Advanced Web Design YEAR TWO

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/

squidsoup.com/ghosts

www.processing.org

http://www.proximityofneeds.org/

http://www.proximityofneeds.org/

make a single page site with multiple live feeds.

API (application programmer interface)

similar to this: http://wordle.net/

but from live feed.

like:

http://labs.digg.com/bigspy/?popular

http://amaztype.tha.jp/US/Books/Title?q=labradoodle

search for things like Facebook API to get an idea what info you can use to create for visualization on own site.

Android-game development tool from google, for mobile/internet gaming, based on linux downloadable.

(idea)

maybe wordle style word map from live feed such as BBC news.

http://www.vimeo.com/1593564 (this is awesome ) generative code based stuff.

http://glennmarshall.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/the-zeno/  (wordpress which explains it)

content management systems:

http://community.joomla.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_systems

Tutorials:

http://w3schools.com/

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

ted.com

rhurst@aib.ac.uk (richard flash guy tutor thing)

visualcomplexity.com

http://quayola.com

http://ymyl.org

SOUND/Audio (instead of visual)

midifucker

text to speech software

Interface Design

http://www.haque.co.uk/

Semiconductor-brilliant noise

http://vvvv.org

Ideas:

Flush system to remove rubbish content from a list of itunes style faveourite programmes.

window size tv

draw curtains

hang favourite shows from curtain hooks.

Personal Planning, Reflection and Development. Written Evaluation

Personal Planning, Reflection & Development 1

I chose FdA Interactive Media as a result of my great enjoyment of screen based audio visual work and also because some of the work I had seen on display that had been produced as a result of the course.

Induction Week:

During this first week of the term, we went to the beach at Sandbanks and were split into small groups as part of a team building exercise. We had to build something using found materials on the beach as part of a brief to produce something which represented Global Warming. We were provided a spade and an orange bucket and a camera as our only building materials. My group decided to build an arm chair in the sand to represent the lazy attitude most people have towards Global Warming and then to wear the provided buckets on our heads to represent the Ignorance most people tend to display to the issue as well.

Also in this induction week, we went to the Tate Modern. I thought that this was a really interesting, and a great way for us all to get to know each other.

Introduction to Web Design:

I personally really enjoyed this unit a lot, as I’d never really had that much involvement with website building or design before, so everything I did was a new learning experience for me which I found to be very interesting. The brief for this unit was to produce a website which showed an artist or artistic movement which greatly inspired us as artists/designers. For the majority of my life my greatest inspiration has always come from cartoons and cartoonists. So I chose to form my website like a comic book telling the story of all the cartoonists that have inspired me from childhood until today. I felt that this was a successful unit for me as it allowed me to explore things that I love, produce my own character designs and to apply this to a new format to me at the time, which was web design.

Image Production Techniques:

This was our second unit, as part of the brief we had to draw upon the photography which we took during the Induction week as part of the day trip to Sandbanks. For this unit we had to produce a digital image montage using Photoshop, which we could then further manipulate in After Effects. As well as this we were given a brief introduction to the Maya 3D animation software, I had used this briefly before to animated pre rendered models, but this further introduction was quite useful to me as I had never used this software to create three dimensional models before. However for Aesthetic and theoretical reasons I decided against using imagery from Maya as part of my final outcome for this project. This unit had two themes which we could work to, one being ‘A political response considering Global Warming and the effects upon the environment’. Or to ‘consider how different cultures conceptualise there relationship to the environment’. I chose the Global warming/Political theme to respond to. For this I came up with the theme of ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ for which I spent a lot of time and effort in creating the best possible way which I could demonstrate the point that most people are happy to ignore a situation as long as it its not really directly effecting them to heavily at a given particular time. My main artistic Influence for this project was a series of Graphic Novels called ‘Tank Girl’ by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. I felt that I used a similar ethos to the Tank Girl comics within my work for the final piece of this unit, whilst also adapting it with my style and to also fit the brief.

Digital Sound and Video production:

The Idea behind this brief was to produce a short video which could be uploaded to youtube with intent of it becoming a viral video. For this unit we had to work as part of a small group, which in my case consisted of Myself, James Crawford, Rhett Edwards and Steven Donea. I don’t feel that this unit went as well as it could have, and I could blame it on a whole plethora of things. But for now we’ll leave it at my poor health during the unit and also a lack of ideas which we were all collectively happy with as a group. Which in the end lead to us producing the video ‘Any Ideas?’ which is basically a audio visual representation of our lack of and Idea for this unit, whilst at the same time using themes such as repetition which seemed popular in the viral video arena at the time. To successfully complete this unit we had to display confident use of Camera work, after having tutorials on how to use the video camera which was available to us, I felt slightly let down in terms of this, as Steven who was chosen as our camera man opted for more experimental hand held techniques as apposed to the tripod shots we had previously discussed as a group. All that said this unit was definitely a learning experience for me in terms of group organisation and how the filming process works, even with a script and story boards things can and still will go undeniably wrong. However as a result of this I feel that if I was in a situation where by I had to undertake a similar project in the future I would be capable of making it work to a much better standard and to produce something of a much higher quality.

