Studio/Artist Exploration #1

For my first blog exploration I chose the studio/artist option and the studio that attracted me was Big

Spaceship at www.bigspaceship.com. Their company began very early in the whole scheme of

digital age it was in 2000 when they launched. I became attracted to this exploration of Big

Spaceship,

because it reminds me very much of iPoint project we are about to work on for our next project in 

my other class focusing on web design.

     The layout of this whole site is very simple, thorough, and professional all at once which is very

attractive in itself not many sites have this it creates a sense of uniqueness Their technique of

attraction and sophistication of being able to explain their company in the simplest form is quite

innovative and intriguing. In fact, so much so that they seem to draw you into their site making you

want to read and discover every little nook and cranny with all their secrets and details of how and

what they are and have become today.

     I knew this company was professional and driven as soon as i saw this quite impressive and long

client list. Some of the clients they showed that worked in partnerships with them were as follows:

Absolut Vodka, Activate, Activision, Adobe, Alienware, Altoids, Big Spaceship, Chobani, Chobani

Champions, Crayola, Epson, Fast Company, Finish Line, Glaceau, Google, HBO, hp, Lands End,

Life Savers Gummies, Lucas Films Ltd, Microsoft, Moma, NBC Universal, Nick Jr., Nike, Orbit,

Seventh Generation, Shake Shack, Skittles, Sony Pictures, Starburst, Target, The New York Times,

Urban Daddy, Victoria Seceret, and Youtube.

    I myself being a drinking advocate and was looking at one of their ideas for branding Absolut

Vodka from the bars to the backyard but in way without saying hey just party with Absolut but,

instead making the partiers want to have it on their own. They created a site for Absolut party

generating tool for the users in order to communicate the brands message the link to that site is

http://www.bigspaceship.com/projects/absolut-host/.

Another one of Big Spaceships works I really enjoyed is starburst. I love how their them theme for

catching the consumer is contradiction. By pointing out lots of contradictions starburst grabs their

consumers attention for example a solid juicy candy. On the starburst site they have created fun

games and links to entertain us like funny analogies such as "boneless ribs or a clumsy ninja." You

can check out the digital presence they have created at www.starburst.com.

    Overall this company was highly impressive and look forward to using it as a reference for Karl's

other class in web design. Its a great resource and I recommend all of you use this site as a source for

branding and connections.

New Media Exploration

http://www.tokyoplastic.com/dm.html

I discovered this website recently to where I love interativity through the web. So I love making music and playing around with it. This website was something cool and entertaining. There is always something different happening when you click over on them. Concerning flash it has the basics and even more I like the uniqueness of the style of it.

http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/technology/rollercoaster

This website I came across on and thought it was interesting because its like nothing you see on the web. It uses interactivity for the user to chose which path you want to take. Also it uses graphical elements that are unique as well. Its different and has a lot of potential to it!

Newgrounds

stick figures

I chose to concentrate on Newgrounds.  It's a site that lets users showcase and collaborate on flash animations.  I've been going to the site off and on for years as an observer.    One of the first flash animations that I watched where I was aware of it being flash, was stick figures kung fu fighting.   Over the years there's now 80 of them.

     Newgrounds offers support and critiques to become a better animator, and the site navigation is easy to use and understand what you're supposed to do.  It's a great resource.

Cyriak: Animation, Graphic Design, and Illustration

Main Website:  http://cyriak.co.uk/index.html
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/cyriak?feature=watch


Cyriak is a UK free-lance animator whose animations, more often than not, delve into the...strange, and sometimes disturbing. While he does not state if he uses Flash for his animation, on his about page he does state that he uses Adobe Photoshop and After Effects for most of his animations.

He does a variety of work, including commercial projects, television advertising and music videos. His website has all of his work, including animated GIFs such as these:

     

I believe that he designed his website himself, and it has some basic interactivity at points, though it's main focus is to give easy navigation to his works .

For the most part, I enjoy his work. It is admittedly bizarre, surreal, and some of it is downright frightening.  However, it’s the bizarreness, along with the strange humor, I enjoy about it and the craftsmanship is something to respect, especially with some of his more complex animations.

