Second life

SEcond life is a computer program where you can live in a virtual world with your own personal, customized character in which you control! Second life is used by millions, making you capable of changing everything about yourself and interacting with others online with a fully new you.

Just like the real world, your able to explore the surroundings, shop, interact with others, make friends and hang out, and virtually everything. Considering the endless possibilities of customization to your avatar, you can create a character that can look just like you or anything possible.

The controls of the avatar are mch more complex than any other RPG game, and it takes getting used to. Making you easily spotted as a newbie, crashig into trees, and walking into people! The areas in the game are endless, and the game is trully like a second life, with the 3-d details and endless adventures with other characters that aren't computer controlled, but controlled by other people around the world aswell.

I ran inot this game by searching computer addicts. You know, the ones you always make fun of for having no life, and staying in the basement and rarely coming out. Second life popped up, and I can understand why. The game is literally and new version of your life, and poeple take the game seriously. The majority just join the game to look around the place and explore. While others take the game seriously, spend their actual money on clothing, and spend the majority of the day on Second life.

Good VS Bad Websites

Relating what a good website is composed of and what a bad on has, I'll relate 2 contrasting good and bad sites that share different characteristics that make them appealing and revolting.

Apple.com is an example of a good website. Straight up. its simplistic, gets straight to the point and has a large image that focuses you to the middle, with an appealing high quality photo. 

The website follows Simons Law, a law that has negative blank space which makes you focus on the difference contrasting colours. The text is bold and short, and gets straight to the point. The site is straight forward on what its theme is about, there is a top navigation bar that links to other related pages. The site also has no flashing, crappy, amateur gifs to catch your attention; because the site is already eyecatching enough. This site will appeal to all ages. The site being simplistic, makes you notice the font and images better, because most of the page is white, the navigation, image andfonts stand out more, making the user more calm and not' "overstressed"The "Ipad" gets you sucked into the site even mre, and by simply clicking on the image, you get a link to the info page about the Ipad, making it simple, and not needing over 9000 links just to get to the info area. With these reasons, I declare that Apple.com is a good, appealing, modern site. 

Muchmusic.com would be my example of a bad webite because its too busy and makes your eye travel too much- this is because of the ads, pictures, and background that make it confusing.

. Instead of having a blank space as the border. instead there ended up being another image, even more detailed making you focus more on it than the actual point of the site. There is limited information on the site, even if it was a short sentence it would still be better than 2 or 3 phrases scattered around the site. There is a lot of flashing and gifs around making you focus less on the actual point of the site. This site would only appeal to the older youth, not to any adults, or elderly, meaning the site is limited to only teen users. Many pop ups happen while going trough the navigation bar above, which I consider annoying. There are many different colours used, unlike the good website reference Apple.com, which only uses greyscale simple colours which make images stand out. Instead, the images are blended in the background, because the whole site stands out, not the images and readings you want them to notice. However, considering this site is targeted more to the youth of today, making it, "hip" this site would be appealing to teenagers. However, relating this site to Apple.com, this site would be considered less desirable to the internet users.

Refrences:

http://www.muchmusic.com/ 

http://www.apple.com/ 

My Inspiration

My artistic talents is inspired by the styles by an artist I truly find a creative, imaginative genius- Tim Burton. Creator and designer of award winnng movies, like, "Nightmare Before Christmas" and,"Corpse Bride", his style is a inspiration to me, and is what creates the designs I do today.

   His style consists mainly of curvy simple shaped characters, with much detail added to the igures, like clothing, of facial features. His characters are usually clay created, and his choice of fashion varies, from the early 1900's like corsets to imaginative, realism worlds.

Not only his art is strange and fictional, but also the stories he produced or designed. One of his movies that is one of my personal favourites, known as, " Big Fish" was created by him. The story is so strange and doesn't seem to have a very straight forward script or introduction of what the story is really about. One reason I really like the movie :)

His art inspires me because even thought his art is somewhat, disturbing... his art has made my art much like is. Maybe in the future I will also use clay animation, like his.

Out of all the drawingsa I usually do, my art is best related to Time Burton's work. I really enjoy doing artwork like his, and I think that I will even take his styke and use it for my future. Meaning, when I finally get into grapghic designs, I'll dedicate my style of work to him- and his expertise. This is why Tim Burton is my art inspiration.

