Finalised.

Final environment scene...


In order to have the environment relate closer to the input device, I have removed the small vase in the corner and added spinning cogs along the wall. They spin slowly as an ambient feature.
The colours have also been dulled down to help relate to the input device.

Solutions.

The solution to our light sensor problems was to mount an LED onto a cog so that every time the light passes the light sensor, the vacuum arm would activate.

Progress.

Today we continued trying out the light in the cog idea and have got it working. We just need to finalise the coding part of the project and do the documentation.

Problems.

We tried to hook up the light sensor to the cogs today but were having problems with making it work properly. The light sensor was not getting enough light from where it was mounted so we tried to find alternative ways to make our project work.

We tried to experiment with Faylin's microphone from her first project since the cogs made a decent amount of sound when it was spun, but that didn't work out. We also tried using a vibration sensor but the sensor ended up getting broken so we went back to finding other ways to use the light sensor.

Ashley came over to our group later and suggested that we mount a light within the cog so that every time the light passes the light sensor, it would give us nice values.

So we tried that out it works much better, although it still can be a bit temperamental at times...

We will sort out details tomorrow.

Post-Alpha

At alpha presentations, there was some feedback about how the scene in flash should relate closer to the input device. In order to do that, I plan to modify the environment some more to make the project look more united.

Update.

I have started writing the 600-800 words as part of the final hand in requirements. The overall project is starting to come together nicely. We are hoping to get the input wired up and finished by the end of this week. From last I've seen, the coding is getting there and Faylin and David have the basics of it sorted which is good.

Spaceship.

Spaceship design for the environment.

Sketch:


Coloured:


The form and animation of it is very simple as it is only meant to be a background element that makes the environment look more lively. It zooms past the sky every once in a while.

Animation.

Short video showing the subtle animations within the environment.

Reworked.

I wasn't entirely happy with the previous design of the environment so I reworked it a little...




It looks much cleaner now since I lightened the colour scheme.

Feedback.

After the progress check on Monday, we got some feedback of needing to add something more to the project so our group started brainstorming some ideas to create a sense of urgency or need for the mother robot to vacuum the balloons. I pitched the idea of having the whole scene filled up with balloons if the user does not interact with it enough, causing the mother robot to be overwelmed, which would become a sort of "game over" ending. David and Faylin have been working with the code to try and achieve this.

Output?

I was casually talking to Craig about this project today and he suggested an interesting output for my group's project involving a fan and some miniature balloons. When the user is interacting with the input, the mother robot is sucking up the balloons in the scene, which then triggers the output involving a fan which blows out miniature balloons into the physical world. I thought this idea was pretty clever so I pitched it to my group and they seem pretty keen on working with this idea. We might work on this extra detail if we have the time.

Environment.

Environment with some subtle animations.

Images:

Basic environment in development...


With the robots in the space (Comparing art styles)

WIP.

Faylin's sketches:



My work in progress for the environment...

Reassigning.

The roles have slightly changed to spread the workload and personal abilities as evenly as possible. As Faylin does not feel very confident in using Illustrator or doing little animations, her environment role has been taken over by me and she has gone back to helping Steven put the input interaction together. We are keeping her sketches for the environment and I will redraw them in Illustrator while she tests out the interaction part by test coding it in Arduino. Jisook is going to start animating the robots and David has yet to start with the coding aspect of the project.

Instances.

Robot animation cycles:

Mother
Idle - feather duster
Angry
Vacuum - arm turns into vacuum and sucks up balloons.

Child
Idle - Happy
Blowing balloons
Sad for a few seconds after balloons are sucked up.

Animation.

Started doing some animation tests for the balloon characters today....

This is their stationary movement and their movement around the room would be coded.

Development.

As a group, we are always talking about different ways to develop this project and after each class, our ideas are always different to the last... However, we seemed to have refined our ideas after the latest meeting and things seem to be less blurry now.

Building upon our previous idea, we have decided to have 2 robots in the scene(mother and child). The mother bot is strict and likes to keep things organised and bland. She likes her mechanical robot life and doesn't like foreign objects. The child is quite the opposite and likes to play with new things. In the scene, the child fills the room with brightly coloured balloons but the mother disapproves of them as they are 'foreign objects' in the robot world, therefore cleans them up with a vacuum cleaner.

The user interacts with this scene by means of a 'controller' which charges up the vacuum cleaner that the mother uses. When the user interacts with the controller, the mother vacuums up the balloons, cleaning up the scene.

Assigned roles:
Me and Jisook: Character development and animation (robots and balloons)
Faylin: Environment and Input interaction
David: Coding
Steven: Input interaction

Variation.

Designed some more balloons that the child robot would fill the room with...



I thought it would be more interesting to have more than just balloon animals.

Concepts.

Some concepts for the balloon animals that would float around the environment.

Balloons.

Had another group meeting in class today, minus Jisook because she is sick, but we still made progress in terms of dividing out the responsibilities.

We have also come to an agreement as a group to create a mechanical and rigid looking environment with a cleaning bot living in it and users 'pollute' the environment by blowing animal balloons into it. The form and bright colours of the balloons are considered as a foreign and unknown object to the cleaning bot, so it aims to destroy it to keep the environment 'clean.'

Brainstorming.

Today in class, my group was just talking through our project idea. We talked about having an environment such as a park where it would look completely normal until the user disturbs it by "playing god" and messing it up with natural disasters like tornadoes and earthquakes. After the disturbance, objects within the environment would become alive and clean up the mess.

For next class, each of us are going to do some sketches of what the environment could look like.