Wednesday, 29 April 2009

Logo Ideas

i began with the GF on its own first, using the a downloaded font 'alba'. I played around with which charectors were in caps, and which were not.
Then i worked on the 'gold factory' text experimenting with different fonts.

After i chose the layout i added colour.
i think this logo works well, it looks modern than the original and the brigther colours make it more appealing. Also talking to my group they also liked the idea.

Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Client Project- Gold Factory- Possible Changes

I had a think about the improvments that could be made for the site.

- More exiting colour scheme, maybe gold/orange.
- A New modern logo.
- Better navigation, maybe at the top of each page.
- More imagery on the homepage, so its more recognisable as a art website.

Client Project- Gold Factory

Gold Factory is a new contemporary art organisation located in Nottingham U.K. Along side Jacqui and Sarah we are to recreate the website.
After meeting Paul last friday we got an idea of what he's looking for , and the ideas we had for the site.

Looking at the current site i found a few issues with it that could be resolved.
- Its not easy realise what the site is for, at first glance the user would not know that the site is about an art organisation. theres limited imagery of art on the home page, and no text saying what the are.

- Navigation is poor. The navigation is spread out in 3 different parts of the site, it would be easier for the user to have 1 navigation bar only.

- Colour Scheme. the colours arent attractive and make the site a little boring.

Saturday, 25 April 2009

Easter Holiday Works.

After watching the film 'Notorious' i thought id do some Photoshop work on the artist. So i made a vector image with a few colour variations. took a little while, consisting of over about 150 layers.





Easter Holiday Works.

A5 sounds. my flat mates needed a logo and maybe a website. the are a DJ/Dhol group, the 'A' is partly made using the drum stick. the first is mine and their favorite so far.

Flash- Evaluation

I began this project by researching some game on the web and noted down the game themes I liked. Then I brainstormed theses themes such as ‘sports’ ‘action’ and ‘puzzle’ games, and added some specific games types.
Theses include football games basketball shooting and tetris.

I wanted to develop the football idea and researched more about the different game types there were, these included penalty kicks, kick ups and free kicks. I found that the penalty games were difficult to play so I firstly thought of making a more improved version. After initial designs I decided to abandon the penalty game as I found it was very similar to free kick games and they are pretty good already.

So I looked at my other ideas and decided to make a headers game, after looking on the web I only found 1 good version of the game and decided to make my own.
I came up with sketches and moved them to Photoshop and then flash. I used movie clips for the player and ball and expanded on previous codes to make my game.

I think the final game works fairly well. The player movement is smooth and the ball speeds work well, I slightly edited the speed by changing the frame speed.
I wanted to add a heading sound each time the ball hit the player but I couldn’t find a free one online so I had to use a replacement sound.

If I were to remake the game I would try make the ball movement more realistic, I wanted the ball to bounce of the players head and squeeze in to look realistic. And also get the player to jump up using the space bar. Also I need to learn about classes as I think this would have made my game easier to make.

Flash- Game Frames

Frame 1- 2 buttons ‘play game’ and ’instructions’
Frame 2- Instructions page, I used large text so its easily readable, and kept the instructions short and simple.
Frame 3- 3 different dufficulty levels. I was going to use ‘novice’ ’amateur’ and ’expert’, but the 3 levels I used seemed to work.

Frame 4- Game play.

i had more frames in total, with diferent sized balls, players. but this is what the 4 main frames looked like


Flash- Choosen Game idea

i decided to make a football game. after brainstorming and researching i decided to make a header's game, as there are very few good playable versions on the web.

Flash- Player Development


This was my first player design. I used photoshop to make a simple vector of a footballer.
I decided to use bright bold colours, as most good Flash game use bright colours and are much more playable.
Also I used a larger head for the player than its supposed to be, influenced by the Fifa games on Wii, I found the player looked slightly better with the theme of the game.
However when I played with the character in Flash I found that the hands were too wide apart. When I converted it into a movie clip I had to use a rectangle shape and I got a lot of the player that I didn’t want.
So when the ball hit areas around the player it would count as a point when it wasn’t supposed to.









so I found a thinner image and recreated it again in Photoshop. This character works much better and looks like he’s jumping as well.

Social Network Website evaluation

Our aim was to create an online social networking site, like facebook or ning.
I began this project by researching social networks and noted down the ones I liked, then I brainstormed ideas for my own network. A few ideas that I had was a art network, like ‘deviant art’ and ‘behance network’. And a gaming network.
I preferred the art and design network as I could incorporate my design work, also there are a lot of these social networks on the web that I could use as research and influences.

I began by making an ERD diagram, I had 4 tables. ‘member’, ‘image’, ‘url’ and ‘comment.’ After this I began drawing ideas for the 4 pages, which I then imported onto Dream weaver.

Then using previous PHP codes and seminar work I tried incorporating them into my design. But struggled as the codes I had were a bit complex and the work I did in class I found hard to use in my work.

I found this project very difficult as PHP is hard to learn. But after a bit of help from tutors and the ‘PHP academy’ tutorials on you tube I learnt quite a bit, such as variables and displaying information using PHP. Learning all the basics such as the echo and GET commands seperatley instead of having all the code I found easier to learn and make things.
If I were to continue this project I would improve the appearance by using more imagery, and adding more complex PHP. I wanted to be able to show separate profile pages of user’s but didn’t know how and ran out of time.

Social Network- Gallery page ideas

Influenced by the layout used by ‘BEHANCE NETWORK’
Having the profile image on the left on the gallery page is easier to see whose work is being viewed.
ADVANTAGES- only having 4 images horizontally allows the page to not look too packed on smaller computer screens.
DISADVANTAGES- more pages will be needed to fit all the users images.
The logout button on the top right is used by most art/design networks and other social networks and is the easiest place to have it.

Influenced by the layout used by ‘DEVIANT ART NETWORK’
Similar to the above but without the profile image.
ADVANTAGE- this ideas allow you to fit more images on one page
DISADVANTAGES- not as easy to see whose gallery you are viewing.

Image and descriptions are on the left
ADVANTAGES- allows the gallery owner to write more about the artworks
Most easy to make in ‘PHP’
DISADVANTAGES- profile page looks a bit empty
Wastes a lot of space

All thumbnails are differently sized
Looks most unique but it would be difficult to make using ‘PHP’

Social Network- header ideas

My initial header design. I wanted it to be simple to keep in theme with the rest of the network. Also looking at other art social network’s I found that the header were all text based and simple.



A few colour variations, I preferred the blue header.



I added a few Photoshop brushes to these idea’s to see how it would look, I found they looked a bit messy and not in keeping with the rest of the network.




I tried a different font and background colour on this design and think it looks good but am unsure if It works well with the theme.