The petitions to cancel the termination plans of our Degree Programme in Media were presented to Tampere University of Applied Sciences rector Markku Lahtinen earlier this week.
Over some weeks 2348 persons signed the national petition and the international petition was signed by 318 persons.

From left Markku Lahtinen, Tero Liimatainen and Anne Alalantela.
Photo: Laura Laukkanen
The international petition was handed out by Tero Liimatainen, student of our Degree Programme in Film and Television, and the national petition by Anne Alalantela, student of our Degree Programme in Fine Arts.

Please learn more and read the petition on our previous report:
http://tamk-artmedia.blogspot.fi/2013/05/strong-global-support-to-stop.html

By Emilia Kwiatkowska
IslandCQ 2013 took place from 1st till 13th of May  2013, at Monostori Fortress in Komárom, Hungary.  TAMK was represented by 15 people (13 students and 2 teachers) from Media, Fine Arts and Film and Television departments who joined students from Latvia, Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands.

International students gathered at the Fortress's courtyard showing their
founding after the walk around The Monostori Fortress and  Komárom city

During 10 days we took part in lectures and intensive workshops which culminated in a 2-day mini-festival with exhibitions, master-classes, performances and music.

The Monostori Fortress was built between 1850 and 1871 to defend Hungary against Turkish invaders and was used as an enormous ammunition storage facility by the Soviets, after the Second World War. Nowadays a part of it is open for public as a museum. This isolated and historical rich location was the ideal background for this year’s theme ‘Crisis! -RE/Constructing Europe’.
Findings and project coordinator Adri Schokker from
Minerva Academy of Popculture (The Netherlands)

During first two days we could explore area of Fortress and city of Komárom. In that time we were searching for tangible and intangible things which would represent mentioned theme. Students could join the guided tour through mysterious and dark interior of the Fortress  (I have to say that long corridors caused shivers…).
One of the findings - transparent keyboard foil looks like labyrinth

Within the main theme this edition was focus on four fields: earth, culture, society, you. These four fields were approached from the perspectives of art, technology, music, media, and sustainable innovation.
One of the group during the walk next to Dunaj River

This year students could choose 1 long workshop (6 days long) or 2 short workshops (3 days long each one). There were a lot of things going on. All the time you could meet people with various kinds of tools starting from hammers ending on professional cameras, etc. The end results were impressive. We could watch wonderful play about unhappy love, lots of videos, photos, installations.
Building up the installation 'It's Alive!'

During this time we stayed at very nice Wellness Spa Resort WF Szabadidőpark Kft (Eng. WF Leisure Park) situated 6 kilometers away from the Fortress.
Students worked very hard during the workshops - on this
picture student is designing visual effects for an installation

To get to know more details about Island CQ 2013 please visit the page where every workshop, lecture and master class is well described: http://islandcq.nl/
Read about all three Island CQ workshops
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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
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Deserved coffee break
Opening ceremony lead by Project Manager Albert van der Kooij
(director Minerva Academy of Popculture) and
Project coordinator Györgyi Rétfalvi (BKF Budapest)
Students from Minerva Academy of Popculture play at the opening ceremony
on created by them instruments during the workshop 'DIY Instruments'
Scene from the performance of the 'Once upon a time' workshop - Ghost Bridge
Happy ending of 'Ghost Bridge' performance
White cube filled with data created during the 'True Scientists
Hangout (05449)' workshop
Teachers from two universities enjoying the weather
during the opening ceremony: Sohvi from TAMK and
Kristaps from MPLAb Liepaja Latvia
Sometimes was busy!
Serious conversation :D
Adri Schokker from Minerva Academy of Popculture during
his interview to the local television
Inside of the building was an incredible atmosphere
Long corridor at the Fortress...
Is said in Poland "Pole and Hungarian cousins be" while in Hungary
"Pole and Hungarian, two good friends" - I had to find something what
reminds Poland (this photo looks like a Polish flag)


By Sabrina Seidl

If you have ever been wondering what IMP's are doing if they are not attending courses and how they actually expand their skills, than this is the right post for you.
I certainly can't speak for all of us IMP's, but I can, at least, give you an idea of what I have been doing within my three years of studies.
Like lots of us, I was attending courses for graphic, print and web design, UI, UX and Project Management, I attended Animation and Multimedia courses, improved my language skills in three languages, learnt about Design Management and Software Engineering, and also learn quite a lot about Video and Media Techniques as well as 3D and Motion Graphics.
The list of courses i attended, projects I participated and internships I completed is quite long and my interests were wide ranging, but I finally found my way.

