Outsight is coming to Mindtrek OFF with their brand new high concept augmented reality game. Be the first to witness the birth of a new entertainment medium @ Iskelmäbaari, Finlayson October 1-2.
Tue/Wed @ 10.00-14.00/15.00-19.00
Outsight event on Facebook 


What is Outsight? from J. J. Aittanen on Vimeo.

What is MindTrek Off?
The Siperia square and Finlayson surrounding will be transformed into an area with interesting digital surprises, art and cultural exhibitions, buzzing interactivity, discounted coffee, virtual reality game experience, Nokia close-up hands on and many other interesting happenings.


That's not all. Expect pop up performances and win some cool prizes at our party! Curious? Sign up at our Facebook Event page for latest updates and further details. We are thrilled to see you there!

What is MindTrek?
MindTrek is the most important digital media and business event in Northern Europe since 1997. MindTrek is conferences, workshops, exhibitions. You will hear, meet and interact with digital media professionals, researchers and students from all ovar the world.

This year's amazing program comes with not only amazing speaker lineups including Steve Wozniak, Alan McKay and Niilo Alfthan, there are also many happenings including Technology Entrepreneurship Days, Academic MindTrek and MindTrek OFF!

Other MindTrek Off events:
Photobooth

MindTrek October 1-3
MindTrek Off produced and organised by IMPs, TAMK Media students

Take your friends with you and come to Photobooth and go crazy. Choose one of our hilarious masks and pose for a photo that you can take home and share on line, a must souvenir from Mindtrek!Tuesday October 1st: MindTrek Party 9 PM
Wednesday October 2nd Siperia Square (Finlayson) 12 AM to 2 PM

What is MindTrek Off?
The Siperia square and Finlayson surrounding will be transformed into an area with interesting digital surprises, art and cultural exhibitions, buzzing interactivity, discounted coffee, virtual reality game experience, Nokia close-up hands on and many other interesting happenings.


That's not all. Expect pop up performances and win some cool prizes at our party! Curious? Sign up at our Facebook Event page for latest updates and further details. We are thrilled to see you there!

What is MindTrek?

MindTrek is the most important digital media and business event in Northern Europe since 1997. MindTrek is conferences, workshops, exhibitions. You will hear, meet and interact with digital media professionals, researchers and students from all ovar the world.

This year's amazing program comes with not only amazing speaker lineups including Steve Wozniak, Alan McKay and Niilo Alfthan, there are also many happenings including Technology Entrepreneurship Days, Academic MindTrek and MindTrek OFF!

Story and photos by Sasha Ostasheva and Daria Adamitskaya.
Every year in the spring time one cosy city in the mountains on the south of Germany named Stuttgart hosts giants of Film and CG industry from all over the world - from Canada to New Zealand and all the best universities and schools of computer graphics such as Escape Studio and Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg and passionate students from China, Japan, Russia to North and South America.

Alexandra and Daria

Even Iron Man himself paid his visit and let us be the first people in the world to see him in the second mind-blowing movie about him being a real man with really special effects :)

For the second time the Media students of TTVO go to this festival, the second time for Alexandra Ostasheva, this year with the private visit :) In 2012 Alexandra was one of the speakers on the conference introducing to people our school, Media Programme and demonstrated our students’ general show-reel on the presentation dedicated to our school which was by the way highly appreciated and in several conversations people mentioned that they remembered the last year presentation of TAMK.

The whole event took four full days from early morning till 7 in the evening non-stop with different kinds of workshops about different directions of cg industry from vfx, animation and games to 3d printing, business and innovations and, of course, after-parties every night for relaxing and networking.

The programme of presentations, workshops, case studies, master-classes and screenings was so extremely tight that one could not make a choice and we had to run all over the 4 buildings around the city center and be in several conference halls at the same time :)

What we’ve seen and learnt from professionals on the workshops we wouldn’t learn through the internet. The very exclusive material and breakdowns from different famous projects were shown by those who did the actual movies, animations and games.