Photo adjustments

When taking pictures with your camera, you can always fix the picture on your computer by adjusting it to your liking, by fixing the contrast, hue, saturation, etc. Before you adjust the photo, the picture isn't as outstanding as it could be, by being too dull, or the lighting isnt how you want. Before, photos would be taken numerous times, until they get the perfect picture. Now, technology has reached the point where photo adjustments are a snap, that even a 7 year old can do it. Computers work differently than others, some you would need a certain program to fix pictures, like photoshop, or the computer would already come with a program that can adjust photos. An example would be Microsoft XP, with built in photo adjustments. It can fix the hue, saturation, contrast, red eye, crop, etc. Macs also come with photo adjustment programs. However, by downloading a program which is already meant to edit pictures. Photoshop can adjust, fix, colour, draw, whatever you want on your photo, their would be much more of a variety to choose from. These programs are better used for expert photographers, but amateurs can also use the program, only actual photographers would buy a better version of the program, with much more variety and uses.

a proposed wall or barrier of sand designed to stop desertification in Africa.

Well known architect, Magnus Larsson proposed an idea to limit the growth of desertification in Africa by creating a 3,728 mile wall of sand from Djibouti to Mauritania. This wall will help protect the trees that were also lined to prevent the desertification spread, known as the, "Great Green Wall". The sand dunes would be a source of shelter, shade, protection for the trees and the villagers, and water collection point.

These sand dune walls would be created by fusing sand grains together with Bacillus pasteurii, a bacterium found in wetlands that produce a natural cement material known as calcite. This cement material would hold the sand together, and keep it solid

23 Countries in Africa decided to use sand dunes into shelter from sandstorms. These barriers are made from nature- bacteria and sand. This wall will help the villagers living in these harsh conitions with shelter, shade and a place which keeps them safe from the storms above. The price of making this shelter would be $90/cubic meter, for the cement, sand, gravel, and water.

Larsson's image is more than just a physical wall, but atempts to make it beautiful and artistic. Acting as both a wall and barrier, this desertification prevention project will hope to commence shortly, as desertification is becoming more of a concern worldwide.

Kinetic typography assignment

Today I have finally finished my typography assignment! it took weeks to do a simple 30 second animation of any media which has words in it. This animation was done on flash.

The media I used was the song "Smyphonies" by Dan Black. The 34 second song clip I used is a calm soothing song. So the text I used was simple, stringy wavy text (not hardcore bloody, bold text) the background i used was a simple light blue and green background. But my background wasn't completely plain. I added moving circular objects in the background to make it more interesting. I used about 5 different texts in making my clip, and used over 100 layers! (it took a long time labelling them) i used many tweens, both shape and motion. I also used as much creativity as possible.

My clip represents simplicity, considering smyphonies is a simple calm song. That is why my clip had simple colours, background text, and wasnt very full. I kept it as clean as possible so the typograhy would match the music, which is the main purpose of the assignment.

At the end, the final result came out perfect! with some minor issues, i soon solved them and finished before the deadline. However, if i could change one thing, i would somehow tried to make the animation more eye popping and interesting. But considering my song is simple and cam, it would be hard to add more media to it, without making it to cluttered and messy.(it wouldn't really match the song, considering my clip represents simplicity)

Some problems I ran into in flash was how flash has difficulty n doing shape tweens. When i create a shape tween(even very simle ones) it studders and messes up. My solutions which I found was to add shape hints, just one added fixed it more, however not completley. Otherwise than that, i had no other problems, and my clip went by smoothly.

Alcie in wonderland

I went to the new movie "Alice in Wonderland" the first day it came out. This new version is very different from the cheerful Disney version that was made back before the 21st century. This new version, was not only real people (not cartoon) but less happy and cute like the other version. Considering cartoons are less detailed and are more simple, compared to the computer graphic art generation we live in today, that can create the most out of this world creature and make it real before our eyes.

Now since we are living in the 21st century, we are remaking movies like crazy (king kong, war of worlds, Batman/dark knight, etc.) and now remaking Alice in Wonderland. This new version has a  less cheerful perrspective related to the Disney version. Considering The orginal Alice book was meant to be less cheerful and more mysterious.

