Assignment for Monday, April 19 - Final Project presentation

Finished and preliminary drawings from Maurice Sendak's Higglety Pigglety Pop! 

Monday, April 19, you'll present your final project idea to the class via your blog. Your presentation should include:
1. 3-5 images of your own work.
2. 5 images from your visual research.
3. A one paragraph written description of your project.
4. A one sentence description of your project.
5. Specific technical issues you'll need to figure out to get this project done.
6. A timeline for what you're going to have done on your project when.
7. What you will have done by Monday, April 26, which will be our next critique.
These Maurice Sendak images are reproduced from an article on a Sendak retrospective in the San Francisco Sentinel.

Early cover concept for Where The Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak.

Double-Edged Wednesday

Stealin' from the best. My shower scene on the left, Clowes' Ghost World on the right.

If the first blade misses yer beard, the second one does the job. . . yes. Here's the to do list for Wednesday, April 14.

1. Bring your FIVE copies.
2. Update your BLOG.
3. Write a one paragraph description of your final project idea.
4. Cite a specific piece of visual research you've used in making your latest and greatest work. Here's a link to a post I made discussing the example above!

Art 351 Assignment 4 - Jumpin' Jehosaphat!

This assignment has two parts:

A. Create a library of 10 buttons, just for kicks.

B. Create an interactive timeline-based story the user will navigate using buttons to jump around the timeline.

1. Script and thumbnail out your story. We'll look at these this Monday, Feb 8. Make sure you post your work to your blog.

2. Shawn will be coming in to demo some basic sound recording on Wednesday, Feb. 3!

3. This piece will be due for critique on Wednesday, February 17.

Art 351 - Assignment 3: Create 15 Animated Dingbats

1. Create a library of 15 animated dingbats.
2. Due Monday, February 1.
3. Post your progress as you go!

Here's a quick demo video on getting started with animation in Flash. More to come.

Art 351 - Assignment 2: Two more collages and interactive writing

1. Take one of your collages and double (at least) either the height or the width of the document. Use Modify > Document to accomplish this. Now work on your new canvas.

2. Create a new collage (or start with one of your old ones) and push the scale contrast! Enlarge stuff so it extends way off the canvas. Shrink stuff down. Go to town.

3. Write about 3 satisfying "interactive" experiences you've had in life. Think about sight, smell, sound, atmosphere, color, texture, drama, sensation, emotion, physicality, sensuousness and all that. Post to blog with relevant pictures.

4. Put all of this glory up on your site so we can critique first thing MONDAY, January 25.

image by Ernesto Caivano

Art 496 Capstone and Art 450 Special Projects - Proposal

We'll meet next on Wednesday, January 28th at 3:00. I've already talked to you about your projects, so I'll expect you to all have the details firmed up as follows:

0. A working title for your project.
1. A one sentence description of your project.
2. A one paragraph description of your project.
3. A one page description of your project.
4. A description of what you're going to actually produce during the course of your project. Make sure you include any preparatory/exploratory sketches, photos, collages, animatics, rough cuts, and interpretive dance you'll be doing.
5. Visual and/or written research for your project. Stuff done by other people.
6. Treatment visuals for your project. Stuff done by you.
7. A written description of specific technical and research issues you will need to address during the course of your project.
8. A timeline of your project. When you will be doing all of this good stuff. You must include specific DEADLINES (for example: "January 27th", not "some time in January."
9. A blog containing all of the above. You will also keep track of your activity here. If you do something for your project, blog it. I check these things oft, so I expect to see constant brain activity here.
10. Your magic sunshine. See you then.

Art 351 - Assignment 1: Dingbats! and Flash Demo Videos

 

Halloween Dingbats by Samuel Casal

1. Choose a theme of some sort and accumulate some related raw visual research on your blog. The theme can be very loose and fun. For example: "abstract pattern designs," "monsters," "random stuff that I've drawn for no good reason," "famous biscuits of the middle ages," "angry old people," "doodles," "pseudopods n' such," "goat referendum," "body parts and organs," etc. Use the theme choice to help you, not hinder you. If you're not one to enjoy thinking up themes ahead of time, just make stuff and think about a theme after you're into the project. Also, don't be afraid to let your theme evolve/change as you create your dingbats!

2. Create a Flash Library of 26 symbols related to your theme!

3. Use your library to create an organized layout of your symbols and export it as .png.

4. Create a set of 3 collages (see example by Samuel Casal, above) using your dingbat symbols and export these as .png's.

5. As usual, post all of this fragrant goodness to your blog.

Due date: Wednesday, January 20, 9:00 a.m.