Interaction Design Principles:

I am yet to complete this unit as a result of a health condition which has left me unable to complete much work. However the tutorials received on how to use the Director Animation and programming software were really very good. Without which I simply wouldn’t have much of an understanding at all about how programming language works, specifically in this case Lingo. I do however have an idea for this unit and really like the idea of producing an Interactive story telling piece. For this I aim to produce a game which for the time being is most likely to be a platform game, which has a narrative based upon an issue of political Interest, like child hood obesity or global warming, although we were encouraged to base the narrative on a piece of writing or a song which inspires us. I will probably use the lyrics to a rock song or something as my basis for this unit, at the moment a song by The Gallows called In the Belly of a Shark, which has a lot of imagery which I feel would be amazing in the form of a platform action game.

Theories of Interactive Media:

For this Unit we were given a series of lectures and tutorials by Bob Cotton on the history of Interactive Media. These lectures have been greatly informative and although on some occasions I was already aware of some of the information, on others I was learning quite a lot, or making connections to other things which I was already interested in. For the essay which we had to write I chose the subject of “The evolution of marketing in the music industry” as I am greatly interested in music and how it is and will be promoted in the future of the ever expanding industry. I feel that this is a very interesting topic to cover as, with decline of record sales the music industry are having to come up with new and exciting ways of presenting the music they are selling. I am yet to complete this unit as a result of my health issue, but feel that the tutor support already received as part of this unit has equipped me with enough knowledge and understanding to complete a successful and hopefully interesting Illustrated essay.

Conclusion:

As this Academic year draws to a close I feel that I have definitely made the right choice in joining the Interactive media course, as all of the units and tutorial support have inspired me to produce some of my favourite and what I consider to be my best work to date. Even though I have had issues with my health that have hindered my works progress the course staff have been really supportive in helping me realise the outcomes I desired from each Unit. I am really looking forward to the next academic year, and also to my work placement which is to be undertaken at the Text + Work gallery at the Arts Institute Bournemouth, where I will be able to put my learned knowledge from this past year to good use, as I have been asked to produce a promotional DVD for an upcoming exhibition with the possibility of making the DVD content able to stream or download from the Text + Work website.

Image Production: preliminary guff

In this Blog are a selection of images that in some way relate to the way my project at uni unfolded.

If by some chance you have found this web log by looking at the web pages which these images lead towards, then aren’t you a lucky chap. However if this is not the case and you are oddly attracted by the pictures you have seen, the web address to see the final Picture and final after effects created vide is: mediaweb.aib.ac.uk/fdashow09/brewer/fmovie

I would like to thank The Masquerades,my brothers old band (www.myspace.com/themasquerades) for allowing me to use the intro to there song Antique Radio for the video section of this project. alas they are no more as a band, but the music lives on, at least as long as my 15 second video stays on the internet.

things I have read as part of this project include

Tank Girl comics 1-3 by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin, published by Titan Books. www.titanbooks.com

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk, published by Random House, www.randomhouse.co.uk

and have also found the following websites useful:

www.taylorjames.com

http://www.parlourcreative.co.uk/

http://forums.creativecow.net/

http://www.creativecow.net/articles/aftereffects.html

http://lynda.com/

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/

some other publications which were also of some handiness were:

Richard Rickitt (2000), Special Effects: The History and Techniques, London: Virgin Books.
G Doyle, (2002) Media Ownership Concentration, Convergence and Public Policy, London: Sage Publications
Ltd.
Magazines and journals
Digital Creative Arts
Computer Arts
DPICT
Digit Magazine

your pal mrmathew x

INTRODUCTION TO WEB DESIGN project evaluation

Having just completed my website, I thought it best to evaluate what I have done. The main Idea behind the site was to construct site that documents a piece of work or and artist that inspires me. Seeing as I enjoy so many forms of art the initial choice was quite difficult to make. Having said that I eventually settled on looking at cartoonists Like Alex Pardee, I enjoy these types of artists because of there weird and mostly warped sense of humour, I also really like the links to the music(i.e Alex Pardee’s work for The Uses) especially because I enjoy these kinds of bands too.

The Idea was to produce a piece of work that shows how this artist relates to what I do and to what I want to do. Because of this I realised that I couldn’t settle on particular artist and decided that the best plan of attack would be to look at a group of cartoonists that really inspire me. As a result of this thinking, I began to construct a website that takes the form of a comic/picture lead story book.

