3W16 – Web Site

I have start this week refining my web site / final project to its final form. I have at all stop ‘music button’ for each effect and I have write down the info and the ‘how to’ use the site.

Info / How to

“Instructions

1. Drag an image from the lower 3rd to the main stage.
2. Create a sequence of images / a storyboard or just mix around the images to create your painting.
3. Play with the sound effects around and try to make your own story. tip: press sound key more than once
4. Be creative and explore… you can always press the reset button

General info

This project was developed out of a 5 years old kid’s mind. This site does exactly what a child do when he develops a story, a fairytale or his/her thoughts and his/her own fantasy world. Images flying around and sounds pop out of nowhere. The images are not so clear, a bit abstract and blurring…just like a kid’s vision and understanding about his/her surrounding. This is your canvas and you are the artist… just like a child’s mind.”

3W15 – Response

I have send out a link to the rest of the MADA students where they can view my a web site with my project. www.dot-studios.com/create

I have intentionally left out all the info of how and what is this web site about, so I will get a clearer point of view of what they think it is about. To make people explore and play with it with out any limits or ‘rules’. This is a non-linear web-story project after all. Just the same way any kids mind is working; non-linear and and the unknown is what they like to explore.

The responses

In general most of the viewers that played with my site at this phase they told me that they spend some time at first just playing around with sound and images before they even go to info button to read instructions. At some point though some of them needed some general info of what this site it is supposed to be about.

3W14 – Script

finally… it took me about 2 months to come up with the correct scripting for my web site and I must admit that I feel very proud. It took a lot of scripting research and some programing. All I can say is that it was a very hard for me since my scripting skills are just above zero.

Here is the hardest and the final script for randomize and reseting images. The software that I am using is swishmax2.

onFrame (1)
{
myPicsArr=new Array();
pics=_parent.picsmc

for(pic in pics){
img=variable(“pics.” + pic)
if(typeof(img)==”movieclip” and img!=pics){
img._xscale=60;
img._yscale=50;
img.onPress=function(){
this.startDragUnlocked();
this._xscale = 136;
this._yscale = 112;
}
img.onRelease=img.onReleaseOutside=function(){
this.stopDrag();
}
myPicsArr.push(img);
}
}

// Randomizing
for (i=0;i<myPicsArr.length;i++){
r=Math.randomInt(myPicsArr.length)
//Swaping two elements
temp=myPicsArr[i]; myPicsArr[i]=myPicsArr[r];  myPicsArr[r]=temp;
}
// re arranging
hs=img._width+5;vs=img._height+5;picPerRow=8;ypos=-32;
for (i=0;i<myPicsArr.length;i++){
xpos=(i)%picPerRow
if(xpos==0 && i!=0)ypos+=vs
myPicsArr[i]._x=xpos*hs-pics._x;
myPicsArr[i]._y=ypos;
}
pics._x=_parent._width/2+img._width/2-5;
stop();
}

3W12 – Final Images

It was about time to finish with the images that I am going to include in my project. I have create a total of 40 images; the only hard part is the scripting now. It is more challenging of what I have expected to be. It is something it will keep me busy the next couple of weeks.

Image process

1) I draw the image on paper

2)I scan the image

3)Digital Processing -(Phothoshop, Painter, After Effects and many more softwares)

I am very happy with the result, and when I look back I am very satisfied that I choose this look of my images; my art work has been improved in many aspects. The way of thinking, working, researching and so on. Overall I feel the result it is extremely good and much better of what I was expecting be.

3W11-Interface and Sound Fx

This week I spent my time working on the design of my interface for my project,and also I spent a lot of time gathering and editing sound efx from several videos that I had my son on. The result is amazing and I love the way that you can mix and match sounds. Now the only major problem that I have to overcome is the scripting of my site. I did play around a bit but I will focus on it next week. I need to solve the scripting issues before I go on and create one more interface and have my fellow students to choose which one they like more. Find below a prototype of my project and play around with the sound. I would love to have some feedback even at this point.

www.dot-studios.com/testv09.swf 

3W10 – New Look

I spend this week working on the look that I want to achieve with my images that I’m going to include in my project.

I have try to merge realistic drawings – images – photos and abstract look.

Here are some images I have done this week. All of the images are inspiration from my sons stories.

Boxing under the see

Fire Bird

Diamond Flowers

Robot Clown

The images  are made in layers; some of them over 50 layers in photoshop. In some images I have add Photos and Drawings, where in some others It is just scan drawings with digital paint.

3W09 – Looking Back

I catch my self going back on my work, especially the work for my MADA, and I see how It got developed to what it is today.