While he has a lot of work and it is very easy to watch them all and lose track of time, here are some of my personal favorites:

Counting Song (with illustrator Sarah Brown):  http://youtu.be/WXvsl8xgRxc

Baa:  http://youtu.be/WQO-aOdJLiw

cows & cows & cows: http://youtu.be/FavUpD_IjVY

MEOW (with illustrator Sarah Brown): http://youtu.be/QNwCojCJ3-Q

Beggin'- Frankie Valli video re-mix: http://youtu.be/qN3kC_4xURA

Resource Exploration – The Bestest, Most Cool Sites Complied 4 U by Xperts

In my search for great interactive media I found it easier to link to great interactive sites through organizations that did the legwork for me, these include: Best Web Design Awards, Interactive Media Awards, Horizon Interactive Awards, and The Webby Awards. These sites provide plenty of examples from winners and nominees from various digital platforms that get your creative motor running. In my opinion, www.bestwebdesignaward.com is the most user-friendly, providing screen shots, details and links to the featured pages, and above all, identifies the software used to create the media.

Best Web Design Awards

Horizon Interactive Awards

The Webby Awards

Interactive Media Awards

Cartoon!

I really wanted to showcase the work from late night work club (http://latenightworkclub.com/) because I have been watching the trailers they keep putting out. What I really liked about this is that there is a bunch of people with completely different styles creating one video.  I was hoping that the full length production would be done by the time I had to present my blog but hey time was not on my side so I thought I would give you a couple of links to the trailers I have found for the production. http://vimeo.com/53444485

Since I couldn’t showcase the works of lnwc I figured I would take a peek at what the members of the club have done on their own. One of the members caught my eye their name is Eamonn O’niel so I looked at his website and he had 4 videos one of them was really short I am not sure if it is a trailer or not but it was pretty cool mainly because of the music. The video that I really liked is call im fine http://www.eamonnoneill.ie/I-M-FINE-THANKS . This is kind of a weird one but still fun I thought.

A lot of the members have great little shorts and I recommend that if you have any time on your hands you should check them out! http://latenightworkclub.com/?page_id=10

Resources Exploration - Aimee Robidoux

The first site I found and explored was flashkit.com. This website has a plethora of resources, including tutorials, free flash animations, sound FX, and written reviews of other Flash-related technologies and resources. It has a forum where Flash designers can ask questions, request help, have discussions, and etc.  It also provides another forum, dubbed "The Lounge" where just casual talking is allowed; no Flash-related issues.  This site would be useful for pretty much anybody, professional or beginner.

The second resource website I found was entheosweb.com/flash.  This site has resources available for other Adobe products as well, but it's Flash section was what I looked at.  It has tutorials for some of the basic steps, like bitmap tracing, drawing in Flash, etc.  It also has detailed guides for more difficult effects, like making a static image of water give the appearance of motion/rippling.

ffiles.com is a repository of free flash files.  They've got files for pretty much everything: buttons, actionScript, animations, clocks, games, image effects, etc.  Great resource if you just want to download some cool effects, or play games.

This weblog has some good, basic tips for working in flash: pat-burt.com/adobe-flash.

pearljamtengame.com is a really cool puzzle game made in flash.

saizenmedia.com/newsite/works/ is the website of a digital media agency that makes interactive experience websites, mobile applications, illustrations, TV ads, 2D/3D animation, print campaigns, social media games and applications, integrated campaigns, etc.  They might not be flash-specific, but they doubtless use it in some of their projects.

http://www.matthiasdittrich.com/

This is a really cool portfolio site.  I really enjoy the animation in the transitions.  I find a lot of flash sites to have low usability and I feel this site does a good job of being edgy but still useful.

New Media Exploration

I came across this pretty cool video game while searching the internet. It's from the history channel http://www.history.com/games/arcade/ice-road-showdown/play. It is based off the Ice Road Truckers show. The game is easy to play with the up, down left and right keys. I think the graphics are pretty cool and the music really adds to the experience. The goal is to deliver your cargo as fast as you can without crashing and by avoiding hazardous cracks in the road. 

Inspirational Short

http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2011/03/13/thought-of-you/

     I found this flash animation short extremely moving. Normally when one thinks of animation (or when i do at least) i think fun, light animation often geared toward children. This short is mesmerizing and quite a cool site if you back further out of the video as well. Instead of using words and sound from the characters themselves, this artist was able to use motion and soundtrack to make this piece speak.

