Resource Exploration- Bickford

For my first blog post I will be doing Resource Exploration:

Animation Magazine: This site I found helpful because it not only show cases different animators but it also has articles on new techniques, links to other helpful resources for the animator and it also has a section for employers to post job postings from all over. It also gives information on Animators conventions or other digital conventions that animators can attend to learn about new and upcoming techniques. 

The preceding three web sites are great sites to refine and re-learn the how to's in Flash Animation. These sites give in depth tutorials in all that is flash.

EchoEcho: I found to be very informative. It has a bit of education and explanation of flash for the beginner. It explains how to use the flash tool box and how to draw basic lines and shapes. It has tutorials on buttons (simple and advanced), tweens and most of the basics of working in flash. And lastly it shows you how to allow flash and javascript to communicate.

Entheos: This site has a ton of tutorials on flash. It gives you how to's on all the basics such as tweening, motions, masking and working with layers. It also has tutorials on other animations and effects that you may want to use in your animation. The one thing that I really like about this site is it provides pictures of what your screen should look like as you progress in the tutorials. For the rest of you techies out there this site has tutorials in Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, CSS and more!!!

The Flying Animator: In this web site of tutorials they go into depth on basic animation and also the run and walk cycle. Animating a butterfly, a cat, and a bunny rabbit. One thing that this site does that I did not see on the others is that it posts links to free software for animators. 

http://24hoursofhappy.com/

So this site made me smile after looking through some pretty horrible flash sites that are not worth mentioning.  24hoursof happy was just that and if you wanted to watch all of it at one time, well you better be prepared to sit for...well 24 hours.

The essence of the site is simple but you can tell that lots of talent was required to create the page. The page features the Happiness by Pharrell Williams and you can move through time to the minute to see different scenes and different people dancing and lip-syncing to the song.

It gives you the option to watch from 360dpi, 420dpi, 760dpi and 1080 as well as an opportunity to leave comments.

Its just enjoyable!!

Pat

Design Exploration

This website stood out to me because from entering the website it is already visually captivating and there are interactive banners to scroll through, introducing you to the characters of the park. When you "reveal the story" It shows a short video and then Fantasyland is taken over by a curse. So throughout the journey through the site it starts to reveal the story to you and it's like your going through an adventure and helping the characters in the site out while getting to know more about the park. It's almost like a video game as you adventure through the park. I like it because it is complicated and it appeal to all ages. It's unique and beautifully made. Or maybe I'm just biased because I love Disney. 

Click here to reveal the story.

Happy

I stumbled on this awesome video and my wife said she had been looking for that song for a month since she had heard it while in France. Of course when we went to YouTube there was 66 million views already. Thats just like me to be out of the loop on things like this.

This artist has made the first 24 hour music video and incorporated flash into his website. I am a pretty simple guy and this is a simple yet effective flash site. The site loads and gets straight to the point - music. I love music and video so this is what attracted me to it. The yellow circle represents a clock that you can skip to different times with. The times represent time of day and you can see that by the daylight that is shown in the video. I think one of the best aspects of the site is that you can go to other peoples comments and see which part of the 24 hour video they like best, and by clicking on that comment it will take you to what they are talking about. The buttons on the clock are not invasive and only get larger when you hover over them.

The song is called "Happy" and the vibe that it gives is just that. 

This site has inspired me to incorporate flash into the videos that I create. I think the artist wanted to create the site to be the first one to have a 24 hour music video, and incorporated the flash into it so the user could be more connected to the video.

Jastin DeMeo

Mella's Observaions

My Observations

While doing research for this blog, I enjoyed poking around many animation sites.  It was pretty time consuming and challenging trying to find animation I was interested in. I am not really interested in the majority of flash animation projects that seem to be popular now, blowing things up, killing, off characters, dark satire, or cartoons that appeal to the lowest common denominator. 

I enjoy subjects that are deep, thoughtful, humorous, mind expanding, inspirational, tender, emotional, things that make you pause and reflect on the human condition.  I like to explore the meaning of life, expansiveness, and elevated consciousness, while laughing at the observations.

