Hollie Ferguson presented on her Design Practice 2 module, which focused on developing design skills through virtual environments, moving image, and interactive media projects. She struggled with the 3D software for her virtual environments Halloween-themed ride but learned from online tutorials. For her film project, she served as assistant director and organized the group via a blog. Creating her interactive media portfolio website helped her develop skills in layout, branding, and linking to her online networks. Overall, the module helped improve her technical skills across multimedia disciplines through hands-on projects.

1. Design Practice 2 Presentation Hollie Ferguson

2. Learning Outcomes Demonstrate knowledge of issues which arise from your relationship with audiences and/or users. Understand approaches to exploration and enquiry leading to the development of innovative and novel ideas. Demonstrate knowledge of design, management and publishing issues through the use of appropriate systems and formats. Demonstrate evidence of problem solving through iterative and incremental development development.

3. Multimedia At NTU Virtual Environments Interactive Media Moving Image Click text to go to each project 

4. Evidence Of The Design Process My Multimedia Journal

5. Virtual Environments I had the first initial idea to either create a Halloween theme of death theme. I created a mood board for both and decided on the Halloween theme which the ride would be aimed at young children and the scares would be props such as witches, pumpkins and ghosts. I chose this theme over death as last term I struggled with the software & thought the props would be easier to make for this theme than “death” which would have consisted of people. The annoying thing about this project was I had the ideas and designs for the ride but found it too difficult to actually make in 3dsmax.

6. Virtual Environments My ideas for the scare scenes are very different from how they actually now look. I had the idea of the pumpkin which is what I managed to do with the cart going through his mouth – although I did want his mouth to animate to look like he was going to eat the children coming at him in the cart. I also had the idea for the graveyard with the skeleton hand coming up & witches flying overhead. I had two ideas for my cart – a sweet to go with the name “ Trick or Treat” or a pumpkin. In the end it ended up being a basic square as I was unable to design it on 3dsmax. The entrance is a huge pumpkin with the cart sitting in his mouth, with “Trick Or Treat sign hanging from the stalk.

7. Virtual Environments The storyboard of the ride was pretty simple, the idea of 3 different rooms to create the theme of Halloween. The track was quite simple with short jerked turns. The riders first scare would be the pumpkin, following on to the graveyard with hands coming up & then onto flying witches. I'm so disappointed with how it actually turned out as I put a lot of though and research into the ride. The audience for my ride was young children so it couldn’t be too scary but enough to give them a thrill.

8. Virtual Environments I found the software 3d max hard, some ideas I had - such as a sweet cart to go with the trick or treat title couldn't be done as I was unable to make the cart so had a basic square cart which looks no where need as good. Although sometimes I did feel like giving up as mine looked pretty poor compared to my peers, it wouldn't get me anywhere. When I had done the basics such as making the track and plan for the ride I went onto YouTube to look at online tutorials. Some of them weren't the best but I did find a few good ones which can be seen on my blog which helped me to produce scenes such as my pumpkin.

9. Virtual Environments One minute Haunted House Animation.

10. Moving Image Adapted from the script “Herds.”

11. Moving Image   The shots at the start are very effective – inspired by “Hot Fuzz” & “Shaun Of The Dead” they create tension and the audience begin to wonder whats happening & who is who. I think the props enable the audience to realise what’s going on such as the candles & wine at the table. The credits also fit in quite well with the story. The location and actors are poor. With more effort a better location to suit the story better could have been found. We Wanted to express the idea that there was something wrong with “Monty” – it’s clearly not normal to do what he was doing but wanted the audience to have their own idea of why he did it. Was he mad, sick, rude? We wanted to create a strong character but at the same time not give too much away about him as a person. I don’t feel this was achieved with the actor of Monty.

12. Moving Image I would improve this by changing the actors and location & this impacts the film massively. This is obviously hard to edit with the footage we had. I also think the music and dialogue aren’t as well used as they should be, we were given a script and although we were told we could edit it a bit, hardly any of the speech is said at all in the film, so the audience has to base their idea of the film entirely on the acting – body language and facial expressions. This would be fine if we had of had a proper actor to do this. I also think the theme and genre is a bit vivid, it is suppose to be a thriller but I think it lacks a little bit in some of the conventions so is also quite hard to pin point a specific audience for the film. I would improve this to make it stronger.

