Genki Desuka?!

2009-12-11T06:24:00.001-08:00

So...i haven't written anything on here in a long while. Mainly because no one reads it. So just in case anyone does read it here are some facts:

- I started this blog because i had to for a Graphic Design class.
- I rarely keep journals/blogs/diaries of anything. However i think i should start.
- I have posted random rants so i may seem like an angry/negative fellow but i assure you i am not. =] Well, most of the time anyway...
- I just learnt how to tie a tie today! =D
- And...i can be quite boring at times. =(

Well...thats it!

Industrial Design... A massive waste of time.

2009-08-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

Here's why:

Good news: Its fun and you get a buzz from seeing things you've designed go from the concept stage through to the production stage.

Bad news: You'll never make it to the good news stage...well, maybe only the fun part. Maybe.

"...the design industry also has an abnormally high under-employment rate."

- Awesome!

"Starting salaries for a graduate designer fall at the bottom end of graduate salaries. The average salary for an adult designer with five years experience is currently (2006) slightly below the average adult wage in Australia."

- So, after 4 years of doing a Bachelors of Industrial Design i have to be in the work force for a further 5 years to just be slightly below the average adult wage? LMAO?

"In the absence of government regulation (which is highly unlikely), there is nothing to stop people with no training jumping into an already overcrowded market."

-Shit, i didn't even know you didn't have to have qualifications to be a designer! I should've just done something else, taught myself some 3d modelling shit and applied for design jobs... -_-

"...frequently require working long hours and hours outside of normal working time. If time pressures and working flexible hours are not for you then maybe design is not the right profession."

-Lol design is not the right profession for you? I think everyone who wants to make a decent living fall under this category.

Quotes taken from the Design Institute of Australia: http://www.dia.org.au/content.cfm?id=104

Website Link

2009-06-04T07:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, here's the link to my website:

Design Documentation

2009-06-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, first of all, I am not much of a blogger. As you can easily tell, as this is my first entry since who knows when. Pretty much this entry is to detail the steps I have taken to create my website. I don’t want to bore you too much so I’ll go over as briefly and succinctly as possible.

First of all, as a refresher I am doing the website vgmconerts.com and focusing on their upcoming concert Symphonic Fantasies. Essentially the music being played is from games produced by Square Enix. With that said, I can assume that game enthusiasts will be a major audience. However anyone who loves beautiful compositions will also enjoy the music being performed. Unfortunately you can’t please everyone, so in order to establish a proper theme for the website I decided that I would target it more towards gaming enthusiasts.

Seeing as these people love their games, it is inherently linked with technology. That is to say that generally these people will have pretty good hardware in terms of computers and a myriad of other gadgets. So…what is the new revolution in computer monitors? Wide Screens! That’s right! Considering people will mostly be viewing websites on computer monitors, this helps decide what resolution to make my website. I decided to go with a 1280x900 resolution because it accounts for 30% of users. (http://www.noamdesign.com/Web-Design-Blog/screen-resolution-statistics/)

With the foundation set, it is now time to begin designing! Yay!

I created a mood board to collate images that would relate to my website. Things I could draw inspiration from. Below is said mood board:

[insert mood board here]

From these images I devised a background I desired and a possible layout. I done some quick hand sketches so I could have a better visual on it.

I was pretty happy with the concept at the time. I really wanted to put my own artwork into it, however that involved a lot of drawing. I bit the bullet and decided to give it a shot.

So, I done some quick sketching and fleshed out the characters in the poses I wanted. These are actual Square Enix Characters whether they look like it or not lol…. My drawing skills aren’t that leet. The guy leaning is meant to be Cloud from Final Fantasy, the guy with his body facing away with long hair is Sephiroth, the girl playing the piano is Aeris and the guy with his back turned is Zack. In the game they’re all, I guess, fighters, so in order to make it seem more formal I decided to attempt to dress them up in formal wear.

In the end I scanned them into photoshop and tried to paint them, however it didn’t turn out very well at all… =(

Then, when I thought all hope was lost I was inspired by photoshop matte painting. (http://www.seb4d.com/tutorials/Mattepainting/mattepainting_english.htm) This tutorial gave me motivation to modify images to suit my needs. So to stick with the original concept of having a beach like background, characters in the foreground etc. I searched for a nice landscape picture.

