Final Project Conclusion

While constructing this project I was able to realize how much work there is in the pre-production phase of creating a project. My project through the quarter took some changes do to the way I was constructing my video viewer. This was a challenging project because I was using Actionscript 3.0 and the Flex Builder for the very first time to build this project. It was something different and exciting at the same time to learn something new and powerful.

The project was all dynamic and there was no use of Flash or timeline animation, all the functionality was constructed with pure code, which I was very proud of myself. The final look of the project looks the same in a way but altered due to the scope of my project.

USER TESTING

I tested this video viewer with some of my fellow WDIMers and also people that I know. Thanks to their feedback on the project I was able to rethink certain ways that I could have constructed my code and later on vamp out the UI. One of the more interesting critiques I got was why is there no control bar and no status bar, so that is one of the elements that I will be adding to my project in the future thanks to the critiques

Final Thoughts of the Class:

I thought this was a very interesting class because it was a diverse class of all levels and interest. It has given me a better understanding on people get entertained by the media that is out there today. I hope that my video cast was great for all to...I tried to put in there the whole entertainment aspect by me being a bit goofy. Thanks Sharon again for the great class!

The video can be seen here:

www.neiltan.net/neilFC.mov

Project Thoughts...

The video viewer that I mocked up has taken some changes due to technical specifications for my project. I am constructing a simple video viewer that will display video work. The reason why I am making a more simplistic viewer is because I am coding the player in Flex Builder using XML and AS3, meaning loading all of my content dynamically. This has been a huge challenge but a great learning experience and still is. Flex is a great development tool and has sparked an interest in me to start developing in the builder. Right now I am building the classes for the viewer. It is crunch time for sure!

Persona Research/Persona

This week I researched user personas on a couple sites thatgave out some really great steps on how to develop personas. One site broke down user personas into ten steps and can be seen in the diagram below.

Here are ten steps:

step:1 Finding the User

step:2 Building a Hypothesis

step:3 Verification

step:4 Find Patterns

step:5 Constructing Personas

-Body

-Psyche

-Background

-Emotions and Attitudes

-Personal Traits

step:6 Defining Situations

step:7 Validation and Buy In

step:8 Dissemination of Knowledge

step:9 Creating Scenarios

step: 10 Ongoing Development

visit the sites:

Ten Steps to User Persona

Personas

Work Cited for this link:

Dr.Lene Nielson. "Ten Steps to User Persona." HCI Vistas. 2007. 2 Mar. 2009 .

Head, Allison. "Personas: Setting the Stage for Building Usable Information Sites."2003. Information Today. 2 Mar. 2009

User Persona:

• Gender: Male
• Age:23
• Is involved in the video/film industry, is web savvy, has knowledge of video production and web.
• Activities:
• Active Vimeo viewer
• Avid movie and video production viewer
• Enjoys flash websites
• Enjoys great production skills
• Likes to edit video or film
• Reads the magazine Filmmakers
• Uses Final Cut Pro

Site Requirements

Technologies Used:

• Adobe Flex Builder
• Adobe Flash and Photoshop CS4
• Actionscript 3.0, XML
• CSS,HTML

Technical Needs and Requirements:

• Research sites that have similar functionality
• Research Papervision for Navigation
• Research AS3 Programming
• Video Compression Bit Rate+Download time
  

FINAL PROJECT MOCK UPS::

NAVIGATION FOR PORTFOLIO SITE:

This will be the interactive video section where users can click and scroll through the interface to view my video work.

VISIT TO EXPLORATORIUM::SAN FRANCISCO

The Exploratorium was a great way to gain inspiration for this upcoming project. While going to the exploratorium I felt like a little kid again, and realized how great it is to get in touch with not caring about what other people think, but to appreciate the simple facinations that a kid should have. There were great exhibits exploring the human brain to the very simplicity of a hologram.
I really enjoyed this trip to the exploratorium and was a great eye opener for ideas.



