MA Interactive Multimedia @ Bath Spa University

Personal Project: Evaluation & Reflection

My personal project is now at a stage where its basic function is clearer – the Maneki Neko as a mobile avatar is firmly established rather than just being something cute waving up and down at different speeds without any interface context.Choosing a small screen as canvas for interactive media inevitably requires a different design approach to large desktop or laptop screens, the challenge is to create something engaging within the limitations of the medium e.g. visuals cannot not be too detailed and with mobile phones particularly for want of a manoeuvrable device such as a mouse, navigation is de facto limited to pressing key buttons.

Flash’s native vector format lends itself to the first requirement ideally and also keeps down the filesize, I would generally predict as Flashlite applications become more popular we will see more vector art on handheld screens.

As I have previously focused far too much on controlling the object via microphone/voice (without getting results) some valuable time has been lost that could have enhanced the mobile Manki Neko. But by finally deciding to let go of this initial concept I am quite happy with the development to date, taking into account some adverse outside influences and the generally tight schedule with me also working 3 days a week in a “proper” job.

At this stage the user can choose between 3 different screen mascots, each with different properties taken from the popular colour coding for the beckoning cats: the black and orange fur representing luck (by far the most popular version), pink, a modern version, representing love and black representing health/keeping away evil (in Japan this is also believed to keep away stalkers which I find an interesting cultural side note).

Currently only the lucky cat turns into a widget by using the keycontrols , in this instance the turned around cat displays newsticker style Japanese proverbs related to luck which are fed from an external textfile i.e. are very flexible in terms of customization (no dooddling about within Flash needed to update content, just a change to the .txt file which resides in the same folder on the server as the source .swf file.)

The other colours would feed other little wisdoms according to their function.

I have taken this idea from the Mac dashboard widgets that usually work in two ways: the front is a fully fledged graphical interface either with something useful or entertaining, the back contains further information.

Time permitting I would have very much liked to add the following features:

• First of all I would have liked to finish the original narrative idea of a cute little cat turning into something evil, the faster it waves its arm.This notion of kawai (cute) turning into evil kawai is a a popular element of modern Japanese culture and would have added extra interest/depth to the avatar
• Authentic Japanese score; something I had arranged for with a Japanese girl I know from school but unfortunately both proposed meeting dates never took place
• RSS-Feeds for appropriate content. The Maneki widget might have been too small to display this therefore I have already prepared another scroller controllable by keyboard up & down keys as opposed to the usual mouse drag & drop which would have not been appropriate for representing a mobile phone. There are ready made flash components in the common .fla library which would have made this relatively easy but again it was time issue as my experience showed ready made components may look simple but unless you fully understand the underlying actionscript can be a nightmare to customize , the devil is in the detail here.

• Create a 3D version of the Maneki Neko (my research showed that true 3D is hardly possible in Flash but SWIFT 3D is a tool that can simulate 3D in Flash and even output .swf files. This would have meant learning a new software and paying for it (no trial fir Macs available) so I refrained from doing so due to time pressure.

• Polish the interface to be more “Web 2.o” like i.e. use of drop shadows and shading for more visual appeal and relevence to a mobile widget application
• Compare real Flashlite capabilities with regular actionscript

Technical challenges faced during this project where mainly somewhere deep within actionscript and as is often the case with programming just a single missed or wrongly set character can mess up everything requiring time consuming trial and error.As frustrating as some of these maybe e.g. it took half a day to get the textfeeder working in the proper screen proportions, I feel I have learnt a lot about little details in Flash/AS which make all the difference.

When developing in Flash in future I need to take a more semantic approach to the process i.e. seperate the design steps from the code. I get distracted very easily with minute details of colour, thickness of lines etc. which has cost me a lot of time I could have spent more effective.
Perhaps I have to take of my designer hat for development purposes and use simple shapes already named like the future graphics and replace these later with the proper images so I don’t even start to think if this line is too thin or that colour to bright for the screen.

As mentioned above I also regret not having dissed the voice control idea earlier as I think the project has potential in terms of design, narrative and technical wizardry – I might revisit it for my personal pleasure and add some finer touches later.

Personal Project finalised

Below please find the links to the final files for my personal project, clicking on the hyperlinks will open a new browser window.

• This is the container file I have created, ideally all movies should load on different layers and unload the previous file (level 0 is reserved for the container and should be universally accesible by pressing key 0 (zero)): http://cklavery.net/uni/pgdip/interactive_narrative/maneki_neko/maneki_neko.html

• Please try chosing different types of Maneki avatars via key press
  1= Lucky Cat (Black & Amber fur)
  2= Love Cat (Pink)
  3= Health Cat (Black)As I have mentioned before this can take a long time hence providing them also embedded in seperate HTML files:
  http://cklavery.net/uni/pgdip/interactive_narrative/maneki_neko/maneki_level1_luck.htmlhttp://cklavery.net/uni/pgdip/interactive_narrative/maneki_neko/maneki_level1_love.html http://cklavery.net/uni/pgdip/interactive_narrative/maneki_neko/maneki_level1_health.html
  
• Preload animation for the switch over from the normal view of the animated cat to the widget with the relevant content:

  http://cklavery.net/uni/pgdip/interactive_narrative/maneki_neko/maneki_widget_luck.html

• This is the Flash movie that loads an external textfile with Japanese proverbs like a newsticker relevant to the Maneki Neko you have picked.
  For the demo these are quotes related to luck, as you have chosen the lucky cat with the black and amber fur.
  http://cklavery.net/uni/pgdip/interactive_narrative/maneki_neko/maneki_ticker_luck.html
• Another dynamic textfield fed by an external textfile, which you can control via key up & down buttons for information screens.
  http://cklavery.net/uni/pgdip/interactive_narrative/maneki_neko/maneki_scrollbar.html
  

• Faster version of wave if game gets developed to add “cute to evil” narrative
  http://cklavery.net/uni/pgdip/interactive_narrative/maneki_neko/maneki_level2.swf

Find some related online research for this project here: http://del.icio.us/cklavery/personal_project

+ more research and development on my shared box folder here: http://www.box.net/shared/q54oiit9ib 

loadMovieNum function takes ages online

I have tried hours on end to make the loadMovieNum functionality work for all files but even the ones that load correctly need very,very long online especially for recognizing the initial keyboard clicks. I have therefore decided to also links to all seperate files on my webserver.

Maneki Neko on 27.05.07

Keyboard control element added, browse over keyboard image for instructions

http://cklavery.net/uni/pgdip/interactive_narrative/maneki_neko/maneki_27507.swf

Maneki Neko on 12.04.2007

Red light Maneki Neko

Stumbled upon this Maneki Neko in a seedy bar window during a visit to Hamburg over Easter. Needless to say this was just off the famous Reeperbahn.

Maneki Neko on 08.04.07

It’s Easter. The Maneki Neko has got more details added to its paw. Also tested an different shadow.

Further development of the Maneki Neko

Looking closer at the Maneki Nekos that actually move their arms I come to the conclusion that my model needs a joint of some description to make it look more realistic.
Here are a couple of developments incorporating this finding. Further details like paws, colour of the fur spots etc need to be added later.

Research into arm movement of Maneki Neko and little changes

As I am not to happy with the way the arm moves I am investigating further how the actual Maneki Nekos that move their arm (a lot just have fixed arms which obviously is a lot easier) work.

Along the way I also made little changes to the eyebrows,nose and mouth.

Interactive Narrative // Personal project

Exported Flash MovieClip as an animated GIF because uploading SWFs is not possible on WordPress.
No too sure I am happy with the beckoning arm yet, something looks out of place.