GDDB

Website of the Week 12!

2008-12-09T08:12:00.003-05:00

Aardman Animations is the official site of the studio that created Wallace & Gromit. The website, similar to the characters is fun, well illustrated, and has tons of links with interesting information and video reels. Each scene keeps you in intrigued and wanting to find out what happens next.

Website of the Week 11!

2008-12-02T08:15:00.002-05:00

NEOSTREAM Interactive

This is a great multimedia company with very nice animations. The preloader is really fun to watch and the main figure on the page will entertain you the entire time as he leads you to different sections of the website. Definitely check out all the different links when you have a chance.

Website of the Week 10!

2008-11-17T23:33:00.003-05:00

www.biggs-gilmore.com

Biggs-Gilmore is an advertising company with a core expertise in integration of offline and online marketing strategies. The website I found very intriguing and interactive. I wanted to continue clicking on their images and reading about their work. It has a nice clean feel to it and was easy to navigate through. My only criticisms are that images are small so you don't really know what you're clicking on until after you click on it, and some of the other sections besides "Home" are not as interesting. But it's definitely worth taking a look.

Website of the Week 9!

2008-11-11T09:02:00.003-05:00

www.christies.com
My site of the week is for Christies, the art auction house. I have ulterior motives for choosing this site because my friend, Alicia Brooks, just redesigned the homepage and the post-war & contemporary section. There is nothing mind-blowing about the site, but it presents a lot of information in a very clean and attractive way. The post-war & contemporary section is more innovative and has some nice flash graphics.

Website of the Week 8!

2008-11-03T17:40:00.002-05:00

In honor of Election Day, here is a funny little video of a dance-off between O'bama (our future president!) and McCain. I think it was edited in After Effects but I'm not positive. Either way, it's funny, creative and shows some of the possibilities of using these video editing programs. Vote and enjoy!

Website of the Week 7!

2008-10-21T08:57:00.003-04:00

PDK is a company that sells car loans. The web designer takes a boring company that has nothing to do with design and creates and great looking, interactive website. It demonstrates how a website and design can completely transform a company giving them a new image.

Website of the Week 6!

2008-10-13T12:43:00.002-04:00

www.creaktif.com

Creaktif is a design studio in France with a great flash website. It is fun, entertaining, and easy to navigate through. Plus, I think their work and design are really good. The opening transition image alone makes the website unforgettable.

Website of the Week 5!

2008-10-02T14:36:00.003-04:00

http://www.joshuaheld.com/

This is a website for a cartoonist named Joshua Held. His website has been down, well, forever as far as I know. But I love his simple, hilarious cartoons and animations primarily done in Flash. It demonstrates how an idea can just as effective as the actual animation. So check out the two on his website and I have included one above as well.

Website of the Week 4!

2008-09-25T17:27:00.002-04:00

www.brickfilms.com is a website with hundreds of stop motion graphics movies made with legos. Some of them are pretty incredible. I included a Yellow Submarine movie and Summer Loving from Grease. Check out some more when you have a chance.

Final Project I

2008-09-23T09:42:00.008-04:00

Match.com is a website in which men and women take risks and let chance dictate their future. This was theme was similarly reflected in my experience with this project.

Selecting my initial action or subject for the assignment was not too difficult. I wanted to let my photographs influence the outcome of my brand name, so I did not put much thought into the action I choose. I picked three separate actions, photographed all three, and selected the one I felt would give me the best results: a woman putting on make-up. Taking the original photographs, I found to be the most challenging part of the project. As an inexperienced photographer, I did not plan out my shots as meticulously as I should have, which would have entailed paying close attention to the light, removing any distracting objects in the background, and providing my actor with careful direction.

After reviewing the photographs, it wasn’t long before I came up with my brand name, Match.com. I wanted to steer clear of any obvious solutions, such as perfume or make-up brands. While studying the images of a young woman applying make up, it elicited thoughts of a woman preparing for a date. With my brand identified, narrowing down my photographs was relatively easy. Many of my pictures were out of focus or had distracting images in the background so I used cropping and Photoshop editing to my advantage to get each shot the way I anticipated. Additionally, my experience with Flash made creating the slide show unproblematic and allowed me to manipulate the photos how I intended.

Lastly, selecting music took some trial and error. My first instinct was to select slow, romantic, typical “love” music. After testing it out, I felt my images and the match.com logo was too joyful to fit that theme. When contemplating the concept of my brand and message I wanted to communicate, the Frank Sinatra song “Love and Marriage” came to my mind. I changed the music and found the upbeat tempo and comical association with the television show “Married…with Children” worked well the playful logo, enticing photographs, and dancing images.

Similar to the users of Match.com, I let chance influence my actions and was both pleasantly surprised and happy with the results of my project.

Website of the Week 3!

2008-09-18T13:04:00.002-04:00

www.strawberryfrog.com

Strawberry Frog is a marketing company that focuses on Cultural Movement. I found their website to be fun and easy to navigate through. They use a frog as their mascot in clever ways to add some excitement to the clean and traditional website.

Spoof Photoshop Tutorial

2008-09-18T10:15:00.004-04:00

If you have ever used any of those online tutorials for software programs, than you will thoroughly appreciate this spoof photoshop tutorial.

Photo Finalists

2008-09-16T08:59:00.014-04:00

I have narrowed it down to these four pictures. I would still like to edit them to remove some of the busy information in the background and make the colors look more consistent. The brand I have decided on is Match.com which I feel works well with these photos and is somewhat unexpected from the original subject chosen.

Website of the Week 2!

2008-09-15T17:47:00.003-04:00

www.gatobiablo.com

This is not a company website, but rather a person's portfolio who works at Blue Sky Studios. There is not much work currently up on the site, but if you look under animation, there is his Flash reel which is unbelievable. It really shows you the full capabilities of Flash as an animation program, not only for websites. Additionally, if you look under the links page, there are links to several other animators amazing Flash portfolios. Enjoy and don't be jealous of how amazing they are!

Website of the Week!

2008-09-08T17:49:00.007-04:00

http://www.aka-advertising.com/

I felt this website accomplished something that many websites struggle with: the concept of usability vs. a cool design. I found this website fascinating to watch and search through, while at the same time found it easy to navigate. Additionally, I thought the company's actual work was very impressive. My only critique is that due to the complexity of the website, the loading time was long.

Jamie Puts On Make-up

2008-09-07T21:52:00.028-04:00

I am pleased with how my photographs came out, but if I had to do it all over again, I would spend even more time setting the stage, playing closer attention to objects in the background and the lighting of the room, and giving my actress more direction. This was difficult considering I didn't know what the end result of my project would be.

Animator vs. Animation

2008-09-06T14:32:00.011-04:00

Animator vs. Animation I
This is an amazingly creative, brilliant, and comical video incorporating the Flash interface and all its tools. Plus, it was created in Flash. Definitely worth a watch.
And don't forget to check out Animator vs. Animation II and Animation vs. Animator III.