RIA and Sketchbook

Red Interactive Agency- This website contains a unique and entertaining way of communicating with people all across the globe. It took a bit of getting used to at first, but basically this site is a profile page for a design company, which also hosts an interactive chat program. It allows you to choose a character, name it, and to use the character to explore the landscape. You can also chat with other visitors using the dialog entry screen at the bottom of the frame. The rest of the website is mostly describing the company’s goals and clients, using menu buttons in the upper right portion of the screen. I think that the interaction element on this website is excellent, almost to the point of distraction. It’s hard to read about the company’s accomplishments when you’re busy chatting with people and making your character jerk around like a puppet on strings. I found it hard to get off this site simply because it’s so amusing! I think that, if RIA made this site with the intent to involve visitors as well as entertain them, then they definitely succeeded.

Sketchbook by Martin Hughes- Another interactive site, but this one is more personal. The navigation takes the form of a pack of pills, and you get to another page by “swallowing” them. This site is also a bit confusing, unless you read the “suggested user tips” on the main page. The transition effects between pages are a bit crazy and disorienting, with text and titles zooming and rotating at random angles, but that just adds to the fun. The Sketchbook serves as an animated journal of Hughes’ experiences in life, though it’s hard to make sense of them, even if you do take the pills in the right order. I admire his style, because the page content is random and bizarre, but at the same time fun. The animation is definitely amusing (like on pill nine- the walking red skull chasing a dollar bill), and it seems to push the boundaries of what is acceptable to today’s Flash-familiar audience.

I’m not sure which site I prefer more, but I think both are brilliant. Have fun with these two!

Design Exploration

If you want a compelling site to visit check out http://www.okaydave.com/
I think I spent about 45 minutes there checking everything out.

This is an award winning artist’s portfolio site. The design has very good consistency, in several arenas, throughout the site. He used contrast well on the home page. It has a collage of photos in black and white and when you roll over it elements pop out to click on in color. He uses a lot of black and white but it feels warm because of the dark background and brown tones. He also has a nice menu that is on every page at the bottom with a red pencil circle that highlights each choice as you rollover. Having this menu stay there makes you feel grounded and knowledgeable as to where you can go and are. When you first get to the homepage he has a pleasing video type effect with music that he replicates in the little videos that he has on his other pages.

Most pages are broken up nicely into 3 parts. The left side has video on top and sub-navigation for the information on the right side of the screen. The screen is split so that the right side has more room than the left which is visually appealing.

There is a nice combination of artsy, scratched words and hand-drawn loading images, yet there are nice, polished, professional projects and they end up being very cohesive. For instance on his logo page he has some simple stark and bold logos and you can move the mouse to see his design notes scrawled out.
The music is appropriate and not overwhelming. His videos explain each project in a visually stimulating way and are not too long. I would like it if he had a written synopsis but I guess that is where his process notes come in so it works. And I’m sure that is what he thought when he did it. It left me inspired.

Another site that was nicely done, visually stimulating and fun exploring is http://www.longneck.ro/

New Media Exploration

As we continue to advance in technology at the rate we are at, it is only up to the imagination where we will take new forms of medium. For now we have the internet, television, movies, video games, and analog mediums such as the classic pen on paper or paints. But as we continue to progress, it seems that the boundaries between the two will no longer exist.

For example CrystalRender will take any 3D model that you have created and place it within a crystal so that you may display as your very own personal accessory. What they do is convert the polygons of the model into a collection of points that match up with the geometry surface, and then they shoot tiny lasers into the crystal which causes the structure to heat up and crack. These small cracks when collected together will form a dusty looking cloud that represents what your original polygon model looks like in perfect detail.

Another sort of medium is within the futuristic realm. A Brain-Computer Interface, at some point we will be able to directly link our brains with computers using a sort of data-jack or other port system, our brains and the machine will be able to speak a common language and with that we may be able to not only create within a new perspective but be able to experience new or familiar forms of media in a whole new way.