This was one of inspirations for my project to put multiple videos or images on one page of my project. The exhibit shown is showing all the emotions of different faces.
Here is a great video that I recorded of an exhibit that used motion to display video.

EXTRA! EXTRA! Interaction Design for Entertainment Website launched!

Here is the design of my interaction design for entertainment website where I will be posting all my exercises and final project for the class. The blog will still be running with my thought process of all my projects for this class and others.

View Website

Week5-Project Proposal

Project Proposal

This weeks assignment was to come up with a project proposal for the final project. So I chose to to start constructing my final portfolio and to display my Video, Web, and Motion work in a very entertaining way and it will also be a great way to get in contact with potential clients and employers. Please see my homework site and click on week4 to see more of a description.

www.neiltan.net/mm3301

cheers,

Neil

Week 3-Interaction Design Entertainment- Transitions

Hello all,

This week the case study was on transitions and how a webpage transitions from one section the other.  I chose a transition that changes the page by sliding the different sections and using XML to load in the content dynamically. This was using AS3 it was actually a tutorial about transitions inside of a web magazine I had. I am not too familiar with Flash and AS3, but I am starting to enjoy Flash and its rich potential for great interactive pieces.  Enjoy!

Here are some sketches:

Sketch 1

Sketch 2

Sketch 3

Here is the final:

http://www.neiltan.net/IDE/transition/transition.html

MOCK PORTFOLIO Navigation/With Random Background-WEEK2

This week was interesting after looking at other website's navigation. I decided to use a navigation that had three buttons on the bottom and wanted to play with users interactivity with the buttons. When clicking once it switches the title and page, but when clicking twice the information comes up for each section. Also each time the user comes back to the page there are three different backgrounds that will randomly show. Meaning each time the user comes back there will be something new for them to look at. 

here is the URL to the navigation:

www.neiltan.net/IDE/navigation.html

enjoy!

-Neil

Interactive Design for Entertainment-Week1

Interactive Design for Entertainment-Week1

I looked through many sites of all genres and this was interesting to see how designers and UI designers use different ways of navigation and use of interactivity. I really enjoyed this search of good websites for entertainment. The safe trip home website really interested me because I thought it was nice to see how they use interactivity and the use of a globe to show their films. I also added the wild card section of "experimental", because many people have some neat and innovative ways of navigation and effects.
Hope you all enjoy the finds!

-Neil

BAND WEBSITE:
http://www.tracychapman.com/
http://www.specialsurprise.co.nz/


MOVIE WEBSITE:
http://thefountainmovie.warnerbros.com/experience/
http://www.punisherwarzonemovie.com/
http://www.kungfupanda.com/
http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/30daysofnight/
http://www.thebourneultimatum.com/


SHORT ENTERTAINMENT or SHORT:
http://www.safetriphome.com/
http://www.makemesuper.com/index.html?


CROSS-MEDIA PROMOTION:
http://www.mercedes-amg.com/SL65BlackSeries/
http://experience.eagleeyemovie.com/
http://www.hasbro.com/risk/flash_world.cfm
http://www.volvocars.com/intl/campaigns/Misc/VolvoOceanRace/Pages/Rush.aspx


MMOG(MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE GAME):
http://farcry.us.ubi.com/experience/index.php


ADVERGAME:
http://www.volkswagensnake.nl/
http://www.punisherwarzonemovie.com/game.html
http://www.monsterlabthegame.com/en/

Webisodic:
http://current.com/
http://itsjerrytime.com/
http://www.galacticast.com/
http://www.ifc.com/webseries/

BLOG or VLOG:
http://lofistl.com



WILCARD: EXPERIMENTAL or Portfolio
http://www.karimzariffa.com
http://lab.mathieu-badimon.com/

Skywalker Ranch

Hey Everyone, 

I am back blogging again! Sorry I have not been keeping up with my blog, but here are some pictures from my recent experience at Skywalker Ranch and Big Rock Ranch where I was interning for Edutopia which is George Lucas' educational foundation and some of the work I have worked on can be viewed at www.edutopia.org. Enjoy!