     By going to this link:
http://www.shortoftheweek.com/films/
You will be taken to the Film Directory where you can choose to see different films based on style (most pertinent to our class so you can choose flash animation), topic, or genre. For those aiming to continue in their animation studies this site will be a great resource for examples in other types of animation such as collage and 3D animation.

Have fun exploring!

New Media Exploration - Experiencing Music

Ahhhhh! Where to start! Identifying new media possibilities has made me feel like John Nash, the mathematician depicted in A Beautiful Mind, not the genius part, but the scenes where he is unable to harness his thoughts and writes on any remotely flat surface, walls, wood, post it notes, completely covering the interior of his garage. How do you begin to explain something that has limitless possibilities? We are on the cusp of being able to be anywhere are any time and have complete control of our experiences with new media techniques.

Wherever your interests lie: sports, music, television, art, etc., the experience is yours to create. Let’s narrow our focus on the direction multimedia is going with experiencing music. A quick and dirty chronicle of the evolution of experiencing music over the course of time includes: having to see it live to experience it; then came the development of radio; then phonographs enabled us to hear it at will; then music performances became televised; the next big thing was music videos; with the development of the internet interactive music videos became possible; subsequently we were able to select which instruments the band would perform for a song; and the most recent advancement in multimedia music technology can be witnessed through Chris Milk’s interactive film production of David Bowe’s  “Sound and Vision” performed by Beck. The “Sound and Vision” production demonstrates the ability to experience a concert from any location within a venue – even from a catwalk – with perfect sound quality using 360 cameras and 360 binaural microphones which makes for a true to life sound experience. The only thing missing is the smell from puffs of smoke floating through the air.

The “Sound and Vision” project really expanded my thoughts on where ideas will take us next. The first exciting thought that came to my mind was the effect it will have on televised events. For instance, an NFL game has several cameras at work during a game and a producer in a control room determining which angle we view. In the near future it seems very possible for every fan to select the camera/angle they wish to view at any given moment –or if they are like me and pay little attention to the field, they could span the crowd and sidelines for their own form of entertainment.

The evolution of multimedia music experiences can be seen on the following websites:

“Neon Bible,” Arcade Fire
http://www.beonlineb.com/ 

Incredibox
http://www.incredibox.com/en/#/application

 

“I’ve Seen Enough,” Cold War Kids
http://www.coldwarkids.com/iveseenenough/

 

David Bowe’s “Sound and Vision” performed by Beck / Video production by Chris Milk
http://loadbalancer.beck360-production.com/main/beck360.html

Artist Exploration- Bo Mathorne

The short film:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkDrIacHJM
The making of:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnnbTaMXDqQ

This short is a creepy and dark animation about the undertaker. I love the animating style, and how everything flows together. the expressons of the characters, and the sound effects.
I have a draw towards most 'dark things', and this is just one video I couldn't help but share... It's not exactly a flash animation, it was done in MotionBuilder's Maya.

Die Anstalt: Curing Crazy Toys

 http://www.parapluesch.de/#

I recently rediscovered a site that I had found about a year or two ago. It is a German based site called Paraplusch: Psychiatry for abused Cuddlytoys. The main screen has two paths: an online shop and an attached flash game.

I mainly want to focus on the flash game, as the online shop has little-to-no flash and its main focus is to give people a means to buy the toys featured in the flash. The game is called Die Anstalt, or when translated, "The Asylum."

After choosing your language of choice and a brief, skippable intro, you play a doctor and your goal is to cure all your troubled toy patients. Currently, there are six toys to cure, though I believe they add a patient when they make a new toy for the online shop. Each toy has a different disorder and some are easier to cure than others.

Upon choosing a toy, you are given a variety of treatments to choose from. Depending on what you choose, you can either make progress in curing the patient...or you potentially make things much, much worse. Sometimes, the treatment you pick doesn't change anything at all. It all depends on the patient, for different disorders call for different treatments.

I found this to be a very enjoyable game. The animation is cute, simple and, for the most part, very smooth and very effective when it needs to be. I also enjoy the concept of game and the fact that it gives further depth and backstory to what is basically a quirky toyline. 