Another exciting experience we’ve got was meeting those professionals in a special recruitment hub where you could easily come and ask about the jobs, internships, show your portfolio and get very personal feedback and tips. We’ve got interesting tips got the contacts from people of Disney Animation, Framestore, Pixomondo, MPC, Crytek and others. It was very valuable for getting a good image of what sorts of professionals are most needed in the industry.The most valuable tips were pointing on what we should focus on, what our strongest sides are, what should be improved.

A lot of fun we had in the Transmedia area. It was a huge hall of different booths focusing on interactive projects. Everyone had a chance to test all the products presented there. For example, you could have a dance with Iron Man like I did:



There we were also given a great whole-day workshop on using powerful tools for rendering and compositing VRay and Nuke from Chaos Group themselves. Every bit of information was consumed and currently is used in work :)

One the most delightful innovative transmedia stands that I discovered was Faceshift technology that allows you to do a very accurate Emotion capture with simple depth camera or kinect sensor camera and transfer it on any 3d object in real-time or record, adjust and apply as a motion capture data. There is no need in any expensive equipment and this technology is already used by the film industry. What’s interesting that this was developed by the students of german Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg. All students works from the Akademie presented on FMX were very inspiring, you can see what quality can really be achieved in the student projects and you get motivated to work harder even more. For example, the famous official trailer videos for FMX 2013

There still is a feeling that nothing is more wonderful than experiencing this overall inspiring week with your best friend in the sunny southern Germany in the huge crowd of dedicated people.

There are millions of things we could share about the event but you better go and check the event out next year ;)

The winner of "The best thesis at Tampere University of Applied Sciences" was announced yesterday at TAMK's Graduation Ceremony. The 1000€ went to Eevi Korhonen's "Evaluating Usability of Games: A Study of Four Facebook Games Using Heuristic Evaluation".

Eevi presenting her Thesis in Berlin

The jury statement: "In her final thesis Eevi Korhonen applied one of the most common usability study methods - heuristic evaluation - to game research in an original, innovative and logical way. She has used wide ranging source material very well and the thesis is of interest to anyone working in the game industry."

Eevi was the first student to finalise and present a Final Thesis work in the international Degree Programme in Media which started in 2009.

Read the Thesis 
Eevi presenting her thesis in Berlin

Also Honorary Mention in the National Game Thesis Award

The first ever Finnish Game Industry Thesis Award went to the Master's Thesis by Gabriela Rodríguez (Turku University) "Learning in Digital Games: A Case Study of a World of Warcraft Guild".
In addition one honorary mention was given - to Eevi's work. The jury considered that Eevi Korhonen's Thesis was best of all works participating in the competition in highlighting the topical research needs met in the everyday life of the current game industry. "The Thesis, exceptionally extensive to be a university of applied sciences Thesis, expresses genuine enthusiasm for the topic and the game industry over all".

The Game Industry Thesis Award is arranged by DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) Finland and Neogames, the hub of the Finnish Game Industry.

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Degree Programme in Media
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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
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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)

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

An axe we all had to model and texture* in Blender

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
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You can see the animation here http://youtu.be/D_D2Ftw4yuQ or embedded below:

Photos and story by Joanne NH Wong, student of 12IMP
May is a very busy month. Right after the obligatory celebration of Vappu, students of 12 IMP are spitting blood and sweat, working really hard on their towers of assignments, rushing and burning midnight oils to produce good work on animation task, besides many other final tasks.

What could be a good way to relax for a day, get inspired and away from the computer screen during such period of time? A field trip! TAMK Media lecturers kindly organised a visit to Helsinki, where students participants are able to choose to visit 2 venues from 4 options. 12IMP students of Animation and Multimedia course are taking part, too.

As early as 8 o’clock in the morning, the bus departed from TAMK Finlayson campus to Helsinki. With smooth traffics, we arrived at Helsinki at 10am, and first venue is Heureka Museum. Students  who signed up for this took off from here for a world-famous exhibition about the structure, functions and health of the human body. It is very unique opportunity to see how a human body is built, with real body parts!