My first thought was to Google “Poetry set to Animation”.  Most of the animation subjects that came up were dark and depressing. 

http://laughingsquid.com/to-this-day-animation-set-to-spoken-word-poem-about-bullying-by-shane-koyczan/

I remembered a poem/animation I saw almost a year ago that moved me in a profound way, "To This Day".  “It stuck with me.”  I thought at the time, the animation was powerful.  The message was strong.  The pace, tempo, and rhythm, of the audio combined with the animation visuals provoked high emotion. The narrator of the poem fluctuated between being contemplative and innocent at times to loud, angry and defiant at times.  The style of the illustration timing, combined with the colors, contributed to the tension of the content.

I was struck buy sadness and empathy for the subject.  That poem stuck in my consciousness for months.  I’ve never experienced what the author went through yet I completely understood their feelings and had compassion for their perception of their reality.

“Bullying” by Billy Collins

Karate Chops-Pork Chops

I found a nice site called  “Short of the Week”: http://www.shortoftheweek.com

This website had a number of different styles of animation.  The animation shorts intrigued me.  The following animation is simple.  It reflects the perils of human greed.  Jossie Malis uses powerful ‘simple’ graphic animation style, along with interesting uncomplicated sound track to tell the story of human evolution and its effects on religion and industry.  I found it humorous and poignant.

http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2007/03/31/bendito-machine-jossie-malis/

The following animated movie just cracked me up.  It touched on subjects that are close to my heart, and was presented I an unapologetic, mater of fact sarcastic tone.  

 Tim Minchin’s STORM: the Animated Movie.  Tim Minchin’s poem is a reflection, of an evening dinner conversation about spirituality and the age-old battle between spirituality and science.

Tim Minchin, is popular in Australia as a comedian/musician/actor, and here he writes and recites a humorous poem in the beat-style, recounting a dinner party in which he cannot refrain from verbally attacking a hippy-dippy guest for her mysticism, in favor of his rationalist, scientific worldview.

https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/HhGuXCuDb1U?autoplay=1

In conclusion, I am beginning to get a feel for the type of animated media I enjoy.  My intent is to deliver, thoughtful, thought provoking, inspiring, and humorous animations.

Mella



Referal sites for presentation:

To This Day, Animation Set to Spoken Word Poem About Bullying by Shane Koyczan

“To This Day” is a spoken word poem by Canadian poet and writer Shane Koyczan that explores the “profound and lasting impact that bullying can have on an individual.” Volunteer animators and motion artists got together for the To This Day project and animated Koyczan’s poem. The final piece is powerful and lovely.

http://laughingsquid.com/to-this-day-animation-set-to-spoken-word-poem-about-bullying-by-shane-koyczan/


Moving poems

http://www.motionpoems.com/?p=292


Muse - Soldier's Poem Flash Animation

http://vimeo.com/51355612


May a nelson Mandella Poem

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/07/video-maya-angelous-moving-tribute-poem-to-mandela/

Michael Parks, Illistrator, Sculptor.

http://www.borsini-burr.com/cm/Artists/Michael%20Parkes.html

Artist Exploration: Larry Carlson

I have always enjoyed a little surrealism from time to time. As I explored Flash animations on the web I came across the artist, Larry Carlson.
In his bio it states that he is a "A pioneer in experimental multimedia web-art, he first started exhibiting his artwork online in 1997. In 2000 Carlson published the legendary art web sites Virtual OM and LarryCarlson.com which featured his original full screen psychotropic entertainment."

On his site he has a prolific collection of surreal Flash animations. Some are interactive and some are not. He uses his experience as a collage artist to create a mixed media feel using bitmap and vector images. The pieces have themes but do not follow classic storytelling principles. The user will find themselves hovering and clicking away to see what strange thing will happen next. He uses the nesting idea to full purpose. A movieclip of a bear can be seen bouncing along in a transparent orb. Barns and duck heads grow into tree shapes by reproducing themselves in different sizes and stacking away. 
A good example of rotoscoping can be found in "Amsterdam Doors."

