this website is pretty much the head of skateboarding rite now. i check it daily and always love its content. it is formatted as a blog for the most part but is constantly putting out different content depending on what day it is. like for example on wednesdays there is a funny segment about a professional photographer named REDA. it is more of a funny segment of the website then anything. there is manny other segments that happen weekly such as battle royale, skate or dice, first try friday, text yourself, Mickey days and manny others . all of them are posted on the website depending on the day of the week. you can go back and watch them if you go to the side and click on the different icons on the side that will take you too all the past episodes of the segment you chose. there is also things that they put up once a year. like battle at the berrics. that is where there is a huge game of skate that ends in two people going head to head and playing a final game of skate for the chance to win 10,000 dollars. i love this website and think its put together nicely.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Design Exploration - Assassin's Creed
The Assassin’s Creed websites are two of the more well designed sites that utilize flash in a creative way.
First is the US Assassin’s Creed 2 site - http://assassinscreed.us.ubi.com/assassins-creed-2/#/home/
Being an M-rated game, before you enter the site, it asks how old you are. Upon entry to the site, you are greeted with a view that is reminiscent of the game and four choices, leading to gameplay videos, character bios, where to buy it, and the fourth one that I found the most interesting, and also the most interactive. If one doesn’t care for the aesthetics and wants to get straight to the point, there is a menu button that will give you links to nearly everything on the site.
The fourth option on the homepage is titled motivations, and while unclear at first, upon entering you can infer that it is about the main character, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. While not really spoiling much of the story, it plays somewhat like a point and click game, you click the various symbols and it either plays a clip, or takes you to another location with different clips, all showing bits and pieces of the game and giving a feel of its atmosphere.
The second website - http://assassinscreed.us.ubi.com/abstergoindustries/#/weapons
This site was also used to advertise their newest game, which is Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Like the last one, this site also welcomes you by asking how old you are. This site, while heavily using flash, is fairly simple in design, consisting of a revolving wheel of weapons that disappear into the foreground. Before the game was released, they would periodically update this page with more weapons, revealing more info in order to generate hype. If clicked on, each of the weapons give out information of their uses, most are darkly humorous. There is one of the icons that is not a weapon, but a wall of seemingly random symbols that act as a puzzle. Looking at a weapon also flashes one of these symbols, hinting at which symbols you have to click.
What I appreciated the most about these sites, is that despite knowing that the site was created solely for the purpose of selling more copies of their product, it still keeps the viewer immersed within the world of Assassin's creed, whether it is the historical backdrop or the flickering screen that gives an artificial feeling, as if all is not as it seems.
First is the US Assassin’s Creed 2 site - http://assassinscreed.us.ubi.com/assassins-creed-2/#/home/
Being an M-rated game, before you enter the site, it asks how old you are. Upon entry to the site, you are greeted with a view that is reminiscent of the game and four choices, leading to gameplay videos, character bios, where to buy it, and the fourth one that I found the most interesting, and also the most interactive. If one doesn’t care for the aesthetics and wants to get straight to the point, there is a menu button that will give you links to nearly everything on the site.
The fourth option on the homepage is titled motivations, and while unclear at first, upon entering you can infer that it is about the main character, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. While not really spoiling much of the story, it plays somewhat like a point and click game, you click the various symbols and it either plays a clip, or takes you to another location with different clips, all showing bits and pieces of the game and giving a feel of its atmosphere.
The second website - http://assassinscreed.us.ubi.com/abstergoindustries/#/weapons
This site was also used to advertise their newest game, which is Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Like the last one, this site also welcomes you by asking how old you are. This site, while heavily using flash, is fairly simple in design, consisting of a revolving wheel of weapons that disappear into the foreground. Before the game was released, they would periodically update this page with more weapons, revealing more info in order to generate hype. If clicked on, each of the weapons give out information of their uses, most are darkly humorous. There is one of the icons that is not a weapon, but a wall of seemingly random symbols that act as a puzzle. Looking at a weapon also flashes one of these symbols, hinting at which symbols you have to click.
What I appreciated the most about these sites, is that despite knowing that the site was created solely for the purpose of selling more copies of their product, it still keeps the viewer immersed within the world of Assassin's creed, whether it is the historical backdrop or the flickering screen that gives an artificial feeling, as if all is not as it seems.
Studio/Artist Design Exploratio
I came upon this site: http://www.assaball.com/ while looking up submissions to the FWA.
