, I have yet to complete a background for the level.

One Shot Film

Single Shot Evaluation

This is our one shot film, from the beginning we had the idea to do something about remembrance day mainly because it was close to the day. We also had the idea to use a poppy symbolically in the shot and we were going to shoot it at the polish war graves. Me and Richard already knew the layout of the place and could estimate a good shot to take. Personally I feel this is a good shot, this is the third angle we tried, looking at it from this perspective you can see the good use of negative space, taking advantage of the rows of polish graves. Combining this with filtering the red through the black and white meant that the viewers focus is drawn towards the significance of the poppy. Altogether this shot talks more than if it was say on a higher angle which we tried before. If I could improve on anything it would be the weather conditions and my sloppy walk up to the grave.

Old Work- Shooting Gallery

This is an old animation I did for my FMP at Newark College, this isnt my final piece it is just something a little extra I did to assist the project. It involves a game layout where the player shoots my tutors and fellow students... great eh? (I bet if my new tutors read this they will be a little scared.) Despite all this I dont like the sound effects used (I think they are too dominating over the music,) and would like to change them. Firstly I thought I should mention that the media course at my college does not have Flash MX or any software like Flash MX. I got a copy for myself at christmas 2005 and since then I tought myself how to use it. At first I had a slow rubbish computer and did the best I could with it. But thanks to my shiney new laptop I got last May I get to spread my wings much more.

I got the inspiration by simply looking down an old part of the College. I dont know what sparked the idea but I think it was the shape of the buildings and the many places a person could just pop up out of nowhere. So on that note I got everyone to pose for me holding weapons and took there pics using a Kodak Easyshare 5 mega pixel camera. Then I took a pic of the area I was going to use paying careful attention to what shapes I could fit into the frame. I needed several shots of guys, and 2 shots of girls so they were the targets your not suppost to shoot. Also I took a few funny pictures for a laugh but one turned out to be very useable in the game/animation, which was a funny looking head that could be a bonus target.

After I had got these pictures home I used Flash and for some Adobe Photoshop to cut them out and put a rough white frame around them. Then using Flash MX 2004 each image was named and stored in the file's library then through that an image could be re-used as many times as I needed. each use of the image was given its own size and movement path to follow. The scenery was cut up into several layers so objects could go in between each building so to give the illusion that they were popping up from places. The crosshair movement, bullet holes, scoreboard and when the targets shake from being shotwere all manually done frame by frame. I prefer to do this technique where relevent because its more personal and you can get more from an animation, I've got endless patience for things like this so i dont mind hours of the same thing at all. Finally some music which I chose from an old Sega game called Sonic CD. The finished piece had to be played over several hundered times to look for errors or problems that needed fixing. But by the end it looked really good, the master version looks crisp and highly detailed compared to its lesser Youtube version.

I'm planning to do another one, featuring Nottingham Trent or my student flats. Any comments or ideas are welcome.

Sorry

Sorry about this everyone but i lost my password for my old blog. So im in the process of re-submitting all the work from my old blog to this new one. And dont worry ive wrote down this password and put it somewhere where i cant loose it. Plus pretty soon once i get used to using this accout i wont forget it. Yay!

Pixelation

This is a pixelation animation we did for multimedia. It was hard for us to think of an idea initially. Our first idea was something in a grave which had no real edge over the norm idea of someone moving around in unusuall ways. So later we had the idea of doing a sillhouette which turned out to be a good and unique idea. Although this was good for us actually thinking of what we could do for shadows was hard.

This animation could be compared to media productions from the early movies and theatrical proformances dating back hundreds of years. Despite the fact that there are no feature length sillhouette movies, shadows play and important part in films. Used to emphasise mood or shape. Film Noir movies such as Double Indemnity make heavy use of shadow to give an almost artistic setting to the shot. On the other hand sillhouettes have made brief appearences in films such as Gremlins 2 as a comedy sketch. In this case some of the Gremlin characters have broken in to the projection room of a cinema and are making funny shadows with their hands. Theatrical uses of sillhouettes are more widely used such as Shadow Play puppets which is an ancient form of Chinese shadow puppetry, which is widely used in over 20 countries, but isnt as popular as it once was.