Condensation, part two

Carrying on …

Wednesday. The 15th of August. Nighttime.  Fancy, blurry, that-takes-me-back effect goes here.

The final class. Graphic design 9, the last in a long string of classes starting in 2006. End of the saga, like George Lucas couldn’t have done it, and usage of CGI was kept to a minimum.

We each had to create a project proposal for a social advertising campaign, with most themes being about the environment, like in my case. I had to design a campaign for the preservation of national parks and endangered species (flora and fauna). My idea was supposed to be a global thing, but the teacher wanted it (and all other projects) to be just for this country. Bummer, as I would’ve liked to create something non-specific that could apply to any place.

The online information on national parks is rather limited. While Wikipedia has plenty of information about species of any kind, I focused more on protected areas and scientific reserves. My project certainly lacked in the theory aspect because of this, but not in the graphical one. I found a nice amount of info on a few parks and a few species, and those were enough to create designs for banners, billboards, posters, ads for printed media, and even a small magazine-style bulletin for the campaign.

I also had to create the logo for it, from scratch and not based on anything. It contains leaf shapes and the color arrangement of our flag inside one of them. To its right, is the campaign’s name, A greener country. It was also the slogan for it, for radio and TV commercials, which would end with “for a greener country”. Saved me from having to come up with an original slogan, apart from the name.

Before all this, I had created another logo, which depicted a green human shape (made of two circles, and not attached to each other) hugging the Dominican flag. What a disaster that was. It looked like a pregnant person (Octo-Mom?) and no one understood it until I explained it. The teacher tried as best it could to avoid stating the obvious –that it sucked–, and said that it was too weak, that it needed strength. I was the one who suggested trying something else entirely, and she immediately agreed. This logo really, really sucked.

So, after having my new logo, making all those designs and the magazine thingy, promotional items (lighters, stickers, t-shirts, etc.) creating a script for a radio ad, a website mock-up, as well as a nice little storyboard with images that resulted from a mix of photo editing (via GIMP), recycled vector work (via Inkscape) and 3D rendering (with Blender), I went to print it all, hours before the class began. The teacher wanted it to be hardbound, like a book, but that required me to get everything done at least one day before, and I wasn’t even able to finish things on the final day. The website remained a mock-up, but it was supposed to be a working design. There was plenty of time, but I was exhausted in body and mind, and didn’t mind delivering something that was less than perfect.

As I was saying, I went to print my work long before class began. An hour and a half, or so. I figured the printing place would be nearly empty, with most students already on vacation. It wasn’t empty. There was a bunch of people there. Thankfully, I was somehow able to get my stuff printed without waiting half an hour. I was offered the choice of having my work bound, right there, but it wasn’t the type of binding the teacher wanted … just the simple binding for regular work. I declined, and instead went to buy a clear book, with 40 pockets. I chose this because the simple binding looked too regular, and in case the teacher asked me to change anything and deliver it later (so I’d only have to print the changed pages).

I ran into some trouble with the magazine thing. I couldn’t just print the pages and slide them into the book, because it would require turning it upside down all the time. So, I cut the pages out from their borders, and them bound. Then, I could easily put the magazine inside the clear book. The binding didn’t look pretty, but as long as it worked … problem solved.

There was also a CD label design, but I must have cut it too small and it didn’t reach the edges of the CD (which contained the presentation and all that the teacher wanted). I was in a rush, so I couldn’t make a test print of it at home, so I relied a bit too much on hope.

When it was all done, and those classmates who were there had also readied their work (one of them actually got it hardbound), we headed for class. While I had gone to print things early, the class was supposed to have begun by now, and we were late. But it’s a very small group, and those not with me were simply not there yet.

While crossing the street, I almost got hit by a car. I know my luck is bad, but that would’ve been a terrible thing to happen on the last day. If not for one of my friends calling me, I wouldn’t have seen the vehicle driving towards me. I joked about it afterwards, saying how much it would’ve sucked to have done all that work, only to get run over as I’m about to present.

Okay, we got the actual classroom. Not the usual classroom, but the projection room. First time since it was remodeled, that I used the projection room for something that was actually class-related. I (we?) thought the dean of Arts would be there to witness our presentation, but that wasn’t going to happen, just like the previous term. It’s strange, because Graphic Design 9 is his class, but I guess the teacher would just show him our work after we were done presenting.

I offered to present first, because I wanted to be done with it and, if I screwed up, everyone else would forget about by the time the last person presented. The projector was behaving strangely, displaying the wrong colors. My green campaign was blue and pink. We thought the projector was at fault, so we got another one. Turns out that the laptop was being evil, and had to be replaced. I ran with the evil laptop and quickly asked for a replacement. After that, things worked fine.