I loved the new version, the detail put into the characters was outstanding. For the two characters, Tweedle dee and Tweedle dumb, they were made by to large bodies and the face was a real persons face but just place on top of a large circle. The characters were completley changed from the older version. Also the characters in the new version have been given more human like features. Such as the little white rabbit. Who has been given human eyes, and the face seems to be shaped more like a human face.

Contour Drawings in cyberarts

Currently in Mrs. Mcfayden's cyberarts class we are working on a realism drawing, by actually drawing what we see, with many different ways of drawing the contour and shading. The assignment first started by drawing quick sketches of poses, but in blind (not watching what we draw on paper, but the object itself) these quick sketches lasted certain amounts of time, usually from 30 to 2 seconds!

After those, we moved on to drawing skulls. We were challennged to really look at all the detail in the skulls, and draw what we see. Once we became experts, the real assignment came. We were seated in front of a very large display of random items.

Our assignment was to draw 3 sketches of segments of what we saw, and a final 4th drawing of what we wanted to use for our large final piece. After we did the 4th sketch, we moved on to the large canvas plane, and worked on our final piece with value(shading). The final however, has many rules. We have to make sure the resulting image isn't static (boring, drawing in the middle, doesn't make your eyes move, etc.) We have to make the piece interesting and the value has to be done well, and in a certain area of the piece, the value has to be extremely detailed, to really catch the eye.

Presently, I am on the step where I add value to my piece. So far it is turning out good, but it will take time before I finish.

How to import images to flash

Tutorial:
Flash macromedia is a flash software that has the tools to create animation. However from past experiences using flash, it is more used for amateur cartooning, and not the software for actual cartoonists. Actual cartoonists (there job) use a more updated and more detailed easier to use software flash version, than the one we use in cyberarts. However, the flash version we use is more srtaight forward to use, and has simple features that is very easy to learn.

Considering this is a animation software, it focuses more on animation, then the detail in the object being used to animate, (so no dodge tool, burn tool, and artistic special effects are in flash) however, if you have the photoshop illustrater (or other photoshop software) you can export files to flash from illustrater.

To do this, just create a new file on illustrater then create the image using the illustrater tools, which have a much wider variety than flash tools. when you finish the image, go to file, export, and save the image as a "swf" (do not forget this!). After exporting, go back to flash and import the image, then the image will appear in a new layer. This however takes much longer time than in more updated flash players for experts. This is because the illustrater images cannot be "tweend" and means to animate the image, you must change the image little by little back on illustrater and repeatedly exported to create a flash. So it is recommended not to use illustrater for flash for a very large animation project. Instead, use flash tools to create images, and if needed, use illustrater.

The West African artist El Anatsui is the creator of art made of materials that we would call garbage. His art consists of metal scraps to worn out cloths. The style and materials he uses for his artwork makes him one of the foremost contemporary artists of his generation. His trashwork has made him a worldwide hit by travelling gallery to gallery around the world.

The artwork created by Anatusui are made up of trash. This is because in his home country (Africa) seeing trash is no suprise. By using these simple everyday materials he fuses them together to create large canvases and sculpture. Anatusui says that artists are better off working with whatever their environment workups up. Obviously meaning, Anatusui does

not uses brushes and paints, but instead uses the large masses

of garbage around him, and turns it into art.

This artwork known as "Hovor" is made up of thrown away aluminum and copperwire. made in 2003

Anatusui said that he creats his art with what he finds with his surroundings. What I believe he is trying to communicate is that since he only uses his surroundings for materials, he must be communicating that garbage is the only material he can find, and lots of it. Considering every piece he has made is made up of garbage, he knows that there is a lot of it. Also he describes how anything can be beautiful, we see garbage as revolting and want to get rid of it ASAP. However, with Anatusui's creations, we see a different perspective of garbage, which we would have never seen before.

I appreciate Anatusui's work because he really does reuse garbage in a much larger and more beautiful way than other people can do. It is inspiring how he can turn a heap of trash into something large and beautiful, also saving that trash heap from going to a garbage dump. I can't truthfully say that my artwork relates to his, because I was unaware that anything, if we put time in it, can be beautiful (even garbage!) However, now since I know, I decided to be a participant in the ROM (The Royal Ontario Museum) of creating our own art pieces, now us using Anatusui's art as a reference.

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