Creative Coding, Project Three, Blog Nine

After getting to the stage I was at last time I have since reviewed that and looked at seeing if I could refine that into a single/main interaction. It became apparent that perhaps being able to 'collect' the snowflakes onto the mouse position wasn't particularly relevant to the main interaction, so for now I have cut this out.

This is the result of being able to remove snowflakes, I have since removed this feature.

I have also decided to 'invert' my interaction idea, so instead of using the mouse to increase the spinning speed it will instead decrease the speed, while if you leave them unattended they will increase in speed then shake then explode unless attended to.

So far I have the snowflakes becoming faster and faster when unattended then once the mouse is within range their speed dampens down until it has completely stopped.

I am now going to reintroduce the shaking and explosions, then I will look at introducing colour.

Here's the link to my current progress...
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/63598

Design Visualisation, Project Three, Blog Five

I have now completed my storyboard...

I ended up breaking away from using traditional squares and instead tried to show my clip as one images. I attempted to use the 'Kraca-Kola' advert as a means of showing the direction of the story/clip in the storyboard.

I also decided to use a made up soda brand for my advertisement named 'Kraca-Kola'. This brand is based on a dominant existing brand. I decided to do this as I thought that the soda/softdrink/juice industry is a very competitive industry with this one dominant brand, and this is what I wanted to show, how dominant and aggressive advertising is in order to gain consumer attention to influence their spending. In my clip as shown in my storyboard I plan to have the dominant brand 'Kraca-Kola' cover up it's inferior rival 'Lepsi', showing the competition there is to gain attention over each other and ultimately gain sales.

I have also made a little test clip, attempting to create the first few seconds of the clip.

I found I made a fair few mistakes in this clip such as not realising my leg was in a few of the shots as well as other things. Also moving the advert within the rubbish bin proved difficult as it was hard to make it stay in the place I wanted it and hard to not knock the other bits of rubbish out of place. Also of course with using my cellphone camera it is hard to keep it still creating a very shaky picture, however when I film my final I will use a better quality camera and have a tripod to keep it steady.

I have also had a go at looking at the lighting effects I would use, I edited the previous clip in iMovie...

I used a greater contrast and a blueish tint, to create a slightly ominous picture, as I want to portray advertising as a 'bad' invasion.

Creative Coding, Project Three, Blog Eight

After not having a lot of ideas of how to progress my application further I decided to have another brainstorm, which this time was successful and gave me somethings to achieve, I found going back to the application progress I showed during the interim presentation useful to remember what was fun about it, so I could reintroduce it to my current progress.

I previously had it that when the snowflakes are within a certain range of the mouse they disappear, I decided to change this so that when within this certain range instead of this I have it so they spin, while the other snowflakes remain stationary. I also further added to this by having it so the spinning snowflakes  shapes spread out also as seen in the image below...

However I didn't like it how once a snowflake was out of the mouse area it just stopped rotating instantly reseting to the default position as seen in the above image. Instead I wanted it so that as they move out of the mouse area their rotational velocity eases down to zero. To fix this problem required the use of more arrays as I needed each snowflake to have its own set of rotational data as well as velocity data. So I created an array for both of these variables with a capacity of 100 as there are 100 snowflakes. I then made it so the snowflakes are always able to rotate however they only speed up when they are in the mouse area otherwise they slow down and eventually stop. 

Here are my array set up variables with the 100 capacity.

This is the result of using the arrays for individual snowflake rotation values.

I then looked at continuing to play with the spec between the shapes for each snowflake and thought it could be interesting that instead of having the this space go back to the original space gap once the mouse moves away from a particular snowflake, to have it stay the same instead, this was the result...

This was pretty fun to play with in terms of the way the shapes interacted with the mouse movement, it's hard to explain but it was quite cool....Here's the link....
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/63596

However it didn't lend much opportunity for the direction I was heading in so I removed the function of the shape space increasing when the mouse comes near. I instead looked at having explosions again like I had before. I currently have it so that now if the mouse does not come close enough to a snowflake for long enough it will begin to wobble, if it is still not attended to it will then explode, meaning the shape space will increase rapidly until the shapes of the snowflake are no longer visible on screen. This feature is working awesomely, the screen shot below shows a few snowflakes exploding...

Doing this meant creating more arrays, as I needed separate wobble values and other data for each of the 100 snowflakes to make this possible.

I then added another feature to add even more fun interaction. This time I thought it would be cool that if the mouse position was in a close enough proximity to a snowflake for a long enough time at a fast enough speed the snowflakes x,y position would change to the mouse x,y position. I managed to pull this off as you can see in the image below...

I think this is a really fun little interactive feature which I will definitely keep and perhaps develop on. I think what makes it successful is that it is quite hard to do interns of the interaction not the coding.

I have now also looked at making the shapes of the snowflakes grow as the mouse passes over them, as seen in the image below...

I think this is a fun interactive feature as it brings more diversity to the overall image, however it didn't work so well when the shape size kept infinitely increasing, so I put a cap on how much it could grow...

As you can see above the shapes cannot go past that size, also when the mouse moves away from them they shrink back down to the original size.

So this is where I am currently at, I think I will continue to further develop these features, then I will look at polishing up the applications appearance.

Design Visualistaion, Project Three, Group Assignment Two

Nana technology aims to facilitate the technologically challenged in becoming savvy and up to date in their communications. They offer social networking tutorials and have developed a series of app's for senile geriatrics. Our advertisement aims to attract interest from our target clientele by displaying relevant aesthetic and media. Appropriately clear in meaning and product, for an elderly audience with failing eyesight and hearing. An audio sample from the wizard of OZ soundtrack, which is easily recognisable to our audience, aims to be attention grabbing through its sense of nostalgia. Our slogan ‘making it easier to connect’ simply states the purpose of our range of services, literally making it easier to understand what we provide.