In order to represent my work i designed and drew all of the characters shown within my site to aid in the story telling, which took the form of how I grew up liking cartoon imagery from an early age, and how it has stayed with me into adulthood, and maybe even touching on why this is the case.

I tried to keep my web design to as accessible a framework as possible by laying everything out in similar panel form to comic books or cartoon books by the likes of Giles or more recently Dave Skinner and Henry Paker. My website I hope shows my understanding of a transparent and learnable relationship to the content, In my mind it does as it feels visually coherent throughout.

From the production of this quite simple site I have learnt that web production is quite time consuming, especially as I made the concious desicion to create all of my layouts using a Pen, Paper, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, however allthough some difficulty did arise from this, I found that the pages look visually more appealing than if I had used a default web font from dreamweaver. I also made the choice to create my site in this manner to keep the theme strongly linked to the comic book style which I was researching and trying to convey.

The main downside to this method again is the time consumption, and that re editing the site will take a little longer than if the layouts and text were produced more basically within Dreamweaver.

In conclusion seeig as this was the first time I have actually made a website, I am quite happy with the final outcome and believe it conveys a sense of where I am and where I aspire to be quite cohesively. below are some images which lead to the final designs but I chose against the use of In my final design.

webdesign design idea

The above is a character design and design idea for the look of my web design project.

(click image for full size non pixelated guff view)

all designed drawn and coloured and everything by me, tis a bit of a rough but you get the idea.

matx

…peoples what make visuals for bands are cool…

It has been officially decided by me that directors of music/band videos and artists in general who produce work to promote bands are really rather cool. As you already know I think that Alex Pardee, who has worked for The Used and Aiden is rather special.

some of Pardee’s work has spawned Toy lines and clothing.

also check these websites in reference to Alex Pardee:

www.eyesuckink.com

http://zerofriends.com/catalog/

Also as part of my research I sort of semi accidentally stumbled across, Shane Drake, this really amazing Music Video director, who seems to have done work for a load of bands which i’m really quite into. his website is in the following link:

the following is a link to an example of one of his video’s for the band Paramore:

http://www.redvanpictures.com/paramore

or this is the youtube video of the same track.

And I have also found out about another rather very cool website (thanks to my sexy housemate; who also graphic designs in her sleep whilst eating marmite on toast;the more talented than a bag full of tent pegs, what you guys dont know but should, kelly) :

http://www.linkdup.com/

which is a site that makes it easier to find out about and have a look at other really good and creative websites, well worth a look.

and all this from initially just having a bit of a liking for eyesuckink and the gorrilaz website.

which is : http://www.gorillaz.com/flash.html

peasoup

matx

its been a few days…

…since my last post so i’m just going to cram in some highlights.

here goes, since my last post we have had an After effects workshop, which i really enjoyed and can see some great possibilities for future work using the program. i really like the idea of pseudo 3D, but 2D really animation. although i have been messing about with after effects, i am currently looking forward to the second session which takes place a week tomorrow due to a staff development day. mainly to see if there are things i haven’t picked up for myself in the last few days. in short after effects = cool, and i cant believe i haven’t really used it before.

On Tuesday there was a trip to London, which took forever in a sardine tin of a bus. due to traffic and people crashing there cars and stuff. once we did arrive at somewhere between 1-2pm even though we left bournemouth at 9am ish. and had a good olde fashioned nosey round the tate modern, which has a great big crack in the entrance hall floor, which I am quite sure was intentional and really should have a look to see what artist did it soon, as it was quite interesting and maybe even a bit interactive.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/dorissalcedo/default.shtm

another cool artist I rather like was Moke.
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999875&workid=92635

almost finally yesterday i do believe some sort of desicion was reached on the group youtube video, and after much banter and creative ramblings, I am the storyboard artist. (ooooh YEAH).

Post tutorial thinkings for webdesign project. forgot to publish after saving last week:.(

After my tutorial I thought that perhaps to make a website that looks at cartoon characters that are used to represent bands in general would be a good idea.

Using the Alex Pardee character Chadam(the Used) as a starting point. Other bands that spring to mind who use characters to represent themselves include Edddie(Iron Maiden). Gorillaz. Kanye West.

You Promised me the world and all I got was this stupid chocolate egg!!!

mmmm chocolate….

Learnt how to slice up images for use in web design (Dreamweaver) today. Pretty cool.

Basically create and image, select areas of the image you want to change when you roll over.

create new layer with changedness.

slice up with slice tool. save both.

bobs your unlce and your dads your mum.

use in dreamweaver to make pretty website.