He uses animated text and lots of buttons with hit areas to start animations within animations and will have the user chase objects around the screen with no hope of catching them.

I had a lot of fun checking these out. It is a good example of the creative possibilities Flash offers.

Exploration #1 - Resources

As someone who works mainly on the web, there is a multitude of sites out there to help me when I need to learn something new or to look up a reference.  I've picked some of my favorite sites to share with the class and here they are in no particular order:

• http://www.lynda.com/
• https://tutsplus.com/
• http://css-tricks.com/
• http://teamtreehouse.com/
• http://www.codecademy.com/
• http://stackoverflow.com/

All of these sites have their pro and cons. Some are free while others require a paid subscription to gain access to their content.

Lynda.com has a huge amount of information all in video format, however it is a paysite that requires a subscription to gain access to all of their videos. You also have to make sure you are watching things that are up-to-date. However, for multimedia, nothing else online has such a vast collection of information.

tutsplus.com offers tutorials in almost all aspects of multimedia. Design, programming, flash, web design and development, you name it and they most likely have a tutorial on it. The site offers many of their tutorials for free, however you can also pay for their video-based content. This site has a wealth of information that really can help you get going.

css-tricks.com is a fantastic resource for css. All the information on the site is free and they offer many tutorials and a well documented glossary in all things web design and development. Many of their mini-tutorials give concrete examples that have really helped me get out of some tough web design/development issues.

teamtreehouse.com is a newer site regarding programming and web design and development. Everything is video-based and is extremely well produced. However, this high production value comes at a cost, but they do offer a free 14-day trial. They really take you through the process of anything programming/web based and make it easy to follow.

codecademy.com is another great site for sharpening or obtaining web-based skills. With tutorials in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ruby, and PHP, they take you through the process step-by-step. It offers coding challenges and helping you get yourself into a programmer’s mindset. It’s a free site and can be a great way to get your fundamentals under your belt.

stackoverflow.com is a site where programmers and developers can ask each other questions in an open source forum. I will use this site at times as a reference if I’m unsure of how to do something. Many questions are asked here and many people respond with a decent answer. I have yet to post my own, but that is only because I usually can my answers first.

Well, there you go. Six super useful sites that may help you become a multimedia wizard. Of course, Adobe.com has its own tutorials regarding all their products and they can be useful as well. I just find that sometimes their documentation can be a little too verbose or does not get to the point quickly enough for me. Either way, I hope you find something useful here and of course our own class is another resource to use. We all are in this boat together.

Resource Exploration

Animation help, Jazza teaches about everything when it comes to animation! https://www.youtube.com/user/DrawWithJazza

Another is https://www.youtube.com/user/HuHaTwo?feature=watch

Inspiration is a must so go find what you think looks cool and try to recreate it! Don’t sell it or say that it was your idea but in the process you will learn new things that can help you later.  Some content out there can be offensive or can be perceived as such, don’t be scared to explore why you hate it.

 http://www.deviantart.com/ http://www.newgrounds.com/ http://shadowness.com/

If you don’t know how to mask, make a button, do anything in life ask YouTube.  90% of knowledge can be found there in videos of people trying to help you. The main reason people make help videos is they make the most revenue, YES they make money every time you click there videos. It is in their best interest to give you the best help possible to keep you clicking next. If your one of those who says you can’t believe what is on the internet, you can by testing it. If that fails then you must ask Google.  

Resource Exploration

Kathryn Wilken  MAT -150

 Resource Exploration - Cutting Edge Resources

Back when I was in high school, the computer and its word processing programs were cutting edge.  Fast forward to my senior year in college – the internet was invented – cutting edge.  Today cutting edge is so far away from my norm that I am astounded by what is out there.  My cutting-edge is just being able to see what is going on in the world with the click of a button.  These are my most used sites from a designer and learning standpoint.  The final four are places I go for inspiration and to check out the current landscape in design.