My presentation was probably the longest (around forty minutes, according to a classmate). I went through all the theory and through each and every logo variation and each and every design. I was going through the script for the radio ad, when I read the part about “nature sounds in the background”. At this point, some members of the audience thought it would help to emit said sounds. Gee, thanks.

At the end of my presentation, I quickly showed the website mock-up and nodded along as I heard the critique. I didn’t think too much of the quickie mock-up, which had seen few updates since the last time the teacher saw it, so I just kept nodding. I did have to defend my work against some of the comments, and had to agree with some others. I didn’t offer to provide a revised version of my work for a later date. That would’ve been crazy of me, as I wasn’t going to spend yet another night on anything else other than sleep. I did agree to complete the theory part and e-mail it to the teacher later in the week, but the design part stayed put.

When I was done, I hurried to a seat in the front, thankful that there wasn’t going to be a Graphic Design 10, which would have been too much, and I think nine levels of graphic design are too many already. If, for some reason, you’re not able to select one particular class in that long chain, you’ll add four months to your college career. It would be great it some could be taken simultaneously.

While I watched others present their work, I had the camera in my hands at all times. If not for the terrible quality of indoor shots (not to mention the weak flash), I’d have more to show for this moment. Oh, well.

Each presentation was shorter than the previous one, and mine held the record for the longest one. When the presentation was done, everyone walked out of the projection room, while I further tested my camera’s ability to capture an indoor scene at night. Suddenly, one of my classmates saw me and said “Hey, group shot!”. Then, everyone walked in again. Great.

Ideally, I would have taken care of the photo-making, not minding that I wasn’t going to be in the picture, but someone (the teacher?) went outside and got an employee to work the camera so the group shot would be complete. The camera’s built-in flash doesn’t reach very far and, while I thought I could fix the shots when I got home, there was little I could do to salvage them.

When all this photo thing was done, we finally went outside, good-bye to the teacher and stayed there for a bit. Knowing that this would probably my last time being in college at night, I kept making some shots of the place outside. Difficult to keep a steady hand, and the flash helps little.

While I was doing that, the others were talking about getting together on the weekend or something like that. Not interested (in part because going out doesn’t agree with me), I ignored pleas from others, who wanted me to promise that I would go. Most I can say for such things is “maybe”, and I just wanted to get home.

Finally, the others were on their way, while Maru and I walked to the south gate. She’s a long-time friend of mine, all the way from Graphic Design 3, and I always wait with her until they pick her up. As her mother was taking her time, we just kept talking and I kept pointing the camera at everything. When Maru was picked up, her mother offered to drive me home, which is just nearby. I gladly accepted, because I really don’t like to say “NO!” to such kind offers.

It was my last day, but that wasn’t the same for Maru, who still had to do her final photography assignment. It seems everyone had a photography thing to do.

I got home, had a quick dinner, wrote that post and … wait, it’s happening again. Essay-sized post. Cutting it short, right about … now.

College things

Now, I’ve realized I haven’t done some serious college writing in well over a month. Not that I look forward to writing about it, but that’s something that’s been left behind, despite the tag cloud on the right suggesting otherwise. Here goes nothing.

I’ve got a three-day week when it comes to college. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I can’t say that enough times, because it leaves me with a comfortable four-day weekend (can’t stop saying that, either!). Everyone should have four-day weekends.

On to the actual part of me being at college … things seem to be going well. The “degree seminar” class is probably the strongest point, as my our work earned 48/50. The teacher’s got an unusual way of grading this one, giving 50 points for the first draft and the remaining 50 for the final thing, instead of the standard 35/35/30 system. I can’t complain. 48 points? That means we only need 22 points to pass and I think we are way past that. We’re supposed to defend our work (being a bit of a thesis and all) but, even if we don’t, something that would take away some points, we still pass. Yay for us.

The budget class couldn’t be better, and could be a lot worse. The teacher is a riot. She’s always making jokes, about things in general and about people in class, but no one is offended. Everyone laughs. There wasn’t a class last week because of Teacher’s Day (on which notable teachers were awarded things), and so we had quite a lot of work to deliver for this past Tuesday. I’m one of the few who actually did everything, but I got a number wrong on one of the last few tables, something that was bound to happen at one point or another, which resulted in the totals being different from the expected amounts. I explained this to the teacher and she told me that if she finds that to be the only thing wrong with my assignment, she’d let it go. Fingers crossed!

