workage.

here's what the home page now looks like:

i've decided to go with a 2d illustrator kokeshi instead of a 3D one, mainly to save on time. i've also decided to make a different kokeshi for each different CSS layout, as well as changing the site logo, background, and any other elements that i can faff around with. there's also going to be a sad robot next to my flickr feed, but i've yet to make him.

and here are the info and play sections of the site:



same basic CSS, just different backgrounds. the info section is going to hold a lot more than it currently does, still thinking about what i'm going to put in there. and the play section is basically going to be a list with some small thumbnails of random things i've made for the heck of it, and as it says, there's nothing to put up there just yet.

CSS and that

although one has not been posting, one has been working.
one has been making pretty patterns:


look at me using small files!

and one has been working very hard on hand coding the CSS for the index page (resisting the temptation to be lazy in dreamweaver, i could make it all in five minutes if i wanted to but i don't want to i want to do it properly, dammit.), trying to make the layout as flexible as possible, so i can be as creative as i want to be with coming up with new layouts. thinking REALLY hard about what content i want to include and what it needs to look like to fit in with possible future layouts. thinking about what i want to do with my twitter feed, trying to get my head around flashr (me no likey actionscript), and screaming at the college computers when the links don't work properly or when browsers wont refresh my page properly, making me think my CSS is wrong.

i'm glad the site is finally starting to get past the conceptual stage, and is finally taking shape. there's still alot to be done but i feel like i'm getting somewhere now.

here's what the layout looks like so far:



i don't know where the little patterny idea came from really, i think it's my little obsession with origami paper. i've always like patterns i just never thought that i'd make them really. these are mostly based on my small collection of origami paper, simplified a lot.

mmm... pixels.

i've also been working on a little 3d kokeshi doll to hold a sign with my twitter feed inside it. or a thought bubble of something. i was originally going to try to make a pixel art one, but i've been missing maya recently so i thought that i'd give 3d a try.

here she is so far:



i'm going to doodle my ideas over this render later, then i can build her up some more.
and since i'm currently considering entering this competition it could come in handy.

live brief evaluation (or i'll be glad when this is over)

The main thing that I think of when I think of this brief is having far too many ideas and things to learn and nowhere near enough time to carry it all out. I really wanted to try to stretch the brief as far as I could, to really take my web skills further and see what else I could do instead of just a nice layout and working links.

My first ideas were very much wanting to show the mix of the real and virtual in my life, and not really concentrating on the everyday boring routines but looking at the traces left by my scurrying around the place and the weird things in my head, which naturally affect my perception of the outside world. I was also interested in the idea of leaving traces on web pages, which found it's way out in my new addiction to twitter, which I started using as a tool to track my thoughts about just about anything and also my ideas and research for the project.

I also started using myspace and facebook more as it was suddenly classifiable as work since it was an example of “web 2.0”, although I didn’t end up using them in my project at all.

The final product is something like my original idea but not. It’s a lot simpler than I had originally planned, my original idea was to have lots of random pages and having them all interlinked, almost a representation of my mind or memory. The final product is still pretty random, I tried to keep the text to a minimum apart from the pop ups, I wasn’t about to explain myself or anything on there, I wanted it to be confusing.
Some of my ideas such as the singing kokeshi and myspace feeds had to be abandoned as I was running out of time and it was making everything far too complex. I had to simplify my ideas into something I could actually make instead of something that I couldn’t get to work.


I think in the second year of this course I will definitely be doing interactive design, as much as I like motion graphics and am starting to like video I’m starting to become obsessed with the possibilities of interactive design. After looking into the twitter API and getting an idea of how web 2.0 works and how different sites can be mashed up together and used as well as looking into the work of Brendan Dawes and John Maeda which focuses on the more experimental uses of digital media. At the start of the year I was still interested in web design but wanting to see if I would be good at anything else, and after messing around in other areas for a bit I’ve found that I’m more obsessed with web design than ever, as everything else I’ve enjoyed this year can easily be brought into web design, which is something I tried to do by using video and second life in my website as well.

meet yoshimi

she now exists in two realities.

i have fallen in love

and discovered that my little geisha key ring which inspired the little geisha things i made in SL is actually a kokeshi doll.

THEY'RE SO FRIGGIN CUTE.

learn more about the pretty doll

oooooooompfff...
this is why i should stay off ebay. i keep using it to substitue the fact that i can't travel to japan.

i also bought some pretty origami papers ^_^
for inpsiration / artistic purposes.
it's perfectly legitamate spending of my student loan.

i want an aibo :(