Here is a link to the demo videos taking you through the basics of drawing and symbol making in Flash. Victory!

Art 349 Comics Assignments & Schedule

Let 'em rip. For Wednesday, October 6, do one of the following:

1. A 4 panel strip.
2. A 1 page comic.
3. A free-form narrative drawing (a la Maurice Sendak). This can be multi-page if you want.

For class, we'll discuss developing an approach to the visual side of things (I think the technical term for this is "art"). We'll check out Scott McCloud's pyramid, page templates, and thumbnails.

For Monday, October 11, we'll talk about lettering, typography, page layout, speech bubbles and the like.

For Wednesday, October 13 you'll present your project proposals to the class. Use the guidelines for the Art 450/496 projects. Make sure your proposal is entirely on your blog as that's what I'll be evaluating. Bonus: it'll be much harder for you to lose or forget to bring with you once it's on line. The only thing that could stop us would be some kind of computer/network outage, but that will never happen.

Heads, you lose

We'll critique your jump pieces in class on Wednesday. A quick note: 400 pixels wide seems to be about the maximum width for embeded .swf files in the blogspot blogs. Bigger widths wreck the layout. If you're working on a bigger piece you can either:
1. Not embed the swf, but post a still with a link to the .swf file.
2. Make a mini-version using the edit multiple frames onion skin option. (Save a copy BEFORE you do this--it can go hilariously wrong.)

Here's a link to the headsy.fla file above. And here's the code:

// headsy.fla ActionScript 2.0 by Miles Inada
// demonstrates how one button can control several movie clip timelines.
// the head movie clips have stops on frame 1 of their timelines.
// the body movie clip is looped and has a still rest frame on frame 40.

but01.onRelease = function(){
head1Ani.gotoAndPlay(2);
head2Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head3Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
bodyAni.gotoAndStop(40);
}

but02.onRelease = function(){
head1Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head2Ani.gotoAndPlay(2);
head3Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
bodyAni.gotoAndStop(40);
}

but03.onRelease = function(){
head1Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head2Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head3Ani.gotoAndPlay(2);
bodyAni.gotoAndStop(40);
}
//this button is placed over the figure's head to reset all movie clips to 1
clearButton.onRelease = function(){
head1Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head2Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
head3Ani.gotoAndStop(1);
bodyAni.gotoAndPlay(1);
}

Art 351 Weekend Assignment

1. Create a timeline-jumpin' interactive piece. We'll critique these on Wednesday 21.

2. Go to another place you've never been before n' blog it. You could also add photos, drawings etc. to your post.

3. Find and post a link to a cool Flash site. It could be a tutorial on how to do something or just a cool site that uses some kind of interactivity--

4. Blog a bit about your advent calendar thinking.

All of this is due by Wednesday, January 21.

Duh - Monday, Jan 12 plan

Hmm the blogger image upload problem seems to be over. Huzzah. Okay, for Monday we'll:

0) Talk color and Kuler
1) Keep rolling on the secrets and mystic darkness of Flash animation.
2) Make some buttons.
3) Work on uploading .swf files
4) Maybe get some interactivity goin'
5) Talk about your writing assignments.

p.s. I recommend allowing anonymous comments as people won't have to register to comment on your blog.

Art 351 Interactive Studio- Assignment 1

Okay lads and lasses--

1. Start ein Blog. Link to this blog.
2. Discuss interactivity.
3. Write a blog post on our discussion. Include images and/or links.
4. Go to a place you've never been before and write about it. Post that writing on le blogue.
5. Begin your design for an advent calendar. If you don't know what one is, look it up. We'll discuss it further on Wednesday, the 7th.

Art 450 and Art 496 Capstone--Fear The Reaper

Okay kids--
We'll meet next Wednesday the 14th at 2:30 or Thursday the 15th at 2:30, depending on which section you're in. You'll bring the following to that class:

A written description of your project including:

0. A working title for your project.
1. A one sentence description of your project.
2. A one paragraph description of your project.
3. A one page description of your project.
4. A description of your specific products of study or deliverables that you will be creating for your project.
5. Visual and/or written research for your project. Stuff done by other people.
6. Treatment visuals for your project. Stuff done by you.
7. A written description of specific technical and research issues you will need to address during the course of your project.
8. A timeline of your project. When you will be doing all of this good stuff. You must include specific DEADLINES (for example: "January 27th", not "some time in January."
9. A blog containing all of the above. You will also keep track of your activity here. If you do something for your project, blog it.
10. Your magic sunshine. See you then. If you have questions about any of this, ask me or post a comment. I will check it. Ask earlier rather than later. I'll post our meeting schedule here as well.