The proposal for my game is growing and growing. The last days I spent a lot of time creating and improving the screens for the look & feel. I enjoyed doing this so much, that I think about the idea to try to produce "Iron Curtain"...
I am currently my fifth month in Vietnam, but I have to confess, that I did not often visited vietnamese websites. So I was really surprised to see the following page of the game-producer company vinagame located in Ho Chi Minh City. They created a quite simple, structured and clear design, which I really like.
Another assignment in Narrative For Multimedia is to create a proposal and EPOC (Electronic Proof of Concept) for a multimedia project with a narrative. I decided to develop an educational game about the Cold War, because the time was really interesting and important as well.
As I researched about the Cold War I noticed the fact, that in 1953 both superpowers had power vacuums. Josef Stalin died and Harry S. Truman decided not to run for the next election. In my idea for the game, the player of the game take up the role of either the President Of The United States or the General Secretary of The Soviet Union. In this role he has to face the most important events during the Cold War (for instance Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War) and has to make decisions in order to do the best for his own country. Too many wrong decisions (as starting the Nuks too soon) reduces the population of the country. If the poulation is destroyed, the game is over. In this game the player CAN NOT change the history of the Cold War. The goal of the game is to educate people about the real events. He can influence the certain events, but all events will occur in every cause. After the event ocurred, the player chose his decision and the consequences of the events were illustrated an information screen appears describing what happened in reality.
One assignment in the course Narrative For Multimedia is to write a interactive story, in which the user can make decisions about the following plot.
Based on my two year old short story 'Patrick' I wrote a story about a catholic teenager in Cromac / Belfast / Northern Ireland, which is badly confronted with a new form of terrorism and as an effect of this with his own past.
Just see an amazing animation for criticising the American politics. I like the way, how they used easy understanding models (pistols, oil pumps) to illustrate. The background of the animation is simple, so we can focus on the models and the spoken words, what Barry says...
As we were sitting on the beach on Phu Quoc at night, I thought I could experiment with the exposure time of my camera. It is amazing, how much you can influence the exposure of your image even if the original setting is pretty dark.
exposure time: 15 Sec:
exposure time: 7 sec
exposure time: 1.5 sec (nearly the real lightning conditions)
A few days ago, I wrote down the following words in a kind of a short-story: "For a long week, her smile is only in my mind... A blurry memory of a wished future..."
I don´t know, why I like this expression so much, because it sounds a little bit ridiculous. Nobody can remember something, that will happen in the future. But if you believe sometimes in this things, you want really become true and you dream about it and think about it all the time, it can give you the feeling, that it already became true. You are remembering things, which are not true, but due to your strong belief, your memory is getting a mixture of your fantasy and real experiences happened to you.
Our portfolio for the course "Web Page Construction" is growing and growing. My research let me see some portfolios of other persons. Here are some flash-examples:
nice animations, a cute design and a very good example how to design a portfolio with plenty of information, if you don´t have enough space for non-necessarey things. http://eendar.com/
The strength of the next design are the animation. Really nice to look at them and to find out something with clicks on other links. I love the way, how the navigation will be re-structured after a click. http://www.attilahartwig.com/ (click on the book)
A very beautiful preloader, which is showing the percentage of the loaded page in a beautiful serif-font. The port folio itslef is clear and not so playful and much clearer than the others. I like the used fonts in this example and the big whitespace around the portfolio. http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/ (Click the first link)
There was a time in the past I regularly wrote short-stories like this one:
Brown Eyes Travelling
