The VU virtual commission flats.....

Last week before holidays - units under construction

It's the final week of term and everybody should have their stories and/or scripts posted on their blogs.
We have started to deck out our apartments, above is a picture of work in progress.

Tuesday at Flinders - WM

Another Tuesday class at Flinders after missing last week because of the special new media workshops.

Today the aim was to get the scripts and hopefully comics completed. Several people are going well on the scripts, several aren't.
By next week, which is our last week before holidays, everyone will need to have their scripts and comic/storyboards 100% complete so that next term we can get stuck into the machinima making immediately.
Anyone who hasn't got the script and storyboards complete by next week will have to meet with me and discuss why it is worth them continuing, as they will be too far behind to catch up and pass.

Wed afternoon at St Albans - working on our stories

Today we started working on our stories for the final machinima piece.
Some students are working alone, some are working in groups (there are a couple of trios).
Any student not here this week will NOT be able to join any of the existing groups.

Stories should be created initially in wordpad/notepad.
Next week they will then be transferred to Comic Life as a storyboard, helping us to examine the kinds of scenery and shots we will require for the final machinima piece.
The final step shall be creating the machinima, which we will start in two weeks.

Several students in this class are falling behind, and will need to update their blogs to remain in the class. Please feel free to email me with any concerns.

Thursday at Flinders - Interactive Storytelling

Today we started off by building a spinning globe, learning how to drop scripts in and how to build symmetrically.

We then made some guns, firstly replacing the bullets, then making original guns, and bullets. Some people made hoverboards etc.

We then had a quick look at Comic life, from here on we will be concentrating on machinima.

Wednesday afternoon - New Media

Today we had our third and final Second Life class, we just did a quick little project building a tv and entertainment unit each for the apartments.

We then moved onto Comic Life, with each student creating one comic each.

HOMEWORK for next week is to come up with a beginning, middle and end for the Melbourne Story. Over the coming couple of weeks we will be workshopping our story ideas using Comic Life, then after the break we will be in full machinima production mode.

Wednesday morning - first class with St Albans IM class

We did the introduction to Second Life as listed several times below.

Welcome to Interactive Storytelling.

Introduction to Interactive Storytelling, explanation of course outline and assessment

• Linear versus interactive multimedia/storytelling
• History of Multimedia - Speech>Text>Print>Radio>Television>Interactive Multimedia
• Discussion of future technologies and their impact on society in general (Disabled, Digital Divide, Intelligence/Individual Divide, What will become of our current reality?)

Introduction to augmented and virtual reality

Second Life and other Virtual Words

• There
• Openlife
• Activeworlds
• Entropia
• Playstation Home
• The Sims
• Google Earth
• Lively
• Photosynth

What is required in a virtual environment?

Introduction to Second Life

• Registering
• Modifying avatars/characters in Second Life
• Applying textures
• Using the Appearance Tool
• Searching
• Teleporting
• Object, Library and Inventory Use

We had a quick look at how to make t-shirts. Most people made them without any hassles.