flash....sigh

Flash is very aggravating. Sometimes it seems to throw a hissy fit for no good reason. I wish there was more time to learn it.

Alas, it is the last day of class and I am glad I got the opportunity to learn about creating websites. I think this will be very useful knowledge in the future.

Finale

Being the last day of class, I can say I have learned a lot during the quarter. All I've really used is Flash, with some small dabblings in HTML. Now, I want to learn Java Script and get a little more advanced with HTML. Flash, while something I know and am fairly comfortable with, is limited right now and probably wouldn't be the best alternative for a portfolio site. If I did do a Flash site for portfolio, I would surely include an HTML version as well so I can be found easier on Google.

CMS is something I didn't know even existed. The project was a good first step into CMS, but I don't think I have any idea of what power it has. On the surface, its editing the contents of a template, but to make it truly your own would require a little more work. I will definitely revisit CMS in the future.

This has been a great class to taste-test various formats for designing web pages and served as a springboard into CMS, CSS, HTML and Flash.

Flash is evil...

I'm having a great deal of trouble getting the image gallery and video to work on my flash page. Is anyone having similar troubles, and if you overcame them, how did you do it?

DesignerCoaster (Post #8)

I think that I've had more ups and downs in this class than maybe any other class that I've taken here at SCAD. Each of the four projects has seen my psyche go on a roller coaster ride, from frustration to understanding and then from meltdown to epiphany...every two weeks. But looking back, it's kind of amazing how much I was able to learn and produce in the matter of ten short weeks.

BOOYAH

BooYah. I almost have four sites to show.

I have to say I like the variety of techniques we used to make sites. From Photoshop, to Dreamweaver to CMS to Flash... it's an interesting progression.

My impression of web design, though, is that it is hard to learn unless you just sit down and fail (over and over again) at whatever you are trying to attempt. It's a lot of clicking and trying. The easiest thing is when you have a sample site with code to look at. I like picking out the stuff in the HTML that I want to keep and getting rid of what I want to get rid of. The Joomla template mods I made were facilitated by copying the entire images folder and then modifying everything I wanted to in PSD.

Anyway. I'm excited to be close to finished. I'll bet you guys are too.

Joomla Based Spaceship Gallery Update

I finally got a chance to talk to the administrators of the site I redesigned for the Joomla project, and they seemed excited about the idea. A previous attempt at a revamp had stalled in the coding phase due to the sheer volume of work, and the fact that this is a volunteer-run endeavor. Joomla's CMS seems to accomplish everything they wanted to with a lot less muss and fuss. I'm going to be in contact with the tech-guys to has out a final design.

The original site is here.

My redesign is here.

Flash isn't bad, it's just misguided

Like a kid with a bad homelife, Flash's problems stem from improper support and foundations by Adobe. It's hard to argue that Flash gives sites a dynamic kick in the ass to make the look and design more appealing, from an eye-candy standpoint anyway. Like all programs, tweaks and additions to Flash could make it more sensible to use from a promotional standpoint and ease of use. Here's my suggestions to Adobe:

1. Get SEO going now. This should have been done a long time ago when it was discovered Google wouldn't search in the trenches of Flash's code to get relevant information. For most people, a site is only as good as its ability to be found. Combining knowledge on how exactly Google works with a Flash file that can be read by Google properly would make Flash much more of a go-to program.

2. Have jump to pages within Flash. One of my biggest beefs with Flash is you have to enter the site from the home page. What if a potential emplyer wants to see a particular video on your site? They then have to navigate precisely. What if someone saw a great photo on your site, told a friend about it, but then the friend got frustrated trying to find the photogaphic needle in the haystack? You could potentially lose freelance work or even just the attention of someone you want because of lack of web page honing. You could make a Flash subsite (www.mysupersite.com/animation) and have a seperate Flash file for each page. This could be a chopped version of your site, by having multiple minisites like that, but then have the normal url (www.mysupersite.com) direct to a Flash file of the entire site. Until Adobe throw us a bone, its up to us to be creative and work around Flash's shortcomings.

hey everyone!

So this flash thing seems to be a bit difficult, but it also seems like it has a lot of possibilities as well. I wish there was more time to explore all the different capabilities and functions of flash.