Fashion vs Fun

Nautica Jean's
site was a very fun fashion web site. The look of the site captured the feel of the jeans experience. Grungy, but playful. They offered a unique way of viewing the model wearing the clothes. He was positioned on a coin that slowly turned so you could view him front and back. There was a variety of levels of navigation offered. Up close you could choose very casual, kinda casual and dressy casual. They offered a sample of each and then navigation further back in the page offered you a choice of denim, shirts, tees, tops and outerwear for each style. The top level navigation offered product, jeans, style advisor, heritage and store locators. I like how the design was clean, playful, captured the product feel well. It was very easy to see the navigation, although it was not huge and in your face. Quietly understated and yet easy to access. The site loaded very quickly throughout which is always a big plus. There was music on the site but they were also considerate enough to add a sound on/off button choice in case the music was not to your liking.
The fast loading helped me stay on the site. The easy to use navigation encouraged me to investigate the site. It was an altogether pleasant experience. Well designed, well laid out, thoughtful to the end user, not just there to cram as much Flash in our face as they can.

Sze's site offers the visitor an opportunity to experience a wide variety of Flash styles. From an interactive flash book, to a silly catch the chicken game. It offers a mix of commercial projects and pet projects. I enjoyed the pet projects best. Always a good way to keep your creative juices flowing. She won the first annual Flash Goddess award for her pet projects. The site loaded quickly, was very entertainingly presented. Maybe a little cute for guys... but thats ok - there are lots of us females out there exploring the web : )

Design Exploration

www.agencynet.com : all I can say is that this website is an advance piece of design. I'm sure there's got to be more than flash elements in this design. First, the interactivity. It's very clever how they made a Three-Dimensional representation of their office as their main navigation. Things are easy to find. However, once you click one, you'll be blown away as what you are about to see. I believed they incorporated a lot of motion graphics, as well as video. You can see how the people in the interface is real but looping. Other inclusion of clever design is the client list, where client logos are things you can stick on the fridge and you can move them anyway you want. On the portfolio page, they used this technique where you pick one category and it isolates the items relevant to that category. On the demo reel page, you feel like you are actually watching tv with a remote control in your hand. On the news page, an advanced iframe technique was used. For those who don't know what an iframe is, it is used in html, you have a small window, you click a link and all of its contents will appear in that window. On Our Difference page is a video of one of the representatives of the company. To me, this is very professional on a personal level. That's how you gain the trust of your clients. They also have a blog section. Every aspect of this website is rich in content. It's funny how help pages are some plain text. Here, you'll be greeted by a video, like the one's you watch on airplanes before they take off. Even their contacts page alone is has rich mouse-over interactivity. In a nutshell, I can only dream of building a website like this. I'm pretty sure too, this website has provided all its information it needs to, very clean, very professional, very competitive... very cool.



www.dreamstudiodesign.com : Here's another flash technology that is beyond this class :) I may sound ambitious, but hey.. that's how websites like these are concieved. I've done research about this technology. Today, there are support softwares out there that help bridge the gap between flash 2D design and 3D design. Check out www.erain.com they offer this software called "Swift 3d". As for the design, interactivity and purpose of this website.. it's very simple, elegant, yet humorous. Each navigation represents an animation on the screen, or you can do it also by mouse over. Each area of the navigation, which also contains information has a little "short animation" to accompany it with. Overall, it's visually interactive. For those poeple who wants their animation to go to the next level, this is the way to go.

Flashy Flash

Here is flash being put to work in the online retail market. I really enjoyed navigating through this site and it has sparked many ideas for myself and now hopefully you to use in future productions. They have really nice visuals with awesome transitions. They have a lot of action going on with-in the site, yet still maintain a uniform flow. I like the way they incorporate video and pictures into the site. I hope we can learn to do some of the transitions they use to navigate through out the site. So over all i think its a great site. I do feel they could improve. I would like to hear alittle more audio through out the site, i think it would really bring it to life. The main problem is this site is very hard to find. I was unable to find the site through google searches. I had to find it through links. Here is the site! www.windwakewater.com

Design Exploration (Disney.com <> Agencynet.com)

I discovered that Disney.com has become quite an elaborate flash site

and I would like to compare it to agencynet.com (click anchor link and read just below 2nd picture), which also has an impressive video animated flash interface.