Basic resources I have used on the internet are:

www.MrWallpaper.com – free use of high resolution files for backgrounds

www.u-tube.com  – can learn anything by video

http://www.ehow.com/ - learning by reading

www.Lynda.com   – classes on line $25 per month

As for more cutting edge design I like these four sites.  I go to them for inspiration.

http://www.thefwa.com/

Thefwa is an award site and a job listing site based out of Britian.  Its presentation is brilliant.

http://www.cuttingedge-designs.com/#!services/c1jh6

The Cuttingedge –designs has some really great vision.

http://www.hiero.com/flash-design.html

The hiero is a flash website company that seems to know what is going on.

http://designrfix.com/inspiration/50-awesome-website-design-galleries

Design Fix is a site for showcasing websites.

Design Exploration - Alpina Geneve

LIFE IS VERTICAL.

    The site that i am showcasing perfectly demonstrates the power of HTML5, CSS3, and JQuery. I actually found this site while looking for some tips on how to make my own websites more interactive. While searching I found a JQuery plugin name SuperScrollorama.  In a nutshell, this is a plugin that's already figured out the mathematical equations and coding necessary to add some really good effects to websites. All you have to do is use there code and plugin in the name of the item you wish to add effects to.  While on this site looking at some of the features, I checked out a link to a site that was using it. I chose to go with the Alpina site.
 
      One of the first things that caught my attention aside from the jquery effects will discuss later is the imagery. I believe the graphics artist really made this page come alive with the sharpness of the items and backgrounds on the page. From the planes to the actual items they were advertising, I thought the imagery to be stunning.

     As I continued to pluck and pry around the page, I noticed that most of the content on this website was actual image. Even the text that appears to belong inside <p> tags were actual images. I've thought of designing like this before, but for what little i know about SEO, it didn't seem like a good idea to have a full page without any actual typed content.

    This company sells watches for every occasion for piloting to sailing to deep water diving. They wanted their web page to represent just that. What I really love is the planes that come onto the page as we scroll down. I really just think this site was done really well and it captivates the message the company wanted to get across.

Testing

To see if this is working.

Design Exploration: Hello Sour Sally

Hello Sour Sally is a cool flash site that lets you experience the yogurts shops of the same name. It differs from

About the site and why you choose it and why it is a good, cutting edge example of design.

Design Inspiration/Integration Jasmine Star

This portfolio site has a lot of interesting elements, notice:

Jasmine Star International Photographer

- The personalized branding loader. Without this you would be looking at a blank white page thinking maybe you reached the page by mistake.
- Integration of video as you jump around the page.
- Scrolling of photos on mouse over.
     - There seems to be some sort of limit in the middle of the page because if you mouse over on the left side the photos scroll one way and if you mouse over on the right the photos scroll the other way.
- Subtle picture in the background that completes the page but does not distract you.
- Even though there is a lot going on for each page everything is organized and legible.
- Links to other media are nicely located and accessible on each page.

- Feel free to explore her blog, it also has a beautiful design.

Princess Bride Sound Board

If there's a movie that's always been in my top ten, it's the Princess Bride.    Here's a soundboard built using flash presented on Albino Black Sheep. The site hosts a ton of content.  Mostly stupid animations that only a three year old would like, but there's some gems on there too if you take the time to explore it.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/princessbride

Rather Good

Rathergood is one of those websites that is considered the insane level of the internet.  The guy who runs it, Joel Veitch, has a strange sense of humor.  This site was brought to my attention because of a video he did called "Viking Kittens."  He had to take it down for copyright reasons, so instead I present Punk Kittens on his site.

http://rathergood.com/punk_kittens


Also of note is this strange video called "We Like The Moon."  I include it because somehow... some way.... the people at Quiznos decided to hire him to use them for commercials a few years back.

http://rathergood.com/moon_song


Here's the Viking Kittens presented by Ebaums World.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/play/938957/

Studio Exploration

100,000 Stars is created by Google Data Arts Team.  It lets you explore the nearby stars, nearly 120,000 of them to be exact.  You can even identify and read about 87 of them.  Google is a massive company that dabbles in just about every aspect of technology.  I am very pleased to see them exploring a more creative side of technology.