Within our animation, we depicted a nana confused by technology. This relates to the struggles that the elderly face. When “Nana Technology” appears her problems are solved. Showing that our company can help the elderly find joy in technology.

We used the same visual features in both the TV commercial and the poster so our audience can recognise our company in both medias.

Images of Nana retrieved from http://www.123rf.com/photo_2866853_senior-woman-using-cell-phone.html

Signed Brief

Locovisual

“The Vic”; Former Lotus Restaurant

"The VIC" (Klee, 2009)

"The Vic" (Wellington City Council, 2012)

“The Vic” building designed by James Bennie, built in 1935 is a clear example of Art Deco architecture, located on 154-156 Cuba street. The Art Deco style is very present in Wellington, particularly down Cuba Street. Between the great wars Wellington architecture boomed with the predominant style being Art Deco. Art Deco became an internationally fashionable style in the 1930s after the 1925 Industrial and Decorative Arts Exhibition in Paris, France.

Art Deco is a design style which was “characterised by simplified ornamentation and an emphasis on geometrical decoration”(Kelly, 2005), it was also influenced by new advancements in transport of the time, such as trains, planes and cars. This often resulted in a lot of design being 'stream-lined', to create the illusion of speed. Another key feature was the use of motifs such as sunbursts/sunrises, fountains and footlights as well as patterns such as zig zags and chevrons. Art Deco also made reference to other design styles such as Classical design, in particular the use of Classical columns.

“The Vic” building uses a lot of these features. Firstly a sunrise motif is used as a central feature created from basic triangular geometries. Zig zags are used above the window frames, whilst basic geometries are stacked on the concrete 'Classical' columns. The use of tall vertical columns creates an “exaggerated vertical emphasis”(Wellington City Council, 2012), which is also another feature of the Art Deco style, creating elongated design. It is these features which class “The Vic” building as a clear example of Art Deco architecture.

References:

Kelly, M. (2005). Art Deco Heritage Trail (2^nd ed.). Wellington, New Zealand: Wellington City Council.

Wellington City Council. (2012). Heritage. Retrieved from http://www.wellington.govt.nz/services/heritage/details.php?id=199&m=search&street=Cuba%20Street

Petty, J. (2012, May 9). Alt-Modern. Unpublished lecture notes, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Klee, A. (2009). The VIC (Lotus Restaurant Building). Retrieved from http://www.historic.org.nz/TheRegister/RegisterSearch/RegisterResults.aspx?RID=5356

Creative Coding, Project Three, Blog Seven

After presenting my application as it was I have since stripped it back in order to rework it and improve it so it is even more fun and interactive.

I decided to strip it back so it was easier to work with and so I can navigate my way through my code easier when adding more interactive functions. In terms of what I stripped back, I have removed the different 'levels' and colours that went with that. This made my application look like this...

Stripped back version of my application.

Here is the stripped back version...

http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/63594

I also had a go at stripping away the background as well which created a pretty cool effect, creating the ability to create some cool looking patterns...

One of the cool looking patterns I was able to create.

                                     

Another cool looking pattern

I could possibly have this as a feature in my application as it is quite a fun interaction to play with.

I then reapplied the background and tried some other types of interactions...

I looked at having the layers of shapes separate along the x-axis as the cursor speed increased, this was the result...

I don't think this was particularly successful, it's not greatly fun or awesome.

I then experimented with decreasing the size of the shapes, increasing the size of the snowflake and decreasing the number of snowflakes, I then added a flashing effect to them so the overlapping shapes spread out quickly then go back to being stacked on top of each other...

...As seen here...

This created quite a cool effect however it was quite rough on the eyes, however it could be a cool effect that results from interaction.

In order to make each shape layer stagger as the flash out, I attempted to use an array...

 In the end I found that I couldn't make the array work particularly efficiently as I still had to write out each different value (diffgap[0], diffgap[1]...etc...) and in the end I couldn't get it to work. However since then I have learnt how to make it efficient by using a loop to create the different values using a variable to replace the number in the brackets (diffgap[variable]) and just increasing by a given increment using the loop.

I also looked at decreasing the size and increasing the number of snowflakes...

I further added to this by making it that wherever the mouse position is any snowflake within a given radius disappears as shown in the images below...

I think this feature is quite interactive and with a bit more to it it could be pretty fun too so I think I will keep experimenting with it.

I have also had another look at some applications on open processing and found this one....

This starts the way it is on the left, then when you press a letter on the keyboard it forms into that letter. I think this could be a cool idea, maybe in mine if the mouse is clicked the snowflakes could combine together to make different formations.

Design Visualisation, Project Three, Blog Four

I have decided to change my storyboard slightly now I want to start it with the flyer/poster screwed up in the rubbish, then it unscrews-up itself and continues the things it did in the previous storyboard. I decided to do this as it shows that even when you think you have disposed of an ad or 'put it to the side', it still has an effect on you as if you see that ad again perhaps in another form of media or the product you will recognise the brand.

I also made a test clip of a piece of paper 'unscrewing-up' itself.

I am also currently reworking my storyboard in a less conventional way, breaking away from squares.

I found a few examples of storyboards with protrude the set squares which I thought was interesting and perhaps a feature I could have in my storyboard. Such as this one...

 I think this really helps show what the action is like for this shot by having the images come out of the frame.