Beta testing

I have gone around the room and asked four questions about my banner. These are the questions and also the number of responses. I have asked twelve people.

1. Do you like the colours?
Yes - 8
No - 4

2. Is this banner challenging?
Yes - 11
No - 1

3. Is this addicting?
Yes - 7
No - 5

4. Would this banner catch your eye on a web page?
Yes - 8
No - 4


Overall I am happy with the results. Looks like my banner is good in peoples eyes.

Evaluation

Overall I think I have done very well with the banner design. I really do like what I have made out of it. The research I took alot of time doing, designing was fun and the banner itself was great work. I have used a variety of techniques with this project, I have designed web banners on paper for primary references. I have used flash alot along with coding. I have used flashvortex.com for a quick simple banner to show what it is like along with seeing what techniques they use. With the final banner I have used images from Google that are internet memes. These are fine to work with and easy to recognise. I have turned my simple banner into a very hard to click game which advertises the college. Overall I think I have done really well on this project. I do think I will do more planning in future though, along with more designs of what my final outcome will be. I am really happy with the project and I think this will go down as one of my best projects so far.

Mind Map

I have worked together with a few of my friends to make this mind map. Team work really can help. We all chose an idea each and roughly done a third of the mind map each.

Banner designs

Here are a few demo banners I have drawn, some are pretty basic and simple.

1. You need to shoot the target while it is moving left to right
2. You need to jump from platform to platform until you reach the finish.
3. balls are falling from the top and you need to bounce them back up, you lose after missing three, a score keeps track.
4. Catch the cat.

I have decided to do the fourth idea as I can adapt on it well.

Progression through banner

Now I am going to go through how I put my banner together, here is what I have done, first I have set my banner size to 160 pixels X and 600 pixels Y. I then went to the internet and took some images that everyone uses which makes them highly recognizable. I then positioned them onto the banner.

I then decided it wasn't enough, that it looked really empty and dull, so I cloned the face to make three of them and added a background, this is the next stage of my development. I know the background is bigger than the size of the banner but it will only show what is within the size what I have set it to.

Next I have added a score system and rotation system on my banner, you have to click the cat, I have also added 'click nyan cat!' with a score bar underneath. This is what it looks like.

Finally I thought with the score system on a standing still cat with no connection to the college, I decided to make the cat appear in random places at lightening speed, plus if you manage to click the cat, the score will go up by one and you will be taken directly to our college course.

Now my banner has been completed, I think it looks great and can be really challenging, try it out and see for yourself!

Script For Banner

I have made the script for my banner and placed it here. Alot of this is to tell the images what to do.

Key:
nyan = cat
af1 = face 1
af2 = face 2
af3 = face 3

With the first two lines I have made a scoring system which makes the score on the banner appear as 'Score 0'.

The next line is telling nyan what to do for the function.

With the next score lot it tells nyan when it is clicked, the score will add by one, also it is telling nyan to open a web page on the internet.

Next I have got another event listener to tell what the next lot to do which is af1, af2 and af3 to rotate.

The next two lines tell nyan to appear anywhere randomly within 0-160 on the X axis and 0-600 on the Y axis.

Finally the last three lines tell af1, af2 and af3 to rotate at a speed of 10fps.

__________________________________________________________________________________

var score:Number=0
scoreText.text="SCORE  "+String(score)


nyan.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, fl_ClickToHide_2);

function fl_ClickToHide_2(event:MouseEvent):void
{
score+=1
scoreText.text="SCORE  "+String(score)
trace("SCORE")
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("http://www.plymouthart.ac.uk/prospectus/Further-Education/BTEC-Level-3-Extended-Diploma-in-Interactive-Media-and-Games-Art/IMFE1A1112");
navigateToURL(request);

}
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, RotateContinuously);

function RotateContinuously(event:Event)
{
nyan.x=Math.random()*160
nyan.y=Math.random()*600

af1.rotation += 10;
af2.rotation += 10;
af3.rotation += 10;
}

Final Banner

Here is my banner. I have spent a while doing this and now this is the finished version. You will need to click the cat to bring you to the Plymouth College of Art website which also brings you to the Interactive Media and Games Art page.

Practise and research Banner

Here is an example of me using banners created from flashvortex.com. I am really using this to look into banners more so its just a little attempt of research.

Banner Ideas

Okay here I am going to roughly jot down ideas and all that stuff needed to make a banner. First of all I need to think of a size for my banner... I am thinking of doing a 120x600 sized banner. I have a few interactive ideas too. I have to not think too much as my flash is limited, maybe a score system with shooting or a drawing system. I cant do a plain banner as that wont do me well.

Now those plans are down i need to think of what kind of style I am going to do. Will it be cartoony? Will it be gory? Will it be child friendly? I need to look into more of this as I go along. I am thinking of a cartoony styled graphics. I might watch some tutorials so I get the hang of it.

Researching Banner sizes

I have been looking at many banner websites and according to my research I have found a few common sizes. Some are roughly 468x60, 60x468. 300x600, any size like this really. I have also found a bit of a preview sheet from Wikipedia aswell. Here is a screenshot.

Web Banner

Here is a banner I have found on google, I think it is bright, nice to look at, which brings your attention to it, the only downside I can see is that it is hard to read and you need to concentrate for it.

Here is another banner which is a nice basic one from the Nintendo website during the 3DS release, got their sponsored characters, a picture of the product and thats all it needs, nice and simple.

Here is another banner which I think could have been a bit brighter, its a sub banner where you type your name in instead, its a good idea but in my opinion its not very good.

With this banner I find it a bit too basic and doesnt work well, plus its original size is too small so when it does get used, it will appear pixelated. Only relys on the lighting effect, i think its too bland.

Animating a dot

Today what we have done is grab a dot and animate it, we have made a clip on flash by increasing the size and putting it on repeat, also with combining it with script, we made it repeat.

Also another thing we have done is added a score system with coding, what we have done is made a text box and added some codes to make whenever you click on the dot, the score increases by one.

var score:Number=0
scoreText.text="SCORE  "+String(score)


dot.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, bananas);


function bananas(event:MouseEvent):void
{
score+=1
scoreText.text="SCORE  "+String(score)
trace("SCORE")
}

Thats the script I have currently used, dot is the object with addEventListener gives it the command while the MouseEvent Click is how to work the code, bananas is there so the whole line follows on to where bananas is used again which means it will have to follow everything else thats listed.

Here in this screenshot I am showing that i have the dot and a text box, you cannot type in the box in action script 3 as it messes up.

In this screenshot I have readied the clip and coded it so the score appears as soon as you start.

As you click on the dot, the score steadily increases by one with each click.