But what is "my way"? Well, I'd say Motion Graphics in combination with Marketing Strategies and even some bits of 3D. Even though I am not able to present all of my works (due to confidentiallity agreements, lack of quality ;) or lack of space here ), I have prepared a small collection of videos for you.


Tell a Story - 2D animation for a clients company presentation in cooperation with Johanna Lievemaa, Camille Romano and Sanna Kuisma. Created in Adobe Flash.


TAMK logo animation in the course of our Animation Evening Workshop. Created in Adobe After Effects.


TAMK Media showreel - a collection of works from TAMK Media students which Alexandra Ostasheva and I produced for our representation of our studies during the FMX 2012 Conference in Stuttgart, Germany. Created in Adobe After Effects.


Infographics - an important topic, Recycling, put into motion by explaining with illustrations and typography.
Created in Adobe After Effects.


Christmas drinking - a 2D animation created during my studies at University of Salford.


3D Manchester city - a task during my exchange studies at University of Salford.
Created in Autodesk 3ds Max.


Video Promotion - my final thesis project for the new advertisement video for Atomi Advertising.
Created in Adobe After Effects.


As said before, this is just a small collection of what I did within the past three years in the area of motion graphics. There is lots more, also in other areas, but motion graphics is the area I am interested the most and which will certainly accompany me in the future.

In case you would like to see more, check out my portfolio with links to my vimeo and linkedin profile or just get in touch with me.
I am more than happy to show further pieces and projects or answer any kind of questions.

The results of the admission of Finnish UAS programmes run in English are today public.

New happy IMP circles will grow again. Pictured here students at our
pre-Christmas party last year

To our Degree Programme in Media we welcome:

Azevedo de Santana, Felipe; Bernard, Alessandra Giulia Aurora; Boissonnier, Kalle Kari Kaleva; Forsman, Jonas; Giam, Yee Feng; Grice, Kimberly; Hiilesmaa, Kai Hiili Markus; Klemola, Anna Ilona; Kozina, Anastasia; Kurvinen, Mika Juhani; Lamminpää, Sanna-Kaisa; Lavrukhina, Anna; Le, Quy Phu; Leppänen, Janne Antero; Lindfors, Sami Johannes; Luhtala, Sasu Oskari; Malyshev, Mark; Mattila, Tenho Pekka Osvald; Mether, Petra Riitta Maria; Mikkonen, Karri-Kasperi Johannes; Moreno Gonzalez, Alvaro Luis; Pelkonen, Titta Anneli; Pirinen, Helmi Anniina; Salmi, Juho; Salo, Heikki Evert; Samposalo, Joonas Pekka; Suontaka, Teemu Maurits; Tokola, Ida Sofia; Tommiska, Tarina Tuuli Matilda; Tulijoki, Tuomas Anton; Tuominen, Mona Ida Maria; Valkki, Emma-Julia; Wenttola, Viljami Jupiter.

Please note, that the list contains only the names of the admitted students who have given a permission to announce the results on the internet.

The competition was again really hard. Most participants of the entrance exam met the selection criteria and would have been admitted should we have more study places.

The autumn semester for our new students starts on August 13.

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Degree Programme in Media
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The new students for all TAMK degree programmes run in English
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By Heidi Mäenpää

 
 


The 5th edition of the legendary 5D has started! 

Four teams of four consisting of artists and programmers (plus two awesome sound designers) will be making five games in five weeks, working five days a week and five hours a day (we sure love the number 5!). 

This week is all about getting everybody on board and going through the basics of 3D and 2D graphics, and also see which gaming platforms everybody wants to use in the following weeks. We will divide into the teams at the end of the week, and our aim is to have 20 games ready in July, and in August these will be presented at Assembly. Last year's 5D participant, the Score Lady Minna Eloranta has been organizing the project and made sure we have all the equipment and licences that we need to make brilliant games.

Today we had our first intensive lessons about Unity 3D and Blender. Jussi Salonen was our guru-of-the-day and he showed us basic level design in Unity and modeling&texturing in Blender. Tomorrow we will be continuing with these, and at some point the axes will be thrown at chickens. We'll just have to wait and see how that turns out!


