Testimonials

Aled Williams - Aged 8, Swansea

" I liked Chris' Game. The bird is funny and there is lots and lots of colour "

Jordan Legg - Aged 7, Swansea

"I laughed at the dog because he looks funny and he  looks like Benji, my dog" 

Dawn of the actual dead.

May 3rd 2011 - Submission Day
Almost feels like it's independence day as far as Interactive Media goes . . . 


I'm going on the basis of a recent email quoted as followed; 

"1) A few of you have asked me about working on your projects after the deadline but before the exhibitiion so to clarify. What you hand in Tuesday is what will be marked however we will mark it within the context of it's presentation at the exhibition. Normally you should be finished by Tuesday and use the time until the exhibition to finish the other parts of the module and prepare your materials for presentation at the exhibition. If however you wish to continue finishing/improving the project itself then by all means do, keep in mind that it will be seen by the public so you whould wan to show your work off."

and seeing it as a lifeline because of a few points

• Because I had to use USBOverdrive, I had to use a mac to assign the keyboard shortcuts with that on the mat. The mac I was working off had Director 11.5 where as I had been working on the older verson of MX2004. Everytime now I wish to edit it, I need to use a mac because the director files aren't backward compatible once saved in the newest version. 
• Saying that, trying to find a mac with director on in uni that is free (no one using it ) is a nightmare so this time between now and the exhibition when major deadlines for other students is out of the way maybe I'd have the resources more so available to me especially without the closure of the uni over the bank holidays. 

• I haven't stuck the graphic down to the mat without the worry of damaging the components in side. In all probability it'll be fine, but for some reason I'm not ready to risk it. I can't afford to mess it up.

• One of the screens in the actual game has a white border on the top from the background for some reason.
• Reason probably being because the PNG image over the background needs to be moved up to fill the screen, something I carelessly didn't notice during set up.

• I need to add a few more sounds because it sounds a bit dull without a continuing soundtrack.

Number Magic - Dolphin's easy readers (Lv.1)

I've decided to include this into my research because of the ideas that the project promotes. i.e. The idea of giving children actions to perform whilst being encouraged to play the educational game; 

• Rhyme: Hop Like A Rabbit 
• Hop like a rabbit. (hop with feet together) 
• Run like a dog. (walk on hands and knees) 
• Walk like an elephant. (hold one arm in front like a trunk, and sway back and forth) 
• Jump like a frog.  (squat down with hands on floor and hop) 
• Swim like a goldfish. (hold palms together and move hands in swimming motion) 
• Fly like a bird.  (flap arms up and down) 
• Then sit right down 
• And don't say a word.  (sit down on floor or chair, with your finger over your lips) 

Where this project my centre around Mathematics, it encourages to user to use more learnt ideas previously aquired to work out what they have to do.

Scrip-tease

 SCRIPT.

-1	“Hey there kids, my name is Tweet”
-2	“Do you want to go on an adventure?”
-3	“Where would we find, swings and slides?”
-4	“Hey look at that animal, what is it?”
-5	“Yay, it’s a dog!” We love dogs. It should be our friend”
-6	“Oh know, it’s been raining! Make it sunny again”
-7	“Oh look, our friends are having fun to, how many can you see? “
-8	“A rainbow has appeared! Do you know the colours?!”
-9	Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet (ROYGBIV) -; NORMAL ASSOCIATION WITH COLOURS OF THE RAINBOW
-10	There’s a castle, take a look. What would you use to say the magic words?
-11	Abracadabra (PRETTY STANDARD MAGIC WORD ASSOCIATED WITH CHILDREN’S NARRATIVES)
-12	I think we need to climb the stairs kids?
-13	WOW! What a view!
-14	It’s been a long day hasn’t it kids? I think we should go home!
-15	This is my room! But it’s ever so dark. What would I use, to turn the light on? (HAND BEING THE MOST OBVIOUS CHOICE HERE)
-16	That’s great kids!! Thanks for an awesome day!! See you again real soon!

Size Matters

So so close to the deadline, and yet not enough time to reorder my mat. I'm so happy with the outcome of it, but its a few centimetres too big but on the plus its; 

• Vibrant
• Colourful
• The Buttons align with the ones on the mat (major plus!!) 
• It's Clear
• Font isn't too distracting
• Birds aren't to distracting (mentioned in critique that one of the birds may have been a bit funny on the eyes)

HOWEVER

• It's left with a bit of hang over the sides.
• Do I leave it and define a reason for it doing so? 
• The Numbers are a bit squiff because of this overhang 
• Bear in mind, that the target audience for this is children; they have small feet, so will press the button correctly?
• What I didn't notice on the Photoshop PSD File when I was designing and editing the graphic, was if looked close enough there's a slight 'unrounded-ness' or bad editing as it were on the button that depicts a hand 
• No Doubt Garrett will pick up on this first? haha
• The Button that represents the sun also, is a bit more obvious that say that of that others; by this I mean there seems to be more of a black outline around it that evident on any of the other 'buttons' 

Twinkle, Twinkle

Zuralski, Alexandra. "Nursery Rhymes in the Primary Classroom. IN " The Fascination with Nursery Rhymes (GRIN Verlag), 2008: Pages 9-10.

As the above source tells us, Nursery Rhymes are an important factor to children's lives as they as beginning to grow up and progress through their schooling life, so I feel it that there is a need to perhaps include such of these into my game and incorporate them somehow.. .