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Students take part in Global Game Jam Edinburgh, featuring work by David Richards

Image from "Moonbear Typing" game
David created characters and landscape art for “Moonbear Typing”

Several of our Digital Media and Interaction Design and Sound Design students took part in the Global Game Jam at Edinburgh Napier University in January 24.  David Richards (Year 4 Digital Media and Interaction Design ) used his  illustration skills to help bring two of the games created to life.   

He says “It was a brilliant experience! It was so refreshing being able to collaborate with other people with the same passion for video games.”  David collaborated on the two games seen here- creating characters and landscape art for “Moonbear Typing” and creating the title screen for “Ye Olde Funnybone”.

Title screen for game "Ye Olde Funnybone"
The title screen David made for the game “Ye Olde Funnybone”

You can see more of David’s work here –https://www.artstation.com/deerich98

The Game Jam games for Edinburgh are available here – https://itch.io/jam/edinburgh-ggj24-say-no-to-gai

Featured Honours Project: Suleyman the Magnificent by Johnny Viola

For his honours project, Johnny Viola investigated the use of motion graphics to increase engagement with history.  The visuals used updated versions of  colours and styles found in paintings of the period, giving the animation a rich texture that adds to the storytelling.  Johnny also won a prize for this poster showcasing the work at the Honours poster day.

From sketch to final images

Visual Development – from sketch to final images

Poster explaining the background to the project

The poster explains the process Johnny followed to create the final motion graphic.

You can see more of Johnny’s work here –johnnyviola.com

This post is part of a series celebrating the work the year 4 students have created for their honours projects.  Thanks to Johnny for allowing us to feature this work.

Featured Honours Project: Sensory Soundscapes by Ellen Scott

Sensory Soundscapes was created by Ellen Scott for her honours project and focussed on visualisation techniques within virtual reality (VR) experiences.  The project offers a unique, interactive and fully multisensory experience that transports participants through three musical environments.  Each environment explores a different musical genre and music visualisation technique that users experience in VR via the Oculus Quest 2 headset.  The clip above shows a walkthrough of the project, while the images below show some of the interiors created in Unreal Engine.

Different environments were created to represent the different soundscapes

3 different bar interiors were created – this one shows the Jazz bar

The Tiki bar

Poster explaining Ellen's project

Ellen’s poster explains the process followed to create the project.

You can see more of Ellen’s work here –https://ellenlarsonscott.wixsite.com/portfolio

This post is part of a series celebrating the work the year 4 students have created for their honours projects.  Thanks to Ellen for allowing us to feature this work.

Featured Honours Project: BeWell Mental Wellbeing App by Jonathan Wood

BeWell is a mental well-being support and social app aimed at students.  Jonathan followed a User centred process, involving his target users throughout to ensure that the solution met their needs.  As well as a high-fidelity prototype suitable for user testing he created detailed brand guidelines and a design system to ensure consistency.  

Poster explaining the project process
Jonathan’s poster explains the process he followed to create his app

You can see more of Jonathan’s work here – https://www.behance.net/jonathan-wood

This post is part of a series celebrating the work the year 4 students have created for their honours projects.  Thanks to Jonathan for allowing us to feature this work.

Featured Honours Project : Investigating Affordable Animation Software by Ray Wyse

For the honours project Ray investigated different free and low cost animation software, before creating an animatic; proving that you don’t need to spend a lot to get professional results.   The scene was created in 3d space using Blender, an open source software, with the 2d character drawings slotted in between the 3d models.  This allowed Ray to manipulate what the viewer would see in the final piece and create different camera angles and shot types.

Ray has already had some success with the project, winning “Best Poster” at the honours project showcase.

You can see more of Ray’s work here – https://raywyseart.wixsite.com/portfolio

An image of a room in a 3d modelling package

The 3D space before colour and filters are used to give the cartoon effect.

An image of a  3d room with a 2d character added within Blender

This image shows how the 2d characters can be placed within the 3d space

Ray's prize winning honours poster

Ray’s prize winning honours poster, which explains the process undertaken

This post is part of a series celebrating the work the year 4 students have created for their honours projects.  Thanks to Ray for allowing us to feature this work.

Playful Progress

You can check out what our year 2 students have been making on the Playful Interaction instagram – https://www.instagram.com/playfulinteractionenu/

They are given a challenge each week to create a response to a “Playful Provocation” using the Arduinos and the skills they are learning  – can’t wait to see how they incorporate these into their final projects!

Thanks to Suzi Cathro and the student on the year 2 Playful Interaction module for sharing this work.

New Signs for Animation

We are excited to share with you “New signs for animation”  a short animated film, created to raise awareness of the issue surrounding the availability of Animation/Games terminology for sign language users – both locally and abroad. The team, led by lecturer Jon Mortimer, consisted of two recent ENU graduates and four deaf artists, and was supported with funding from ENU’s Public engagement fund.  It helps  to highlight the struggle students from the deaf community encounter trying to pursue a career in the animation or games sectors, due to a gap in available language.

“New signs for animation”, has recently been nominated for awards and continues to be considered for film festivals around the world:

A worried looking student sits at a desk

A Still from the animation.

More Than Code! Find out more about Creative and Social Computing at Edinburgh Napier University

We are constantly amazed by what our students achieve with digital technology! They learn to combine creative ideas and technical skills; working on projects that always put people at the centre– whether that is making a new virtual reality experience, designing sound for a game or making sure a new app works well and looks great.  In fact, we use computers as tools on so many different kinds of projects it’s impossible to list them all!

We offer a range of undergraduate programmes including Digital Media and Interaction Design, Sound Design, Web Design and Development, Informatics for Business and User Experience Design.

You can sign up for the open day and find virtual tours  here – https://www.napier.ac.uk/study-with-us/undergraduate/meet-us/open-days

Check out more about our undergraduate courses here-

Digital Media and Interaction Design and also check out our blog

Sound Design

Web Design and Development

Informatics for Business

User Experience Design

You can apply to start these courses in year 1 or join us in year 2 or 3 if you have completed a suitable HNC or HND – see the course pages for more information.

We have another new course coming soon for year 3 and 4 entry only – Animation for Games

Students work on projects in our specialist computer labs

Featured Project: How to Save Human Problems by Lucienne Kunz

Today’s featured animation is by Lucienne Kunz.  Inspired by recent events, for this project Lucienne created characters representing some of the biggest issues humans have to deal with – and exploring how they interact with each other.

This work was created for the 2D animation module run by Fiona Stewart and Andrew McKelvey.  Thanks to Lucienne for allowing us to feature her work.

 

 

 

Featured Project: Unknown Sender by Sophie Spalding

We’re so excited to share this piece by Sophie Spalding, one of our year 2 DMID students.  There are definite echoes in this story of the fact that a lot of us have been alone more than usual this year and looking for a little contact – human or otherwise.   The pre-production images below show Sophie’s character designs and an excerpt from her storyboards – finishing these to a high standard meant the story was clearly mapped out ahead of beginning the animation process.  We hope she makes a second episode so we can see what the characters get up to next….

This work was created for the 2D animation module run by Fiona Stewart and Andrew McKelvey.  Thanks to Sophie for allowing us to feature her work.

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