At first glance Disney seems a complicated website, overwhelming with lots of information. Discovering the site is meant to be an adventure, a reflection of the lay-out of Disney's themeparks. But instead, the main pages focus on the company's core businesses.

Looking at the source code, I learned that the website developers built a CSS site with Flash movies and flv's (Flash Video's) embedded in a Flash driven interface. They also used javascript to call the flash elements within the interface. The homepage source code is unexpectedly short, I assume because of the javascript code, that processes the webpage needs/call outs on Disney's webserver. Still so much to learn and understand and so little time: "...Mork calling Orson, come in Orson,... I need more life..." *Sigh ;)

Each web/Flashpage opens with a wonderfully beautiful background (hallmark of Disney's State of the Art animation capabilites), then the subwindows load. At the top of each page is a recurring horizontal control bar with navigation text buttons with a matching clickable icon above them that branch off to a new webpage. Some pages carry an Ad banner (Movies, TVshows, etc). The NavBar lists Disney's main lines of business: movies, TV, games, music, live events, travel, shopping, mobile, characters, and Disney XD (Xtreme Digital). On rollover, the buttons glow up and a trace of pixie dust shoots across, and the corresponding icons light up. Central on each theme page is a flash video... Disney's website tries to avoid being perceived as a commercial website. This is a place where dreams come true, a magical and happy place, pixie dust (cute) is all over the webpages and in the flash intros...

The visual center of any of Disney's webpages (except for the shopping pages, which tend to have a more commercial look and lay-out) is just slightly above and to the right of the actual (mathematical) center, and that's where the designers placed the Flash flv's. This tends to be the natural placement of visual focus, and is also sometimes referred to as museum height. The design recipy of the pages also respects the rule of thirds. Top 1/3 includes Adbanner, Horizontal NavBar, and windows with main flv panel. Middle 1/3 branch off to individual Disney characters. Bottom 1/3 contains legal footer. All 3 parts are embedded in a main Flash window. So what I'm trying to state is that the website consists of embedded, cascading style Flash based webpages. Cool!

The balance of the webpages are approximate horizontal symmetrical. Symmetrical balance occurs when the weight of a composition is evenly distributed around a central vertical or horizontal axis. The size of the whole website is really big, matching the clout of a Fortune 500 company. The cluttery look with windows left and right reflects the feel of the store fronts of Main Street in Disneyland. There is quite a lot to discover. Have fun!

For example: explore the fairy minigames at: fairies minigame: sundown. Aren't those fairies enchanting!

Another attractive Disney cartoon character I like is Kim Possible. Have you noticed "Erin Esurance" the auto insurance company's secret agent looks like Kim. Well yes, they have the same been created by artists from different companies: Alan Lau (who used to work for Disney) from ghostbot.com and Phil Robinson from W!ldbrain.com. The last two links: "Lau" and "Robinson", lead to QuickTime video versions of original Flash animations.

On to the next one:
AgencyNet.com

Check out the website by clicking the picture here below:


The webdesign technology is similar to Disney's, but this company chose to display a professional & clear commercial corporate identity.
Website build is the same symmetrical center balance. A group of flv's are strung together and are in fact clickable button areas (they flash on rollover) with embedded Flash movies (swf's) that link to a deeper level in the site. The background murmur gives this an active office feel. I wonder how they shot the videos as base for the clickable buttons. Anyone have an idea?

Anyway, this website gives Agencynet.com an interesting and modern, corporate cool image!

Victor Sturm
4/16/07

Is there a new Flash 9 CS3?

http://www.bestflashanimationsite.com

In this site, there are several examples of superb websites using flash. There is one about IKEA, which I found quite interesting. Check it out.

Do you know about the new Flash 9 CS3?
www.flashmagazine.com/

They mention about script action 3.
Are we going to learn this in the advanced flash class?

