Posts
My apologies for not blogging much recently. Its something i enjoy and usually like to do regularly as ideas flow and i keep track of what ive been doing.
Truth is i havnt been doing a great deal these last few weeks. Since having an abscess 2/3 weeks ago, when i was in excruciating pain for 2 weeks, i have struggled to find myself the effort to do much work. My abscess has now been gone for a week but i have since been extremely low.
I am always tired, had no appetite and also having difficulty concentrating.. along with not really enjoying the things i usually enjoy.
Hopefully this is just a phase that i think, as i am writing this, pulling myself back out of.
I have attended all 3 virtual environments sessions and been able to do the in-class tasks set, but i am behind on my secret lair.
While unwell i did do quite a bit of research and hand drawn ideas of what i wanted to do.. but didnt make a start on the actual 3d building.
I have now almost fully made the walls/shell of my building, which i hope to have complete by this weekend for me to begin building what will go inside.
I have 3ds max on my computer and laptop and so i am not worried about being behind as i know ill catch up.
Im far more concerned about getting myself well as i really havnt felt myself in any way/shape/form for a good 3 weeks now, and feel its affecting those close to me too.
OnLive;
Recently, hype is being built around a new product called OnLive, which can be found here:
OnLive
OnLive is a piece of software that allows you to play games on your pc and tv, to either rent or buy.
the fantastic thing about it is that, unlike conventional gaming machines where the hardware of your console plays the game. Games from OnLive are streamed, the servers and hardware on THEIR end deals with the running of the game.
This eradicates the need for an up to date machine, which for PC gamers especially (myself included) is great news as it means that gamers no longer have to buy new graphics cards and processors to keep up to date with the requirements of new games.
All that is needed is an internet connection.
"OnLive is launching the world's highest performance Games On Demand service, instantly delivering the latest high-end titles over home broadband Internet to the TV and entry-level PCs and Macintosh® computers."
This, to me, is a fantastic idea. As media moves further and further towards internet and digital streaming, this allows households to maintain that their TV's are still a "multimedia centre".
I know that my family, myself and the families of a few of my close friends, have their main TV sets connected to multiple pieces of hardware, or run a PC through their tv so that they can play downloaded content.
OnLive, will allow them to continue this trend but with games.
OnLive
OnLive is a piece of software that allows you to play games on your pc and tv, to either rent or buy.
the fantastic thing about it is that, unlike conventional gaming machines where the hardware of your console plays the game. Games from OnLive are streamed, the servers and hardware on THEIR end deals with the running of the game.
This eradicates the need for an up to date machine, which for PC gamers especially (myself included) is great news as it means that gamers no longer have to buy new graphics cards and processors to keep up to date with the requirements of new games.
All that is needed is an internet connection.
"OnLive is launching the world's highest performance Games On Demand service, instantly delivering the latest high-end titles over home broadband Internet to the TV and entry-level PCs and Macintosh® computers."
This, to me, is a fantastic idea. As media moves further and further towards internet and digital streaming, this allows households to maintain that their TV's are still a "multimedia centre".
I know that my family, myself and the families of a few of my close friends, have their main TV sets connected to multiple pieces of hardware, or run a PC through their tv so that they can play downloaded content.
OnLive, will allow them to continue this trend but with games.
STAR CITY;
Saturday, 27 February 2010
My apologies for my inactivity over the de-facto half term, i was pretty busy and as a result didnt get round to blogging.
On the tuesday i visited nottingham contemporary's new exhibition "Star City", which takes a look at art, design, politics and life under the iron curtain.
there were modern installations taking a retrospective look at communism alongside poster design, propaganda and and product design from the cold war years.
The exhibition was very similar to the COLD WAR MODERN exhibition that was put on at the V&A a year ago. The main difference being the cold war modern looked at and compared what was going on the other side of the iron curtain too. We saw the differences (and the startling similarities) between what communist russia was doing and what capitalist america was.
Star City, however, concerned it self purely with the communist perspective.
It should be said at this point that Communist art and design is by far my favourite area of art and design. My favourite pieces of designer are made by Alexander Rodchenko, so any opportunity to see a cold war exhibition is quickly snapped up.
I think the exhibition sheds light on the communist approach to design. The work has a recurring theme throughout it, most people who have visited the exhibition will now know that "SLAVA!" (Слава) means Glory!
What i think is good about the exhibition is that in most cases it is politically agnositic. It talks about the space race, it talks about communism and its competition with the west, but rather than focus on its downfall and its secrets, it takes the stance of retrospect and nostalgia. It represents communism's pursuit of utopia.
On the tuesday i visited nottingham contemporary's new exhibition "Star City", which takes a look at art, design, politics and life under the iron curtain.
there were modern installations taking a retrospective look at communism alongside poster design, propaganda and and product design from the cold war years.
The exhibition was very similar to the COLD WAR MODERN exhibition that was put on at the V&A a year ago. The main difference being the cold war modern looked at and compared what was going on the other side of the iron curtain too. We saw the differences (and the startling similarities) between what communist russia was doing and what capitalist america was.
Star City, however, concerned it self purely with the communist perspective.
It should be said at this point that Communist art and design is by far my favourite area of art and design. My favourite pieces of designer are made by Alexander Rodchenko, so any opportunity to see a cold war exhibition is quickly snapped up.
