This project was a difficult task to produce due to the circumstances of Covid-19 forcing us to be in a national lock down therefor locations were very limited to film at anyway and my ideas had to adapt to the situation. Therefore the idea of a Star Wars game guide website just helped my case in producing something that I have knowledge about and can be able to do. Learning and using a new software to produce this piece was an annoyance to myself because it was something I wouldn't do again by choice and it certainly was a project which did not meet up with the qualities and skill set that I have. Therefore it was a pain to learn a new software which is quite difficult to navigate around, even with video tutorials it was a lot of work to produce a website that would work. After countless trial and errors with different buttons etc., I managed to produce a interactive website which offered the audience two characters to understand and learn on how to use them in the Star Wars Battlefront 2 video game. Even though the design of the pages are simply and not executed to perfection, it still looks great and the added bonus would be that comparing it with other Star Wars related websites they look fairly similar and people can tell that the website is at least about something along the lines of the Sci-Fi genre. Eventually all of the buttons did work but there were multiple problems faced with producing these buttons and having them work within the preview section of Adobe Animate.
The requirements of the website were achievable but it would always be difficult to achieve the higher grades down to what was required and the talent that I possessed to be able to create a multi page interactive website with advance techniques and moving images. This was way out of my credentials and yes it is always great to learn new techniques and software, this was something that I did not enjoy producing, I am proud in producing this website. But i know that this website could of been so much more with time and effort, but to be honest I did not give this project my hundred percent, the reason being that I didn't want to do this project and it was way out of my comfort zone. Maybe if circumstances were different were all the lectures were not online and morale was at a all time low, maybe this project would of been better produced and offer so much more which it could easily have. I prefer not to make excuses in what went against me and with the whole Covid-19 situation because I understand that everyone is in the same boat as myself, but I feel as people who are comfortable and interested making interactive websites and all the post-production elements would benefit more and enjoy this project much more than myself. I can say honestly once this module was introduced it was already an uphill battle in producing something that looks amazing with multiple buttons navigating among plenty of pages which offer different content for the audience, this production that I have produce lacks a lot of creative content for the audience to enjoy. This website offers three pages, with one being the homepage with two buttons that lead to separate character profiles. And within those pages there were three YouTube video links that play the edited videos that were made in no time. That's all that the websites offered, it should of offered much more but it was more of a chore rather than something that I was passionate about, maybe in the future if something like this comes up again I would put more effort in and try and enjoy the project a bit more. But for the lack of effort and determination for this module this website suffered a lot and it deserves to be much better for the audience and even for myself to look back on and be proud of.
Initial Research and Idea Generation
When planning to produce this interactive website there were a few inspirations that would help me produce this website along with having a subject which would be interesting to see. The theme I would chose would hopefully give the me the most potential to produce something that can offer different forms of content to the audience while embracing and enjoying the subject which is Star Wars. Obviously Star Wars is a large form of entertainment and there are many paths to take in terms of content about it. Therefore I chose to focus on the Star Wars Battlefront II video game. This game I have been playing over the lock down period during the Covid-19 pandemic, where this game has many features that could be shown in another platform. Therefore I had the idea to use this game to be the main source of content for the website, this then gave me the motivation to research into different Star Wars related websites that were interactive and would help give me some sort sort of structure to work with. With these websites it gave me an insight on how to produce this interactive project and make all of the elements work and it would look presentable. (https://www.starwars.com/)With this website it gave me the best solution on how to incorporate the characters from the game into the website and have a personal profile of the characters display onto the website.
There was only one other idea that could of been done and that would be a cooking website with different recipes for people to look at and then proceed to follow, the recipes would be homemade recipes made by myself where I would produce cooking tutorial videos to display on the website . but I opted to follow the Star Wars path because I didn't want to spend any of my own money to produce this website and I would much rather produce something that I can do with the equipment that I have and where there would be less hassle to do. With having an Elgato Game Capture HD60 S this would allow me to capture gaming footage to edit into tutorials/guides for the Star Wars website which again was the easier option to accomplish. I took inspiration for the gaming guide website from other game guide websites and even old magazines that I use to read when I was younger, where games would be shown in images/screenshots and there would be detail analysis on different characters/levels in games. Then with the websites these are still being used to this day because with every new game comes out or a new player is playing an old game these gaming guide websites are still used to these days to help the players. Therefore I had the vision of creating something similar to this. The major difference between the gaming guides that I have used for examples my website would be heavily based off one game and all of the aesthetics of the website would resemble the Star Wars theme to make it more appealing to the Star Wars fan base.
