Final Website Link

Here it is!

Interactive Project- Histography.io

Histography is a singular site that is full of important historical events. Each dot on the main page is a different event, and mousing over it will expand the dot to reveal which event it is. The time frame can span as far back as -13.8 Billion and stretch all the way to 2015.

http://www.histography.io/

This is actually pretty fun to play with. You can shift the number of years it covers, thus changing the number of dots you can see and investigate further. The dots flow in like organized bugs when you shift the Year bar, and overall the site looks very neat and cute.

Assignment 3 Critique Suggestions

• Adjust eye color choices/blink line
• Experiment with themes/meanings
• Add space between the eyes
• Play with directions the sketch takes your eye
• Maybe make door open/house flip/add more movement upon clicking

Messing with p5.js

function setup() {
  createCanvas(800, 800);
}

function draw() {
background(204);
rect(100, 100, 300, 300);
strokeWeight(4);
rect(125, 250, 100, 100);
rect(300, 115, 75, 100);
ellipse(360, 150, 10, 10);
triangle(400, 410, 100, 410, 250, 525);
line(50,100, 470, 400);
}

Critique notes

• One thing to do, the primary thing, is to better understand the proper format for divs so that coding errors aren't an issue.
• Find/format better images so that the theme sets in
• Better text size/color options, that way it looks more appealing. Also keep the line/word ratio. (10-12 words per line)

The Garden of Forking Paths

This was an interesting story.

While reading this it was a little difficult to apply it to what we're learning in class immediately, but upon rereading it, it becomes a little clearer. The book that man wrote was his labyrinth. He'd written it to be one, to have deep paths in the ways you could read it, almost like those "choose your own adventure" stories.
In a way, that's what the structure of some websites become. They can be confusing and difficult to navigate, yet that's just how the site works. Then again, a labyrinth doesn't always have to be so difficult, so perhaps its just the way it's interpreted by the user.

Psychogeography

"Psychogeography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasizes playfulness and "drifting"." In other words, it's the mapping of the means of freedom and exploration.

The article describes it as something that takes pedestrians off their "usual path". In a way, this can apply to people's paths online. If something is distracting enough, it can take people away from what they originally wanted to see. With building our websites, I can only assume that there shouldn't be a certain "path" for viewers to see, but they should be able to explore the site freely.

Website Building

I've been working on a website in class to act as an online portfolio or a way to extend artistic services out there. It's not as impressive as I'd like it to be, not yet. I still have a ways to go in figuring out html and css. In the meantime, I'll link it here so a preview is available for whoever is interested.

http://homepages.utoledo.edu/erice3/ 

Possible Website Design

I'm making progress with a new website for class, so here's an idea of how it'll look:

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction- Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin means to break down the views of how mass production of art works and why it works in general. To any reader, it makes sense. The more art you make, the more you'll sell, the more you'll be able to continue making your art an turning a profit for it. It's not just about the ability to make art, it's how it's done. And even further, it's not about the one piece you made and how many other different ones you can crank out, it's how much of the same thing you can produce for the masses. He references types of Printmaking, and yes, it's a valuable tactic for mass producing large amounts of similar works so that multiple people can have something they like. It's a matter of having lots of the same thing for everyone, provided they want one. With this, it makes me think of the Artist's Alley at convention centers, at least for the conventions I go to. These artists produce large numbers of singe pieces so that anyone who walks by their booth has the chance to have one if they want. The purchases happen, and they get more production funded. It's a cycle.