Then comes graphic design. Oh, so much can be said about that one final class in a string of nine (yes, it’s Graphic Design IX) that may determine all that happens after this term ends in August. I’m pretty sure I won’t fail this one, though. The project I’m working on is smooth sailing, more or less. I’m delivering everything on time, and the teacher seems pleased with my work, but it’s not the best effort I’ve made. The thing is that this project is rather intensive. I’ve got to design posters, stickers, billboards, radio and TV ads, a web site, a magazine and all those things using the same theme, which is environmental protection. Not a particularly exciting thing, especially because it’s focused on this country. The amount of online information about national parks, endangered species and all that jazz is rather limited, and the work I’ve created based on it is not really innovative and would probably not cause much impact if this environmental campaign thing were to become a reality. But, hey, at least I’m delivering things on time. Right now, I want the points!

And that’s the college update. What a strange journal, this is. Rather than writing about things on the day they happen (like a handwritten one would be), I let life’s things pile up and just throw them into a post or two when I feel like it. It’s a bit out of sync, but I think I’ve almost got that fixed. Just one or two overdue posts and I can go back to the usual day-by-day rants that drive people away make this blog a frequent read for anyone who might like it.

For now, I’ll just enjoy my usual long weekend. I’ve got no assignments for Tuesday, nothing big for Wednesday and just a bit of making things up research and summary work for Thursday. So, a worry-free weekend like few that I’ve seen since the month began. And to think that the halfway point of July is only a few days away. How time flies …

By the way, see that SocialVibe thing on the upper right? It’s not an ornament, you know.

Going higher

So, I got third place.

Sorry, I didn’t express that the way I really should: I GOT THIRD PLACE!

If you can recall that post from last week, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. The What Goes Up contest that took place on BlogCatalog ended with a handful of entries, and results were posted on Monday night on the insider blog (as well as BlogCatalog itself, several times). If you’re too lazy to click, I’ll just provide a screenshot here of my small moment of glory.

Apparently, I’ve had a lifelong dream of making movie posters (wait, what?), but I thought it was funny that my entry (that poster I designed) was officially titled “Obi-Wan Kenobi”. I was glad to read that the producers liked the usage of arrows from the logo all throughout the poster. I spent many hours several minutes trying to create a good arrangement and finally got them alternating between pointing left and right. Good enough.

So, this small victory has brought me much joy because  I hadn’t won any contest of this type before, probably because I had never participated! I was missing out! In the end, I’ll be getting an official movie poster signed by cast and crew. So, I’ll be getting autographs without the whole awkward star-struck moments (phew!). Oh, and my work (along with other contestants’) may be shown on the day of the movie’s premiere at the very fancy Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California. California!

I will definitely have to update my portfolio with my poster design, while giving credit where credit is due. Stuff like this makes it more attractive, beefs it up (and it could use an update of any kind, anyway).

While the update comes, watch first place winner polybore’s video on YouTube. Done in part using Blender and Audacity (hooray for open source!), it features the What Goes Up logo 3D-fied, a lot of BlogCatalog user avatars, a sample of the movie’s soundtrack and even a small contribution by yours truly near the end. If your connection is made of awesome (read: very fast), make sure to watch the video in HD!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to continue my efforts to wipe the grin off my face before I end up looking like Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker.

Going up

Whew … my nephew’s first birthday party sure took its time, and my eyelids feel heavy. The long weekend hasn’t turned out as I wanted it to, but that’s an issue for another post. Meanwhile …

This is my entry for the What Goes Up movie contest. If you have no idea what this contest about, you better click! What Goes Up is an independent movie about a troubled New York reporter who goes to a small town New Hampshire to cover what’s being said about Christa McAuliffe, who was to become the first teacher in space, prior to the launch (the film takes place in 1986, a week before the Challenger disaster).

Now, instead of doing that, he follows an unusual group of kids whose teacher, Mr. C, has apparently committed suicide. It seems the students were very fond of Mr. C, as they don’t hold back when it comes to expressing the sadness of their loss. Rather than follow his assignment about Christa McAuliffe, the town’s hero, he decides to write an article about the students, who found a hero of their own in their teacher. Eventually … things happen. As I haven’t actually watched this film (yet), that’s as much plot as I can give away.

The movie stars Steve Coogan as Campbell Babbitt (the troubled reporter), Molly Shannon as Penelope (a teacher), and a group misfits … no, wait. There’s a group of misfits portrayed by actors, among which are Josh Peck, Hilary Duff and Olivia Thirlby. That came out better. There are many others, of course (like Third Watch’s Molly Price), but I don’t want the list to become too long.