Also, it seems that the monitors in the grad lab are calibrated very different from the rest of the world. I was working on my layout in there only to find that it was incredibly dark upon bringing it up here in the cintique lab. I thought the values looked a little fishy. So be aware of the grad lab and double check things. It's a headache having to change all my color brightnesses. And unfortunately on a website you really can't be sure of how people are going to view it on their own computers.... *sigh... why can't all monitors just be the same!!!!

Interactive Flash Videos

This is absolutely amazing. More of this could and we could start seeing music videos becoming cool again:

http://www.neonbible.com/readme.html

Be sure you click around a whole bunch.

Ryan

Examples of Flash Websites

Hello all

Since we are int he process of creating great flash websites I've decided to post some examples of some sites.

http://www.jasonryananimation.com/main.html

http://www.beckitower.com/

http://www.neilhelm.com/

Check these out might give you some ideas
JP

Finished Joomla Site

I'm posting my finished Joomla site here for everyone to get a look at. It's based around this Joomla template, and is a revamp of the Star Wars Design Alliance Gallery. I'm going to be presenting it to the Design Alliance webmasters sometime this weekend for some final tweaks and possible implementation as the new gallery.

You are going to LOVE this

It is incredibly on-topic for today's Flash lecture. ENJOY.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/animator

The President-Elect

Well here we are again. Another presidential election, and the country can continue to thrive in the same way it always has. Now we have President Barack Obama in office and I wish him well and hope that he does this country justice by spreading around all of the change that he has been talking up throughout this election process. It is also worth noting that the color barrier for the president has been broken, showing that America is ready to grow up, and finally put some of the race issue to rest....in some small facet. I just wanted to write and say that I am looking forward to our country going in a new, and hopefully positive, direction. And even though my presidential candidate did not win, I wish our new President all the best, as I continue to give my undying support for the country that I love so much. Go America.

- D

Joomla ups and downs

I struggle, and will probably continue to do so until the assignment is due tonight, with the "simplicity" of Joomla. The overall look is fairly easy to achieve, but the layout seems a little all over the place. There's more than one way to get to an area you want to edit, but because of that, I have some trouble remembering how to get there. I do better with a one route way, it's easier to memorize.

Before I began designing through Joomla, I had difficulty installing the templates. Although I downloaded free ones, some weren't compatible with Joomla 1.5. After installing 1.0, some templates weren't completely unlocked, making it impossible to edit all areas of the template. Eventually, I found one that was compatible, fully editable, and had a more interesting layout than some of the others.

Though I won't abandon CMS, I didn't find it as easy or as intuitive as I hoped. This may be corrected with more practice as I want to see exactly how much customization I can do with templates.

making up for lost time!

Hey people! sorry i haven't blog lately, I lost my password for the blog, but i found it so for now on i will be making up for lost time. I wanted to share with u guys one of my favorite website so, ENJOY! www.goodbrush.com

This is horrifying...

Fair warning: The following might induce seizures in photosensitive epileptics. I'm not kidding.

In time for Halloween, the most horrifically designed website I have ever seen. I have to assume the effect was intentional, because it doesn't seem like something you'd accidentally create. I'm not sure why they would do this, because it was disconcerting and disorienting to look at for more than a few seconds, and seems to have left some lingering afterimages in my vision. The good news is that the owners of the site have seen the error of their ways, and fixed it in recent versions.

Web Accessibility

I stumbled across this website today, and was amused by the lengths they've gone with accessibility. The site has four text sizes for their standard 'beauty' template, and an additional four sizes in a high-contrast black-and-white template.

CMS cliche

A CMS site that uses the CMS cliches is ugly. I'm sorry.

I've seen enough rounded corners, bubbley buttons, gradients, large fonts, orange and blue and lime green layouts to last me a lifetime.

Bottom line: if it's a preset. if it's easy to do. if you kept the style that way because the template was made that way... it's going to look dated soon and everyone will know it was made easily with CMS.

This is also sometimes referred to as a web 2.0 style.

Here's an image someone created to demonstrate some of the most over-used graphics of CMS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Web_2.0_style_example.png

We Put Up A Good Fight

Alright...so the SOX lost BUT, we did put up a good fight. If I had to lose then that is the way I feel OK doing it....putting up a fight and not to the Yankees. Enough with that.