Studio/Artist Exploration: Brooke Jagoda

I came across a cool site that is the portfolio of a Canada/ Switzerland based digital design studio called In the Loop. The first thing you notice is how the word "Loop" follows your mouse. I liked how their color palate is mostly greys so it's a little sophisticated but the shape of the word "Loop" is much more organic looking and takes you back to wanting to play with Playdough.

The first thing I checked out was the tab titled "Works". They had quite a long client list. Most were
unidentifiable European projects. The only client I recognized was for Air Canada were users were encouraged to participate in the game-like interface that ultimately entered them into a contest. I didn't spend a lot of time investigating that site though. I was more intrigued with how they set up their own site.

After a little browsing around on my own finally discovered what the little icon is at the bottom center. You roll over it and it pops up to display more ice-cream shaped icons. When you roll over those you realize it's supposed to be like a game where you have to go and unlock the items to advance. I had some fun going along with it because a couple items were just goofy and others you had to tweet about the site or go and "like" it on Facebook. The one I liked the best asked the question "Who's the king of pop?" and then it promted you to type it at any time even though there was no field to type it in. And it worked! All I had to do was type Michael and I was able to advance a little bit.

From reading each of the developers descriptions under "About", it seems like they both have a big passion for designing digital media and creating a richer user experience. Well it worked for me! I feel like their work is set apart from others' because of the non-linear manner in which you can navigate their portfolio. I feel like the experience clean, and yet playful and innovative.

Here's another example of their work:

Siboire
This site had a nice layout, I liked the colors and the images they used throughout. It's a website for a brewery in France.  Everything is in French so I can't really tell how the information is organized. One thing I managed to come across was a description of their beers. On the home page there's a set of tiles you can click on. It's the center one with the light bulb. They don't only use images but also video of the head spilling over. Then you used the hand to swish to the next one. The only thing is that it takes forever to load.

New Media Exploration

I came across this site while I was reading this article about Flash. A developer was mentioning that flash would be non-existent soon and that he no longer uses it on his websites. But I was reading the comments and a lot of people were disagreeing especially when it came to interactive media. One of the people who commented posted a link to a site which I never been to before but it has over 11 million facebook likes. It's called  http://www.takethislollipop.com/

You log into the website using your Facebook account. It asked you to allow the site to access your friends and photo's just for the interactive experience. Then it shows this psycho guy going through your account and all your information and your pictures come up. Then google maps pops up and it shows your city and location. Then the guy jumps into his car and then supposedly drives to your location.

I think this was a pretty cool site. The interaction was pretty intense especially when it uses your actual pictures. It makes you wonder how the developer came up with this Idea. The way it was filmed looks very professional and where they filmed it definitely set the tone.

Design Exploration - We Choose the Moon (Aimee Robidoux)

The Flash-based site I found was wechoosethemoon.org, a website linked to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum site.

The site takes you through eleven stages of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in 1969, from launch to landing.  Each stage is an interactive scene, where the user can look at photo galleries and videos related to that particular phase, and listen to the actual audio transmissions sent back and forth from the mission control station and the spacecraft.  The user has the option to go through each phase in order, or, by using the Mission Tracker menu on the bottom of the interface, choose a stage from any part of the mission.

When the user first arrives at the site, there is an introductory page which gives instructions on how to navigate site.  A user’s eyes are immediately drawn to the center of the page (where the Apollo is), then left and right to the menus.  The eye stays longest on the Apollo, because the entire site revolves around its trip to the moon.

I thought the site very clearly conveyed it’s purpose, and was well-designed.  The layout is very simple, very facilitating to inexperienced users.  The buttons are very clear as to what they do and where they lead.  I saw no design elements that were distracting from the experience.

The site depends heavily on visual and audible information, with the animation of the space flight, and the mission transmissions.  There’s not a whole lot of textual information, but a lot of visual.  There’s no sense of clutter, everything is very sharp and clear.  In fact, there is an option to “clean up” the interface by making the menus retract.  The information is nicely packaged in little sections; some of it is only available when you click buttons on the page.