Talking with her is not difficult, but once more, I want to see her smile. Only once more a smile – that is all I need. But that wish won´t be fullfilled, won´t become true, but it has to be. And then I stand in front of her, looking straightly in her eyes and missing that, what I always missed. I even don´t have to notice it. Drinking beer alone doesn´t taste, I experienced for a while. Liqueur never tastes, I experienced today. And so I am standing here – "All" is staring at me, as I would be the attraction on carnival. It would be smile, this "All", if it would know, what the motivation of my thoughts is. But the "All" is also lonely, nearly as lonely as me, and it is bored. And thats why it is staring at me. What I am thinking about, it is asking. „Brown Eyes never travel alone,“ I am answering. "All" is leaving, shaking its head. „But the smile“, I am continuing, noticed by nobody. „But the smile, which is following, hides.“ If the "All" would have understood me, it would be better, but in this case, it is kidding me. I don´t care, because the next beer is drunk quickly, the fifth beer ordered quicklier. Well-Known are passing by and leaving. Hands are getting shaked, hugs are given. I realize the time foggy – half past twelve. Already so late? And I couldn´t notice the smile so far. Sweaty masses are passing by – sweaty by dancing and the heat in the hall. But I don´t meet brown eyes travelling. I´m not getting beer anymore, the bar is closing, the masses are cooling down in snow outside, the music is stopping, the hall is enlightened. And me? Standing here without a word – thirsty, helpless and searching. Observing in fast motion the half-life period of masses is getting quarter an hour, the half-life period of beer is getting irrelevant and the half-life period of a smile is the eternity, when you are waiting for it. Give it to me once more, give it to me and I am satisfied. But how could you give, if brown eyes are travelling and I can´t find them? Loneliness could be a curse, when you don´t want it. Mainly loneliness is a curse, if Conor Oberst is crying for her love and promising to follow her everywhere. Love? What is Love? This warm, happy, amazing feeling, you get beside a person, who is important to you? Or is it only the glibbering, warm mass, pasting all of your body and aching, if you try to rip it off? If brown eyes are travelling, they never travel alone. But the smile, which is following, hides. The brown eyes aren´t alone, but they are feeling like. Because the smiles doesn´t unhide, even, if it´s ordered.
It´s night, when the door is closing. I´m seeing blurrily the door to my room. Too much of the yellow-brown fluid, in which mostly I took more than comfort. I´m feeling the smoky taste on my tongue, feeling the taste of beer in my mouth and hope, that tomorrow I will wake up and realize, that everythig is a dream. Thinking, Amplifying, Sleeping, Dreaming – thats all left. I´m dreaming of a slimy mass, which is holding me and won´t let me go. I´m drowning, waking up and looking for brown eyes travelling. But, why here? Have to look in the world, because only they could conquer the world, even if they won´t tell. They don´t know, that they conquered me. Without thoughts, I´m filling up my bottle of water, recognizing that the sun rise. Even, if you don´t see the sun, it´s enlighting. You miss sleep only, when you are tired and cannot sleep. You hate beer, if you drank too much the day before. But a smile always will be missed. One more time, please. Give it to me, and you won´t be disturbed by me again. Only a small sign and I am conquered. Conquering, didn´t we talk about and I couldn´t answer? That´s still true. But the brown eyes are travelling and trying to rule the world. And they decide, which fortress will be rised down next.
Cineclassix is my own german movie-portal, at which I discuss new and old movies, provide links and feeds and will later provide articles describing movie-history as well. It is based on the free content-management-system Joomla! and has at the time a provided standard design.
But I want to change the design as soon as possible - that is a screenshot, how it should look like:
As you can see, I tried to play with the different contrasts between orange, grey, black and a kind of red. The girl in the banner is Alexis Bledel as Becky in the movie Sin City from director Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller. I like this movie because of its visual design in black and white (to illustrate the comics) and some coloured parts (her blue eyes). To focus on her eyes I tried to keep the rest of the banner simple. Besides that, I can focus on the content as well...
We had to create two business cards in our class. At least I finished them:
For the first version, I chose a traditional business-like design with only a single line seperating the name from the contact-dates. The second try was a draft to play with colours appearing in the logo. So I seperated the card in two different-coloured parts. In both drafts I did not want to use other shapes and forms in order to give the logo the ability to breath.
Life´s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