Big Rock Ranch

Main House aka George's Office

Skywalker Sound 

New Photoshop Lighting Effects

Here is some of the newest photoshop creations that I been messing around with.  I played around with lighting effects in Photoshop, which I found to be very powerful.  I hope you guys Enjoy!

Loopkicks TV Show

Hey Everyone, 

Recently filmed a live to tape show at Access SF for Team Loopkicks which is a Martial Arts Tricking group out of the San Jose area. This was an awesome experience due to being able to get a taste of being producer for a show.  It was a very pre-production heavy task, but it was worth it and very fun to see Team Loopkicks perform and show off  their moves.  We had a lot of cool questions to ask to show what this team was about.  

New Tony Chu Website Coming Soon!

Well in my intermediate web design class we were assigned to recreate a website from scratch with a group and to be assigned different tasks within this website class, so I was think who or what can we make a website about and I thought of my good friend Tony Chu who is an awesome and innovative photographer. This Thursday we are meeting up to discuss the layout and great things we can do to for his business as well to display his photos in a very artistic and sophisticated way. The layouts are in the works and I will be posting layouts soon as we progress. Here is some of Tony's great photos!

JFP "The Premiere"

Last Thursday, Justin Fone Productions officially premiered its studio in the SOMA district of San Francisco. VIP guests were treated to epicurean delights by Alex's Catering featuring Petite Sips of Bliss, Lobster and Mango Cones, and Braised Beef Short Rib Polenta Cups. The studio was transformed into a luxe lounge courtesy of Hartmann Studios, Enhanced Lighting, and Nancy Liu Chin Designs. To end the night on a sweet note, guests enjoyed aqua chocolate cupcakes designed by Butterfly Cakes. This fabulous soiree was seamlessly orchestrated by none other than f duncan reyes events by design. On hand was Kevin Chin to document the day. This was an amazing event where I was able to hangout and party with the top wedding professionals around the bay which was an awesome experience to be around such friendly and very talented people. It was Awesome!

SOME NEW PHOTOSHOP ART WORK

Hey everyone,

This weekend I went over to my girlfriend Sumeet's house in Davis,CA and took some portrait pictures for my Advanced Photography class.  I got inspired to make these pieces by the photographs themselves and also a fellow peer of mine Sebastian Jaramillo. Here are some of the compositions.  ENJOY!

Typography-Deconstruction

Here is one of my current projects for typography where I had to de-construct a speech or document of my choice and make it not in a specific format.

The Future of Chinese Cuisine Video Shoot

Well today me and Jamie Weber hung out and documented a panel discussion at the Hilton for the Culinary Department of The Art Institute where Albert Chang, Former three-term president of the Chinese Culture Center; Nicole Mones, author of the award-winning novels Lost in Translation, A Cup of Light, and The Last Chinese Chef, Alex Ong, Betelnut partner and executive chef, and Martin Yan, T.V. host and master chef with 26 cookbooks to his name, and Olivia Wu who is currently a chef at Google and a former award winning writer for the SF Chronicle.  They talked in great detail about why is great Chinese food so hard to find in the U.S.?and also Does great Chinese food exist just under our noses waiting to be discovered and celebrated? 

Overall, this was an awesome experience to see these great chefs communicate their thoughts on Chinese cuisine and the future of it.

New Logo

Well I finally came up with a new logo! It all started with self monogram for my typography class and inspired me to recreate a specific look for my new logo. Typography is one of the many aspects in design that inspires me. This new look has inspired me to recreate my personal website all in CSS and Javascript. I will keep you posted on the progression of this site.

Here is the logo:

Finally Learning CSS Scripting

I am finally messing around with CSS scripting in Dreamweaver and have been getting a better understanding of it, but there is so much more to learn!  Here is one of the design I came up with for my Intermediate Web Design class with Sharon Kaitner.  

click here to see it on the web