Unity 3D level design/test made from Jussi's models

An axe we all had to model and texture* in Blender
*The axe's texture was made using this concept art piece. 



 Stay tuned for the first patch of games done by our great teams!

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The author is a student of the Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
Read more stories about the Game Development Club Score 


Nordic Game Conference 2013 was organized 23.-24.5 in Malmö, Sweden. NGC celebrated its 10th year anniversary and I was very happy to be part of it!

Togehter with NGC, Unity also organized its first own conference, Unite, which had lasted for a few days. Between them, on the 22nd, was the Nordic Indie night where the best chosen indie developers would show their games accompanied by lectures. In the end, Finnish game Badland won the competition and got the award for Best Indie Sensation! 
Telltale  Games Keynote "The Talking dead - Voicing a Dynamic Narrative with  voice actors and sound designer from the  game The Walking Dead

NGC consisted of great presentations, keynotes, networking, exhibitors.. I wish I had the time to be part of everything organized at the conference! The presentations were categorized by Production, Creation, Handheld, Business and Technology.

Here are some highlights from my point of view from the two-day conference:

Keynote Tim Schafer on creating games ouf of love

Keynote by Tim Schafer - Inspiration Driven Development

The conference was opened by Tim Chafer from Double Fine (Psychonauts, Brütal Legend), who gave an inspiring presentation on keeping your own creative rights and designing with passion. "If you're not making games out of love, I wonder why you are doing it?" - was the most powerful quote from him. Coming from LucasArts, he went through the reasons on wanting to keep all his creative rights and setting up a studio where they can work on what they want.

Matthew Boch - New Normals

Matthew had a very interesting lecture on defining gender roles, sexuality and racism. Using examples from Mass Effect and Dragon Age, he explained with examples how the female and male shepard have differences and also went in depth on how the game world should be creating normals. What if the player's behavior toward's certain game races were acts of racism? It was a great presentation which made people think a bit before using the clichés and way game design has used so far.

Susan O'Connor Play It Again, Sam: How To Connect With Your Audience

Probably one of the best presentations. BioShock writer went in depth with story writing and how it affects the player. O'Connor thought on ways to make the world more fascinating and how to qrite interesting stories that make the player feel immersed. She felt like there is still a long way to go in developing stories in games -- but we're on the right track with the indie games scene growing bigger and bigger. 

Richard Lemarchand - Life of Play, Life of the Mind: What Game Design Can Teach U

Naughty Dog Game Designer (The Uncharted Series, Jak & Daxter, etc.) spoke on his decision to stop working in the gaming industry and moving to teach game design in USC, the ranked #1 game design school in North America. Going through methods from doing paper prototypes to engaging people to talk to eachother honestly,  Richard was sure there are much more ways to learn game design than many people think.
Networking an creating new student cooperation between Kajak and Tamk
-- 
The Nordic Game awards was organized after the first conference day. Nordic game companies took homw prizes from different categories, such as best Nordic Game, Best Children's game, best artistic achievement, etc. Supercell's HayDay took home the prize from Best Handheld Game.

Work hard - Play hard. After a long but very exciting and interesting first day of the conference we were transferred to a secret place to network and take it easy in between the conference days. There was a great chiptune-gig for a few hours in one of the spaces, needless to say it was packed with people dancing to sounds from the Game Boy.
Kamk students showing off their spring game projects, BAFTA-award winning Starcrossed and game from the Kavio Cluster
All in all, it was a great and succesfull event, I made tons of new connections and got inspired by the amazing people from the industry. (now to just sort out all of these business cards..)

Minna Eloranta
Student of Degree Programme in Media, Game Development Club Score








The annual New Factory open event is 500+ participants, state of the art keynotes, exhibitions, pitches, competitions, a party. From our point of view New Factory Open is above all a show of the Demola projects IMPs (Art&Media International Media Programme students) have been working in this spring.

The exhibition and the pitches are among the most rewarding moments in a lecturers life: you can see that the students have been busy working and learning, created and delivered excellent results and are able to present the awesome projects brilliantly. It's a wow wow wow day!

All nine projects involving our regular and/or exchange students were shown at the exhibition, three were among the three selected to competed for the best Demola project award and one represented Demola in Demola international competition. The number of Demola projects this spring is 28.

