Spike's Digital Media Blog

Showreel:  https://youtu.be/2KHU01jfazI?feature=shared Trailer: https://youtu.be/s7_q8gCeOQo?si=p-NKmDBu9LJVzPwA Walkthrough:  https://youtu.be/WzGk1ZK0pqE?si=IvQTZvzYqL5ggWlG These are the final versions of all my video artefacts for the Degree Project and Professional Practices. Sadly, all of these videos suffer from a lower than professional video quality due to the recording software, OBS only having access to the h.264 format and no DNXHD or Apple Pro Res. Because of this I can't help but feel these aspects of the project are as good as they could have been, looking all grainy and amateur. If I had found out soon enough, maybe they would have looked nicer, but as it is, they are not the best they could have been. If I were to redo my trailer and showreel, I would probably take the same approach, (fast quick-cutting showreel and a slow trailer filmed in-game.) but I would obviously use a more appropriate method of recording than OBS. At least they look crisp on Mobile, whi...

2 of Us · Emil Axelsson Coast 2 Coast P. Epidemic Sound Released on: 2017-01-20 Composer: Emil Axelsson Music Publisher: Emil Axelsson Blank letter head

  Today I created a scrolling gallery for my homepage as I didn'r really know what else to put there. I think the images are kind of nice, they can just be slotted in and out outh though because of how it is coded. Speaking of Code, this is the tutorial I used  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCunS8KzyQ0  from here:  https://www.insidethesquare.co/squarespace-tutorials/horizontal-scrolling-images I have also started gathering footage from all of my games for the portfolio and the showreel.

  Ever since I saw the engraved text effect on dean's Website I wanted to see if I could do it for myself, so I tried it out in photoshop using the Bevel and Emboss tool and here is what I got. pretty cool, right? Also here are some updated branding pack materials with the new logo. I'm not sure how but they still need some work I think.

  This is my Squarespace site, which I finally bought the Subscription and Domain for today, being spgames.uk, solely because that's what the domain is on all my branding and is the name of my instagram. A majority of the text I want is in position now I just need to gather images and videos to use alongside them: A picture of myself maybe, a video of all of my works, maybe some screenshots and that should be enough. I also need to consider what I will add to my homepage too as it feels a little barren. You can also notice I changed my Logo again, for the final time hopefully, to this: The original SP games logo was too "Old Timer" and didn't really fit what I was doing so I updated it to something sleeker. It kind of feels like a 1970s Videotape company logo but it is by far the best I have done so far. Here is an older design:  This is the only previous iteration that I have left of this design because the otghers annoyed me so much I deleted them haha.

CV - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-CXgbSz1vv2d5eWOQ4REtnsB82aghIJQXfnIf3TMO5o/edit?usp=sharing Cover Letter - https://docs.google.com/document/d/13mRsTHq2_n0KcVidc5G_8OOxjXNj6UlAaW7EkMtMjGg/edit?usp=sharing Gratitude Letter - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wfx79qTeo0shcRe4W8qEFi7dP4iZZbMcpWpOVcW8Lf8/edit?usp=sharing These are my first drafts of my CV, Cover Lettter and Grattitude Letter. I tried to change them a little from thge template to where they suited Game Design more but for the most part they are the same despite different wording and obviously skillsets. I am a little annoyed that I couldn't find an appropriate place to put the fact that I could speak spaniosh on the Cover letter but it is alright as there is space for it on the CV. It just didn't fit in any particular section of the Cover Letter. As for any other comments, I think the education and qualification sections of the CV are a little redundant as what I studied could just be paired with the grad...