The website is created by Bok-Chul Lee and his website acts basically as a portfolio of all of his work. He guides you through his work by using what he labels as "Assaballs". The term "Assa" in Korean is a way of saying "Awesome!" or "Yay!" when someone is feeling good or when something went well. His characters are round balls in order to represent the spontaneity of his work.
Each one will lead you to somewhere different. For instance, if you click on the ball labeled as "Works", it'll show you teasers of designs he has worked on for different websites. Another ball will lead you to a gallery profile for each of his "Assaballs" where you can also download wallpapers that he has created.
Overall I think the site very creative and really shows us just how much the world has begun to rely on the internet as well as the design programs we use today. The only downfall to this website is that many users have complained about the loading speed, which, depending on how fast your computer is running, can take awhile.
The website is created by Bok-Chul Lee and his website acts basically as a portfolio of all of his work. He guides you through his work by using what he labels as "Assaballs". The term "Assa" in Korean is a way of saying "Awesome!" or "Yay!" when someone is feeling good or when something went well. His characters are round balls in order to represent the spontaneity of his work.
Each one will lead you to somewhere different. For instance, if you click on the ball labeled as "Works", it'll show you teasers of designs he has worked on for different websites. Another ball will lead you to a gallery profile for each of his "Assaballs" where you can also download wallpapers that he has created.
Overall I think the site very creative and really shows us just how much the world has begun to rely on the internet as well as the design programs we use today. The only downfall to this website is that many users have complained about the loading speed, which, depending on how fast your computer is running, can take awhile.
I stumbled upon this site a while back, and while they took down one of the collections that had the most entertaining movie clips, it's still pretty good for showcasing fashion.
Most clothing designers have a Flash-based website in which they'll have a little intro clip with models wearing the bulk of their designs for that season. What's effective about Wrangler's presentation of their collection is that not only do you get to see how the clothing looks on models in an almost normal everyday situation, you get to virtually spin the model around (or in this case, rip his jacket off while pulling him off a ladder).
Not very practical, but at least it's more entertaining than just watching people strut it on the runway?
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Dilshan Arukatti's Portfolio
Dilshan Arukatti is an Art Director, experienced in creating interactive and motion designs.
His website: www.immersive-garden.com is magical, creative and at the same time very simple to navigate. It has a simple menu that lets you navigate through the site and explore the different options. Each of them starts with an inspirational quote and a dark background where a lighted dot invites you to change it. Once you click on it, you feel part of the creative process. The darkness becomes creation, the background changes and you cannot help to feel inspired!
Immersive Garden was awarded on Favourite website awards. (FWA was named the number 1 web award in the world), 101 Best Websites, My Design Award, Design Licks, etc.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Studio/Artist Exploration: NINJAI
The Ninjai Gang, creators of an online/action series called Ninjai: The Little Ninja. This small group of stuntmen, artists, and musicians by day, and animators by night who primarily use Flash 5 for their creation. This was one of the very first Flash animations I was introduced to when my father showed me Don Hertzfeldt on AtomFilms (NOTE: because of their website change, now Ninjai and Hertzfeldt are no longer on their site). The Ninjai web-animation is currently only 12 chapters long and centers around the life of Ninjai, a young samurai/ninja who is traveling the world looking for meaning and purpose in his life. During his journey, he encounters memorable characters, including a little bird as his friend and sidekick, and villains.
What sets them apart from other animators is that they are not a famous studio or artist. They are a group of normal people aging from 15-25 with various skills in Flash and animation work. They are not a company such as Pixar or Lucas Films, but they have enjoyed their success thus far. The group has had their struggles with financial issues but is persevering.
The characters in Ninjai are hand drawn frame by frame for most of the animation process. Most of the backgrounds are either hand drawn or are found images because of the pixilation that is apparent whenever they zoom in on a character. Further into the series, the character design becomes more fluid and natural instead of static animation traditionally seen in Flash.
Blogging Explorations
Studio /Artist Exploration
I found Dave Werner's Portfolio site when I searched for 'websites that use Flash'. I went to www.ebizmba.com and looked at their Editors picks for 'The Ten Best Flash Websites for 2011'.
I am so impressed by this students website/portfolio. The opening page is the shape of a business card which I think is really a great idea. I like the on The navigation bar along the bottom uses hand-printed fonts, with a circle in red pencil as the rollover button graphics. The center of the home page is an artistic collage of his various projects from Portfolio studio in Atlanta in the center. There are rollover buttons at various places in the center of the home page that continue the collage feeling in that they are abstract shapes and different colors.
