Moray College UHI students support Piping Hot Forres

Over the past year a number of our HND Interactive Media and Computing students have been working closely with Forres Events Ltd on projects to help promote and support Piping Hot Forres 2014. After the success of last year's event the students were challenged to think big and to come up with new and innovative ways to engage with the competition. Outlined below are a selection of the projects created by this year's students.

Rebekah Hughes (HND Interactive Media) used footage from last year's event to create a short informative video detailing some of the high points of Piping Hot Forres 2013.

Joanna Taylor and David Urquhart, organisers, were impressed how well Rebekah managed to capture the brand identity of the event itself and create something new and innovative based on it.

Aaron Collie (HND Interactive Media), Morgan Baker (HND Interactive Media) and Kevin Thompson (HND Computing) created games to help promote the event to a younger audience.

Aaron created 'Piping Paul' where the player has to defend the lone piper from flying haggis. It was designed to be played on mobile phones and tablets, making full use of touch screen interaction to create a compelling and challenging game.

Morgan and Kevin worked collaboratively on a game called 'Droppin Notes'. Kevin focussed on creating the basic game play features using Adobe Flash and ActionScript whilst Morgan created the graphics which would be used in the game itself. Together they managed to create a fun and appealing game that can be played on both touch screen devices and within a desktop web browser.

David Wilson (HND Interactive Media) created another video project. His brief was to show the variety of activities which take place on the day focussing on more than just the piping itself and looking at the event from a much wider perspective.

Finally Simon Armstrong (HND Computing) and Finlay MacDonald (HND Interactive Media) worked together to create an Augmented Reality treasure hunt which will take place around Grant Park on the day of Piping Hot Forres (28th June). Their app uses image recognition to identify posters which will be located around the site. When one of the posters is detected the player will be shown a full 3D model of the character shown on the poster. Simon has been using Unity 3D and Vuforia to create the underlying framework on which the game will work whilst Finlay has been working on the 3D models which will come to life as the game is played.

All these projects will be appearing very soon so please keep your eyes peeled on the Moray College and the Piping Hot Forres Facebook pages for updates.

"Piping Hot Forres has provided an excellent opportunity for the Interactive Media students at Moray College UHI to get involved with a project which impacts positively on the local community. Over the past two years our students have been challenged to think of new ways to promote and support the event digitally. I cannot emphasise enough how important live projects are to our students. Not only do they provide invaluable experience of working within the constraints of real-world projects but they also allow the students to see the value of their work within a much wider context. Piping Hot Forres has helped give our students' work the exposure it deserves and having the chance to present their work in the VIP tent at last year's event bolstered their confidence and gave them a pride in their work that we cannot give them in an academic context. It has been an extremely fruitful relationship which has benefitted our students in so many different ways and given them a chance to be directly involved in something which takes them to greater levels of learning and understanding."
Gary Groves, Lecturer in Interactive Media