Animation....

With the website done we have moved on Flash Animation. Like learning html, Flash is no walk in the park. As of now I still don't know very much but I am hopeful that I will pick it up soon.

Our new assignment is to make a text animation of a 30 second sound quote. I chose the last 30 seconds of President Obama's acceptance speech in Chicago. Here are the first two tries.... Both of these tries lack visual hierarchy and are trying to hard to feel the space.

This last try, and the winner, has hierarchy and white space. It is an excellent depiction of the voice quality of the sound clip. I am pleased with it. The hard part is going to be animating the clip later....

FINISHED!!!!!!!!

I finished! My first ever real website is done and working. I am rather pleased with the end result. The longer you design something the more you tend to hate it. The first few weeks are good. You enjoy the design, you think of little things that are going to make it that much better, you are truly excited to see the end project. Then a few things start to go wrong. You manage to incorrectly save a page causing you to lose a file. You accidently close a page without saving and loose several hours of work. Probably most frustrating, you click on some unknown thing, or just open it up again and all of your positioning is wrong. Three hours later you close it and open it again and it works again... It is times like this were you don't actually like your design. No matter how cool it is it can not make up for a lack of sleep and countless hours of frustration.

Most designers will come to like their work again a few days or weeks after it is finished. However, there are some all nighters that just can't be forgotten. Designs like these you just smile and say thank you when other give you praise or you agree when they give criticism. Lucky for me, I like me website. LIKE not LOVE. I might love it in another week or so. For now all I have to say it "FINISHED!"

If you would like to take a look you can find my site at: fall09-1.graphicinterfacedesign.com/acottle/html/thedaughter

Slowly, very slowly

You never really understand how amazingly large an entire website is until you try and design it all. Once you have done all your beginning design work and have decided what you actually want to say, you would think it would be smooth sailing. WRONG. Writing a website is hard work. You are basically designing you site twice, once is photoshop, and once in html/css. The photoshop version is so you can see exactly what you are going to write into the code. This process took me several weeks. Next you have to basically translate that work from a nice visual image into a dynamic working website. That is where I am now. I have nice images, but no website...

Here are a two of my final photoshop creations.

This page is all about cyclocross. It I win in coding the main four photos will have a rollover effect that will allow the viewer to point at a picture and see it in full color and then move their mouse away and see the picture in the colorized version.

This page is comparing an average cyclist to a racer. I drew both illustrations in illustrator and then imported them with their text. The finished web version should look exactly like this with a working scroll option.

Progress...

It has been a crazy few weeks. I have been working on learning new software and creating new designs that will function on the web. Here is some of my progress.

Here is the very beginning. This is where I decided what I would need, where I would put it and how you would navigate through the website. Confusing though it may be, this holds all my beginning information.

Attempt number one. This is one of my first sketches for a main content page. The idea was to put a picture of the different types of ground relative to each type of racing. Then I would use one main picture to describe the feel and look of that race.

This was another first idea. This one combines several pictures and just a color for the background without the texture idea. I also brought in some wheel and crank illustration/pictures to give the top and interesting look.

These two pictures are mockups of what a real page might look like. Most of my class like the bottom one better. However several thought that the textures around the frames in the first felt more dirty like the sport.

SUCCESS

Today marks a tuning point in my life. I have officially created a website. That is right I looked at a blank text edit page wrote some letters down, saved it as an html file and I now have a website. WAY COOL!!! If you would like to join in the excitement you can got to, fall09-1.graphicinterfacedesign.com/acottle/misc/demo1 to see the site. If you don't want to here is picture documenting my success.

Decisions

My first project is quickly approaching, this means it is decision time. I now have to decided what to create so I can prepare and research. I have decided to make my first website be all about bikes. It will be an outsiders look at the crazy and all consuming world to cycling. I will talk about the different types of bikes, the clothes, the lingo, and all the weird stuff riders seem to do for no reason. I spent the whole weekend taking picture of my little brother in his cycling clothes and of all the different kinds of bikes in my house. I will continue to post my progress so you can follow along as a create. 

New Beginnings

I woke up this morning to a new beginning. Today marks the first day of my last year in school. EVER. Not knowing how to handle this I went to work, came home and then got ready for my day. I put on my new pair of jeans and went to school. Now three hours later, I have assignments and new projects for the year. A new beginning.

New. All of it is new, a new challenge, a new adventure, a new semester, a new blog to document the semester... NEW