Yay for 3d programs!

Not only is devArt an awesome source of inspiration forcool vector work, photoshop work in the realms of my own work - you should see THIS girls stuff! OMG, she is my queen of Photoshop!!

Snow_wolf__by_heise.jpg

But I am also having so much fun being in the world of 3d pinups! I have "acquired" a copy of Poser 6, a program that multiple people have talked about, and I plan to start dabbling in this area once the holidays come. Check out some of these cool works!

Black_Pearl_by_RainfeatherPearl.jpg

Georgina_and_Jezebel_by_RainfeatherPearl.jpg

The_Dark_Elf_by_RainfeatherPearl.jpg

whisper_on_my_lips_by_tralfaz.jpg

General Illustrator Design

I would like to take this opportunity to display all the design that has been done in illustrator that I like, and would like to be reproducing in the futute.

Firstly, since I came across the NIGHTWISH (OMG NIGHTWISH!!) tour poster that Joe Whyte drew, it was love at first sight. His style is very bitchin' :D His own personal drawing style is exciting and actually quite varied, and then the way he technically executes it is brilliant. He says on his site "My goal is to continually develop my illustration and push it in new directions. I produce work in a range of mediums, from traditional charcoal drawings right through to entirely digital vector illustrations. "
Here is his website http://www.joewhyte.com.au/welcome.html (I highly recommend him to EVERYONE) and here are some of his great peices. He does a lot of music posters and things like cd covers and tshirts etc. I admire his work very much.

a12836.jpg

bce_covers.jpg

headphones.jpg

velvet_rev.jpg

I also want to point out the style of a french artist Arthur de Pins, here is his site http://www.arthurdepins.com/, he has an awesome style, and he dabbles in creating animations out of his vectors too! here is a screenshot of some of the thumbnails on his page.

depinsthumbs.jpg

These vector images are more generic "pretty" designs that I am very attracted to. I like the use of black with a lot of them,a nd the ones with figures I especially like the usage of negative space to produce the image. I would like to be able to do more design stuff like this. I compare it to Huw's work actually, i really admire his pretty style.

Vector Faces

As I mentioned, DeviantArt has realy inspired me to pursue realistic vector faces - not just for Jo, it is somehting I would like to pursue into the futute aswell. I want to put up some of the great vector work i have been collecting, you can see for yourself how inspirational it is:

Fade_to_Black_by_LDYdeath.jpg

Solitude_by_akirichan.jpg

Wages_of_Sin_by_akirichan.jpg

I tried my own hand quickly at an Adriana Lima picture, using the posterising and tracing technique and you can see how well it turned out. here is the vector and the outline to show all the different shapes used.

adriana_vector.jpg

adriana_outline.jpg

For the major illustartor piece however I chose this photo of my sister Kendelle to vectorise.

kendelle.jpg

It has proved much harder as the colours' shapes are not so defined, plus I can't eyedrop the colours. The nose, eyes and mouth look great, I am SO HAPPY with how they turned out and it has really helped me to stay keen on this project because I can see hopeful results for the finished piece. I am starting on the cheek now and having colour diffuculties. This is the vector work i have done so far, and the next picture is the photo of Kendelle with my vector work over the top - you can see the colour problem in the cheek.

kendellevector_sofar.jpg

kendelleandvector.jpg

And now for some piccies - Flash

Going back over the sheet regarding this competency, I have noticed lots of mentions about the Online Media lab. I must go and make comments on the works uploaded there. It was a good experience, it is pretty cool to be working online with other people in real time (even if tones of voice cannot be considered and sometimes mistaken on the written comments.) I must link here to our wiki page. http://medialab.wikispaces.com/Team+B Our challenge was the online documentary. I came up with the two evolved mockups, which was good coz we really needed a visual basis from which to work off. Then I also simplified our concept down into the bottom two navigational sitemaps.

On the thought of comments, I am a very active comment-er on deviantARt, I have received 101 comments from others about my work, and have made 407 on other people's. It serves a couple of purposes. It provides interactivity with artists around the world, it promotes a sense of networking, it is an avenue to express your thoughts on other people's work, and it also serves to get your name and avatar out there on as many pages as you can so other people will be able to look at it and hopefully click on it and come and visit your site, and then make comments about your own work. It is certainly a way of comparing your work to others, and each picture you put up you wirte your artists comments on it and reply to other people's comments on your own work. Would this be suitable for CUVDSP02A/04 ?


