Art 107
Advanced Projects, San Jose State University, Spring 2011
Peace Corps is a zero kill organization in World of Warcraft; this looks like an anti-war movement in virtual reality even though the actual war is in the real world. This is just a different way to reach out, to get attention, and to send a message. I tried to find some information on the website, but it only has the rules for gameplay on forums. The website itself does not seem to explain the reasons behind this project, so everything I know I either heard from someone or drew a conclusion after participating. So far, I only reached level three with my Night Elf Druid. Her name is Isago and she is in Peace Corps guild in Alliance fraction. Due to a lot of schoolwork, I am unable to participate as much as I would like. The overall experience of zero kill is not new to me. I love exploring virtual worlds and gathering resources. I got very interested in this project, because this is actually the way I like playing sometimes and at the same time I can participate and help out with a group project. I look forward to working on this during this summer.
Our second meeting with Danielle was very productive. She wants to make this internship fun and interesting for me as well as productive for the project. We brainstormed a bit about the artistic part of this project and decided that it would be wonderful to make a website its own climate clock. For example, it could show different states of the Silicon Valley in the background depending on the local time of day the website is viewed at. This way, the viewer would be compelled to visit the site at different times, thus come more often. The background would be hand painted which is why it certainly will take more time, and this project will probably be extended into the summer. By the end of the semester, I plan to have the body design done and at least one background painted. This way, the website will look professional and carefully designed and I will be able to add more backgrounds and content as the summer goes by.
There is some debate about the logo, because when the winner of three teams is finalized, the whole marketing look of the project will be redesigned. This is a bit of a downer for me, since it looks like the design I am working on will be there only until the end of the year. Since the project will be renamed after one of the teams, I am not sure if I should invest time into redesigning the logo at all; the feel of it should be simple, modern and clean. I will certainly try to develop a design that would satisfy the flexible requirements, but it is difficult task.
The Photoshop Clinic was a huge success in my opinion. Even though we did run out of time and didn’t go through all of the exercises that we planned, but I think everyone benefited a lot from the session. I knew that for some people computers are more difficult to understand than for others, so while helping out with the Photoshop tricks, I showed the students some shortcuts for Windows as well. In addition to showing the tricks of Photoshop, I also touched on the different logic behind solving a particular design task.
Getting positive feedback from the students felt great, but I also realized that teaching is not my cup of tea. While I can definitely do it, even be successful at it, and remain very patient with the students, I find it very tiring. After those four hours of talking and demonstrating Photoshop functions I felt as if I was working hard in a mine for two days straight. I also lost my voice, since I’m not used to talking for so long.
Today, I had a meeting with Danielle at the ZER01 office. I presented my ideas for the design of the website and she really liked them. My main concern was the logo and the possibility of redesigning it. I got a green light for redesigning the logo, so now I can proceed to the creative part of this project. After we agree on the new logo, I will work more on the design of the website. Today, we agreed that the post-apocalyptic overgrowth is a good theme for the project’s website. Also, I will incorporate San Jose electrical tower in the design, since it is an important symbol for the Climate Clock project.
Overall, I am very happy to say that Danielle was extremely pleased with the design proposal! She complimented the color scheme and pointed out how well it fits with the projects’ idea. Even though this was just a first design mock up, she said I could go forward with implementing it if I am satisfied with it. I think I could make it a little more artistic by adding a painting in the background and animated sky. The painting would be a snapshot of the post-apocalyptic Silicon Valley with plants consuming the buildings and clouds slowly flying by.
The Climate Clock of San Jose is supposed to drive awareness about the environmental impact on Earth; this is why it would be logical to go with the green design theme. I think that the postmodern overgrows on the buildings, electrical towers, and poles would fit well into the overall website design. Hopefully, this is what our future will be like because of the Climate Clock initiative.
The current version of the project’s website does not appear to match the scale and desired impact of this installation. My job is to fix this problem and produce a well-organized and user friendly website. The redesign project will consist of three main phases.
The first phase is to move the content from the old website to the new management system with some additions and changes. This phase is partially complete; all the content that I had has been moved to the new website. However, there are some empty pages that need to be filled with information as soon as possible. Additionally, the Climate Clock team decided to open the new website before the re-design was complete; this is due to the fact that they need to have the most current information available on the Internet.
During the second phase, the focus will be on the website layout design; this includes the logo, any banners or buttons, and other graphic design elements. I am working on this phase right now; I have already created a mockup design of the new website to present to the team. In order to best satisfy the team’s needs, I will offer a few design options to pick from or combine them, depending on what the client feels is best. I am still not sure if I can redesign the logo or not; I am waiting on the Climate Clock team to make this decision. This is a huge drawback, because I usually make my website designs based on the logo.
The third phase would be to implement the established design and finalize any changes that need to be made.
Last week, I worked on researching possible software solutions for the CNC Embroidery team. It seems that there is no free software for this particular machine. The most advanced solution for this issue would be PE Design 7 or 8 software. This software suit contains a set of five applications: Design Center, Layout & Editing, Programmable Stitch Creator, Design Database, and Font Creator. Design Center is suited for hand drawing the illustration and then embroidering it in four steps. At the last step, one could export the illustration to the Layout & Editing. That program is suited for the automatic generation of the illustration and composition of the image and text, which can be recorded to a mini flash card. Programmable Stitch Creator allows one to design, modify and save the inside stich of the illustration. Design Database allows the user to create and search a user friendly database of ornaments and illustrations. This database allows to preview the illustrations and to export them in different formats. Font creator allows the user to create, modify and save illustrations for fonts that can be used for the future projects. There are additional applications for the different file formats. For example, the EPS Solution and TIF Solution are for work with .EPS files and TIF font files. As far as my sculpture project goes, I am still in brainstorming stage. Just putting together construction parts of the trees in my head; the next step would be to get these ideas in sketch and draft form.
As far as my sculpture project goes, I am still in the brainstorming stage. I am just putting together the construction parts of the trees in my head; the next step would be to get these ideas in sketch and draft form. In addition, I got accepted into the Climate Clock Initiative, but not necessarily to help one of the competing teams. My job would be to develop and design the Climate Clock Initiative website. The current version of the website runs on the WordPress engine and looks like a commonly used WordPress layout. My job is to change that, to make a user friendly interface, and to add an interactive elements of the social media.
In addition to the laser, we will have access to these three machines this semester:
- CNC Embroidery
- Shop Bot
- CNC Quilter
Although I was quite surprised to see the variation in the availability of the machines, I still would like to work with the laser. Since the first time I used it, I came up with an idea of designing a sculpture out of translucent plastic that would have to be put together from small parts just like a construction set. Because laser can cut the tiniest parts, I took it even further and decided to create smaller sculpture inside of the larger sculpture. To continue with the last semester’s project, the form of the sculpture will be a tree-like and possibly equipped with illumination and motion detectors to interact with the viewers.