I think the exhibition sheds light on the communist approach to design. The work has a recurring theme throughout it, most people who have visited the exhibition will now know that "SLAVA!" (Слава) means Glory!
What i think is good about the exhibition is that in most cases it is politically agnositic. It talks about the space race, it talks about communism and its competition with the west, but rather than focus on its downfall and its secrets, it takes the stance of retrospect and nostalgia. It represents communism's pursuit of utopia.
Don't say i didnt warn you..
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Changed my website already, as a short spell as a CSS site, i decided to completely redesign it, partly from boredom, partly due to experimentation.
The whole point of this site is for me to learn. Web, i feel, is the area i want to go into, regardless it was an area i was curious of and decided to explore in my own time.
The site is now a lot simpler, but now utilises text image and shape far better, which i think represents a designer far better.
heres a small clip of what my website now looks like, but can be found here.
The whole point of this site is for me to learn. Web, i feel, is the area i want to go into, regardless it was an area i was curious of and decided to explore in my own time.
The site is now a lot simpler, but now utilises text image and shape far better, which i think represents a designer far better.
heres a small clip of what my website now looks like, but can be found here.
Adobe Fireworks
This is a program i hadnt previously used, but since taking to Web Design in my own time it is a piece of software that has really opened things up.
From personal experience, i have found that designing a website is inredibly time consuming. First you have to know what is going to go into the website and what you want to acheieve and then you go about setting up its structure and design.
I tend to design on paper and know exactly how i want it to look first, before making a mock up on the computer, but then you have to go about breaking it up into css and html. If a similar template can be found this will save time but generally its a very time consuming process.
Fireworks helps irradicate this and allows you to quite quickly generate a rough idea for a website. This is good as it speeds up the time between concept and product. It allows you to create on the spot with a client, or at least allow you to produce a prototype very quickly. You can also make fully functioning websites with it and then break it down to XHTML/CSS. Which is fantastic.
This isnt all fireworks is for, however, it is a very diverse tool, that unlike photoshop, is made to work with the web.
At the moment i am just experimenting with it but i intend to redesign my website using fireworks. I think it should allow me to concentrate more on the way it works and looks due to it concentrating more on the form of the website, rather than the function.
From personal experience, i have found that designing a website is inredibly time consuming. First you have to know what is going to go into the website and what you want to acheieve and then you go about setting up its structure and design.
I tend to design on paper and know exactly how i want it to look first, before making a mock up on the computer, but then you have to go about breaking it up into css and html. If a similar template can be found this will save time but generally its a very time consuming process.
Fireworks helps irradicate this and allows you to quite quickly generate a rough idea for a website. This is good as it speeds up the time between concept and product. It allows you to create on the spot with a client, or at least allow you to produce a prototype very quickly. You can also make fully functioning websites with it and then break it down to XHTML/CSS. Which is fantastic.
This isnt all fireworks is for, however, it is a very diverse tool, that unlike photoshop, is made to work with the web.
At the moment i am just experimenting with it but i intend to redesign my website using fireworks. I think it should allow me to concentrate more on the way it works and looks due to it concentrating more on the form of the website, rather than the function.
Post Production:
So, we finished filming last week and transferred the footage to Mac on friday.
As mentioned our filming went quite smoothly all things considered. It was shakey at the start as it was our first time filming as a team and with individual roles. But we got ourselves organised and we filmed quite successfully.
We have since studied the footage and are satisfied with what we have and are now in the process of editing.
Jess has spent the week gathering additional recordings of sounds that would be happenning.
We had some serious troubles getting the footage off of the Mac and onto harddrive so we had a copy spare and so it could be worked upon out of hours, niether mine nor dora's hardrive would work and niether would the uni harddrive we rented out. In the end Dora was able to use her camera to import the footage onto her own Mac and work from there, but this did waste valuable time over the beginning of the week.
I have written work that i had been doing over the course of the project, storyboards, research, considerations that i havnt been able to upload as i havnt had a scanner but when i go home this weekend i shall do.
We are meeting tomorrow to go over the footage and collaberate on the editing.
As mentioned our filming went quite smoothly all things considered. It was shakey at the start as it was our first time filming as a team and with individual roles. But we got ourselves organised and we filmed quite successfully.
We have since studied the footage and are satisfied with what we have and are now in the process of editing.
Jess has spent the week gathering additional recordings of sounds that would be happenning.
We had some serious troubles getting the footage off of the Mac and onto harddrive so we had a copy spare and so it could be worked upon out of hours, niether mine nor dora's hardrive would work and niether would the uni harddrive we rented out. In the end Dora was able to use her camera to import the footage onto her own Mac and work from there, but this did waste valuable time over the beginning of the week.
I have written work that i had been doing over the course of the project, storyboards, research, considerations that i havnt been able to upload as i havnt had a scanner but when i go home this weekend i shall do.
We are meeting tomorrow to go over the footage and collaberate on the editing.
Useful Web Research;
Sunday, 7 February 2010
For me, the best way to learn is by hitting walls. I throw myself in the deep end and then learn to swim. By breaking, i learn how to fix and what not to do last time. So rather than reading through books and theory i find that forums, blogs and resources are the best way to get help and learn new things.
I have found a site called Populair which is a database of over 400 blogs,and websites on colour, font and typography. This is a great place to begin looking for help and inspiration.
I have found a site called Populair which is a database of over 400 blogs,and websites on colour, font and typography. This is a great place to begin looking for help and inspiration.
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