Introduction to the Projects

Chapters from Digital Media Tools, 3rd edition in PDF format to download can now be included in MacAvon Media Course Bundles for purchase by students from the MacAvon Media Downloads Store. Course bundles can be constructed by bona fide college lecturers or instructors through a MacAvon Media Lecturer’s Account. Lecturers’ Accounts also enable lecturers to obtain free evaluation copies in PDF format.

The “Try This” exercises throughout the book provide practice in applying what you have just learned in the preceding section of the text. In most cases the “Try This” exercises focus on a small task using a specific feature of the relevant program. The projects here on the site are intended to give you an opportunity to use a range of features in each program in combination, in order to create finished pieces of work.

These projects are designed more to help you attain mastery of the different programs than to produce superior pieces of work. Ideally, of course, you will do both, but you cannot hope to create good work using these programs until you are confident in using all the features you may require. So, like the exercises in the book itself, the projects focus on building skills, but to a specific design brief. Artists, illustrators, graphic designers and animators are expected to create work at a suitable level of sophistication while learning at the same time to use the software in a way which properly serves their purposes. People from different backgrounds will have different levels of artistic ability, so most of the projects have been designed to be open to different levels of artistic interpretation.

Each project brief should be read right through and considered carefully before the project is started. It is usually necessary to know what end result is being aimed for from the beginning, even if the first steps of the project seem far removed from the final outcome.

We have provided projects for each of the four media tools programs we cover in the book, plus an additional set of multimedia projects which require the use of two or more different programs in combination. The projects vary in difficulty, but are not presented in any particular order. Most can be undertaken by a single person, but a few (especially the multimedia ones and some of the Dreameaver ones) are better suited to group work. Where a project requires some special skill such as scripting knowledge, this is noted clearly at the beginning of the project brief.