100,000 Stars is built with THREE.js and CSS3D.  It deals with concepts such as depth of field.  The loading screen looks like something that could easily be done in Flash; it is simply a spinning blob.  Google's intent was to combine technology and data with art.  The interface is smooth and beautiful.  You are allowed to spin, whirl, progress forwards and backwards.  It really feels as though you are travelling through space.  Michael Chang goes into further detail about the process of this creation here: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/casestudies/100000stars/

You can find the 100,000 Stars project here: http://workshop.chromeexperiments.com/stars/?ModPagespeed=noscript

100,000 Stars won the Favorite Website Award for the entire month of January.  This should come as no surprise seeing as Google pushes the limits in most areas of technology.  It is very exciting to see Google popping it's head up in the artistic world and I hope to see more of them in the future.

Resources Exploration

http://www.youthedesigner.com

This website helps us designers with inspiration and tips for new media explorations. Not to mention all the endless possibilities for tutorials to learn new software programs for elements within certain programs. I believe it can be helpful for us designers because you are going to have those times you have lost most of your inspirations and design. So this website helps you with just that giving everything a designer may possibly need when it comes to help and inspiration.

http://www.tumblr.com

This social media outlet has some good use to it than you may think! I recently gotten a blog and seek often countless inspirations for designs on here. I love it especially when I having designer's block making it fun and interesting finding and sorting through photos and art others in the world have created or manipulated through various mediums. So social media is also one way designers can use to come up with fresh, new ideas that are perfect for such audiences that use such mediums. In return gives them an outlet to show off their hard but awesome work they so brilliantly created!

http://pltts.me

This website gives designers options for color schemes and what colors go with what. It is hard sometimes when you cannot get the colors to match. That is why this website can be helpful because it shows you many options for a certain color using the color wheel. Color is one of the crucial aspect of design so understanding to apply such principles in our design can help us reach out to our audiences better pertaining to what colors they like or fits according to their mood or personality. Reaching the right audiences effectively is the key to success in design.

Design Exploration

 http://www.13creative.com/portfolio.htm

I came across this women designer who's website it beautiful and welcoming. I thought it was cool because she used the design of a notebook and presents her pieces in a way that is fun and interactive! As a designer it is important that the content is just right but also its only half the battle its the design and interactivity that truly brings people to your website. She does that just right! Its not too much her content is just enough so you can get a jist of what she has created and learn about exploration of different names and their meanings behind it.

For example, in her born free baby piece she decided to have a good use of color for baby in way that it attracts mothers with the cuteness of it but also maintaing that continuity of simplicity. I like the fact that she chose simple colors easy on the viewer's eyes. I think she knew that and put it too good use!

Another example she has is the baby & kids company branding she did its simple color and playful attracting the right audience of who it is for. Mothers and families like the fun, playful design and her as a designer she did a great job on the logos and bags and cards by following the clean, simple design just right for babies and kids. Using brown and blues shows she knows what colors people like too see. It makes it nice and inviting.

By using such a color scheme it attracts the females and essentially like her overall design and in the end want to pay her to design baby announcements, cards, and etc. By doing so this audience in particular is huge and important because its so communial. Women tend to talk a lot and when something or someone has a cute eye for that fun, playful design they know she can do wonders because she understands her audience seeing as she is part of such group. It gives her insight on how women think and act which in return helps her with her designs being successful and essentially bringing in more work and gain publicity because the mothers will all love her and her eye for design. Her design sends out messages to her crucial audience she would be better of than if women were to ask a male designer to design a baby announcement. I do not want to bais but it totally makes sense that she chose such design to attract the right audience seeing as women share and talk a lot about everything all the time!