So this CMS looks pretty good...and getting into it, we will see how easy it is? Does anyone feel like its not gonna be as easy as it looks??

One of my friends is quite a bit ahead of me when it comes to building sites. I think he used CMS on his site.

Check it out and let me know what you think
http://niteshpatel.com/wp/about/welcome-to-niteshpatelcom

So I leave you with of course another animation site.
This guy is a great animator at PIXAR and one of the creators of Animation Mentor.
Check it out:
http://www.carlosbaena.com/

Cya
John Paul

Scaling Backgrounds & Help

Hey Ryan, in response to your first question, 'stretching' web pages are generally produced from using percentage-based div scaling, clever use of absolute positioning and or the use of relative positioning. It's a little more involved that the type of web creation we've done in class, but pretty easy to pick up. If you can show a specific example, I could possibly tell you how it was done. As for your title, just pop open either the HTML code, or Dreamweaver and change the title to whatever you want. In Dreamweaver it should be a small box at the top of the page, in the code it should be near the top, enclosed in title tags: <title>Untitled Document<\title> (The slash is facing the wrong way so it will show up in this post)

I found an interesting page on scaling backgrounds from Web Designer Wall (GOTOCHINA) and picked apart the code if anyone wants a starting point for creating something like this. Just keep in mind the image generally loses a lot of quality as it scales.

CSS

*{border:0px solid #eee;margin:0;padding:0;list-style:none}
html,body,#bg,#bg table,#bg td,#cont{width:100%;height:100%;overflow:hidden}
body{font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10px;cursor:default;background:url(loading.gif);color:#000}
img{display:block}
#bg div{position:absolute;width:200%;height:200%;top:-50%;left:-50%}
#bg td{vertical-align:middle;text-align:center}
#bg img{min-height:50%;min-width:50%;margin:0 auto}
#cont{position:absolute;top:0;left:0;z-index:70;overflow:auto}
#top{color:#FF9966;height:56px;background-color:#000000;opacity:.5;}
#mid{width:513px;height:474px;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;margin-top:25px;}

HTML (Removed Brackets from each line><)

body
div id="cont"
div id="top"
/div
div id="mid"
/div
/div
/div
div id="bg"
div
table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"
tr
td
img alt="" src="bg.jpg" /
/td
/tr
/table
/div
/div
/body

2 Questions

I apologize, of course, for never having any interesting web news to share, but rather only posting here to ask all of you smart folks for help. But here are my questions this week:

1) I've noticed that there are many web pages that stay in the center by seemingly stretching themselves out rather than just staying proportionally from the margins. Does anyone know how to achieve this?

2) My web site is titled 'untitled' at the top of the page (ryanpeoplessound.com). What did I do wrong?

Thanks everyone. One of these times I'll have something for all of you. Maybe for your birthday.

Ryan

IE Css Hacks

Hey guys, if you haven't noticed yet, some settings may look different in Explorer vs Firefox. I found a great post on how to fix small problems between the two. If you're having issues, definitely worth a look..

CSS Hack


For example, if a div on your page is too low in Explorer, but looks fine in Firefox:

Declare the CSS normally for IE

#holder {
position: relative;
width: 500px;
top: -3px;
height: 55px;
left: 29px;
}

Then restate the options you want to change with body>html in front of the tag..

html>body #holder{
top:4px;
}

Firefox can read the second CSS entry for the #header tag, but Explorer can not. Hope this helps anyone having cross-browser issues.

Midterm ramblings

Wow....5 weeks already gone. I can't believe we start signing up for classes again next week. SCAD is very fast paced.

Well, I don't really have any useful links to add to the mix this time around... perhaps next time.

But for all of you college football fans out there, if you haven't heard Tommy Bowden got the sack! Actually, I don't quite know if he got fired or if he just randomly decided to quit mid season....whatever the case may be, this is great news for the Gamecocks. Maybe they will actually beat Clemson this year! woowhoo! Plus it's a perfect opportunity to tease certain family members who graduated from Clemson...ok, or all my family members...lol (*is the black sheep of the family).

Good luck to everyone on midterms! Go! Get those websites done!
cheers!

This is a site I came across a while back for a company that builds luxury yachts (you may recognize their 118 foot power yacht from Michael Bay's insipid film The Island). They've done a pretty good job of presenting a pretty substantial amount of information with a simple layout that remains small enough to fit on almost all screens.