Bernard Garvey and Ville Kairamo from Demola, jury representative
Kim Dotto, Dean from British Columbia Institute of Technology)
and Trent Pancy on behalf of Demola International winners

"The Best Mobile Game Ever" (Client Tampere University of technology) featuring Trent Pancy won the competition between the Demolas. New Demolas following the Tampere model are up and running in Oulu, Skåne (Sweden), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Budapest Hungary.

The Avatars team, Rosanna Salminen speaking and Erika Kim managing
the slide show

The Adaptive Avatar Music Experience (Client Nokia) project with Rosanna Salminen and Erika Kim from IMP won the best project award.

Laura Räsänen speaking

"Digital Picture Book For Learning Foreign Languages" (Client Tampere University) with Laura Räsänen was one of the top three Demola projects

Visualize it team with Martin Kleinberns presenting, Joanne Wong and Lubos
Rezler behind the desk.

VISUALIZE IT! create new ways of bringing YLE’s strategy to life (Client YLE) is the third projects chosen to pitch at the event to compete for the title. Joanne Wong represented IMPs, Martin Kleinberns and Lubos Rezler our brilliant exchange students.
Lukas Kallenbach lures people to play his game

Tampere Machines game (Clients Cargotec, Sandvik and John Deere)  is a Demola project with Lukas Kallenbach. I never have time or patience to try games when running trough an exhibition, but Lukas got me hooked. (But never made it to next level.)
Yonatan Wolowelsky shows how it works

iSee! - New ways to visualize information (Client Metso) project team includes Yonatan Wolowelsky and Tuomas Lecklin from the IMP


Two projects I didn't manage to catch with my camera:
Future of eCars (Client ABB) with Mikko Haverila
and
GOLFi - a state-of-the-art golf service (Client Talentworks) featuring our exchange student Justyna Gogolin

Last but not least a project with our Jungsoo Moon with the demo below on YouTube,
Gesture-Based Kinect Game For Museum Exhibition (Client Guidesi)



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New Factory Open
Demola
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By Cai Melakoski
The author is principal lecturer of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
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By Róbert Frankó
It all started on a cold February night while I was walking my dog in the forest. Almost full moon and no clouds in the sky. Listening to the newly discovered song All alone from David O’Dowda, when I literally saw (at least in my head) a little light monster coming out of the woods walking to the hillside of Mustavuori and singing his lonely melody to the moon. By the time I got home the image got so clear and visible that it didn't even let me sleep, it stuck in my head the whole night and by the morning the story was done.


A couple days later we found out that the animation assignment can be anything we like, so I sticked to my idea. The rest of the group also liked the story but had concerns about the implementation even though the storyboard made all the scenes clear. The animation itself is a stop motion video about a devil looking monster roaming the Finnish land looking for it’s home.

The method of creation was light painting. For those who are not familiar with this technique the shooting is quite simple. With a DSLR camera you set the shutter time longer than a second (as long as you need), the ISO and the exposure should be the lowest possible. You also need darkness to accomplish your goals, indoor, outdoor, doesn’t matter.


When everything is set and the shutter is pressed you can start light painting the figure you want. You need a flashlight, a torch, fire or whatever that gives light and you have to draw the shape you wish. Sadly you will only see the result when you check on the camera display, so if you did something wrong, or the lines won’t match, you have to start it all over again. As it was for a stop motion video we had to shoot and draw all the movements and motion. Just like in a hand-drawn animation.

The first night was half success and half disaster. The fact how well the images turned out with the DSLR I have (Canon 1100D: the most basic DSLR ever) and how big portion of the story could be done during one night was uplifting. But -25 °C and no proper clothes can do their magic. Frozen fingers and knees, bleeding nose and such awesomeness. But the result that you see when you check out the pictures make you completely forget about all the pain and difficulties. The only thing you realize is that you need a remote shutter and a camera with a better (live) display. And that is why God created AV Kioski.

The second night went much better (more clothes and hot drinks) except for the rest of the group that was not as prepared, despite all the warnings. Anyway, the pictures have got to be taken so there were no excuses.

After seven frozen nights your body starts a riot, refuses to work properly and the knees give up, which makes you stay in bed. Although you are happy with the result, your smile is not honest anymore and the excitement starts to fade away. Specially, when Tuomo, your teacher comments on the story-line  “it might need some extra shots. Maybe just one more night... And it would be so cool to see the light from under the ice...”