Emma Museum inside WeeGee talo

I did not get off from here but instead, eight of us including one of our lecturer, Carita Forsgren, went to visit  the original artwork and films by Warner Bros. from 1930–1960 at Emma Museum. It was such a nostalgic experience for me, revisiting the cartoon characters of Warner Bros and getting in depth with the character design from study perspective.

Nostalgic Warner Bros cartoon characters

The exhibition explores the elaborate creative process behind the making of classic Warner cartoons, and I am amazed by the production art dated as early as 1930, an era when modern computer has not been invented yet. Cel painting is one of the technique used.

Character sketch of Tweety bird

‘What’s up doc?’ iconic catchy phrase from Bugs Bunny

We only have 45 minutes to spend in the museum and it was definitely a compact learning experience by watching some cartoons and mesmerise the great art in traditional animation. I personally was moved by the catchy phrase of the characters, such as “I tawt I taw a putty tat” and “What’s up doc?”. What’s your favourite ones?

After this, we were picked by the bus and reunited with the gang, heading toward city centre of Helsinki. One group dropped off at Shared Gems 2013, a game event. And the other group went to the city centre to get some lunch before visiting Anima Boutique, a creative production house that produces many excellent character designs and animation works.

Lounge area at Anima Boutique, posters wall

Learning After Effect tips from the industrial production expert, Jyri

We were greeted by production manager of Anima Boutique, Martti Sirkkola, an alumi of TTVO who graduated last year. The friendly Martti brought us through the portfolio of the company and answers all of our questions related to animation tips, work flows, and satisfied our curiousity with many examples of the animation produced by the company and also their latest project with producing game app based on their animation series, Giggle Bug.

Student Jungsoo Moon playing with Giggle Bug app

Students wandering around the interesting collections of Anima Boutique

The field trip ends with chilling and relaxing in the beautiful weather in Helsinki’s city centre, which I happened to bump into Finland’s prime minister, Jyrki Katainen right in front of Helsinki Cathedral!

What an eventful and fruitful day, although long and exhausted when we got back to Tampere in the evening.
I sincerely thank to TAMK media lecturers for organising such trip!

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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
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Read the story about the previous visit to Anima Boutique

By Joanne NH Wong, student of 12IMP
Photos provided by Riikka Uhmaavara, Joanne NH Wong and Ryoko Sasaki

It was a long awaited spring in Tampere, as days are getting longer and weather is warming up gradually. Being a student coming from a tropical country, Malaysia, I am proud to have survived the cold and dark Finnish winter!
It was such a great feeling, knowing when the calendar is approaching and hits the first day of May! Vappu celebration is here!

On the eve of Vappu (May Day), few of us from 12IMP had gathered together to embrace the celebration of being university students by wearing our cool overalls (haalarit).

My friendly Finnish classmate, Riikka had warmly prepared traditional Vappu food, home made munkki (donut) and sima drink (mead) alongside with palettes of good dishes. The multicultural group of 12 IMP gathered together for a relaxing afternoon, learning more about Finnish culture and immerse ourselves into the very tasty donuts and special drinks of the Spring!

Home made Riikka’s munkki

Student Jungsoo Moon enjoying at Vapputori

Our Vappu eve continues to Vapputori, a market filled with colourful balloons, sweets, toys and festive atmosphere right in the center of Tampere, at Keskustori. We took a stroll and observe the kids with their excited faces, holding toys and balloons in their hands.

At 5 o’clock in the afternoon, we then attend ‘Vappu Fuck Up’. A grill session organized by TARINA, a TAMK Association of School of Art and Media which focuses on taking care of students’ interests and community building among students of TTVO.

At Näsinpuisto, we continue our relaxing atmosphere and enjoy the grill session with drinks and had a good time. The day went onto night, I got more and more excited when I saw crowds of people on the streets and we ended up in another park watching the amusing scene of how young people celebrate their Vappu eve day.

It is for sure a very memorable day for me, hanging out in my haalari and learn a thing or two about Finnishness from my Finnish classmates!

Bobo, Ryoko and Joel with balloons sellers at Vapputori

Joanne, Bobo and Shanie celebrating vappu in true blue Finnish style!

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The author is a student of TAMK Degree Programme in Media
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