Did I succeed?

Is this the feeling I want to create/show my piece?

How and from whom I got influence at most?

Is it developed enough?

Do I get involved and do I help my fellow students?

Well, these and many more questions spinning in my head every day, and I don’t feel this is bad or annoying. Actually it is the opposite. I feel that taking this course, helped me more like an artist; more than I actually expected.

Now did I finally succeed? I sure did. At least in personal level I feel I have gain a lot and this is a success for me.

About my project and my art work, I am very sure that the development lead me to a new way of thinking; a more mature and more artistic. Getting out of the standards, and self boundaries I feel more complete as an Artist.

Well…do I feel I got my piece developed a lot? The ‘path’ it is there. The work foundations are there, and the pieces of the puzzle are lay down on the table; all I have to do its to put the piece together.

I didn’t expect to get so involved with other students; not that I didn’t want to, put due to limited time that I have in my life. I feel very lucky to have such a good and artistic group around me.

3W08 My Input on Final Show

After some thoughts that I have about the final show I came up with some ideas that I shared with Peggy the leader of Publication team.

I told her that I can do an animation (opening-loop) for the show and we can play it on a screen.

We can also have all the posters and ‘paper’ work, added to this piece so we don’t spent time or money on printing, and mostly we could do our little share of saving the environment. You can have a look at the email at http://dotworld.wordpress.com/category/emailspresentation/ and see the follow ups e.t.c

PhD – talking with Doctors of the world

This week I had a meeting with the founder of Doctors of the world-Cyprus Dr. Elleni Theocharous. I must admit that I got the chills just by talking to her. She is just an amazing woman and she has achieved so much in her life, which it’s an honour to anyone to talk to her. The greatest thing of all is that she was so enthusiastic about my idea, and she told me that she will help me all the way to make this come true. She also told me that I can travel with them around the world and video recording everything. There next mission will take place, early of this March and I can travel with them.

3W07 Wikispaces

These 3 weeks will be very hard for me to ‘over-work’ with my MADA project since I’m going to work until very late for the presidential elections that takes place in Cyprus, but still I will keep up with chats and so on.

Wiki

Today I have added myself at our MADA Wiki place (http://madigitalarts.wikispaces.com/MA+Final+Show), as one of the ‘members’ of the publication team.

Final Show

For the final show I’m not sure if I will have the time to travel to England to setup my piece and stay there until it finished. Will see how other students will overcome this problem and I will try to find a solution myself. I may do it local and webcast it or something.

Other Artist

I made a little search on the web this week to, trying to find more Interactive Storyboard artists. Well I must say that it’s a bit hard to find exactly what I am doing. Nevertheless, I did found an artist called Brian (http://murraystudios.com/gallery.html#Anchor-23522), where his work is to do digital storyboards. I found his work very ‘clean’ and right to the point, but unfortunately it’s not the style I want to create in my piece. When I started my MADA this was the style that I wanted to follow, but not anymore. Next week I will try to find some more abstract storyboards work, or even some abstract artist to get some influence from.

3W06 Tutorial

Tutorial

This week I had my first tutorial for MADA3 with Jonathan. We talked about general thinks about my project, but we focused mainly on 3 things.

§ that everything is clear from my unit 2 feedback

§ plans for the end of unit 3 ie. exhibition etc

§ that everything is clear for the objectives for unit 3

As I told Jonathan I was very clear about the feedback, but one. Somewhere they told me about Harvard system, that I need to use it correctly, and I asked him to point out where was the problem. He couldn’t tell me at the moment, because he didn’t have my essay in front of him. He said he will email me back on that.

Final Sound/Sound fx

As for the plans for the end of unit 3 we talked a bit general about the interface of my final web site and how to make it more ‘clear’. We also talked about sound (he liked the fact of overlapping and playing the sound over and over where it can also be mixed; and then Jonathan (as always) dropped a great idea about sound; to have the stories that my son narrated and also some sound effects from my son. Can this work out? I think so it will be great and unique as it comes to variety of sound and the fact that it will be in Greek.

Final look on Images

We talk also about the final look of the images within my web site. I decided to do something different of what I used of doing. I will great more abstract images and do some photo/digitization compositing. Jonathan showed me Myriorama http://billdouglas.ex.ac.uk/eve/results.asp?item=69238&keywords=myriorama– a web page that shows a series of cards from quite a long time ago where you can place them in different order and still will have similar horizon line.

Interaction with other students

We also talked about assessment and that its important to contribute and have an interaction with other students, as well contribute to wiki so I decide to do a whole different section for interaction