Which I then photoshopped, using the clone stamp to get rid of the mountains. Played around with the saturation and light, and added the characters plus a piano and violin. Also modifying their saturation and light to match the background. I decided to paint clouds around the airship at the top of the image to make it really seem as though it were in the clouds. For the violin, I just used the clone stamp to make it look as though it got washed ashore. The piano kind of looks like its on fire, but its not! >_<>

In this next image I have used the dodge tool to produce light coming from the clouds. Kind of like rays of light and added the title. The font I used was ChopinScript and I wanted to add a windy effect to it, so that it somewhat blended in with the clouds. To achieve this I just used the smudge tool to modify it

Finally I added shadows to the objects in the image. I didn’t believe the girl fitted in very well with the rest of the image due her seeming very light in comparison to the other objects. So I used the burn tool to modify her, also to add the shadows.

Now to add buttons and a text area. I made the text area the same way I done the title. I just drew a rectangular box in another layer, copied the selected area and pasted it onto this new layer. I then made it lighter and smudged it. For the buttons I used the same font as the title to keep it in theme. They’re rollover buttons so that when the user mouse overs a button it adds an effect shown in the image below.

The End! So, that’s the story of how I came to design my site the way it is.

Dell can go to hell!!

2009-03-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

So... I recently purchased a Dell XPS630 for my brother. Got the extended warranty and some extra nifty things, like a blue ray player and a giant 23" monitor. Computer was running great when i first booted it up. Then....

Got home from catching up with a friend, tried to boot it up and...nothing. The computer locked up straight after getting into the windows screen. Waited, and waited. Still nothing. So i performed a hard reset. After which the computer began working properly, yay. But not for long....

Decided to test its legs by playing some games on it. Was all going great. Then all of a sudden the damn thing just dies. Literally, it shuts down with no warning as if the power had been cut. Which is what my initial reaction was. I mean, hey, a 5 hour old brand spanking new computer won't just die on you right? WRONG!!

I thought maybe the fuse in the psu triggered it to cut power so that means i just need to flick a switch on the back of the psu. Nope, wrong again. There is no switch... I proceeded to unplug the computer and plug it in to see if that would make a difference. Nope. Ok, how about resseting the bios? Nope, wrong again.

So, after browsing the glorious interweb searching for fixes on google and forums, i came to the conclusion that either the motherboard was dead or the psu was dead. Most likely the latter. What does this mean?

"Genki desuka?"
"No i am fucking not genki today!".

Now i have to call the crappy tech support which i have a really, really hard time understanding due to their extremely strong accents and the fact that their condescending sons of bitches. Herer's an example of some of the questions they will ask:

"Is your computer plugged into a power socket?"
"Is the power cable properly connected to your pc?"
"Is the power cable properly connected to your power socket?"
"Is your monitor plugged in?"
"Is your monitor plugged in to the proper slot?"

Yes, yes, yes, yes and fucking yes! I am not a fucking retard who just came from the stone age you fucks! After which i will get a tech guy to come and replace whatever the hell it is they deem the cause of my woes. And hopefully i will be a happy chappy.

Whats the moral to this story? DON'T BUY FROM DELL!! If you do expect a myriad of headaches and stressful times. Don't say i didn't warn you.

Did i mention that it was only about 5 hours old?!?

Design Reference.

2009-03-14T21:08:00.001-07:00

First of all...i sure hope the submission date is wrong in the Unit Outline (Monday 11th of March week 4) cause i'm pretty sure that Monday Week 4 is the 16th. If i'm wrong then f&%*!!!

Ok...seeing as i will be doing a game based music site (http://vgmconcerts.com) i decided that to capture that aesthetic i should look into some websites based around games. Well, here they are:

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Final Fantasy Online
Gamefaqs
Ichigos
World Of Warcraft

The first site is the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children site which i was amazed by, with all the fancy flash menus and animations. Its a site that i will never forget because of its aesthetic appeal, functionality and coolness level! The first time the site loads, the main page materialises onto the page! How awesome!!

This is the home page of the Advent Children website. The buttons are floating next to the characters head and they move around depending on where your mouse is. Each button has its own unique animation when you mouse over it giving a level of depth. As you can see (above) the highlighted button has lit up whereas all the other ones are still grey.