13. Moving Image I have blogged all my methods since starting this project that developed my ideas. Being assistant director, I felt this was quite an important part of my role – to keep the group organised. We created a group blog so we could always blog ideas & updates about our film and give feedback to each other on how well we thought it would work. I had jobs such as the risk assessment helping to create the storyboard & initial ideas. We didn’t come across any technical difficulties as Mark was the editor who knew exactly was he was doing on premier pro & Sam was the camera man & he had taken the camera out in advance to become familiar with the settings. I think it worked well each of the group keeping to their roles.

14. Moving Image What I have learnt from this project: Although it was only a 3 minute film, it takes a lot of work and equipment to make a really good effective final piece. On the first day of filming we thought we could get away without using lights & looking at the footage afterwards it looked pretty bad, it made such a difference when the lighting was used. We have used dialogue which is recorded on the camera and sound effects such as wine being opened, water boiling and plates being used on the microphone and the quality of the sound is a lot better on the microphone. It does take a lot more effort to do it but its better in the long run as the quality of the film when doing it properly makes it so much better. For a 3 minute film we had about 2 hours worth of shots & although we didn’t use a lot of them, I’m glad they were filmed because if we hadn’t of had the right shot it would have been nearly impossible to re shoot it trying to get the same lighting as the previous footage.

15. Interactive Media I created a mood board at the start of the project to on the IMGSPARK website; there is a colour theme of pink - hence being my favourite colour. I like "girly" things such as make up, shoes, my boyfriend. The mood board portrayed me well as someone whom has never spoken to me could guess my personality from this. Doing the mood board did give me ideas for my portfolio - such as themes I could use, what I wanted to include in the portfolio & how much I could put onto the portfolio to make it about me as much as possible. There was also the idea of personal branding – “involves the application of one's name to various products.”

16. Interactive Media Before creating my website I started by making “wireframes” which were basically my drawings of the design for the website. I only designed the homepage as the other pages would be the same design just contain different content. both looked like simple layouts but with images, backgrounds and text it improved the look. I didn’t want to design anything too complicated that I had to follow as I would have ended up getting frustrated,I started with something simple that changed along the way as I got more advanced. To develop my ideas I also looked on other websites that I really found appealing – Kate Nash, Rihanna & The Orange Tree website all in different ways gave me inspirations for my own portfolio.

17. Interactive Media The colour, image & text I used in my portfolio didn’t happen by chance – I wanted them that way. The text is very simply - Palatino Linotype & Book Antiqua. I decided on this because the images I used are quite «busy» & wanted this to contrast with a simple text. The background image is a noticeboard tiled as the full image was hidden from the box of text on the page so tiled had a better effect. I changed the colour of the dots of the header and footer to create the idea of each page being a different zone for the user. Text colour is pink & lilac to reflect the theme of creating a use of my own personality. I did originally change the background on each page but after feedback decided it would look better with the same background on each page but different header & footer.

18. Interactive Media My links from my portfolio to my networks consisted of Facebook, Twitter, Blogger & Vimeo. My reasons for this being that I often use Twitter so anyone could then follow me - as with Facebook ( I am also going to create my own page which will differ from my personal Facebook) My Blogger and Vimeo links are simply there because I use them regularly for my media work so anyone who is on my portfolio can easily access my work and planning for it.

19. Interactive Media Click Here! 

20. Pathway.. Pathway from the chosen 3 is Interactive – for many reasons, most importantly I enjoy & understand it & the fact I enjoy it makes me want to progress & improve my skills. I did enjoy film but find working in a group more difficult than I do than working individually – which swayed my decision towards interactive more. Animation I find very hard, not only the software but the planning – such as drawing as this is not my best skill. I hope over the summer to create more websites to improve my knowledge & skills for next year.

21. Thank You  Programme: BA (Hons) Multimedia Module title: Design Practise 2 Module code: MMPR10109 Credits: 60/120