Reactions to this course

I really enjoyed this course. I have always been interested and used photoshop and illustrator. Making the CD cover was a fun experience for me. I'm glad a learned the basics of Flash and web design. These skills will for sure be helpful in whatever I choose to do.

I think the lectures were superb. I think one of the best ways to improve your skills in design is to analyze amazing work that is already out there. In lecture we talked about digital media, but we were also exposed to some great work by great artists. This exposure definitely influenced my work in the lab. The youtube examples of digital media also expanded my mind as to what is possible in digital media. I think the labs were also effective. We learned step-by-step techniques in tutorial. This made it easy to get through with little complication. Our professors were very helpful with any problems we encountered.

Although the labs were done well for the most part, I don't think it is necessary for the 45 minute talk in the beginning. For instance, in lab, we would sit at the front and watch and listen to exactly what we were going to do in the tutorial. I don't feel like this is necessary - I think it is more informative to just get to the tutorials right away. This way we can have more time to play around with the applications. Ultimately I find that tutorials and playing around with the programs is the best way to learn, so if more time was dedicated to that I feel I could have mastered and understood the programs more thoroughly.

After seeing some of the innovative work in lecture and in the labs I have a much deeper appreciation for digital media. I'm now very interested in the After Effects program. Some of the work done in the program is really interesting to me and now I want to learn how to use it. Working on the projects throughout the semester has definitely given me more confidence in the ability to create. Using the knowledge I learned in this course I feel like a can make posters, CD covers, flash animations and websites a lot easier.

The most important thing I take away from this course is the knowledge of the possibilities available in digital media. Social networking, user contribution, all things new and exciting things have expanded the creative landscape in which we work. With applications that make it so easy to create and share I feel like there is a lot of opportunity in the digital world to do something unique and innovative. I think this an important perspective to have since the world is becoming shaped evermore by the digital world. With knowledge on how, why and what the web and world is changing into I feel like I am equipped to be an active and effective participant within the environment.

5 Characteristics of Web 2.0

1) Dynamic Content - an example of this 'mash-up' characteristic is Google maps and Flickr. This program combines 2 separate mediums and is constantly changing and evolving.

2) User Contribution - user contribution refers to a user's response to the web - comments on a particular media. An example of this is an Torrenting site. Before downloading a torrent, you may wish to look at the comments of the given torrent to learn if it contains any viruses or just doesn't work.

3) Social Media - Social media combines media from web users and brings it to one site. An example of this is Photobucket - a place to share your photos with anyone you wish to.

4) Online Applications - an example of this characteristic is Ryeron's 'virtual applications' where students can log in from their home and use applications like photoshop and flash

5) Harnessing Collective Intelligence - this characteristics involves the organization of information on the web. An example of this is tagging. Tagging brings common elements together, making it easier for the user to browse through particular subjects without be directed elsewhere.

Flash assignment artist's statement

Artist's Statement

Matt Hornick

I really enjoy the hybridity of music and imagery. For this Flash animation project, I attempted make my own piece that combines these two mediums.

It was one of my first times using flash, so I encountered a lot of difficulties during production. One of the my tricky things was making the buttons. Even though I only had two, the programming aspect frustrated me. I would think I followed the tutorials correctly, but they just would not do what I wanted. For instance, I would be able to click the play button but it wouldn't play the movie. I had to fool around with that for a while to get it right. Also, the button at the end to go back to start of the movie was difficult to configure.

Along with the button difficulty, I struggled to prevent the music from playing before pressing the play button. This was because the music started on the first frame. I realized that if I put the music after the play button, the song would start after pressing play. One thing I could not solve was how to have the music stop when the movie stops. At the end of the movie, everything is frozen but the music is still playing. Then when you press the go back to start button the music overlaps with the original track, which is rather annoying.

The tweening aspect of the movie I found relatively easy. The most difficult thing to do was probably the growing line in the beginning. I had to make a 'mask' to get the effect – this took a little time to figure out how to do correctly.

Overall, I really like simple animations with only a few colours, and I think I was successful in that aspect. I did not realize I was supposed to have type in my animation, and I probably would have made an entirely different movie had I known this. I had fun and learned a lot while making it, and in future productions I will try and make them a bit more interesting and interactive.

What I learned

From doing my flash assignment I learned a number of things - most of which I indicate in my artists statement. I learned how to put music into flash, how to do motion tweens, how make masks, how to make simple buttons and how to use key frames correctly. I basically learned everything about flash in this class, as I wasn't too familiar with it before this class.

I thought this poster was sort of interesting because on the word poetry. Poetry usually links together words and ideas in a small space, and this poster sort of indicate that. The letters are squished together, overlapping each other, sort of the way elements of poetry overlap each other. Other than that it is a pretty simple poster, but I think it gets the companies message across nicely.

This image uses typography effectively. The poster is promoting a scary movie, and the type goes with the theme. The red type almost looks like its dripping blood - and blood is commonly associated with death in scary movies. This choice of typography, combined with the background image create a very horrifying image.

Typography

This image uses typography in an interesting way. I think it is for some sort of animal protection group or something. The 'collage on type' effect is eye grasping. The font looks like new times roman. I don't think it is too effective as some sort of propaganda because looking at it quickly it just kind of looks like a bunch of random words together and you can only identify a theme when you look at it for more than 5 seconds.

With so much information on the web these days, we have to be careful not to consume too much 'crap' out there. I'm talking about addicting games, spending too much time on Facebook, reading non-credible articles, etc. I think it is important that modern consumers not only use the web for pure entertainment, but also for learning about and engaging in the 'real' world. Starting almost a year ago, I've made it part of my daily 'lurking' routine to watch a few videos from this educational, informative website:

http://fora.tv/

With a rapidly changing world, this website follows these changes and its effects on economics, science, spirituality, and much more.

I have an infatuation with the quick little animations in between commercials/music videos/shows on MTV. The total obscurity of them are effective in getting my attention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMhkmcvO4Qk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovLLp6qmPjY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1jbdWepq24&feature=related

I really enjoy things that 'grow'. For my interactive flash assignment I'm going to try to create some graphics like this. I will also record some music to go with the animation. The work will be a commercial for some product - a TV show, or maybe a drink or food. I think it will be a fun assignment and I am looking forward to learning new techniques in Flash to make what I want to make.