Graduated!

My graduation project has come to an end. I've passed my final exam last tuesday with (if I may say) exellent grades!
I'm quite satisfied with the final result of Virtuoso, however for me it's not quite 'there' yet. So I will continue improving Virtuoso, at least until the 21st of september, when you can check out Virtuoso at EJECT at KMT.

Green screen magic

I'm really not familiar with montaging or Adobe After Effects. But I still want to create some sort of trailer, to get people warmed up for Virtuoso. The thing I wanted most was a shot of a child conducting with Virtuoso in front of a whole orchestra instead of his livingroom. Therefore I've created a 'green screen' in the living room of my cousin today, and I filmed him. I've spend a whole evening behind the computer, and I must say that -for a first timer- the result is quite good!

Thank you Youtube Adobe After Effects tutorial guys!

Also I've tried a first montage today. I montaged it on the musical piece that is playable in the prototype (Hall of the mountain king, Grieg). Thing is, this piece is about 3 minutes long. So my montage is way too long as well. Stan (Virtuoso's orchestrator and composer) will make a shorter version of the musical piece tomorrow. Here's a sneakpeak!

Like my new logo? Just made it!

Final playtest!

I've just returned from the final playtest. Koen van Vuure, my cousin, was the tester, we tested at his (or his parents) house. I choose for Koen, because we already were quite familiar with each other (however, we don't see each other too often). So it wasn't strange for him to have me over. I also choose for his livingroom to test, because this is his natural playspot. I tried to make this testsession feel as natural as possible. I told Koen I've got a toy that would be fun for him to try. I wanted to prevent that he felt forced to like something, just because I made it.

The results were the following:

- Koen didn't know what a conductor was, but he did understand how to interact with the music. The result was that his way of moving was quite the same. I showed him a movie of a conductor later on, and his movements became more diverse, clearly inspired by the conductor.

- It took clearly too much time for the music to change, so sometimes Koen didn't feel like he was influencing the music. So the transitions in the music should be more quicker.

- The contrast between the first and second mode (there are 6 modes) are not clear enough.

- Koen experimented with quick and slow movements.

- What Koen liked most about the toy was that the music reacts on you, 'you can go high and low and then the music gets louder! And when I move very quick it becomes the most fun'. Koen clearly liked loud and up to tempo music.

- After the playsession, Koen kept humming the song he played with (In the hall of the mountain king, Grieg). So, as concluded in earlier tests: children like music with a recognizable melody).

So in short: Koen liked to play with Virtuoso, but the music needs to react even faster to his movements. That would really make the difference.

After the test we shooted some material of him playing with Virtuoso, which I will use to make a trailer with now.

Visual design officially finished!

Just attached the hinge to the two parts of the Virtuoso model, which means that model is done!
It works even better than I expected, the hinge is strong enough to prefent the cover from tipping over. And the bottom part is suprisingly stable, which prefents the model from falling over due to the heaviness of the cover. So I am very happy!

And of course I'd like to thank Stan for helping me attaching the hinge!

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

This is bad. Today was supposed to be the day that the musicsystem and the hardware were put together in the model of Virtuoso. But the tilt compensated compass (which registrates all movements with the baton) just stopped working and is beyond repair. This means that the conducting baton doesn't work anymore and that I have to cancel the final playtest coming saturday.

Monday we'll have a new tilt compensated compass, so I hope that we have enough time monday to fix Virtuoso. But I'm afraid that there will be no final playtest, tuesday is my final exam presentation, so there is just no time left. I'm going to try and do the best I can though.

Furthermore, the model of Virtuoso is finished, I'll give you a sneakpeak!

Progress!

Today was a very very VERY busy day. I have finally managed to sandpaper all the lasercutted parts of the Virtuoso model to the round shapes of the visual design. The parts that were sandpapered today, also had some dimples that needed to be filled with MDF filler. When the MDF filler dried up, I sandpapered it again untill it was smooth.

Next step was to give two white underlayers of paint to the parts of Virtuoso that hadn't been painted yet. The other parts got another layer of white primer. When everything was dry again (which took several hours), I started painting. I choose five colors (fuchia, signal red, bright blue, lemon yellow and broken white, waterbased paint with a 'satin shine' in it).
These colors lay most close to the colors of the initial design of Virtuoso. I especially had trouble finding the right color for the pinkish color on the footplate, because the color wasn't clearly visible in the design. But once I painted the color on the footplate, the color fuchia turned out to be well chosen!


It is a quarter past three a.m. now, it's really a mess, as you can see. I've managed to give every part a second layer of color, so I think the Virtuoso parts are well coated now. The paint needs to dry for six hours until I can apply a new layer of paint on them. So it's time to sleep.

Goodnight!

"BOTANICUS INTERACTICUS": Interactive Plant Technology

This is brilliant!