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Pitch
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With this research i came up with this idea A website that is a guide on how to use characters from the video game Star Wars Battlefront 2. The footage that will be gathered will be done by myself by using my Elgato Game Capture HD60 S to record the gameplay and I will be using Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the footage into short clips to be used as video guides on the website. There would be drop down menus that offer different button options to select and it will take to another page with details on the specific characters and there will be a video button on each page with a small video clip that is a guide on the game. I felt like this was the best possible option to go for and during the pitch I felt comfortable talking about this idea because it had a great structure to it and there was always the possibility to produce this without hassle in terms of gathering the content needed for the page. Gathering the footage would be the easiest part of the production of this website because I have the equipment to capture the gameplay without hassle and I have Adobe software to edit the videos into tutorials. But I feel like this idea works well and it offers enough coverage to the grading system to tick the boxes to express my creativity and shows the worth of the website, where it will function properly and it will fulfill it's purpose and be a gaming guide that works and offers enough information.
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The videos themselves will be edited on Adobe Premier Pro and the images that will be used on the website will be edited on Adobe Photoshop, I am most comfortable using both of these software and I know that they will give me the best opportunity to have everything looking good and up to a professional standard. I will be using Adobe Animate to create the website by using the HTML 5 coding option on the software, this will be the first time I will be using this software but open to learn new skills in producing a website that will implement different aspects of media into one production. But the idea itself I like and believe with the planning that has been made so far the website will function properly with different button options to navigate and I feel that the edited video guides will be a great success to the website.
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The sketches below is some sort of version that I would like for the website to look like and I feel that these sketches give me the best way on how to produce this website. Added with some color on the sketches I have the idea for the mood board that I would want to go for. These sketches are a good representation on what the final product will look like.
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Concept Development
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Since the pitch the development of the idea has come a long way where I have started to design the website on Adobe Animate and I have introduce buttons into the website wheres the buttons link with one another, as well it will navigate the audience to two different sections of the guide where the two characters I have selected for the website have their own individual section. Within these pages they have three video links to YouTube which will play short edited video clips of gameplay from the Star Wars Battlefront 2 game. I feel that these additions will help the website reach it's potential in what it can become. There was a lot of trial and error in producing these buttons, due to Adobe Animate being a hassle to use and it was not an easy task to have everything working. Buttons wouldn't work in certain areas and the software would crash from time to time. But somehow I got it to work and I would say what I wanted out of the website has come to reality. I fiddled around with different combinations with linking the homepage button to be present on each of the characters page. This button would navigate the user back to the homepage again where they can chose a different character page to enter. The button took a while to work with multiple times of deleting the button and recording the entire page. Yes, using Adobe Animate was a challenge because of the amount of trail and error needed to ensure that one item would work in the website let alone a decent amount of button combinations. The design of the website is quite generic and basic for the eyes but it is effective because the users will have an easy time to navigate between the pages.But thankfully everything was able to work in the end.
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Thankfully, in creating the assets for the website it was much less of a hassle. Where in producing the images of the characters I would screenshot the gameplay and use Photoshop to crop out the characters to edit them into the website for their pages. With the videos that was the greatest part of the whole production where I was able to do something which I enjoy doing producing videos, whether it being a gaming video I still enjoyed this stage of the production far more than the website designing and coding element. Anyway this process was done by connecting my laptop, Xbox Series X and the Elgato Game Capture HD60 S together to be able to record the gameplay which I was playing. I played for a couple of hours on Star Wars Battlefront 2 to get the best footage possible for the website, as well the footage had to make sense for the website and of course the audience.After gathering the footage I imported the footage onto Adobe Premier Pro and edited six different video clips for the characters page, there were three videos for each page and they all turned out good enough for the website.
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The feedback that was given by my tutor for the production was very helpful in regards of the planning element of the website, where he had good information that they gave me in how to present the website in a professional manner and also for everything to work well. The main point I took away from the feedback was to be careful in how everything would be displayed onto the website where all of the images/boxes needed to be aligned together and look aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and it would need to look like a simple design but would be effective. With the design being simply it allows myself to have more freedom in the assets creation, while the website will still look great regardless of the content it offered.
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