There is minimum typography differentiation.  It is all one font, but some of the type is all caps, the font size varies, and the type color in the Mission Tracker bar is blue instead of white.  The Mission Tracker menu bar is portrayed differently from the Mission Status and Transmission Menus, as it is an interactive image of the route Apollo 11 took, rather than text information.

The layout of the site is strongly aligned, with no design elements that are distracting.  Both Mission Status and Transmission menus are in close proximity to the Mission Tracker menu, and are directly across from one another. Everything is very uniform, categorized, organized.  The animation of the Apollo 11 is centered, but it doesn’t make it boring.  Everything is very balanced in terms of size and alignment.  This site has symmetrical balance (similar shape, size, color, weight, proportion, texture).  It is overlaid with dark tones, and brighter text: blues and blacks of the background, contrasted by white and light grey of the text.

The designers of this site were probably facing the problem of making the website interesting for adults, yet simple enough for younger people to enjoy as well.  For me, this site elicited a feeling of interest and fascination, and a bit of excitement as well.  Part of the emotional appeal is the running audio commentary from the original mission, which includes Neil Armstrong’s famous “one small step for man, one giant step for all mankind” line.  It gives an atmospheric feeling that you, the user, are a part of the mission.  And I think that that is what the designers set out to do.

Orisinal : an Uber cute Flash Game site

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/


Orisinal has been one of my favorite pastime online. It is the brain child of Ferry Halim, a professional flash artist based out of Clovis, CA. He started this site for fun in 2000, and kept adding new games to it ever since.

His graphic style is clean, refreshing and whimsical. The game play is simple yet addictive, though wonderfully well rounded when it comes to user experience (he thought of all the conditions of game interactions).

My favorite games are "A Daily cup of tea", in which a team of 2 tiny mice tries to steal a whole cupboard full of sugar cubes, evading bouncing balls, falling books and bees. Another one of my favorites is "Cats", in which the player "herds" cats, its quite ingenious how he (presumably?) used the invisible buttons as cats.

He has since started developing/converting some of the popular games into iOS games. I have a couple of these games, and he has not only incorporated simple game play from Flash but also user experiences unique to iOS such as the accelerometer. I highly recommend these games (online and on iOS).

by Angela X. Wang

Flash presentation

This is the flash presentation I would like to submit to the class
http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/new-fantasyland/

As I was surfing for a good flash example I was not sure if some where flash or not
I liked this site because of it simplicity, and its magic appealing effect.
The sense of hierarchy is very strong through all the scene as the end comes only when everything was revealed.
It is a very easy site to use as its navigation is catered  for young viewers.
The pictures are very   artistic and blend easily with the static background as it interact during the
video or the slides show.
There is a good consistency in the use of navigation with the special effects and the active commands that take the viewer from one story to the other
The design is well balanced and in harmony as it goes from peace to drama, to tension and magic effects.
The videos have a good interaction with the main frame and background and blend perfectly as they
are playing.
Great drama effect with the storm, the lightning, the fire bobbles and the symbols of each stories
Even though it is a simple example of what can be done with flash I feel that the overall effect was
pleasing, interesting, amazing and well done.

Artist Exploration

www.joecartoon.com

This has been website that I like to look at for many years. I think the cartoons are very funny, and this one of the reasons I wanted to take this class. I want to be able to make this type of short animation in flash. Some of the cartoons are play only but some are interactive, letting the viewer decide on the outcome of cartoon by choosing options.

Artist Exploration: Jonathan Harris

The work of Jonathan Harris...

http://tenbyten.org/10x10.html

Design Exploration: Hello Sour Sally

Hello Sour Sally is a cool website with rich interactive, game-like features. I was attracted to the design because...

http://www.hellosoursally.com/

Resources Exploration

kirupa.com

Kirupa is a website that has flash and actionscript tutorials among other tutorials such as HTML5. Flash tutorials are divided into different sections including basic tutorials such as animations and actionscript basics and more complicated ones such as game development. This website also has a forum with a lot of resourceful information.


gotoandlearn.com

gotoandlearn.com is a website that I particularly like mostly because the tutorials are instructional videos with step by step teachings. The tutorials are completely free. I also like the interface, I find easy and simple to navigate through all the videos. There is also a blog by the author Lee Brimelow that can be helpful at leebrimelow.com.


flashperfection.com/

This is a website with a very large collection of Flash tutorials and articles from various website. Anyone can submit tutorials once they register on the site. Tutorials are organized in a lot of different categories which is a nice feature to have as it makes the search easier and more efficient.

flashmagazine.com

Flash magazine is an online magazine and independent resource about flash news, reviews, resources and also tutorials.


entheosweb.com

This is a website with a large free collection of different tutorials for different programs including Flash, Dreamweaver and also CSS and Web design tutorials and plenty of resources. Each section is dedicated to a program. I also like the interface, I find it user-friendly and easy to navigate through.