Design Exploration

One of the good effective interactive multimedia design that I found was Dior.com .If i say good it doesn't mean that there is no problem in the sits'e design I mean I liked it and attrected to it.I could see that this site has alot of flash in it.I think the design of this site is very well done and attractive.In the intro we can see the drop menu.In this site we can choose many languages for its presentation. Each time I've opend the site, I've faced a new picture in intro.I think this make the site more interesting for its customers.The menu leads the customers to different part of the site.One problem that I faced in this site was the nevigation because I couldn't find a good navigation for going back to the main page or some other navigation.The colors are vary bright in this site which is a need for this kind of sites.Most of the pages have white background which is good and make the main picturs more effective.We can see the company name for loading each page and it repeats over and over.
The second site that I really likes was wynn hotel in las vegas.This site has a great navigation to different parts.There are many different categThe menu which leads us to different sections of this site and presents the hotel.This site is about a great hotel and I think it's really showing the great things about this hotel by using the colorfyl pictures and color.The way the menu works is so interesting .This site is a great example of using flash.

Summit, Solid Designs

Summit is an Oregon based design company that creates cutting edge websites… or at least really good ones. Their portfolio is an impressive display of great designs and solutions. Before I get ahead of myself, let me say that I prefer some of their sites over others, my statements apply to most of their sites, but not all. I don’t agree with every solution they have used, but most of their sites primarily contain design elements which I am eager to appropriate.

I am stunned by the aesthetic appeal of their sites; which are sometimes for high end customers and sophisticated, other times they are fun and casual. Tastefully bright colors enhance richly colored backgrounds. Their sites always look like the products that they display.

Tahoe Mountain Resorts looks like Tahoe; it’s designed in greens and tans with a lot of textures, big blocky areas, and outdoor pictures. The only thing missing is a pine scent. Nike Golf has a variety of background pictures, see others by refreshing the page. Another good element of their sites is the navigation; you always know where you are, how to get somewhere, and where you’re going to go if you click on something. There are a lot of roll-overs, images fading in and out, and creative ways of presenting information. One of my favorites is Norweigan Cruise Line's Slide Show, if only I had thought of that. On some of their sites you can even use the back button to return to pages, though occasionally it behaves unexpectedly. More variety could be used in their font choices, but I like that their fonts are typically small but readable. I suppose that all of those things combine to make a good site, but not a cutting edge site. Summit either creates new solutions to common problems or they know where to appropriate ideas from. As your average consumer and site viewer, I don’t know which it is that they do, but I like their sites and will leave the technicalities to lawyers. Hopefully those same lawyers won’t notice that my final project might bear some resemblance to a Summit website.

If you need to commandeer ideas:

Norweigan Cruise Line's Slide Show, how cool is that?!

King Retail Solutions

Camelback

Tahoe Mountain Resorts

Nike Golf

Official-Linerider.com

Officiallinerider.com is a website with an interactive game that lets the user create the actions of the figure on the sled.
Line Rider was originally created by Boštjan Cadež, a Slovenian university student, in September of 2006. It almost immediately gathered a cult following and became the seventh quickest gaining keyword in Google. Since that time, the ‘toy’ has generated over 16 million views. Fans quickly noticed that they could create tracks, set them to music, and share them over YouTube.com. Currently, there are over 11,000 shared videos with many more to come. InXile Entertainment is extremely excited to work with Boštjan in order to reach the full potential that we feel the Line Rider application can live up to.
This website is fun and entertaining for both young and old. It seems like it took alot of Action script to create. It is a very simple to used game but very complex to make.

Teamironmen.com

Alright this is my first blog and I'm new to the whole blog thing.
I picked this website because I love paintball and I wanted to do something about it.
So the website I decided to explore is Teamironmen.com.
Teamironmen.com is a website for the professional paintball team Ironmen.
This is a website where people can find info about the team, team members and find where they are going to be playing next
One thing about this website is that it is made entirely with flash and it is very easy to navigate through.
The website is somewhat basic and the use of colors is easy on the eyes and go well when the theme.
When you click on the team roster, an easy to use navigation list of the team loads.
It appears it uses a preloader when going from team member to team member.
It is also very easy to get back to the home page from every part of the site, which alot of flash site don't have.
Other than that the site is pretty basic but I think it is well made with easy navigation.