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Posts Tagged ‘AirBrush’

PLAY AIRBRUSH NOW!

Posted 23 June 2011 by Hannah

That’s right. The time of waiting… is over. All of our hard work is complete.  You can now play the finished game:

AIRBRUSH!

Our top tip for playing: STAND UP! Jump around. AirBrush is great for making abstract artworks using your WHOLE BODY!

We’re looking forward to seeing all of your new AirBrushed artworks. Hopefully you’ll enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed making it.

If you have any top tips for drawing with AirBrush, leave them in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!

Someone very talented at Plug-In Media made this version of Van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night:

 

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SOUNDS LIKE OUR GAME’S ALMOST DONE!

Posted 6 June 2011 by Hannah

Hannah here again to tell you about the very last thing we had to do on our new game: the voiceover! Wakka wakka (*sounds* like our game’s almost done? Geddit?).

SJ and I took the train to Brighton (note to self: work with more people who are based in Brighton, it’s a brilliant place) to meet up with Dom from Plug-In Media and our actor friend, Jason.

Dom’s a very cool type of a fella with lots of very cool friends, so we all went to his bandmate Ellie’s house. Oh yeah, she’s got a recording studio in her back garden and she and Dom play in a ukulele band together. Completely awesome.

Here's the script. You can see where I made one small but crucial edit. I am important.

After a little while familiarising himself with the script, Jason was ready to get to work. He has done voices for very famous video games in the past, so he knows exactly what to do!

First Dom showed him how the game works.

After getting the idea of the game in his head, the way it feels and looks, he was ready to enter the sound recording booth, which was hidden behind a lovely folding screen.

Here Jason looks like he's being shy, but he's totally not shy really.

You can see some soundproofing material stuck to the wall in the top right of that picture. It looks like egg boxes. That’s what stops the sometimes loud noise coming from Ellie’s Musical Bungalow from disturbing her neighbourhood (she was making a song for an advert when we arrived, which was very catchy indeed and might have stuck in your head all day if you’d heard it – it did stick in mine!).

When you’re recording voiceover, it’s important to listen to everything and make sure it flows well. Sometimes you might be about to cough, or need a drink of water, and you can hear it in the recording – even the tiniest sounds become really amplified.

Luckily Ellie is a bit of a wizard and made sure everything sounded perfect, using her amazing recording software.

So Ellie’s saved all the sounds and we’re just adding them to the game now – which means we’re almost ready to go! Are you excited to play it?

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WHAT’S IN A LOGO?

Posted 2 June 2011 by Hannah

As you know from this blog, we worked very hard to think up loads of different names for AirBrush before we decided on one. Sometimes just working on a lot of different ideas, even silly ones, means that the best one jumps out at you. It’s important to try different things, even if you think the first one you came up with is a winner. (I still don’t know why we didn’t call it WAVEY PAINTING TIME, which was my first idea. Humph!)

The same thing is true for designing logos. Sometimes you need to try lots of different versions before you get a feel for what’s the right one. What will the colours be? What kind of texture will it have? What font will we use? There are more questions involved in the process than you might think!

Here are a few of the logo designs that the good people at Plug-In Media came up with for AirBrush…

The first one, with a kind of hand-drawn look.

Smart! Using the title of the game as the centre of a handprint - and of course, in AirBrush you're painting with your hands!

Ooh, now the hand stands out more, and is filled in with the effects from the game.

It's the famous Tate font!

Another font idea with more of a 'brush' feel.

And now with capitals!

You’ll have to wait and see which one we go with when we launch the game. Which one is your favourite?

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DESIGNING A USER INTERFACE

Posted 20 May 2011 by Hannah

We’re almost finished with AirBrush now. It seems like only yesterday we were just messing about with webcams and doodling on pads trying to figure out how it would work. Time flies! I may shed a tear… nah. Too exciting.

Today I want to tell you about the user interface that Plug-In have come up with. User Interface means the bits and pieces that are on the screen that tell you what does what, what has done what, and what happens next. Here’s the first ever idea for AirBrush…

Image of first ever user interface for AirBrush

Told you we were doing lots of doodles. Look at this happy little feller!

No he hasn’t got a whirlwind coming out of his hand – that’s supposed to be paint. He looks like he’s enjoying himself! You can see the buttons that allow you to change the colour, shade and so on. Here’s the next version:

Image of the second design for the user interface of Airbrush

He's even happier now he's got a lightsaber.

This is what it looked like when we put it in the computer. Look at the edit button. I wonder what that was for?

Image of the third user interface

Wahey, it's Dom! Wave hello Dom. Hello!

By the magic of computer technology, our pal the stick man has turned into Dom. Those buttons are still the same though…

Dom has magically metamorphosed into Richard!

Here’s the first significant change – the menu has moved to the left. This makes the drawing area more square and a better size to work with. Also you can see that the design flourishes are starting to come in, with a nice pink eraser and some paint splats! This makes it feel a lot more like something touchable – and as you’re really using your hands with this game, it’s a great fit.

Richard is really good at keeping very still, it seems.

Here’s a refined version of the last design. Now it’s easier to tell which setting you’ve selected.

Still holding that pose!

Now there are a second set of buttons on the right. These are the more technical ones, and the ones on the left are more about the art-making fun times. Keeping them separate should make it easy to find what you want to do!

In a somewhat remarkable switcheroo, Kat appears in a shower of purple glitter. Hi Kat!

This is the final version! All of the designs are fully sorted now, with button sizes and positions decided (and the eraser now doesn’t look like a great big giant one next to the brushes). Done!

It’s not long until the game launches now, are you getting excited to play it?

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PICS FROM OUR AIRBRUSH USER TESTING

Posted 18 April 2011 by SJ

Hello all,
Check out the talent on show here!
Best wishes
SJ

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