Anyway, i wanted to post some pictures regarding how my Flash project was coming along. there are the two original drawings invovling how Mary and the Lamb might look, and some concepts about the interactivity and content.

interactivity.jpg

mary_sketch.jpg

So the basic idea was to have a Mary, and a Lamb. there will be an intro/title page that you click on to enter. then you go to play verse 1. As I drew, I always wanted to have the lyrics there, and the word would light up as the tiny sheep bounced on it, karaoke style. I have acheived this, but I really need to put music in (the whole thing needs more music, or rather, sound effects. children are very easily stimulated both visually and audibly.) i think the addition of music will be easy enough, we will have to see. There will then be quiz type questions (very easy ones) such as what colour was the fleece and how big was the lamb etc. I think i should have 'wrong' and 'correct' sound effects on them too.

Here is some pics form Flash. This is the intro page. I origianally had the title as a dark blue and when u hovered over a letter it would become a different colour. But I changed that to now every letter is a different colour, and they still change to another colour when you hover over (and they glow too when you hover over them - thanks to Matt ;p) Thhen I had the idea of the letters constantly changing to different colours on their own (and still changing again and glowing when hovering). But I don't yet know if that would just be TOO MUCH colour changing? I asked a couple fo classmates and they thought it was Ok ... will see what everyone thinks on Tuesday. The lamb opens his little mough when you hover over him (I will try and insert a "baaa" noise there - oh, he also glows too) and he wiggles his ears and moves his head - it's VERY CUTE! he is the active button to go to the next page.

lamb_intro.jpg

Page 1 here and Mary and the lamb come waddling on from each side. Hopefully I will get them to do things when you hover over them, i havent yet tho. I tried to animate the lamb walking, and it was just HIDEOUS. I realise I should have persisted, but I have enough to do on this thing without spending hours on the walking - and besides, the little kids wont care anyway. They do move into frame,. they rock back and forth, it's kina amusing actually! the text "Play the first verse" is all different colours and those colours move along the letters consecutively. I don't know if that is also too much. i don't know if I really like it. Anyway, you click on that to go to the first verse. Navigational buttons down the bottom (WITHOUT any bevels) take you back to the intro page on on to the first quiz.

lamb_p1.jpg

Here is the lyrics for the first verse, the little lamb bounces in time and the letters light up. It looks pretty cool in action :D
My only qualm is that the page looks really bare. Maybe I should make the words bigger. I did have a dancing sheep under the words but he took the attention away from the bouncing sheep.

lamb_v1.jpg

The quiz is very basic, you click on what you think the answer is and it comes up with "yes" or "no". And as I said, i would like to put in sound effects there.

lamb_q1.jpg

Well, that is as far as I have gotten. I do need to map out the rest of it exactly. I am happy with it so far and I'm also not. I feel it is still rather plain. Maybe i should have those little flowers on the ground grow bigger when you hover over them, maybe I should add a tree with a bird that is also interactive. I have the clouds moving constantly in the background so that there is always something moving.

To Develop Self as Designer

Dear Robin, please excuse me for there will be a long speil of text here, I promise there will be pictures later, I just want to get all the words off my chest first ;)

I find it possibly coincidental that my skill as a DESIGNER is coming to my attention at the same time as this competeny. Lately, especially as we are nearly through for the year, I have had chance to refelct on my work so far and to be very honest with myself, I have not improved as I ought to in my strengths as a designer. Watching, especially, two of my favourite peers Aaron and Emily develop their own talnets to a very impressive degree has been not only inspirational, but also a real reality check for my own work. I can't help but note that it is something similar in their work = ILLUSTRATOR. It is their improvement with the vectors that produces such impressive work from them both. I wanna do more impressive vector work! :0

For our major vector peice, Jo wants us to do something impressive, she showed us the trumpet that looked like a photo and, of course, I immediately wanted to do a face. Since joining DeviantArt (go visit!: http://freyals.deviantart.com) I have been completely addicted to trawling the site for awesome work, I get very inspired from seeing other peoples stuff, and I have seen some AMAZING vector faces that has been incredibly inspiratrionmal in my quest to do a realistic vector face (I know Robin, who would have thought ;p ) So this is something else I really want to acheive.