He talks about the impact of the art, and what its presence does. He talks about the process it took to make the original and what went into it. Every art piece has its trials and tribulations, its time taken until satisfaction, and specific materials used to get the best look. Each person is going to react differently to a particular piece, and the artist only has so much control over that. They want to convey a feel, or an "aura" as Benjamin put it. That feeling will be replicated over and over for the masses, but still bring different reactions.
With a particular piece, there's a slight risk of overdoing it or potentially liquidating the effect wanted. With so many of them around, it might end up becoming too common or unpleasant to see if brought to exposure too often. Granted, the piece doesn't always end up that way. Art pieces don't necessarily end up the same way overplayed songs do, art is entirely visual while a song can quickly become an annoying drone, a flat background noise if presented too much. Art takes purely a visual experience to begin with, which leads to more experiences upon further analysis. In short, it's harder to totally burn out an art piece, but the effect can still happen if the presentation is done "right".
However, certain pieces can be considered tradition to see and might never get old to look at. For example, those old marble statues found in Greece. They're exceptionally old and one of the most common things thought of when thinking of the term "art", yet they're considered a landmark and a stepping stone in the history of art rather than an annoyance. They give background to what we call art now. While they weren't mass produced and copied over and over (they really couldn't do that during the time period), they're still seen anywhere there's a museum, promotional work for that particular line of art, etc.

Good Example works

Three Artists I Like

1. Rebecca Sugar
- Creator of Steven Universe and previous animator for Adventure Time.
Some of their work:
https://www.gallerynucleus.com/artist/rebecca_sugar

2. Lauren Zuke
- Former Storyboard Artist/Revisionist for Steven Universe
- Unfortunately, due to health concerns and unnecessary harassment online, this artist's main art website has been deleted, as well as their many forms of social media accounts. However, a google search will show the artwork they have done that has been saved by fans.

3. Mira Ong Chua
-Storyboard Artist for OK KO.
Some of their work:
https://miraongchua.tumblr.com/

New Year, New Content!

I'm back for another semester and I'm back in business. My name is Emma Rice and this time, I'm taking a Digital Interactive Media Class, which means I'll have a bigger, better website by the time this semester is over. Hopefully that goes well.
As I've said at the beginning of class, I hope to someday get into Animation and Storyboarding for 2D animated Television shows, as I've always found that fun and something interesting to get into.

Process Synopsis

The overall idea for this Zine was one of a creative mindset.
I put a lot of effort into DnD, almost embarrassingly so. It's become a serious source of inspiration to me ever since I got into the group a little over a year ago. I always put a little bit of myself into my characters so it feels like it's me having adventures with all the characters, at least a little. Working together with my friends like that and building up our characters has been a lot of fun, so I felt like sharing that with the class for the Zine.
I had to start with the opening cover designs, the layout of the pages, the content inside, and how to adjust it so it read nice. I also had to compile art, fine-tune the story description from the campaign, and try to describe it in a way that showed just how much fun that me and the others had while playing.

Final Zine

Zine Interior Rough Drafts

These are simply a small excursive to further practice with grids and spacing to see what kind of page layout works best. In this case, it has to be a bit more final, since this leads up to the final product for the end of the semester/school year. I worked on mapping out the pages and deciding what things would go where, and in what order. The order is going to take a while to place accurately, since InDesign's "Facing Pages" feature can be a little tricky to figure out, but I at least have a idea of what to do with the content. Baby steps.
The first four pages will give information about the characters and the people that play them. The last two will have information about the latest campaign we finished as a group, how the characters progressed through it, and what the favorite, more memorable parts were. I do know that the pages as they look above are not in the correct order, that's something for me to work out later.

Importance of Columns

When using columns, it's important to understand how they can change the flow, overall look, and organization of the piece you're making. They essentially determine how readable something is.

One column is just as it sounds. Full page, standard spacing, neatly placed in the center, and typically aligned to the left (it's anyone's guess, sometimes people like to get crazy).
Two columns or more usually are used for more professional settings and can allow more information to be spread on a page if set up right. However, anything over two columns can accidentally look clunky and have the reader's eye in too many places at once, but only if their text looks "off", like if the font was too small or the font was not appropriate for column format.

(That's just how I see it, at least.)

Grid "Event" Practice

Makin' up events to advertise with more grid practice.
Man, I wish we could have an event like this in town.

