Thursday, May 14, 2009

About to go live....

'The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey' application is almost ready to go live. We are just waiting for final approval from Beaulieu and then we can make the website live, such good news.

It has been almost a year of part-time hours in the making, fitting in the commercial training, PhD and normal day to day life. A very full year.

I have a lot of thanks to give to all my very patient friends who have hardly seen me over the last couple of years (took almost a year to develop the funding application for the Micro Project from FSE/SEEDA!), obviously my family for the same reason and then there are the 'helpers' who have helped create this application. They are:

Alex Hogg - for six of the characters voices
Rebecca Furse - for some of the character illustrations and proof reading
Seanine Joyce - for the music
Sandy Whitehead - for some of the illustrative 3D models and some of the characters
Kim Potter - for producing the web structure that pulls all the content together
New Forest Post Productions - for the use (and help) of the recording studio for the voice overs.

Without their added help, I think I would have been up every night til 1-2pm, as opposed to only half. The music is fantastic, something I would not have achieved on my own and adds so much to the whole, and Alex's voice overs, watching him change the way he spoke for each character and sustain that for half an hour at least was amazing, I struggled for just two, but six, no way. Kim used to work with us years ago with Clear Thinking, the fact that she was back in England and able to help us with the code needed to pull everything together for the web was fantastic, so conscientious, knowing what we needed, how we wanted it to work and producing on time - thanks Kim.

There have been a lot of other people whose confidence and support over the development of 'The Talking Walls' right up to the Beaulieu Abbey project, including Beaulieu, have made this possible, thankyou all. Finally, thankyou FSE / SEEDA, without the match funding through the Micro Project scheme, this just would not have been possible.

Once the site is made live, I will post the link here and spread the word online as well as through traditional means. The site will have free access for 4-6 months and then the 'Interactive Abbey' part will be completed and membership to the site will be active. So please make sure you visit the site within this time and explore. Your thoughts and feedback will be very welcome, and will help provide an insight into how the design bears up to use, and what may need changing / adding / adapting.