Design Exploration

Edison Innovation Foundation

This website, in my opinion, has an excellent interactive interface design. This site animates its typography throughout the website in a very entertaining, consistent, and clean way. It captures the essence of the website which is mainly educational about Thomas Edison and his creations by giving the user the feeling of discovery and innovation, and that is well delivered through the spiral navigation and the background images.
The design is simple and clean, using deep colors, it focuses on typography. I thought the menu navigation was neat, especially the way it animates slightly differently, from one page to the other. The timeline, for example, forms into a list that expands and contrasts. The main navigation is user-friendly and easy to access from anywhere in the website.
There is no frame around any of the content and the navigation which gives the feeling of openness and creativity.
There are small tricks throughout that are also well done: the light bulb that can "light up" the website, the "e" which rearranges the background into a visible image, the launching of the website, the way his signature takes form...



Varywell Studio 

This is a website about a studio that specializes in website and application design, and interactive installations. The site showcases their work in a very cool and creative way which reflects their design ability. I liked how you have different cubes representing each project that change forms and speed depending on how fast your scroll up or down. It gives the user a feeling that it is a desktop application except that it was executed in flash.
The color scheme is very limited except for the project cubes and that creates a nice contrast especially when they are expanding. I liked how you explore one project at a time and how each image in every project you are looking at is highlighted while the others aren't. You can also minimize those images into small cubes themseleves.
I found it all to be very creative, my only issue was however, the navigation. I thought it was too small and not very intuitive. Although it didn't take me too long to figure it out I still didn't get it quickly enough.

Website Research - Britnee Sapp

http://www.openloops.net/#/music/changing/




http://blabla.nfb.ca/




I found this website (openloops) to be so so neat! I want to be able to use some of the features in this website into my online portfolio. I love the negative space and how clean it is. My favorite part about this site are the links. I love how everything is linked together. When you click on or even hover over one link, a bunch of other links branch out from that one link as sublinks. I found that to be so creative and clever! I want to be able to create these features in in my own website in Flash.

I also found another website (blabla) that is strictly created for interactivity. I love how you can play with the characters and how there are just so many features. I want to be able to create similar features in my own site using my own characters I've drawn myself!

Maurer Klimes - maurerklimes.hu

Maurer Klimes

http://maurerklimes.hu/

I wanted to look at a site that is doing something with Flash, and I stumbled upon this site while looking for icon and logo inspiration. This is an artist exploration more than a studio one. I was browsing through the collection of work that artists present on the behance.net network. This is, by the way, one of my favorite resources for inspiration and constantly makes me want to push myself farther.

The designer of the site and the company branding has some information about the project at this link http://www.behance.net/gallery/Maurer-Identity/2385026

The logo animates onto the top right corner of the screen as you enter a site made of clean lines and easy to identify symbols. The interface is a unique experience, a drag and drop interface that begs to be played with. All of the icons react to the presence of the mouse and move towards the users actions. 

When you combine different icons you get different results on the website. You make combinations of the icons and it gives you the result. This is all done with actionscript and it looks really cool.

The design reminds me of that swedish style of graphic design that seems to incorporate a lot of clean lines. It is definitely cool looking and has a modern design appeal to what it is showcasing. 

The person the website is about is mr. Ákos Maurer Klimes. I like his website work than the work that he does, his personal claim to fame is a a gravestone that fills with water like a bird bath. Its not really what I am into to say the least. I like his site more than his professional work. If he never had such a cool site I would never have seen his work though. I just like being exposed to design ideas and trends on an international scale. Other countries speak in different paradigms, with unusual semantics and peculiar syntax