3w20 – Presentation

This week I had my colloquium presentation. I had some great responses and questions. Overall people liked it and the feedbacks where very productive and well thought. I believe at this stage, I can say that we have succeed to deliver our best of our self in this final presentation before the final show.

The only thing that worries me, is that I have just a very few chances to go to the actual show, because of my work .

I have also start working on my essay and I just find my self short of time. Well I guess after all thats one of the biggest challenge in the duration of my master degree.

Final Project

I have upload also my final web site at dot-studios.com/create where I have include the info part as well after a short experiment of just letting people to guess what is the site all about

3W19 – Colloquium

This week I spent my time working on my colloquium. I’ve tried make a bit more ‘live’ presentation rather just text and voice over; so I’ve shoot my self on a green screen background and then I import all the materials to after effects.

I’ve made the composition of the material in after effects, and then I’ve exported the pieces in premiere where I’ve edit the video and sound to complete the final piece

In general I’m pretty happy with the result, even though I had some technical problems with green screen. The solution that I found is by painting green, a corner in my living room and lighting the background.

…by the way…my wife liked the color, and I had to paint the whole living room at the end

3W13 – Working on Images

Sorry I forgot to publish this post earlier

I am getting close to my finalize my images and the content of my web site/project. It is a really pleasure to work on these images and I find it exhilarate the fact that every single image is the product out of my sons stories.

3W18 – Exhibit Space

I have been trying all this week to find a space to set up my exhibit. I have finally decide to run the show in my office where I can setup a camera to record the show and I have a space to setup a laptop on a big screen. Actually it is a nice place and I will have more control on several aspects of the show.

I start building out some PCs to try out if its better to have 2-3 simultaneously people viewing my work on 2-3 monitors. Still can’t  decide  if I like to have just one viewer/user at a time.

3W17 – Web 2.0

We got an interested paper from Jonathan of Manovich essay about Web 2.0 and we where suppose to discuss about it in the chat session. Unfortunately my isp at work got flipped and I was getting a lot of disconnections. Anyways, thanks to Birgitt I got the chance to read the chat log afterwards and it turned out to be a very nice chat. Some very interesting points where raised and in general I aggred that Manovich is right to the point… in some cases. For example he says that “Web 2.0″ is about making connections between people and media, and more connections = more possibilities for creativity”; this is so true in my opinion and I still believe that big business control the ‘game’ of web…They produce so many web sites to attract youngsters, artist and anyone of us; its just like TV ads… they direct you where they, exactly, want.

Web 2.0

I have done a small research about web 2.0 and I end up with a very interesting video post on youtube. If you have some time it is really worth to view it.

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