Contextual research - trees and brambles

More contextual research - Game Company Logos

Here are the game company logos that I found.

Games Company Logos

Contextual research - display screens and logos

As part of my ongoing contextual research, I have been obtaining images of game points displays, intro screens/ menus, game over, game logos & games company logos.


Oh the exciting things we do when the other half is working for the night!


These should help get an idea of what is commonplace in the industry's market, if they all have a common theme, that suggests it is a method that works.  This should help us steer our design development along the right path.  It is all well and good being different to show our creative abilities, but if it is not in keeping with a market's tastes, we may alienate a proportion of potential sales.


Here are the points display screens.

Here are the games logos.

The Countryside - Ideas

Marine Life - Under the Sea

These images are from a diving guide that I bought in Taba, Egypt.  These are fish and coral from the National Park in the Red Sea.  Should help to design some realistic sea creatures for the Under the Sea scene.

Countryside sketches - Depth of Field/ Aperture Game

I have an idea for the game, this will be a landscape of the countryside with a variety of features placed at differant areas.  There may be rolling hills in the background, a river, farms and trees in the middle section with flora in the foreground.

The aim of the game is to photograph the scene with a variety of different features in focus.  This demonstrates how to use the aperture to create varying depth of field effects.

The larger the aperture the shallower the field, this is beause the light is spread through a larger area, this makes the image less clear.

The smaller the aperture the deeper the field, the more levels that will be in focus.  This is because the light that travels through the aperture (hole) is concentrated.

A way to think of this is to imagine that you have a hose pipe.  The aperture is the width of the hose pipe and the light is the water.  If you have a narrow hose or a water gun, the spray will be concentrated and the target will be saturated.  The wider the hole, the greater the width of the spray, the target will be wet but not as soaking as some of the water will fall away from the object.

Assessment - Contextual Research

Contextual Research  (Tuesday 08/11/2011)

By 9pm on the day of your Working Product Presentation, you are required to submit your individual Contextual Research. This document should contain the following:

·        The aim of your research

·        Your methodologies

·        A literature review

·        Results/conclusions

·        Bibliography

Your research should be no more than 2000 words in length. Please note that your research can be visual/graphical as appropriate! Feel free to include images, diagrams, drawings, annotated screen-grabs and other form of visual research.

This individual Contextual Research will award 30 marks.

How to…. Teach kids about photography

As part of my contextual research report I have been reading about photography for kids.  I have bought two books from Amazon this afternoon Picture This: Fun Photography and Crafts (Kids Can Do It) - Debra Friedman & Jane Kurisu and Photography for Children - John M. Pickering, hopefully this will be interesting reading.  

The reason for this line of research is that I want to make sure that the content of what we are teaching the kids through our game is not only accurate but also appropriate for the target audience, children.

The books won't land on my mat for a few days and in that I am impatient I decided to visit the ol' interweb.  I came across Digital Photography School with a fantastic piece called 13 lessons to teach your child about photography.  The author and founder of the school, Darren Rowse, explained not only what to teach the kids, but also how to.  The article breaks down elements such as composition and exposure with simple terms and metaphors.  Personally being a visual/kinasthetic learner, I found his metaphors very clear.  Hopefully I can transfer what I have learned from him, into our work.  Thanks Darren!

Tags: How to, Photography for kids, Contextual Research, Research.

Contextual Research Report

Starting planning this today as well. Good grief they want a lot from us on this assignment.

I need to make a list of everything I have read and studied so far on this project.  All the books, magazines, blogs, video tutorials, photographs that have been taken.

In fact while I think on, I should probably upload the briefs to this blog!