Each of the pages represents a different project, a book project called Cadence of Seasons, Mondavi Wine branding, Brinker International annual report, Kennedy Center logo, and a Wachovia website redesign, to list a few. Each of the projects has an informational video that tells about the project, his ideas, concept, inspiration, process and links to the site. For Brinker International, which is the company that owns Chili's, On The Border, and Macaroni Grill, he uses a recipe box idea for the website. When you rollover a tab for one of the restaurants it plays the theme song. If you click on it gives you information about that chain. He used Flash to animate the tabs in the recipe box, a numbers graphic on the financials page, the contact information which comes up out of a suggestion box, and the photos and graphics for the Brinker Team page.
On his logs page, his rollover pulls up his notes for the concept so you can actually see his process. On his illustrations page, the Map illustration floats around in the target window so that you can see the various parts of the entire illustration.
I am attracted to his work and site because it is so clear, clever, imaginative and really easy to navigate. The movies all load fast and are short, to the point and really kept my interest. This portfolio site shows how he approaches a project and made me feel like I would be in good hands if I hired him to do a job for me.
Check it out: http://okaydave.com/
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Design Exploration- Choose My Colors
http://choosemycolors.com/ was started by a local painting company to help their customers decide what colors to choose when they want to paint their house. Someone can upload a picture of their house, the company loads it into the program, and they are able to choose from 1000s of customizable colors. This helps the person who wants to paint their house if they are not sure what color scheme to go with and want an idea of what their house would look like a specific color.
The flash part comes in when you start to actually put the colors on the house. A palette comes up which lets you drag colors to a set of swatches. These swatches control the color of certain areas like the garage or the trim. It is easy to use and you can check out a lot of different colors in short amount of time. You can also save a specific color scheme so that you could make a new one and then go back to the old one to compare it to make it better. The color names come up on the side so that once you knew what you wanted to do you could go to Home Depot and get those exact colors.
The site is pretty simple and straight forward but it caught my attention because it is something that is useful and functional. It is a good example of a well designed website that is capable of making a profit.
The flash part comes in when you start to actually put the colors on the house. A palette comes up which lets you drag colors to a set of swatches. These swatches control the color of certain areas like the garage or the trim. It is easy to use and you can check out a lot of different colors in short amount of time. You can also save a specific color scheme so that you could make a new one and then go back to the old one to compare it to make it better. The color names come up on the side so that once you knew what you wanted to do you could go to Home Depot and get those exact colors.
The site is pretty simple and straight forward but it caught my attention because it is something that is useful and functional. It is a good example of a well designed website that is capable of making a profit.
Design Exploration - Catherine
The website I'm exploring promotes the video game "Catherine" for the PS3 developed by Atlus. The theme of the game is horror.
Atlus is Japanese video game company. They develop Japanese Role playing games (Jrpgs) and other niche titles.
http://cathy.atlus.co.jp/
The site starts off by welcoming you with two hanging pendulum, that are click able, which each pendulum will take you to the main site but depending on which pendulum you chose will show a different main character for the background(Katherine if you chose the left or Catherine if you chose the right). like that right from the start they give user interaction. Also that it plays to the consumer's preference of which character they prefer On the main page the background and site layout are formed, followed by the logo for the game, and music from the game's soundtrack begins to play. The layout is simple, small, and user friendly.
The theme of the site is clock based, so all the navigational buttons are pendulums. when you scroll over them the text bordering the button rotates.
When clicking on any of the navigational buttons, it makes a seamless transitions to wherever it is navigating while staying on the same page. each transition uses a flash based fade in. I enjoy that they use a fade in because it fits with the theme of the game they are promoting which is horror, the fade in gives an ominous feel. I thought it was very well done.
I like that the site has many buttons at the bottom which are there for the entire time, which is for some of their other media, like links to their twitter, news feed, smaller promotions, and to the developer's main website.
My Favorite section of the site is navigating to the "Characters" section. It shows all the main characters, and when you scroll over each character, they pop out a bit, and the relation ship between the characters is shown by circling them in a low opacity bubble and fade in arrows pointing to who's connected to who. When you click on a character, it takes you to their profile and gives you info on them. you can also cycle through them by clicking the arrow(that is actually a male symbol) on the left or right.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Design Exploration - Chinese Soul
This website is found on FWA.com. This site is a promotional site for the jazz album “Chinese Soul”
by Werner Tian Fischer. Fischer is a guitarist based in Bei-Jing, China. The album is made up entirely of his original compositions, and features vocals by Sophie Dunér
The site opens up slowly with a little introduction in a plain white background. I like the simplicity of it, so the user can enjoy the music and the intricate line drawing that is to come. A fine horizontal line appears in the middle of the screen and pulsates as the music begins to play, and there are only two buttons remain constant on the page the whole time. There is the Stop/Pulse, and the “Squiggle” button. As the songs play, Flash based line drawings are scribbled on the screen for the duration of the composition. The user can choose to go to the navigation by clicking the “Squiggle” button, at which time the drawing would immediately be finished and reveals draws the navigation system. The user can also allow the music to go on from one tract to the next, and the drawing will continue once it’s finished with one drawing.