Interactive Media Artist Exploration

http://portfolio.andybest.net/

I found this guy through googled and had some cool portfolio pieces such as Webcam Lines which consists of a 3D effect making it look cool when viewing the video giving it a cool weird effect making me attracted to it. His work is solid has a lot of exploration with flash, 3D effects, and interactivity. For example this particular piece uses effects that allows the users to see color in a whole different light. This makes it so when people view his work it shows he stands out for coming up with crazy ideas such as interactive logos.
Also for another example he has another piece called interactive logo he made for Welsh Children's Television. He did a great job and bringing the color and effects of exploding or dissolving as tv screens blanked out would do. He knew that so he decided to go with that! By intergrating animation and effects he came out with a good piece of interactive design. By exploring such options helped him I bet to understand his audience better knowing what they want to see design wise. Interactivity is one way to get there especially in today's world.

This artist stuck out most to me because his portfolio is small but bold statement wise. He has a strong sense of design using all kinds of media from 3D effects, flash elements, and video not holding back. For an artist to do that is rare these days. The career is competitive and you have to not be afraid of exploring every option out there. For doing so it will push you as a designer better and in return gain a better understanding and eye for design in the end.

Overall, this artist has a good sense of design where you can tell he has done his research as a designer. Exploring new and exciting ways concerning interactivity and design. I recommend you check out the rest of his work he has some good ideas!

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe announced it's Creative Suite is moving strictly to the "Creative Cloud" on May 6th.  The Creative Cloud isn't actually in the cloud, it just means that you aren't buying the software in a physical form, instead you are opting for a monthly subscription.  As soon as you stop paying the monthly fee of between $20 and $50.  The fact that you are being forced to do this means that eventually Adobe could end up jacking up the prices and because nobody actually owns the software, designers would be helpless to do anything about it.  The subscription based package also will effect users who don't need the newest software.  A cloud based subscription will deter people who are perfectly comfortable using older versions of the program, but could potentially encourage other companies to come out with new software comparable to Adobe's programs.
     In the long term customers who normally buy an update every two years could end up saving money in the long run.  A subscription to the Creative Cloud means that you automatically get every upgrade for the same monthly fee.

Don Hertzfeldt

This is probably one of my favorite animators of all time.  I remember first seeing one of his works at spike and mikes animation festival back when i was 12 years old, the title was Rejected.  some of you may be familiar with it, it consists of crudely drawn  characters depicting rejected commercial idea that Don had created.  Other works that he has done consists of billy's balloon, I am So Proud Of You, It will Be Okay, Wisdom Teeth, Its such a beautiful day, and so on.  i know for a fact that Don chooses to hand draw his animations on paper so all of the animated is not done with a computer.  But occasionally he will have a narrator for his story which would need flash for the assembly part of his short films.  He also tends to do silhouettes with burning paper of crumbling effects which might be done with an after effect program but i am pretty sure its actual fire or actual crumbling the paper.
  i thought it would be fun to show some of the videos if some of you have never seen its work, like any movie you seen flash will be there or else he wouldn't be able to mass produce his films across the world.

http://www.bitterfilms.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/t1i1b?feature=watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMsyOowMaEY&list=UUSCF9UABxj49kg2SEXUUZAw&index=1 

New Media Exploration - Process

Most of the major and successful design studios and agencies go through their design process quite similarly in around 6 or 7 seven steps roughly. They are tend to start with is the Discovery stage where the company will inquire as to know as much as possible about the client from every stand point possible whether its their view the customers view or the analysis of numbers generated from their previous sites and techniques if applicable. After the Discovery stage comes the Strategy and Planning stage. During this phase the team’s brainstorm and sets bars for success of branding and objectives obtained from stage 1. Next, comes the Design stage where the clients and designers visions come to life into a well-developed authentic piece of work. For the fourth part the studio will Make it Work though SEO search engine optimization and through other branding techniques. After all these steps have been worked out the go the Test/Launch stage where they make it cross compatible between all platforms such as phones, tablets, mobile devices, and computers of course. After the rigorous testing goes through they finally make their way to the final stage 6. This is the Assess and Evaluate stage where the let the guest interact and engage give feedback which allows them to improve, amplify, and refine the site as it grows with the company.