Hey...

UPDATE: SOX tied in series 1-1 with an afternoon game today.

The new website seems to be going well...we'll see about when I try to center everything , cause of course I am one of those people that like my sites in the center.

Of course I leave you with an animation resource site.
Enjoy

http://animationtipsandtricks.com/

JP

Mashed Potatoes

What's so interesting about mashed potatoes that I would write a post about them? Their feelings mostly. I was watching something on cable the other day and some crazy chic was going on about fruits and vegetables and their feeling, and announcing that cooking and eating said fruit/veg is murder. She's a loon, hands down, but today I feel their 'pain.'

My brain is experiencing a sensation that must parallel the 'pain' that those starchy little buggers go through when we beat the hell out of them and serve them up with butter. We've all been there, that place where you exists but you're not good for a whole lot. If on the other hand you need someone who can sit for hours staring blankly at white walls, I'm your girl.

So my deepest sympathy to all the potatoes that have been sacrificed at the alter of dinner.

Now I have to get back to my white wall.

Some great way to make fonts

Hey everybody

Another week down and another year that the Red Sox have made it into the playoffs!!!
I can sense that everybody reading is as excited as I am!
1st game is Friday night.

On a different note...in my research for web site design I ran across this site to build some
cool fonts in Photoshop...so cheers.

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/photoshop-text-tutorials/

JP

Micro Compact Home

Micro Compact Home

I thought this was a neat site, which plays off the shape of their main product with a square motif, and the cool colors mirror the color scheme of the m-ch.

The m-ch itself is a neat bit of design work, but since this isn't an industrial design class, I won't wax poetic about it.

The Color Vs. The Shape

Through filtering what I believe represents some of the best overall designs on the web, there is still a very hard line between good layout and good design. Of those sites I found appealing, only a select couple seem to "get" harmonious blending of structure and visual pleasantry. Some of the conclusions I've come to after surfing these sites include the following.

- Conceptual and "innovative" layouts aren't worth anything if they don't navigate well. Period.

- Use photos sparingly. They should never dominate the look.

- Certain colors, when paired accurately, give the viewer a mood right off the bat. Some sites just amazed me if for no other reason than the way the colors made me feel.

- Keep it simple. A busy site is an immediate turn off.

- Icons can work well, but avoid the common ones. Design your own to fit the theme.

- Easter Eggs are fun, but unless it's an "entertainment" type website, leave them be.

- Avoid theming that already relates to something else. If your fonts look like Napoleon Dynamite's sketchbook handwriting, that's what people will connect it with.

- The first third of your page should include all of the following if you have them as assets: Logo, company name, contact info, quick link bar, slogan
I found this article from Smashing Magazine that shows some of the current trends and once current trends, now cliched. I thought it was a good read and pretty on the money.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/26/navigation-menus-trends-and-examples/

I Dunno

Well, I think everyone has already put enough links about current website trends for all of us to gather enough inspiration...so I don't think I'll add to the list. I would rather discuss midnight snacking. I gotta tell ya, it's 12:53 right now and I could really go for a big hamburger. Is it a good idea? Probably not, but what's a guy to do when he eats tiny meals all day in attempts to maintain a weight that he's already unhappy with? I mean, don't get me wrong. It feels so good to put healthy food in your body, but its times like these when you want to undo the hard work you committed to all day, and just lay into some chicken tenders. Am I right or am I right? I don't think any place that sells chicken tenders is open right now, but you get my point.

Now its a crying shame that America is all about weight loss. I saw a documentary the other day that suggests that weight loss is simply a temporary "fix" to making people more healthy and to make them feel better about themselves. Its temporary because once you've lost the weight you have to work doubly hard to keep it off, and if you don't work hard, then its gonna come back twofold. How freaking depressing! A therapist on the documentary also brought up a good point about obesity being just like any other type of mental disorder, saying "You wouldn't ask a clinically depressed person to think happy thoughts, and assume that everything will suddenly be ok, so how can you ask an obese person to just stop eating and lose weight?" I guess I'm just tired of society placing so much emphasis on being as thin and in shape as possible because let's face it, your heart will only beat so many beats before it gives out, and no amount of dieting will ever change that fact.

