Non-Linear Project

http://digitalghosts.webs.com/
See the above link for a copy of our brief, our research and planning.

For this group project we had to create a non-linear product, which would be interactive and serve a purpose, as a group we mapped out some ideas for flash websites and platform games but decided to focus on York’s historical past for an interactive product, after looking into the history of a couple of locations we soon found that our city had been reputed one of the most haunted cities in the world due to its bloody past of battles and wars, we looked deeper into a few locations and found out how they are commonly used as feature landmarks in ghost walks for tourists. This gave us a perfect idea for a creative product which could be used as a feature application on a website for someone hosting a ghost walk to show visitors the locations which they would be visiting.
As we were working in a group I decided it would be a good idea to create a small website where we could all contribute our ideas and keep all of the work in one place otherwise we could have ended up with several versions of the same project.
On the site we set the tasks which had to be achieved and when they had to be achieved by, as well as who they would be carried out by. We did this through the form of a list and a calendar which acted like a schedule.
My assigned tasks where Film editing for podcast, Photography, research and web development.
Therefore I was administrator for the website and had to make sure that all of the work was uploaded and up to date however we made sure that there was a posting area and profile space for each member in the group so that they could add information about themselves and use the website like a progress diary so that other members knew what work was left to be carried out and could help other users when they became stuck.
I also looked into different ghost hunts around York and what locations they visit on their ghost tours. Searches carried out showed that the York Minster and St Marys Abbey where the most popular therefore they would be the feature locations for our application.
I found out that the York Minster is supposed to be haunted by an army officer, aswell as a couple of sightings of other ghostly beings and the barking of a ghostly dog. I also found it interesting that the Minster hasn’t always stood on the grounds of which it does today. It was in fact built in the 7th century out of wood for the baptism of Edwin of Northumbria on a different site. It wasn’t until the year 1220 when the Minster we know today started to take place.
St Marys abbey on the other hand is said to be haunted by many monks resulting in allot of audible phenomena and has stood its ground since 1088 the ruins today are what’s left since the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry the eighth around 1540.
We decided on these locations because of their historic pasts combined with their reputed phenomena.
Since deciding on the locations we had to decide on what the application could do, we had various ideas for small games and information features however we didn’t think they were quite suitable for what we were trying to achieve.
It was then we thought about visual interactive applications such as 360 maps of the locations such as the ones you see on hotel websites so that you can have a look around the room before your visit. However we wanted to add animations in.
We looked into the big software programs commonly used for creating 360 visuals. Such as Paper3d, Rich, who had been assigned the task of looking into the 3d software’s and development looked at some tutorials and decided the software could possibly take months to program and learn, therefore we started to look for an alternative which would better fit to our deadline.
By coincidence we stumbled across the software from Microsoft: Photosynth this software analyses the photographs which you have taken and automatically makes a 360 map out of the images. This software was perfect so we ran out with the cameras to the locations to get the necessary images.
Every member of the group tried making a simple Photosynth using the photographs; we found that the photographs for St Marys Abbey didn’t work as well as the York Minsters images I think this is because the abbey is now the ruins of what once stood. Meaning that allot of the angles and arches look very alike, confusing the automated software. Therefore for the final application the Minster would look better, examples of these can be found on the made website.
The problem was that by using this software we wouldn’t be able to add moving animations of ghosts therefore we decided that we would have to Photoshop them in. We did this by looking through photographs and cropping them as if to zoom in at certain parts. I took an image of a monk, changed the colouring to grey and white and made the layer transparent creating a ghostly image. Once put back into Photosynth and rendered out the ‘ghosts’ looked unrealistic against the coloured back ground therefore we turned all of the images into black and white before trying again.




http://digitalghosts.webs.com/