The Oscars Showed Us Why Typography Matters

It is incredibly obvious now why a mistake was made during the Oscars.
Before now, I never quite understood how this kind of mistake could be made. I had originally assumed that the cards just had the name of the winner on it and nothing else. Once I heard it was a slight error on the part of the one handing out the cards, I kind of understood. However, now that I see the actual design of the card, I want to find who designed them and ask them how anyone is supposed to read the practically microscopic text at the bottom that tells you what category the name applies to. No wonder the reader had an issue onstage. The category label essentially disappears at the bottom while the name above dominates the center of the card. What makes it worse is that they prioritized the Oscars logo at the top over the word that tells you the correct category.
With a mess-up like this, it's kind of clear how it happened. Now, the question remaining is whether or not they"ll learn from their mistakes and change the layout of the card entirely.

InDesign Grid Practice

These six images were practicing using grids in InDesign, making sure we knew how to put emphasis on certain points of text or creating a kind of pattern with shapes. Fun with "balance"and making a mess with shapes, if you would.

Zine Cover Sketches

Three possible sketches for my Zine cover. Dungeons and Dragons theme for the content because I'm a huge nerd.

InDesign Practice

Messing with InDesign is rather fun. What's also fun is making up dialogue from two characters who technically don't exist yet.

Illustrator-Color Practice with Patterns

More illustrator practice. This time utilizing the Color Guides tab and focusing on which colors work well together and which ones don't.
Makes for an interesting time when playing with color and trying not to get a headache on accident because I keep staring at white for a few hours.

Illustrator- Letter Construction

More Adobe Illustrator practice. We were building letters out of basic shapes provided by the shape tool. It was a little difficult to try and decide how to structure these, since making an R typically means using multiple shapes instead of just one. It was interesting to step out of the comfort zone for this.

Illustrator- Pen Tool Type Practice

We started with Adobe Illustrator today. I've used this program before, so this was easy to get the hang of again.

How to Choose a Font

As a response to the article "How to Choose a Font", one thing is obvious. There is such a thing as choosing the wrong font for a project. It all depends on what kind of feeling you're going for, the theme. If you choose something that doesn't accurately represent the theme, you're going to end up with a really odd-looking set of information. I think that's why schools always require the use of Times New Roman for papers or official tests. It's been set as a very professional font, like a basis for what the board system will accept. It's a legible, straightforward font that doesn't have anything fancy around the edges. There are other fonts that accomplish this fairly well, such as Arial, Courier, Georgia, Helvetica, Trebuchet, and Verdana. Goofier fonts are more appropriate for childlike things, like party invitations, storybooks, or events at places like a pet shop.

I just got flashbacks to that one high school teacher who wanted her student's papers typed in Comic Sans and got a headache.

Letter Pictures

For this project, we took pictures of everyday object in the shape of letters. I arranged my paintbrushes into the letters as a different way of using them, since all my watercolor paint was left somewhere where I didn't have access to them.
The top image is those same letters used to spell out an adjective that describes my work in general.

Making Letters With Masking

This was more masking practice, and thankfully I understood it better this time. This was just an exercise to make letters out of structures in photos we took. This was fairly simple, since the uppercase and lowercase H look pretty similar when considered geometrically. There were parts of the supporting posts I had to take out or select and reposition so it would look..."normal", if anything. As it is, the lowercase H was easier to make. All it took was a masking layer over a portion of the top.

More Masking Practice

In all honesty, I had trouble with this one. We were supposed to "merge our face with something", but the tools to do so were confusing. I'll have to ask for additional help later.
This file is appropriately titled "WowReally".

To be fair, putting my face on a manatee would have been much more interesting.

Masking Practice

We got to play with Masking settings and eliminating parts of images without accidentally removing the others, sort of like selective deleting. I messed with particular images to see what I could isolate and add filters to.

Text Based Artists I like:

1) Barbara Kreuger
2) Jenny Holzer
3) Christopher Wool

These three just stuck out to me. I remember learning about these people in a previous contemporary art class, where the students researched as much detail about these artists as possible. Barbara Kruger was my favorite of them at the time.

Point, Line, and Plane

These were works I did based on Point, Plane, and Line images I took.