So there's a little insight to my thoughts for the evening. Thanks to everyone who posted all the inspirational websites! They will come in handy this weekend for my site design. Seacrest out.

- D

Hours of FUN

http://www.yearbookyourself.com/

Hierarchy

I've noticed that a lot of site (most likely using CSS) have a blog format with an emphasis on hierarchy of information. This hierarchy is shown through type treatment, especially contrast between titles, body txt and links. ILoveTypography does a beautiful job, with nice typeface choices to boot.

p.s. notice how this site uses Serifs a lot, and well.

More sites...

http://www.stainless-design.eu/

http://www.monolab.cl/

http://www.thibaud.be/

http://europe.nokia.com/musicalmighty

http://www.fat-man-collective.com/

p.s. I am finding a lot of these on www.thefwa.com

Useful links for inspiration

Here are just 2 sites I found that are in some ways similar to web designer's wall.

http://bestwebgallery.com/

http://webtecker.com/2008/05/13/guide-to-stay-on-top-of-web-design-trends/

Current Trends: Trendy Sites

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/current-style.cfm

http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/2008-design-trends/

http://webtecker.com/2008/05/13/guide-to-stay-on-top-of-web-design-trends/

Inspirational Site!

Amazing, inventive and insane website balled up in one. Enjoy


Check it.
http://www.creaktif.com/

Professional Interest

The goal of any artist is ultimately the synthesis of new ideas and principals and their presentation to the world. There is a need for balance between purity of expression and approachability of the work. Bowing to the former can lead to a rarefied audience, the majority of the public being unable to relate, while catering to the latter can result in disposable entertainment made for the lowest common denominator. It is the responsibility of the artist to incorporate both in his work. My personal goal is to use my educational background in graphic design, my interest in creative writing, my knowledge of physics, coupled with my experience in three dimensional computer graphics to create art that is balanced and approachable to meet the needs of my clients.

Education

2007- current Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia

Major: Visual Effects

2007 BA State University of New York at Binghamton

Major: Studio Art

Specialization: Graphic Design

2002 New York State Regents Diploma, Pittsford, New York

Awards: National Merit Scholarship commendation, Who’s Who Among American High School Students, Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, Wegmans Scholarship

Employment

2008 SCAD Couseling and Support Services

Jump Start orientation assistant for students with disabilities

1998-2004 Wegmans Food Market

Service Clerk and Night Crew

Extracurricular Experience

2005 Israel Defense Forces Course Marva

An intense nine-week civilian training program tun by the Israel Defense Forces to teach foreign students about the history, function, and structure of the I.D.F.

2005 Ein Gedi Nature Preserve

Worked on park maintenance as a volunteer clearing old fences, planting trees and digging out a swimming hole after a flash flood.

2005 Natzerat Illit Fire Department

Worked as a volunteer firefighter at a station that serves both the town of Natzerat Illit and the city of Natzeret.

1998-2002 Church of the Blessed Sacrament

Worked as a dishwasher for the soup kitchen at the Church of the Blessed Sacrament.

Software Familiarity

NewTek Lightwave 3D, Autodesk MAYA, Adobe Photoshop, Apple Shake, Side Effects Houdini

Web 2.0

Hey guys! I've been doing a little bit of research on Web 2.0 layouts and graphics and found a site that does a good job of explaining the principals behind it. It's a pretty interesting read, and it's a good source of inspiration.



http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-2.0-design-style-guide.cfm

Reading 04.

Does anyone know what the reading is for today's class?? Last time I did chapter 03 for reading 03 when it was actually supposed to be chapter 04 for reading 03. Did really well on that quiz I can tell you. Anyway, what's the chapter for reading 04??

Thanks,
Ryan

Adobe makes easy things even easier

I never had a good grip on web design before this year. I taught myself enough of Dreamweaver a few years ago just to have a basic thesis project website. It was straight html, though I can hardly take any credit since Dreamweaver practically does everything for you. You just drag and drop assets where they need to be and create your buttons and links.

Maybe the slice tool was around when Photoshop 7 was the new version, but I didn't know anything about it if it was. That would have been much easier, even more so than the already simple Dreamweaver setup, to create a basic page. What I like about this class is we're getting a taste of the conventional ways of web design. Unfortunately, with projects being about 2 weeks apart, I don't know if I'll be able to get a portfolio piece out of it.