Here are my WiP Powerpoint Templates that I worked on today, much of it is based on the RA presentation from last semester, just because I really liked the Bold White Arial on Cyan effect. I also made a few unique icons to accompany slides where I feel they were a little lacking.  Despite being very simple I somehow managed to nearly crash my PC 5 times while maing the Mobile Icon. This was because I made it 1080x1080 at 300ppi because I wasn't checking my document settings. Very Silly.  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TAj8jL3jBdB7e_kp4zFtYiY1oHzpXBJ3uEzTyiR0MMA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wRGqPBeO0IDcFlHAqxI_nIG6LGXFq52ZpdR-UZnjxdM/edit?usp=sharing I also made this A4 Letterhead which is similar to the invoice in many ways but obviously the table is removed and replaced with a body of text. It may need some tweaking but I like the general layout for now. That being said, I also haven't asked for any Feedback yet so who knows if I'm in f...

  Here is the latest iteration of my Logo, it is a quite simplistic joining of an 'S' and 'P' with a stroke around it in the Damion typeface. With the typography, I use Cyan and Blue paint daubs as a background to create this kind of zaney, off-beat, kind of unconventional effect. I like it more than my previous iterations and I want to stick with it but I still think it's early enough to where tweaking won't be a problem. Invoice Template Business Card Template This is the Background Paint Daub that I made in Photoshop. Next I will probably move on to the Letterhead and Powerpoint template uhhh hopefully.

Here are 3 more personal logos I created today. I hate all of them still, I'll work on this again with a fresh pair of eyes... I think I like the rougher, more quirky type of logo but I could go for sleek too. I'll do iterations of both types next time.  

Here are some iterations of my own personal logo for the Branding pack and my Portfolio site. I decided to call myself SP Interactive as I want to focus on Game Design when I finish the course. The Iterations started from Top-Left, then Top-Right, then Bottom-Left and finally Bottom-Right. I was initally trying to go with the idea of building my initials out of shapes for the first 3 designs but I was not happy with them, they looked to "Insurance Company" or "Banking App" and lacked anything in the way of character. This lead me to my 4th iteration, where I wanted to emphasise myself as a designer this time around so I thought colour, shape, editing - and so I created a marquee tool-esque thing around these cmyk shapes. Much more personality and communication of the services I off I think. Update: After today's presentation I'm starting from scratch.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEfIoTAN5rG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== Today I finally hit 1000 followers at midday during Steve's Lecture. I had no doubt that I'd at least reach 1000 with how fast each follow was after the 250 mark, though it appears after that for the rest of the day they have rather slowed down again compared to the daily average. I actually remember Nyssa saying that after 1000 it slows down again, which is a shame. Overall, I think I did a lot better than I was expecting in terms of numbers. I was expecting 200ish to be where I reached my plateau but clearly that wasn't the case. Like I said on the last blog, it is a little deflating when you consider most of your own followers don't even look at your posts. In terms of engagement, my comments and likes are more akin to somebody with 200 Followers and 20 Hardcore Fans, not that I'm complaining of course, this proably is the best reception I've ever recieved on Soc...

 https://www.instagram.com/zestarius.the.yellow It is now the other side of Christmas Holidays and there is only a week left for the Lemon Project. Minus accounts that I know for a fact have used Bots, I am probably 4th, 5th or 6th STILL!  You may notice I have also recieved around 550 Followers since my last Blog, where I was only at 200. Now I never expected to get this many as by my estimate, 100 Followers took about 3 weeks to a Month sort of up until Boxing day where it's now averaging 60 per day, which doesn't really correlate with engagement on my posts, which have stayed in line with how they have been since hitting 200 followers. In short, I'm pretty sure most of my follows are coming from otgher Instagram accounts, trying to boost followers by doing Follow for Follow, which I also do but now people are going to my account, rather than I, going for theirs and I've sort of started to exponentially grow as a result. I am a little deflated at the fact that people ...

As of today, all the deliverables, minus the Presentation and Example Mock-Ups/ Images, are in a submittable state, here isa Google Drive Folder to preview them, these ones look identical to all the final images except the ppi is incorrect on some of the JPEG Files (Which has now been corrected).  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fcCh4IZgV4D4rSCmAFWuyOMV4wIK5O-6?usp=drive_link As I've stated many times within this Professional Practices Blog, I was initially worried to do this project because of my lack of knowledge or expertise when it comes to Illustrator. As I went through, doing each image, sometimes multiple times, I became much more comfortable with each step to where the most difficult part of each deliverable was making sure the parameters were set correctly (e.g. ppi, colour set-up, Bleeds, Borders, Marks, file type etc.)  There were some other mistakes however moreso in Practice, which had to be corrected too, such as having inconsistent dates among posters, u...

