The extreme winter sports site that I have been working on for the past five weeks is coming along great. The design has been approved and we’re moving on to the programing phase. Frostbitesports.com will be launched on May 1st, following a media night. I’m quite excited about the project as it’s looking great and it’s a lot of fun to work with great content.
I’ve been working with Flash and a webcam to allow users to “paint” a piece of art using a sort of motion capture. It seems tough to get a real accurate motion capture by just analyzing pixels, but it’s the way I’ve gone for this experiment.
A few weeks ago my department head asked if any one was interested in designing and developing a web site for a senior photo class next quarter. I was quite intrigued with the thought and decided to meet with the students and their professor to see what they were requiring. The students have spent all winter quarter photographing and gathering video of nine different extreme winter sports such as skiing, snowmobiling, and snowboarding.
After seeing a few videos (they’re using a helmet camera in some of the footage) and some photos, I became just as excited as the photo students. The site will showcase the nine different sections they’ve focused on, with a slide show with audio and video for each section. They’d also like to show the different footage at full screen, which I think will really help the viewers focus on the content of the site and have the web site its self stay in the background.
They’d also like to have the local media involved for the launch of the site in May. I’ve excited for this as well, as I hope to drive a lot of traffic to the web site through promotion in the media as well as possibly submitting it to award sites.
Finally, after a long week of staying up until 5 a.m. everyday, my portfolio site is finally up. The weird thing about this portfolio site, is that it’s the first time I’m quite happy with the design and programming. I kept it nice and simple on the design side. It was fun looking through all the work I have created over the past 4 years. I’ve grown tremendously. Thinking back to high school, I just wanted to make cool websites with nice graphics and make the internet a better place. I never dreamed I’d know how to use as many technologies as I do now such as Flash, 3D, and motion graphics. I also think about how choosing RIT was the best decision I’ve made so far.
Anyways, check out the new portfolio, feel free to comment on it on here or drop me an e-mail. Send it to everyone you know too!
In Adam Smith’s QTVR class, I worked on a mock up site that would showcase the different museums in the Rochester, NY area. The site would allow users to see a 360 view of the museums while learning about what the museum has to offer. View the site Here.
In Jason Arena’s dynamic persuasion design class, I mocked up a design for a photo gallery. The site would allow users to upload their images, tag them for different categories, and write a description. They could then share their photos with friends and family by sending them a url to their specific page.
For my final project for Jason Arena’s dynamic persuasion class we had to create something that was viral. I decided to do a motion graphics piece to tie in with the breast cancer website I created last winter that made it to the Adobe 2007 ADAA competition as a semifinalist.
In my experimental new media class, I’m working with Flash and web cams. I want to create an application that involves the user and turns them into the artist. I’ll be using motion capture in Flash using a web cam and allow the user to paint on the screen with their hands & body. I’d also like to allow them to save out their “masterpiece” and email it to themselves or friends. There is a good amount to do, but the design is coming along quite well.
This winter quarter I decided to take a bit of a breather from Flash and code and decided to take a class in the graphic design field. It’s nice to get a bit of a breather every now and then and work on something that I don’t do much anymore: drawing. For the class, we were each assigned a different non-profit organization to work with. I was given PETA.
One of the projects was to design a poster that represent a message our “client” would want to convey using our own style. We started selecting different imagery to give us a decent amount of varying content to pick from. One of my images was a little mouse with a giant robot arm above him. I thought this image perfectly reflected the message PETA wants to convey: the defenseless animal and the human using them.
After look at different collateral they have, I thought taking the design in a 50′s style design would work great, along with the bright, cheery color scheme I had created. After sketching up the design, illustrating it, and refining, I came up with a poster I was quite happy with.