I also want to realise my vision for my Flash project.

I think at this point I will outline my learning plan:

Learning Plan

What are you going to learn?

~ I want to develop my vector style, and strengthen my design skills further with vectors.

~ I want to achieve a photo-realist face with vectors, or at least as close as I can.

~ I want to realise my original vision for 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' in Flash.




How are you going to learn it?

~ Well, the whole overall design strengthening is somehting that is going to be ongoing (indeed, quite possibly it is always ongoing, even for great designers) for example, I think over the hoklidays i might take up some of our print briefs through the year and redo them to a level that I am very happy with. I have been studying great vector designers, such as the very talented Joe Whyte and Arthur de Pins, my fellow classmates, reading Emily's Computer Arts/ Design magazines, and of course checking up on the great devArt galleries. I always find I learn best by studying what has already been done, and trying to put my own spin on it, or merging different styles etc. I think more actual hands-on me doing it and less staring at others is going to help too, coz i do do a LOT of staring at others, I love it - looking at other peoples great images is an amwesome stimulation for me - I could (and sometimes have) do it all day - it's coz I'm a taurus u know ;)!

~ Regarding the vector face. Well, it is not as actually hard as i first imagined (at least, the way I'm doing it isn't.) There are basically two methods - each colour is a different shape, or the mesh tool is used. Now, I am a bit scared of the mesh tool, i have had a play with it before, and because I am scared of it, then I must use it (that's what Robin would say I'm sure)however, I am not using it for the face. I am doing the face as lots and lots of shapes, so it's pretty much a time thing (oops, I didn't say that word!) and i have decided that for the clothes I will give the mesh tool a try, so that the picture ends up using both. Anyway, thankfully to devArt, the vector face artists do tell their secrets - You get your photo and posterise it so that each colour does take on it's own shape. I had a quick try with a photo of Adriana Lima, and hey-presto it looked great. For Jo though, I knew I would have to use one of my own photos, so i chose my sister dear. But even after posterising, the picture (not airbrushed at all and taken on a digital camera) is still very mottled, and I am almost ad-libbing the shapes, so it is quite tricky, but coming along slowly. Also, for some reason i can't eye-drop the colours off the bitmap in illusdtrator, so i am doing each colour by eye (OMG) For some reason Dave can do it in CS2, but I only have Illustrator 10, maybe that is the problem!?

~ As for learning the Flash stuff, it was a case of making use of teacher matt's well of knowledge while he was with us - which I did. It is also a case of going back through the 10 flash exrcises to get all of those things down pat (which I pretty much have i think). It's also a case of mapping otu exactly what i want the flash experience to llok like, i have made notes and such, but I think i will write out an exact storyboard for every single scene before tuesday, so that I know exactly how I want it to look, in order to reralise it properly. I really should hunt around the internet and look for other interactive nursery rhymes, or even just interactive kids things. I need to stay focussed on the age group I am targeting ... I dont think i know any 3-5 year olds.


How are you going to know that you have learnt it?

~ To be able to look at something I designed I will know that I am improving. It's just one of those things, I will be able to see it. And hopefully others will be able to see it too.

~ As for the face, well, if I show it to mum and dad and kendelle and nathan and say - "who is this?" and they all say "kendelle, omg It looks so real!" well then, yes. Also, we have to present them to the class in the last week, and my classmates are ususally pretty honest about things (the constructive criticms from everyone is great, we all seem to be able to get across how something might be improved upon without hurting any feelings!) So yeah, if they think it looks like a photo then I will have succeeded. Also, again, I can tell in myself whether it looks real enough or not. I have the vectors over the top of the photo, and if u turn the vector layer on and off, you should only see minor differences between the two.

~ With the flash assignmwent, if it interacts exacly as I had wanted, if it looks how I had planned then I suppose I can say that I had leaned what i wanted to. I think I have kept it relatively simple, although, it willmbe my first time inserting sounds and stuff, so we will see how it turns out. Again I can count on the comment session in class next tuesday to help me.


How are you going to prove that you learnt?

This is a bit of a funny question ...
I suppose for all things being learnt, keeping a record of progress (ie, with a BLOG) helps to prove learning. Also, being able to retain what was learnt and to do other projects based on what was learnt, also to expand past what was learnt into new things. Is this enough to answer this question? (I realise I have said the word "learnt" far too many times just now.)