This is the moment your body 100% disagrees the comment, but soon we realized we do need extra footages, so going out again is not an option. Result: 91 pictures of the moving stars in 4,5 hours, 20 frozen fingers and toes, and one tired dog. Totally worth it.

When the images were finally ready for post production, we could proceed to the post production. First editing in Adobe Lightroom, then loading the edited images to After Effects. This is where all hell got loose. After Effects is a professional software, but if you are only in the beginning of making a relationship with each other, it can be a cruel mistress. Hidden settings you are not aware of, enormous memory usage that bans you to live track the process and some awkward ways to do the easiest tasks. So it turned out that in order to succeed we had to use 3 different softwares: After Effects, iMovie and a ringtone maker application on my phone... Not the most elegant way, but...
..but when looking at the final product, does all the complications and difficulties really matter?

Creators:
Róbert Frankó
Carolin Büttner
Markku Laskujärvi
Noora Tolvanen
Riikka Uhmavaara
Dylan Jones

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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
Read more stories by and about IMPs, the international media programme students
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You can see the animation here http://youtu.be/D_D2Ftw4yuQ or embedded below:



At the end of last week I bought a train ticket to Kajaani and went to find out what the Kajaani game development area was all about! The Kajaani University of Applied Sciences is known throughout Finland as a strong game development school with their own co-op and lots of other happenings (Like the Northern Game Summit in the autumn). Students from Kajaani also won the BAFTA Ones to Watch-award this spring with their game Starcrossed. With only about 40k inhabitants, they're doing a terrific job on staying on the map of the Finnish game industry.

I was there to see their working methods, meet students and ask for some tips on how they've done it all. I was hosted by Julius, last year's CEO of their local game development co-op Kajak Games. I also chatted with the current CEO to discuss on future cooperation plans with Score and Kajak Games. (Game Jams, LAN parties, who knows?)

The Business Information Systems district of KAMK
Merging in
Students working hard on a Friday morning, getting ready for next week's Nordic Game Conference to show their games

I got a tour around the campus, which had really nice spaces to work on game development. Classrooms with computers organized in groups offered a nice way to work on project work. On Friday morning the classrooms were buzzing of people working on building their games for devices they needed for the next week's Nordic Game Conference.

I also got a tour around KAMK's game testing laboratory, where researchers test games from game companies using neurological and physiological tests. It would be quite interesting to see my brain's reactions to different type of games!

In addition to the student-driven Kajak Games, I also visited the premises of the Kavio Game Cluster at the campus, which  is working on enhancing the Kajaani Game Development area even further by helping game developers and students to get into the business in the Kainuu area.
The Kavio Game cluster guys gave me an artbook on game projects from KAMK with lots of coolio graphics

A very successful trip I'd say, back to Tampere with lots of inspiration! (You can find the Kajak art book from the Score lab)

Minna Eloranta, student of the International Media programme
Score Facebook page


The five minute video documenting MC2020 two week workshop at Finlayson Art&Media has now been released.

MC2020 is a European project demonstrating what 21th century converged and interactive European Media Culture could be. Fifty students and lecturers from Liepaja University (Latvia), Utrecht School of Arts (The Netherlands), Vic University (Spain) and Lincoln University (UK) and Liepaja University.

The movie reveals one of the creative success factors of the workshop:
Swimming in the hole in the lake / Ice diving

The project works on-line and has two workshops. The second workshop will be in Liepaja next autumn. The Tampere workshop created ten concepts of future applications and services, the workshop in Liepaja will make demos of them. Preparatory work will be done collaboratively on-line like the Tampere workshop was prepared. MC2020 breaks classroom and campus walls by creating open virtual learning environments where students from different countries and fields can explore and learn together.

The workshop was prepared on-line over six weeks
The film is produced by the Utrecht School of the Arts student team Oavsett (Hugo de Kok, Kay van Vree & Edwin Haverkamp) oavsett.nl. The logo is designed by TAMK media student Yonatan Wolowelsky (grmmph.com).
Drama was one of the methods used to illustrate the concepts

You can find all information about the project, also a day by day report of the workshop at
http://mediaculture2020.blogspot.com

The project is partly funded by EU Erasmus programme.

You can view the five minute MC2020 movie here: