Cheif Suzie On YouTube…

opes forgot to say that i did manage to make a wmv visrion of the recipies. well all except the smoothie, with due to the way i made it maens that each and every thing will need to be moved.

links…

The quality is slightly worse, and there is a nasty black box down the side. Im not that good with video editing and wasnt able to crop the video enough to remove it with out distorting the video totaly.

On the plus side it means that many more people can access the application as it is now cross media!

More On Cheif Suzie…

So after getting the most of the course work done it came to finishing this off.

After a few days solid work i finally managed to get it finished. Final version can be found here.

Over all I’m happy with the result. There are a few small areas that I’m not so happy with, such as some parts of the curry and dippers recipes, but over all happy.

Originally i planned to publish the final project over several mediums, such as .swf and .mov ect. This would mean that more people would have access to the final product and it could be used on a range of different things, such as PC’s, iPods and MP4 players etc.

However due to the many movie clips used it means that it is going to involve moving all the transitions so that they fit properly before I can do this in flash, something that could take as long as making the original. This is probably some thing i should have thought of in the 1st place. I may try and find a way to convert the swf into a video format, using a 3rd party software, and I can then edit the video in to its separate parts from there.

Other things I would have like to add are subtitles and a way to pause and rewind the video, something I may still add if I have time.

Chief Suzie Update…

I haven’t had much time over Easter to get much done with Miss Suzie.

I added a bit more to the introduction and the main menu. She now introduces her self and asks the user what they want to make.

Other than that Ive started some more animation on the smoothie recipe.

The latest version can be found HERE

Things I’ve learnt – drawing cottage cheese in a glass is HARD!

Lip sync…

So I’ve been working a lot on this recently.

I started off with making a logo. Its not totally finished yet. I need to do something with the colour of the text, change it to a darker colour maybe, passably black.

Other than that I’ve decided what recipes I will be using (fruit smoothie, chocolate cookies, chicken dippers, pizza and chicken curry). These foods are all popular with children. I have adapted the recipes slightly, to make them a tad heather and to fit my needs better and turned them in to scripts.

I have also pestered my girl friend untill she agreed to read the scripts for me. So far she’s recorded the smoothie recipe.

As with the final product I have created a pre-loader, main menu and added the lip sync for the smoothie. I knew the lip sync would be hard, but i didnt realise just how hard. The recording is only about 95 secs long but it has taken me hours to add it to the annimation.

You can see my work in progress HERE.

I also posted my work on a flash forum to get some feed back. I got a few good comments and some people are interested in seeing the finished product, witch was nice.

So far I think its shaping up to be my best work in flash yet, but its going to take a lot of time and commitment to get it to the standard I want.

Cartoon Characters…

Carrying on with this Slow Food project… Ive decided to go with the interactive children’s cook book type thing. The best way to get a child engaged in some thing that can be boring is to make it relate to them, and what better way to that that than with a cartoon?

First I drew a bunch of different foods and made them in to characters by giving them faces. With most of the food this was easy, however some did cause some problems. I went along the lines of thinking it would be cool if the different characters told the user how to use them to make something. But then realised that some kids might find it a bit disturbing having an apple talk to to and tell you how to cut it up and make it in to an apple pie. That and it meant a lot more work drawing all the different characters. So I scrapped that idea.

Next I just started to doodle a bit and see what happened. I came up with couple of robots (one of witch was a bit scary looking). I then drew a chef. Why I didn’t think of doing that before I don’t know. I really licked that idea and carried on experimenting with different chefs.

Once i had chosen a design, I drew it in flash and coloured it in. Below you can see my designs and final character.

Slow Food: Ideas…

Right so I’m still not 100% clear on slow food but Ive got the basics. I think.

Ive spent the last couple of weeks thinking of ideas. Ive decided that i want to try and get people to lean about the values of slow food not lean about slow food movements its self. I’m going to aim my application at children, as i feel that the best way to change the way a nation thinks is to target its children.

I came up with several ideas. One was a internet cartoon where the characters are food and teach the kids about eating healthy and about different types of food ect. But decided against this as talking food might put some kids off. That and im not that good an animator.

My next idea was still a flash web based application. But instead of teaching kids bout food it teaches them how to cook. This also ties in with an initiative happening in many primary schools getting children to cook. I thought that tis was a good idea so i did some research. I found a few sites that have many recipes that are aimed at children. How ever very few of these sites are aimed at children. They aim at the children’s parents.

http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/recipes/index.html

http://uktv.co.uk/food/homepage/sid/6291

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mostof_cookingwithchildrenhugh.shtml

http://www.urchin.co.uk/articles/fun-family-barbecues-kids-bbq-recipes.html

http://www.justkidsrecipes.com/index.html

So to sum up my application will be aimed at children with the aim of getting kids to cook with their parents. I will try to keep most of the recipes healthy and traditional in keeping with the slow food movement.

Slow Food…

So I’ve go to do a project digitalizing slow food. But what is slow food?

“The Slow Food movement was created to combat fast food and claims to preserve the cultural cuisine and the associated food plants and seeds” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Food

So its all about thinking where the food on your plate comes from and preserving local traditions associated with food. It may or may not be organic, but the actual growing of the food must be organic. It can range from simply teaching children where there food comes from e.g. cows make milk and the milk is turned in to cheese or yogurt ect. Some people take it to the extreame, treating every meal like a wine connoisseur would treat a bottle of whine.

Update…

right so just so you know whats going on…

iDAT 205 project/presentation… DONE

iDAT 206 project… due Monday… putting it all together

iDAT 204 killer app project/presentation… due next Friday… only just started but should be finished on time easily

Database project/presentation… due Thursday… got the basics working, just need ot apply it to our shop/website

Java project… due 1st week back after christmas… looked through the breif and then realised i wont have time to even start this until Christmas but it didnt look to hard so should be ok

right i think thats about it…

iDAT 206 project beginings…

Well we have a group sorted and a group blog set up (see previous blog post).

Right so ideas…

Well there is no real brief as such, so we can do just about anything. we wanted to do something that we haven’t done before in class, but not something so different that we wont have a hope in hell of getting it finished to a high standard.

Phil said about setting up a web cam in erm, well i dont remember where, but it was near the sea. Well the idea was that itsa for surfers to check the sea and stuff and apparently there isnt a web cam there yet.

Next idea was …. erm, Ive kinda for gotten that as well, opes.

Then I said what about doing a sort of interactive video. The kind of thing where your watching a video of a person walking about then they some to a cross road, then you choose witch way go. A bit like one of those “choose you own adventure” books, but in video form.

Then Phil said what about doin it at Berry Pomeroy Castle. So were going to do a interactive video tour of a very, very haunted castle. FANTASTIC!!!

Group blog…

So iDAT 206 is mostly a group project, so go check out the group blog!

www.teamxtreme.wordpress.com