Session 3 of the Game project was all about the graphics, taking them from the sketches and drawing them into the graphics software I have developed for retro style games. Drawing out the “Good Guy”, “Bad Guy”,” Item” and “Platform” as well as the background  in a separate editor all ready to be put in and tested in the game engine next week.

The students began to realise the value of making them draw several sketches of their characters and their respective worlds when they began “reducing them” in to 64X64 pixel sprites. It is really good doing a project over several weeks with a group of students, seeing how the develop their ideas over time instead of within a short one day session.

As always the students were friendly, polite and most important inquisitive, I think they are beginning to look at the games they play and think, “I can do that”.

I was very fortunate to be asked to be one of the “cutting edge” developers at the Power of Minds Hack with Honda, organised by Rewired State, in one word it was” excellent”. The concept was simple get 23 developers of various talents (art, music, coders and designers) and 10 of Hondas impressive “Cultural Engineers” and explore Hondas well documented ethos. We had approximately 48hours to think up and demonstrate an idea/product/piece of art inspired by these philosophies.

I was involved in two projects, both inrelation to it deployment on the iPhone “bikeAlert” alongside Emily Christie, Sym Roe and Kevin Fong a system allowing HGVs to become aware of cyclists. You can read all about it here.

My pet project was “SonarCycle” a simple app that transmits a Bluetooth signal to cars alerting them of cyclist being near. You can read more about it here.

There were loads of truly amazing ideas and you can read them about them all here. Do look at the outcomes they are fantastic. Today we presented our ideas to a panel to compete for a prize fund to develop the idea further, fortunately “bikeAlert” won best Design! and will go before a public vote shortly against three very worthy ideas.

I really enjoyed myself it is the first of this type of event which just allowed us to get on with the work, food, accomodation and wi-fi were all sorted out for us, we just had to think and create. It was amusing for me being a Guardian reader to use the Guardian Newspapers office as a kind of hack-space and we certainly made it our home for the two days. I got to meet loads of lovely and talented people most of which can be found on Twitter. @thehodge (inspirational work, excellent bloke)  @rainycat (cool wearable technology, lovely lady) @Yummity (fellow designer, who shared several ideas on music making which was spooky),  @symroe (coder and fellow beard master),  @Kevin_Fong  (“our” cultural engineer and excellent converstionalist),  @lawrencejob (brilliant ideas, will undoubtedly do well), @1jh (made me feel old, but very hopeful for technology).

My only regret is I didn’t get to speak to more of them more, but in all fairness we all had excellent ideas to work on.

Thanks to @rainycat for the picture.

Today was the second session at Springfield Junior School, and the main focus of the day was character design. Looking at some of the more popular platform game characters and trying to work out why so many characters wear white gloves? Do some games use colours like traffic lights,  green platforms are safe, yellow rings or coins are important and red bad guys are dangerous? Is it possible to tell the story of the game from analysing the box art? Although not all of the teaching materials for OCARBOT EDU are ready I used some of the assets and stories from the development to help teach about game making.

The second half of the session was the students turn, they carried on revising their designs for their games and then presented them in a 60 second pitch to the group. All the ideas and presentations were great and everyone is on target for the next session in which we will start loading the graphics in to a specially created piece of software for retro style games.

I re-visited Suffolk New College today, this time to deliver two lectures on Star Wars sound effects and Film music, it was good to have both music and media students in attendance as it was relevant to both groups.

I took them through the first 10 minutes of the “Star Wars: Clone Wars” cartoon analysing the sound design and through the first 10 minutes of “Star Wars: A New Hope” analysing (and in some cases note for note) the music of John Williams.

The lectures have been a success at University Campus Suffolk and Anglia Ruskin and they certainly seemed to enjoy it and and take on some of the terminology used in film music and sound. Although this was to be a brief introduction, I hope some of them go on to extend their studies in this area.

After giving a talk at BT recently about interesting and creative uses of technology, I was asked by Springfield Junior School, Ipswich to visit and help do some fun and creative projects with them. Today was our first session and it was fantastic.

I started by a simple introduction to the children about the types of projects I have done in the past. I then took them through a brief history of “platform games” showing them the key events in the evolution of the genre.  Following that was a brainstorming session with the children drawing, writing and discussing the games that they would like to make.   Finally the session ended with them filling in their “Game Design Diary” to help keep track of what they have done and hope to achieve over the course of the project.

I had a group of 12 year 6 students, I think it was equal number of boys and girls which was good to see.  They were all excellent, polite and attentitive, I really hope they enjoyed and learned from the session.

Next week we are going to look at character design and then have them present their ideas in the style of a 60 second pitch to game producer.

I am really pleased with todays outcome the kids got on with the work and were vocalising and visualising their ideas well.  A big thanks to Mr. Rogers Mr. Pearsons for their help and support.

For the past three years I have been fortunate to have been a student at the Centre for Design Innovation, University Campus Suffolk studying Design under the guidance of Dr. Michael Doherty. It was a wonderful experience for me to step back and look at what I have done, want to do and how I could achieve those goals. All or most of my projects for my coursework have been public facing. Obsolete?, The Super Chiptune Samba Band and Super Chip Tune Ensemble.

I am extremely grateful for everyones help and support over the past three years, FACT Liverpool, Ross Dalziel, Marshall Amplification, the National Museum of Computing,  the University of Hull Scarborough Campus, Dr. Andrew King, the Institute of Education,  Dr. Evangilos Himonides, SEMPRE and the Journal of Music Technology and Education.

I would have never imagined I would ever do a Masters Degree, let alone gain a “Distinction” for my work, become a published author and immediately continue on to do a PhD.

I could not have done this without Dr. Michael Doherty, who has been rigourous and supportive through the entire three years. Equally without the support of my wonderful partner Emma, none of this would have been possible, she has had to tolerate having an “academic” as a partner, whilst being a wonderful mother to our four children.

Today I graduated, although  I had received my grade months ago today was a kind of closure to all the work, not only was I graduating alongside some of my colleauges but some of my Computer Games Design Degree students as well.

For me the highlight of the day was not receiving the award, but looking into the balcony  seeing my children and hoping, that I have in some way inspired them to follow their dreams.