This menu is a list of characters. Each character has their own portrait, and the menu spins. When you mouse over one of the portraits they all stop spinning and the portrait becomes highlighted. The great thing is that it is a completely different style of menu to the home page which was an unexpected but pleasant change.

Second! Is the Final Fantasy Online website (FFOnline for short) an unofficial website created by fans for fans. It has some really good content a really nice layout with good ergonomics in its navigation and readability.

The site has a really attractive layout, the imagery and colours used are great. The layout makes it very easy to navigate through the website, with all the main categories listed at the top. The roman numerals at the top indicate which game it directs you to (Final Fantasy I through to X). The text is very easy to read. I effing hate those websites that use crappy fonts with crappy colours that make your eyes bleed trying to comprehend what matter of dribble is camoflauged amongst the background. This site, however, uses a nice choice of colours and imagery to convey to the user what each game is about with nicely sized screen shots that don't miss any details and a good readable font with a neutral colour that doesn't stab your eyes.

Pick number three my lord (reference from Shrek =P)! This website is: GameFAQs which is all about FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions) for games of all manner, from Super Nintendo's through to PS3's. Nice and simple graphics make this site very pleasant to navigate through and nothing is too overpowering. The search function, the many categories which you can navigate through make it an easy task to search for information.

All the main categories are listed at the top conventionally, along with the search bar. Each page you're on has a sub heading so you don't get lost or misdirected. The neutral blues make it easy on the eyes so you're eyes don't start bleeding. A simple layout with good graphics makes this site ergonomic, functional and aesthetically pleasing.

Number 4! This site is wonderful, find lots and lots of sheet music here. Ichigos is a website dedicated to sharing music scores for Anime and games. Very simple layout with all navigation options listed clearly to the side, with a large area to the right for displaying content framed by the site logo and navigtion menu.

Possibly has the most search function i have ever used, apart from GameFAQs. When you search for a specific music score, which is available, it actually...*drum rolls*...RETURNS WITH A POSITIVE RESULT!! OMG! How amazing! Yes, i know, its a miracle. The amount of times when i've searched for something on a website for it to only return with a negative result when i clearly know that it has what i am searching for befuddles me. Oh, and the colours and stuff are cool too.

And, lastly....the World of Warcraft website. Yes, i am an addict. No, i don't care if critisise me for it. This website is probably one of the most advanced websites i have browsed. It has tonnes of information, on top of a large forum with login functions, interactive menus, good navigation and nice graphical appeal.

The menus are expandable and collapsible which is a nifty idea, similar to when you are browsing your computers folders. Seeing as it has so many categories it NEEDS as much space saving, aesthetically appealing menus as possible. In the SS you can see that all other menus are collapsed whereas the Game Guide menu is expanded. On top of that each link opens up its own sub menu with sub categories. Very easy to browse, but due to the amount of information it sometimes takes a bit of time to find what you're looking for.

The verdict! So, what do all these sites have in common? The answer to that is:

Aesthetic appeal: All of the websites have a good level of aesthetic appeal.

Colour choice: They all incorporate colours that work well togethor, which don't make your eyes wander everywhere and go with the theme of the website.

Layout: They all have conventional layouts, some more simple then the others but in the end they all work. Make the site easy to view, look organised and make for easy navigation.

Navigation: All the sites have good navigational tools. All menus list the categories in an easy to use manner, they all display sub headings and the buttons light up, animate or do something when you mouse over so you can tell what it is you're selecting.

Site logo: They all have a giant logo. It tells you you're at the correct place. Imagine getting directions to the local Maccas, sure its on the map where you're standing but if it didn't have a Maccas logo wouldn't you be asking yourself "This is the right place yeah?".

Content: All of the websites have excellent content. They all use good fonts and colours that are soft on the eyes to make reading easier. After all, thats what text is for isn't it?

Solid thingo (you know the one that doesn't resize itself when you resize the window, yeah, that): Yes, i can't remember what its called. All the websites stay the same size regardless of how much you resize your window. I think its a great aspect of these websites due to the fact that it doesn't distort the page and keeps it how the designer intented it to be viewed.

~THE END~