video tools and machinima for animations

I was challenged to find come up to produce a video welcome message for a module, the problem is I dislike appearing in a video - I tend to use an avatar in place of a picture of myself.


Here are two example video introductions using two different tools.

Example 1: Photostory 3
A free piece of software (http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=11132) that takes photos and allows you to add narration, music and some effects. Moviemaker software will do in it's place.

 The module was a MSc Computing dissertation module giving a short overview of the module.


Example 2 and 3: Machinima
A second approach was to use a package that allows you to guide/direct a character, scripting what they say, etc. The package used was an early version of Moviestorm (newer educational version can be found here) it allows you to 'direct' the character and save me having to appear in it! 









This module is an introduction to artificial intelligence module.
 

The second one is an introduction to a problem solving and programming module.

Placed inside a VLE:

Ok, they were done as a couple of experiments and a bit a fun; but are worth a play with.

code into 3d images

In a recent online article on the CreativeBloq (http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/codeology-web-app-turns-code-3d-art-21619365) a new piece of software Codeology (http://codeology.braintreepayments.com/featured) was reviewed. 

This webapp (and its free) turns code on GitHub into images. So I couldn't resist having a look at what my code on GitHub looks like so I made the video below.




Personally, I am not sure what I am seeing, and to be honest I don't mind that. The images do look interesting and as a bit of fun I think this is a clever and interesting piece of software.