I'll speak on branding in my next blog...

Another Post

So what has changed...Well I came up with a new design for my website!

The SOX are in the playoffs!!!!!

The stock market is crashing??

That's about it for now. I am looking forward to learning a bit about flash and why the website that I have built is garbage.
I have already been animating a lot this quarter...which is fantastic and I hope to stay somewhat caught up with all my work in the process.

Here is a site to my old Blog..that I kept while I was in Iraq..some cool stuff on there.
http://jpranimation.blogspot.com/

And of course I leave you with one more animation resource site...since I am an animator :)
http://www.11secondclub.com/

See you in class....

John Paul

Fun Animation

Just thought I would share some fun animation with you guys. Some of you may already know about this, but just in case you don't...
It's a serious of 3 short animations called Simon's cat. They are very simple, but highly effective.
Cat Man Do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ffwDYo00Q
Let Me In: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rb8aOzy9t4&feature=user
TV Dinner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s13dLaTIHSg&feature=related

Enjoy
~Melody

Fall in Savannah

So the fall is here, and I for one am stoked. I went for a run today at Lake Mayer on Montgomery Cross Road, and I could not believe that I actually felt cold! It's my favorite time of year that brings back the fondest memories of college and my childhood. I mean, so many great times happen during this time of year. Thanksgiving, yum, Christmas, the best, New Years Day!?!? I think I made my point. Oh, and let's not forget the World Series and college/pro football.

So classes haven't gotten too hectic...yet, though I expect them to soon. I'm kind of anxious to get started on my thesis because I have so many ideas! I know exactly what I want to do, but just getting all of my thoughts organized has become quite the undertaking. I guess that's why I'm in Studio I.

Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my thoughts for the week. I don't really have anything interesting to report from the news because I simply don't watch it. For some reason it really depresses me...I wonder why? Anyway, have a great rest of your day, and keep living the dream!

- D

Alex

Hi everyone. My name is Alex. I'm from Taiwan. My BA degree is Economics (Yes! it's ture!) and now I am an industrial design student. I know it's a big change and sometimes I still can't believe I am here. Before I was a math teacher at cram school in taiwan. So if anyone have math questions maybe I can help.
I know nothing about web. So hope I can learn well in the short eight weeks.
Here are two websites I visit everyday. It about new products and concept products.
Yanko Design
Engadget

Enjoy
Alex

Hello Everyone

So I'm an animation major who has an undergrad degree in painting from USC. I am mostly interrested in concept art and texturing. But I also love actually animating and ncloth simulation. I'm from upstate South Carolina and this is hopefully my last yr. at SCAD assuming I get the classes I need and complete my thesis.

As far as favorite website, Google is by far the one I visit the most. However, being that this is terribly uninterresting, I will share with you one of my favorite web resources. This is a link to a post on Conceptart.org that has many other links to free online art E-books. These books are old, out of copyright books that are amazing for fine art study. They are somewhat categorized and are more than you could ever want or need. I find it extremely useful, so here is the link: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=131117

Me!!!

Hello everyone, my name is Dennis Smith. I am a graduate animation student here at SCAD working on completing my last year and my thesis here. I received my AB in Drama at The University of Georgia, (I know, AB is really backwards, but that's what it was), and decided that I wasn't ready to enter the workforce. So here I am at SCAD getting the training I need to be successful in the competitive art world. I really enjoy sports...mainly football and futbol...and my five year plan is to be working at an animation/design studio as a character animator. I look forward to learning with you all in class! See ya.

Here is one of my favorite website...it's hysterical.

www.failblog.com

Zippidy-do-dah!

Hello class. My name is Mandy and I am an Advertising Design major. I have 3 dogs that I treat like my babies. Edward is my Great Dane, my biggest baby. Then there is my tiny princess, Madeline, a Jack Russel mix who was the runt of the litter. Finally, Molly, the American Bulldog who is quite content to sleep ont he couch all day. Sometimes we dogsit and the house gets really crowded. About two weeks ago we kinda double booked ourselves and had five dogs at the house at once. We decided to call that week Doggie Day Camp 2008 and tried to make little bandana's for all the dogs.