Back to the contest thing. BlogCatalog and the What Goes Up insider have teamed up to provide this exclusive contest. As the deadline approached (contest ends on the 21st!), I decided I had nothing to lose and a lot to gain, and here it is.

And that was that. I wanted to make more posters, but it seems this will be my Obi-Wan Kenobi: my only hope (ha!). So, comment if you like it, comment if you don’t!

NOTE: the What Goes Up logo and screenshots, as well as the BlogCatalog logo, are property of their respective owners.

Total Recode

Before my previous post, there was something keeping me busy. Something important, but not particularly exciting, at least until the end result. My homepage has been transformed from this:

To this:

I decided to turn it into a portfolio, based on a final project I did for college (which I took advantage of, because all the concept/planning/design work was practically done!). It was initially there to present my Blender work, but I’ve extended it to include graphic design, photography and animation. I’m finally using my real name in it, too, instead of the old Friday13 nickname I’ve been using for –gasp– almost nine years!

I was never satisfied with the previous design of the site because it was, as someone else said recently, too simple. Very true. While my site is primarily meant to show my work, it doesn’t mean the design has to be something only a mother could love.

I’m a big fan of the color scheme, which I’ve been using since 2004 or so, so I kept it. Now, the layout … ah, the layout. That’s a real mess the difficult part of it. For my college project, I created each and every screen using Inkscape, exported them to images (35 in all!) and put them all in an Impress slideshow (with some clever linking between them), which was finally exported to PDF so it could be viewed everywhere (because there’s little hope for OpenOffice.org to be installed at college).

So, I grabbed a few of those Inkscape files and used them as reference for creating the layout. My first try was a mess because, up until a few days back, I didn’t fully understand the CSS box model, which doesn’t quite work as I expected it to (after much fiddling with Inkscape, desktop publishing programs and things like that). The site looked very different in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, so I deleted the stylesheet and decided to start from scratch at a later time.

After reading more of the box model, just later in the day, I finally managed to create proper page divisions (yay!) and it finally looked right in both browsers. For some reason, using XHTML is what solved most of the problems (changing the DOCTYPE screwed things up again), so I decided to go with that instead of the HTML 4.01 (strict!) I’d been using since the last design.

As I had the layout done with Inkscape, all I had to do was carefully export parts of it that I would use as buttons: create a rectangle, place it above the button area (I always use guides for designing, so I didn’t need to zoom in or anything), either move it to the bottom of the object stack or make it invisible, and export. All the buttons were done in no time.

I’m a big fan of image compression, especially PNG. If the files can be made any smaller, I won’t hesitate to try a combo of OptiPNG, PNGOUT (through PNGGauntlet) and AdvanceCOMP. Yes, I’m a freak.

The navigation was done by combining both the active/inactive state of each button into one image and having them displaced with CSS. Oh, yes, did I mention the whole thing is controlled by one CSS stylesheet? My past sites have been lame attempts and getting a full CSS design, but this one got it right. Other than the content (the text and images in the main area), anything and everything is defined in one file that I can change at will if I want to screw up alter the design. That’s probably why the stylesheet ended up at almost 6.5kb, whereas the old site’s stylesheet didn’t even make it to 1kb (sad, I know).

The gallery is what I most wanted to update, as I needed to get over the old way of having the images lined up vertically with a description next to each. The old gallery was getting too long, giving the scrollwheel a run for its money. The new gallery consists of just thumbnails, much larger than before, and clicking on them results in a nicely overlaid image with its description right below, thanks to Lokesh Dhakar’s Lightbox JS (yes, the old version). While I normaly think that JavaScript is evil because of all the bad/annoying stuff that can be done with it, I found it necessary in this case. Note that most images have a link to a larger version at the end of the description.

All in all, the design (HTML files, buttons, backgrounds and CSS, without the actual works presented) is weighing in at a nice 88kb, and should load quickly for everyone. What I’m not completely sure is how it looks like on browsers other than Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 (I don’t have version 8), even though I managed to get the site to look pretty much the same on both. So, any input on Opera, Safari, Konqueror and IE8 will be appreciated.

That’s it for the site redesign post. Didn’t know I could write so much crap about that subject!

If you’ve checked the site already you’ll notice that the animation section of it is empty. I put it there, despite having nothing worthy of showing … yet. Hopefully, it’ll motivate me to finish something soon.

Because I’ve removed some of the lesser 3D works from the new gallery, the old site remains available if you wish to see them. I’ve also updated the link button on the sidebar here, so it’s more prominent. Can you find it?

Anyway, I should be sleeping. Check out the page!