The drawings for each song are quite random, which I find it very intriguing. The selection is often related to the Chinese theme, but not in the traditional sense. It keeps me guessing what each drawing would reveal. The lines in the drawings pulsate to the beat of the songs is very nice design element I find captivating.
For tracks which contain lyrics (e.g. Lazy Afternoon, East bound) they are scribbled out at the bottom of the screen as the song plays, but I wish the font it uses is more legible. Another thing I think it can improve is that the title of the song can be display somewhere on the page when it is being played.
The different section of the navigation is well design. I especially like the section named ”Xie Xie”. It’s “Thank You” in Chinese, and thought that was a nice touch. In addition to music downloads in the “Download” section, I like that items that were kind of hard to read can also be found here. In the “Concert” section, it mentions of the plan to project the drawings from the website on large screens, and having them react to the music live, is a wonderful lure.
One item I find disturbing is that when the Resume/Travel section is selected, the animation comes to a halt. I am not sure it’s intended or a bug in the website. Finally, I like that the site gives you additional social media options to share this site with your friend in the “Tell Your Friend” section. It includes many other choices other than Facebook and Twitter.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Days with My Father
http://www.dayswithmyfather.com/
Phillip Toledano is a professional photographer and artist who began documenting his 98 year old father during his last year of life as he suffered from advanced Alzheimer's disease.
The website uses a simple layout to present the photos where one can either go to the bottom to click the next photo, use the scroll on a mouse, or click on the left side to reveal a gallery view of the photos.
What I like about it is the simplicity of the layout. Toledano doesn't distract the user with superfluous Flash content and plainly lays out his work in an appealing environment with subtle touches of animation to add polish.
He also has another site that showcases his photos in a similar manner, albeit without a gallery view: http://www.americathegiftshop.com/
Phillip Toledano's website: http://www.mrtoledano.com/
Studio/artist exploration
I came across Agencynet after I did a Google search for flash websites and clicked on a link to the top ten best flash websites of 2011. After browsing through a few of the other sites I stumbled upon Agencynet's site and I was immediately intrigued and wanted to explore the site. The home page of the site is a view into the building with little animations of the people working there moving around. When I first entered the site I felt like I was looking into a dollhouse and it immediately made me think about a movie I used to watch when I was a kid, "The Indian in the Cupboard." Each room of the building has its own animation constantly going on that mimics that of a design studio or office. The user is able to seamlessly navigate to all the different pages on the site by either clicking through the animations in the office building or by using the navigation bar at the bottom.
Agencynet is a digital agency that consists of a diverse group of individuals collaborating together. The agency consists of people from all over the world that are developers, designers, and strategists. Agencynet works with some of the world's most recognized brands including: Bacardi, Grey Goose, Ruby Tuesday, Warner Bros, Ford, Sony, Howard Stern, Bill Clinton Foundation, and many others. They were named "one of the hottest digital agencies" around by AdAge.
Agencynet lists some of their capabilities on their website such as: consumer strategy & research, strategic roadmaps, digital brand management, innovation pioneering, platforms and infrastructure, SEO & SEM, content creation, social media marketing, mobile, on-going maintenance, production, and digital AOR services.
Bacardi came to Agencynet looking to create a definitive guide to the world's most mixable spirit. This is what Agencynet designed for Bacardi.com. The user of this website can explore the endless possibilities of cocktails made with Bacardi products. Once the user selects a cocktail, images of the primary ingredients surround the drink. Clicking on one of the ingredients begins a journey to explore even more options and tastes and cocktails. Each cocktail features vivid imagery to bring the presence and flavor of the cocktail to life. And in this manor the website keeps the user continually engaged and interested in the product. It gives the user the full experience of picking and creating different kinds of cocktails while making the experience completely interactive.
Agencynet is a digital agency that consists of a diverse group of individuals collaborating together. The agency consists of people from all over the world that are developers, designers, and strategists. Agencynet works with some of the world's most recognized brands including: Bacardi, Grey Goose, Ruby Tuesday, Warner Bros, Ford, Sony, Howard Stern, Bill Clinton Foundation, and many others. They were named "one of the hottest digital agencies" around by AdAge.
