Gareth Jones

I’ve just finished developing Quak Avatar Creator. This little application allows webmasters to provide their users with a great way to create high quality avatars with a consistent look and feel.

The screenshots below show the app with some example graphics supplied by Andy Quick, but the point of the app is that it allows website owners to quickly and easily replace those graphics with their own so that the avatars that users create match their website’s look and feel, whether that be cartoon graphics, photo-realistic graphics or whatever.

Here are some key points:

• The avatar can be exported both to an image and to a database.
• For image exports, both the crop area and scale of the resulting image can easily be configured to generate images of any size and shape – ideal whether used for full-screen profile pages, forum icons or anything else.
• Webmasters can easily add new categories i.e pets, make-up etc.
• Webmasters can also pass settings to the app to force it to default to either gender (for instance in cases where the gender of a logged in user is already known) or they can let the user select their gender before getting started.
• If no previous avatar is found in the database or if database saving has been disabled, the app will randomly generate an avatar for the user to edit as a starting point.

To play with the app please click here.

Please note that for demonstration purposes the app has been set to offer your avatar for download. This setting can easily be disabled when the app is deployed on your website.

If you’d like to buy the app or would like to discuss the provision of new avatar graphics to match your website, please get in touch.

Secret Projects was commissioned by Fyza Hashim at FYHK8082. The brief was to convert Fyza’s PSD designs and choreography into a Flash website.

The site was designed for Joseph Katsaros, an accomplished music composer who has worked on a number of popular American TV programmes and Hollywood movies. The home screen displays a music composer’s desk and equipment and clicking around the navigation zooms in on the relevant areas of the room before transitioning to another screen that either displays more information or features some kind of interactivity.

The work screen displays a number of movie posters that Joey has been involved with on a billboard. The billboard displays 10 posters at a time with next and previous buttons allowing navigation between the different pages. Implementing this screen in Flash 8 was quite a challenge because for reasons known only to Adobe, Flash 8 doesn’t anti-aliase dynamically-loaded images and the randomised rotation of the images resulted in some unsightly jaggies. A potential workaround had been to take the rotation off and just play with the positioning, but Fyza felt too much of the randomness was lost with this method so instead I implemented a hack that made use of Flash’s BitmapData class and the fact that Flash can anti-aliase bitmap data quite happily. Such a procedure would have resulted in significant performance hits if the bitmaps were large, but thankfully they were small enough on this screen for the hack to deliver the desired effect without impacting performance at all.

The reel screen plays a video of all the different movies that Joey has worked on. This is an FLV that is streamed from the server.

The media screen is a music player that allows the user to not only navigate between the tracks with the controls on the bottom, but also by clicking on the keyboard’s keys. The current track is also displayed on the keyboard by way of a slight glow on the appropriate key.

The site is completely driven by XML to allow easy updating and maintenance which will allow Joseph to add new movie posters and audio tracks whenever he wants.

Screenshots removed by request.

Since April 2010 I have been working full-time on Learnalot, a high-end game-based learning maths portal. I have so far developed the website itself, 18 activities and 34 games, which is around 18-20 hours of learning content. My responsibilities include coding all of the activities and games, managing a team of six, designing the activities with the content specialists and liaising with the PR company.

The development work has consisted of Flash, PHP, MySQL, XML, HTML and CSS.

I have also set up and maintained the Learnalot blog which provides behind-the-scenes news from the company.

The resources are designed to develop thinking, reasoning and problem-solving skills by presenting the learner with real-life challenges that engage their thought processes in new ways, using topics that students can relate to in their day-to-day lives in the 21st Century in a style that they are used to from their video games.

Feedback on the portal so far includes the following:

Your resources are excellent – the best skills-based learning resources for maths I’ve seen.
- Melanie Blount, NGfL-Cymru

The look of the site has immediately caught the interest of pupils who I know love to spend time on X-Box/PlayStation at home. Harnessing an existing interest for a learning purpose is probably the Mecca of education. I would love to know if you might have plans for a KS2 version at some stage?
- Steph Ladbrooke, teacher

Great website for revision especially for me and I’m in year 11. Amazing website!
- Alex, student

Amazing for me – I like a good challenge. My favourite resource is Britain’s Got Power because it gets you thinking about science and the environment.
- Ben, student

It’s really good because the score boards show you how you’re doing against your friends and other people. It’s another way for preparing us for our SATs. Cops and Robbers is my favourite because I feel like a detective.
- James, student

Mercury is an Flash-based elearning courseware that allows for the creation of rich, bespoke elearning from XML instructions, including HTML text, images, video, audio, drag and drop, click and reveal, quizzes and assessments. It uses XML files for asset definitions and layout as well as content.

The application contains the logic required to read content and layout from XML and construct the resource in real-time, including the page structure within modules and module structure within the resource, as well as information required for the interactive assets like drag and drops, click and reveals, quizzes and assessments.

The platform is so versatile that two different content authors could develop elearning resources that are completely unique in both style and substance – and without even owning a copy of Flash.

It also features SCORM support with a local shared object (Flash cookie) backup should SCORM not be available on the delivery platform.

For more information and a demo of Mercury in action, visit www.madewithmercury.com.