It has been an extremely long module having started work on it back in June 2010.  Although this project has had its share of difficulties and not least problems, I have overall enjoyed working on it.

I have enjoyed learning more about Flash and putting my drawing skills to use in Illustrator to create the different ‘world’ components.

I have certainly learnt a considerable amount of Actionscripting (even if it is AS2), the next module which again is using Flash for Interactive Media Design I am planning on trying to use AS3.

I would also like to say thank you to Jen and Becky for putting in so much effort and their contributions to making our final working product successful.

So, onwards and upwards.

If we were to undertake this project again we would use either AS2 or AS3 through out rather than a combination of the two given the problems we have had loading the AS2 games into the AS3 file, also as mentioned previously we would also give more consideration and time to improving the types animations to help with the interactivity of the product.

In terms of the quality of the finished product we think that it could perhaps be more ‘fine tuned’ perhaps a bit more attention could have been paid to initial layout schemes and these produced as accurate scaled sketches before starting the flash file.

So in conclusion, having said all this, we are pleased with the overall outcome and do have a fully working product that has been tested at various stages by some children within the target audience range of 3-5 years.  (Two children from members of staff at the school that Jo works in)

We have worked to people strengths throughout the project.

For example Becky had expressed a desire to be involved in the set up of the main file within flash and wanted to improve her Actionscript skills and already had some flash knowledge (much more than Jen or I).  As Becky was identified as being organised as well it made sense to use her skills to create the site and keep everything organised within it.

One of Jo’s strengths is also creativity and I also wanted to improve my skills using Illustrator so we decided that I would produce all the individual components for the site such as the starfish, octopus and so on. I was able to use my skills in photoshop to help produce the jigsaws once I had created the component using Illustrator.  Like Jen I also had an active role in creating some of the games and have also been able to vastly improve my flash skills using both AS2 and a limited amount of AS3.

Jen admitted that her weaknesses were time management and written documents but that creativity, planning and storyboarding were amongst her strengths, therefore Jen came up with ideas for the games, page layouts and page backgrounds and also took an active role in creating the backgrounds for the worlds and some of the games included in the site.

The main bulk of my contribution to this project has been to produce individual illustrations and games for the site.  For instance I have produced the components such as starfish, octopus and sun amongst others, using Illustrator.

I would have liked to have seen more animation being used on the components for instance making the octopus ‘wave’ his arms around, but due to my limited knowledge of flash and how to correctly set up the layers etc, I felt that it would not have been feasible to try and do all this as well as producing the games in flash, therefore I compromised and concentrated on the games.

Jen

Created background, component illustrations.
Would have liked to include a bit more variety.
Attempted some basic flash games.
Not too successful using Flash.
Created working games – not to a great standard.
Long time to do little in flash due to lack of knowledge using flash.
Looking back, more practice with flash.

BECKY

My Main contribution to the development of the project has been the flash development.

It was very important for me to have the flash file well organised as you can see each aspect of the site is on a different layer, the background, the white backgrounds on which the NAV sits, the NAV itself, the pages etc. This organization enabled us to make the design decision of changing our background well into the project, because the file was well organised it was simple a case of inserting a new layer and adding the new background then deleting the layer containing the old background. Basic Navigation for the site was set up using a standard NAV bar and goto and stop commands.

The other main aspect of flash development for the game was the animation of the components. We wanted the site to be interactive and the way in which we did this was by making each of the components do something when the world opens and then a when you move the mouse over, I’ve used a combination  of tween max and tweening to help with this as you can see the cat eases in when you open the scene using tween max and then if we go to the swift within the cat move clip you will be able to see the tweens I’ve used to make the head roll to give the impression of purring which I will now demonstrate back in the SWF.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working on the animation for the site however I feel I was held back slight by a lack of imagination and ideas, I had all these wonderful components to animate but couldn’t really think of different ways to animate them so in a lot of instances the components are animated in a similar way, this may bore somebody in our target age range after a while, if I was to attempt this project again I would give a lot more thought for different ways in which to animate the components.

Becky and myself have both re-written the drag and drop games using AS3 and have tried to put them into the main flash file.  Yet again we have a couple of errorrs.

Firstly, the size of the game files (although all set to the same size and sized for the loader) are not fitting correctly with the loader in the file.

Secondly, one component illustration in each of the files is ‘breaking apart’ each time you click and drag on it.

At this late stage we have to find a solution, albeit it may  not be the correct working way.

To overcome the ‘breaking apart’ I have substituted some of the components with a gif file instead of using the illustrator.   This is not an ideal solution as there is a comprise on the quality of the images, however is does solve the immediate problem.

In terms of the sizing problem, Becky has been able to manually re-size all the assets and the stage with the flash file, this has however, led to another compromise and that is on the text font and sizing/positioning.

Added to this there is now no voice-over when the user correctly positions the component to the matching word and there is also not tweening into position.

Finally though we do now have a fully working site and this is what we will have to submit.  The amendments and compromises that we have had to do to these games is far from ideal, but they have enabled us to complete the project.

I have made some adjustments to the original game.  I have now included a voice over for each component and as they are dropped into the correct position the voice over says the word of the image (eg. cat, sheep etc) a tick also appears as they have completed each portion to show that they are correct.

Originally, once you had moved the images onto the word you were able to move them about again, now a bit of extra actionscripting, with the help of Mark, means that they are no longer moveable once they have been ‘dropped’ into the correct position.

I have also changed the colour schemes to make it look more professional and appealing to our target audience of 3-5 year old.

We had previously decided to add another page to include doorhangers and bookmarks that when the thumbnail was clicked would open a pdf file to enable printing and colouring at home. There are 3 pages in total on the activities page.

The main page is an artists palette that contains the paint wells as links to the individual pages.

Fun and Games – this includes a selection of printable worksheets/mazes.

Print and colour at home contains all the individual components in the site (ie starfish, octopus) available to print and colour in at home from a pdf file.

Door Hangers and Book Marks contains a selection of various components into the hangers and bookmarks, again available to print and colour in at home via a pdf.

Each component button is a rollover image containing the name of the bookmark or the hanger and on roll over a thumbnail image.

I have now completed the pages and have uploaded them to the dropbox to enable Becky to include them in the site to finish.

Images of the site components are shown and the corresponding word to the image is in a box.  The user then drags the image that matches the word, if it is correct the image goes into the text box and there is a short voice over that says the word of the image.

I still have some ‘fixing’ to do.  Once the user has put the image into the box they can then also remove it again and the word goes back into the box.  I am not sure whether to leave it like this so they re-cap on the word and the image and loop the game as they require, or whether I should make it so that once they achieved the correct answer the image becomes unmoveable?

Early attempt

Developed Game

One component revealed

One wrong component revealed

Two correct components revealed

• Activity and printable Pages

1. Collate all printable colouring pdfs
2. Link all files from main activity page
3. Collate all worksheet pdfs
4. Link worksheets to main activity page
5. Layout of parents page
6. Ensure all completed swf files are in the dropbox (JC & JB)
7. Check that Becky has the useful links document for parents page.

• JC – Put updated graph into presentation to show percentages completed
• JB – Gantt Chart to be updated
• JC – Gantt chart into presentation
• ALL – Team Evlauation
• ALL – What going to talk about in presentation
• JB – Convert portfolio to digital into dropbox
• JC- Hyperlink JB portfolio into presentation document
• JB & JC – Investigate cube idea for presentation
• JC – e mail completed presentation document to JB and RC prior to presentation evening