Ben Sandison Portfolio
GreenMove.io
GreenMove is a site providing ratings on a range of environmental factors for every city in the UK. The ratings are based on data drawn from numerous sources around the web. I made this site as a group project in my third year of uni, I led development of the sites frontend. The frontend of this site was made with Next.js, this allowed us to serve static HTML pages to the user without needing to fill data from additional API requests after the page had loaded. In addition I used Chakra UI to speed up and simplify the process of styling the site while keeping a consistent theme throughout. I also put a huge amount of work into designing the search bar of the site and giving it the ability to auto correct a users search query.
Social Media Clone
A fully functional fullstack social media site. I used Node.js and Express.js on the backend to build a rest API allowing users to create, edit and delete their posts, comments or even accounts. In addition the api also allows users to upload images along with their posts. On the frontend I used React with Material UI to quickly design the effective and visually pleasing UI. I also used an external API to generate unique profile pictures for every user. I took care to ensure that the site would be secure. In order to securely store passwords I used salting and hashing with the help of Bcrypt. In addition my choices to use React and SQLite meant that I would not need to worry about SQL or HTML injection.
Wind Visualisation
A live visualisation of wind data across the south of england. This project queries the OpenWeatherMaps API to get live weather data across the UK, I then map this data across a p5.js canvas using particles. I learned about Object Oriented Programming and particle physics in the creation of this site.
Netley Racing App
I made this app for my sailing club to help people easily sign on for club racing during covid. I used react native to make this app, this way I could create an android and IOS app with a single code-base. Googles "Material UI" component library gave the app a sleek and consistent theme. The app included a bottom nav bar and local (async) storage.
Friendships In Jeopardy
An 80s style Quiz show game. This game was made as part of a group project where I took charge of the visual presentation of the game. This involved designing, modelling, texturing and animating the set and characters. This expanded on some of my prior knowledge of 3D modelling in Blender and also taught me how to integrate these models into a Unity game.
Gif Maze
Explore a 3D maze made of gif's. For this project I wanted explore the use of Three.js for creating 3d web games. This led to Gif Maze where a user is able to input a search query and the maze would be generated using gifs from the Giphy API to cover the walls of the maze. The layout of the maze is randomly generated each time and the game is playable on both desktop and mobile through the use of an on screen joystick.
Digital Animation
This is an animation I created in 2018 for my Foundation Arts Diploma. It covers some of the history of Video Games and my concepts about what the future of gaming might look like, mainly involving virtual reality. I created this using Blender and After Effects. This project was the culmination of a year of getting to grips with digital animation both 2D and 3D. P.S: The video is a seamless loop!!
Chess Calc
The app aims to calculate a chess players chance of winning based on which pieces they have remaining. This was my first time using React Native. I learned a great deal about creating web layouts with flexbox and understanding state in React.