Agencynet lists some of their capabilities on their website such as: consumer strategy & research, strategic roadmaps, digital brand management, innovation pioneering, platforms and infrastructure, SEO & SEM, content creation, social media marketing, mobile, on-going maintenance, production, and digital AOR services.
Bacardi came to Agencynet looking to create a definitive guide to the world's most mixable spirit. This is what Agencynet designed for Bacardi.com. The user of this website can explore the endless possibilities of cocktails made with Bacardi products. Once the user selects a cocktail, images of the primary ingredients surround the drink. Clicking on one of the ingredients begins a journey to explore even more options and tastes and cocktails. Each cocktail features vivid imagery to bring the presence and flavor of the cocktail to life. And in this manor the website keeps the user continually engaged and interested in the product. It gives the user the full experience of picking and creating different kinds of cocktails while making the experience completely interactive.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
website - first assignt by T.Vogel
Here's the website that helps me to distruct myself, when I spend too much time working at the computer:
http://wonderwall.msn.com/?ocid=ENTSP-Celebshttp://wonderwall.msn.com/?ocid=ENTSP-Celebs#
http://wonderwall.msn.com/?ocid=ENTSP-Celebshttp://wonderwall.msn.com/?ocid=ENTSP-Celebs#
New Media Exploration (MAT 150) - Tatyana Vogel..
I decided to share with the class “Second Life” website, because I found it interesting and entertaining enough. It is a free on-line game that allows people to explore different parts of the world, speak foreign languages, sell and buy properties, land, goods, meet different people with different background and even fly after creating your own character/identity based to the relationship to other people, activities, style or personality.
I know some people for whom this game became a life turning point event. Just letting you know that it might get a little bit contagious, but it’s just an opinion. I don’t want to bore anybody with a lot of words, but I encourage everybody to try at least once to check out for yourself the creativity and a business side of this web.
RESOURCES Exploration
All of the sites I mention here are educational sites in one way or another. They all have tutorials and most of them have freebies. They are all free!
Vector Tuts is an innovative, progressive site. There are many tutorials, not just on Flash but also Illustrator, Photoshop, web design, and multiple others in this group. It is not just one site but many; although I will concentrate on the Vector Tut site. They do interviews with designers that have been designing for many years as well as designers who have only been designing for a short time. They send out a weekly and a monthly newsletter with inspiration in it. Many of the pieces I have seen, left me with a “How did they do that?” thought.
There is a section of vector Tuts that is for paying members, they send our “premium” tutorials to everyone on their mailing list but only the paying members can see all of the “premium” tutorials. They send out other tutorials also, I have found that the only real difference between these two types of tutorials is that the “premium” ones are longer and in only some cases more through.
Here is their site for what they feel were their best tutorials for January 2011 http://vector.tutsplus.com/articles/news/best-of-tuts-january-2011/. Most of these tutorials are written, which I personally prefer.
The next site is http://www.incredibletutorials.com/They have a nice column off to the right that has other tutorials that are similar or have something to do with the tutorial that was clicked. Which is nice if there is another part before or after the current one. These are video tutorials and some are quite long. The making a cartoon Background one is over an hour but they are very through. Again, a good variety of subjects are included.
http://layersmagazine.com/category/flash
Another site that doesn’t work with just one program. This site has a mix of video and written tutorials, as you can see you can look at tutorials on Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign, Aftereffects and Premiere Pro. Again, tutorials are very through, and varied in topic. Interesting articles can be downloaded in the magazine-downloads section.
http://www.youthedesigner.com/category/adobe-tutorials/
The last great site I’ll talk about today is You The Designer…this was a new site I literally ran across in trying to go to a different site, it just popped up. But I’m glad it did. This site covers a bunch of different software, I don’t know anyone that uses GIMP, but it might be interesting to learn about it. I didn’t see any mention of Flash but Photoshop and Illustrator are both present. Several of the tutorials mentioned here are actually Vector Tut’s and at least one is from Vector Tips, another pointed to gomediazine.com. So I can’t talk about the quality of the tutorials as that could be different at each site, but it is nice to have just one place to go to pick what you want to see.
Several of these sites have a freebies section, which is always nice as long as the quality hold up.
One site I didn’t mention that I just can’t ignore is VecTips, it is one of my favorites, I have found that the quality is always there and their variety is very good as well. Oh, and they also have good freebies!
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