  I actually reached 200 Followers around 5 Days ago but I didn't realise I had began to gain followers quicker so I guess this blog is a bit late. It seems because of the other lemon accounts who have all followed accounts from the crotcheting accounts and fashion accounts  many accounts from those subcommunities now see me as an easy Follow for Follow target (Which I am) so I'm definitely getting a lot more visits now. In terms of content, a lot of it is reposts or edits of Marmot videos still with Lemon related captions. I've also started doing more marmot photo collages and abstract edits too just because they're fun, relatively easy, a little weird and seem to gain good traction too. In terms of my rankings compared to everyone else, I am probably 5th, maybve 6th at the minute. It's still definitely all to play for, for 2nd place at least, 1st is definietely unbeatable, being 1,000 ahead of 2nd and I'm still a few hundred or so from that. Hashtags: While I ...

    Here are all of my current RA Project Deliverables with outlined text, in the correct document formats (hopefully) with bleeds and borders and the vectors imported correctly and all the other stuff which is needed for each one. I have done roughly a third of the Final deliverables over the past two weeks and that was only from a few hours here and there, so I think completing this project to an extent that I am happy with before the deadline will be possible over christmas, depending on what more I complete within the next two weeks. I think my inital struggle and apprehension of this project was my unfamiliarity with the intricacies of Illlustrator down so the issues I had with the Font, Editing Vectors in the documents, outlining text etc. and also not having a final design down which i was confident in such as with the size of elements and particularly the colour of text and graphics too. Initially, it was all Black text but after some advice I changed it to mainly Yell...

Here is my updated poster design for the project, after feedback I came to the conclusion that Yellow and White lettering looks far superior to the Black I had been using up until this point, fitting more with the brief of a SUMMER Exhibition and of course the two colours being more interesting again than just Black. In terms of completed deliverables I now have 3 and feel I can comofortably do the other 12ish before January 10th as I have had a lot of practice in Illustrator techniques too and a more finalised design.  I've also been told to pay attention to which deliverables require text and which don't, which I hadn't considered beforehand.

  What Life Gives You (@zestarius.the.yellow) • Instagram photos and videos https://www.instagram.com/p/DB1qazxtQjU/ So this is my account for the Lemon project, @zestarius.the.yellow  . I've decided to wait until now to do my first blog about the project because I wanted to break down the account's evolution up until now and how it has changed since the beginning. Initially I had struggled to come up with content to create or repost, especially about Lemons. A good starting point was/ is the 2024 US Election because of how current it is, but other than that I had very little of an idea of which niche I would fill that would make people follow. The posts felt aimless. I figured out from asking a friend early on that doing a follow for follow scheme for ~300ish accounts that follow similar niche "meme" accounts can be a good way to increase traffic and get the ball rolling, as such, so that's mainly how I've made it to 100 but now people who I didn't follow...

After being given the Lemon Project 2 Weeks ago, last week we were given the main Professional Practices Assignment for this semester which is to create a pitch and branding (To very specific Professional Guidelines) for the Royal Academy of Arts' Summer Exhibition. My initial thoughts on how smoothly I think it will go are almost split down the middle, on one hand I am familiar with the summer exhibition and have been every year since 2021 so I am familiar with the subject matter and passionate about it; on the other hand a lot of the project is to be done in illustrator, which I am far less familiar with than other Adobe Suite Softwares.  With that being said, I'm not necessarily making the Artwork which I will be using for the branding on Illustrator rather most of the project will be arranging pre-made assets within Illustrator from the braning pack that I have been given, as such it may not be as bad as I'm concerned it may be.  ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ I'm also close to finalis...