Here's a blog I like to visit, daily!

www.poppytalk.com

Laura intro

Hi my name is Laura, I'm studying Broadcast Design and this is one of the websites I like to follow for design-related tid bits: quipsologies

also, everybody should go to this website too. Ze Frank is funny.

Hi im kristal Marie

Hi my name is kristal Marie. I'm from Puerto Rico. I did my BFA in advertising and right now i am in my last year of my two M.A's which are, illustration and Broadcast design. I came to scad to improve and grow as an artist as well as a profesional in the comunication field. In this class i hope to learn more of the computer art and how to interact with it. My knowlege of web design is really limited so by the endof this quarter i hope to improve on that as quick as posible.

Hi, My name is Zulfiqar-ul Hasan and my nick name is zulfi which is used by every one, i am a Broadcast Design and Motion Graphics major doing my MFA from SCAD.Right now i dont know any thing about web but hopefully ill get a good grip on it by the end of this quarter. Here is a link a quiet useful website www.motionographer.com here you can have a good idea about what is happening in the motion graphics industry.

Enjoy!
zulfi

Ryan Peoples

Hello everyone. This is the second blog that I have started in less than two weeks. I have another blog floating around on wordpress that focuses on sound stuff and other random thoughts that I think. The address for that blog is http://ryanpeoples.wordpress.com/ if anyone is interested. I am looking forward to working with you all throughout this quarter. Blog blog, blogger, bloggy, bloggest.

Ryan

The race for October

Well it's getting to October so I am becoming more and more consumed by baseball and the Red Sox. I am from MA and there it's an exciting time of year as we are approaching the playoffs. So now you know I love baseball and the Red Sox.

I have just found this site back in the June and have been visiting quite a bit over the summer.
I have used this for developing my animation skills.

http://www.jasonryananimation.com/

Enjoy

First Post

Hey all! My name is Chad Steele, I'm from Nashville, TN. My undergraduate degree was is Visual Effects, but I also took several undergrad courses in the ITGM program. My focus in the ITGM Graduate Program is web/interactive design. I originally started working with HTML in 1997, making small personal webpages. My time at SCAD sparked an interest in scripting and coding. More recently, I've been teaching myself actionscript, PHP, javascript and ultimately would like to work with AJAX.

I really like to tinker. In my spare time I like to etch brass, among other random activities. At the moment, my favorite website is Instructables. A pretty cool website with a nearly limitless number of do it yourself projects.

My conceit is palpable!

Why else would I post about myself? How about because my grade depends on it? Did I draft some of you over to my team with that statement? Good, let's begin...

I received my MFA from SCAD back in 05. I was one of the last Computer Art kids and I loved the flexibility that program offered. I was able to create my own thesis project that welded sound design and animation together. What I learned at SCAD was that although there may not be a direct route to your dream job, there is always a way to trailblaze yourself one.

With that lesson learned, I worked in Orlando for a company that designs theme park rides. I was able to work on rides such as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" at Alton Towers and a few other projects that are soon to be constructed.

The most rewarding time I had was during a brainstorming session for a 4D Haunted Mansion type ride we were developing. The problem was a hole in the story. The gist was we had a master of the mansion character that seems sympathetic, as he explains his mansion is haunted by the ghost of his jilted bride. As the story unfolds, it's revealed that he is keeping her ghost from resting because of her affair to a calvary soldier. The problem was we had to show the audience that the Master was also a ghost, but this could not be unveiled until the final scene.

After a few moments of idea knocking, I had the idea that the final scene would take place in a solarium where the audience would see the Master and his bride struggling and fighting. I suggested we have the Calvary soldier crash through the glass solarium on his horse, snatch the bride away, and run towards the Master with the intention of stampeding him. As the horse hits the Master, he would then mist away and reform as the bride and Calvary soldier rode off. This made the cut and will be the ride's finale scene when it is constructed!

After my wife decided Orlando wasn't for her, we came back to Savannah where she had a good job. I now work for SCAD and am pursuing a second degree since the school is paying this go-round. Web design is something I feel I need to know as we want to stay on the east coast, specifically, North Carolina, and jobs in animation and certainly theme parks, are fairly hard to come by. However, web design is needed everywhere and I view it as a new challenge and opportunity to flex my creativity.

Here's a few links for theme park news and rumors. I'm a junkie.

www.screamscape.com
www.jimhillmedia.com
www.miceage.com