From: Amy Wright
Date: April 17
Lucas, I thought your project was a cool way to showcase your musical talents. It was really neat to hear all the different instruments you can play and to hear you sing. It would be helpful to include some directions and an introduction to the music house on your homepage. I know that was one of the things you were going to add toward the end after all the other stuff was done. It would be great to have the music sheets and the notes playing as the music played but I know that is a lot of programming. I am excited to see the rest of the instruments and how everything will look at showcase.
--------------
From: Sunny Lim
Date: April 12
Hi! Lucas
First of all, I have to say that your project idea is awesome! Making your own mix song is really fun and interactive activity for users. I am also impressed with your graphic design. It is very cute and clean. I like the way that it changes its colors when it goes on stage as well. If you have different changing colors for each instrument, then it would be more distinguishable.
I only saw the basic element of your project, so I do not have whole lot to suggest changes for your project. Only thing that I would suggest, it will be fun to have some kind of features that allow users to change the beat or tone of the each instrument. But, I know that it is not a simple thing to make happen.
Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing your final project on Showcase!
--------------
From: Erin Noh
Date: March 5
Hi Lucas,
I really liked your studio project idea from the class discussion. The Flash project sounds refreshing and interesting. Your idea is full of enthusiasm, and although I have not seen your project design, I am sure it will demonstrate your love for music and technology very well.
The only suggestion I would like to make is you might want to narrow it down to one or two ideas and focus on those for this project. If you haven’t visited the New York Philharmonic Kidzone website, please take a look. It is a fun site and they offer a huge selection of helpful resources for music. This website has composer’s gallery, instrument storage room, composition workshop, musician’s lounge, game room, and many more. http://www.nyphilkids.org/main.phtml
Good luck! I can’t wait to see how your project turns out.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Showcase time.
Here is a link to my project.
It started as "The Musical House" (which is still a great idea that I hope to use one day) and now it is called "Let's Mix A Big Gray Song", which definitely doesn't roll off the tongue but did not do permanent damage to my sanity like the Musical House would have. It's an ambitious project that I hope to resurrect someday.
Ultimately, I think that my project is something of a semi-success. It works if you let it load all of the way and hit refresh, which isn't exactly very elegant. It also has problems with looping. Well, it has ONE problem with looping, namely that it doesn't loop at the end of the song. I have got to figure this aspect of the project out, but I really don't have time. Certainly not before the showcase.
Things I do like? Well, I like the graphic design I did. I used Adobe Illustrator's live trace function to mutate various clipart I found into more artsy and contrasted black and white images. I remember Dr. Branch saying a long time ago that it was recommended to never go above four colors on any website, and I took that to heart because it worked with the clean design ideas I had.
Most of all, I think my project is fun to play with, and I hope people enjoy using it!
It started as "The Musical House" (which is still a great idea that I hope to use one day) and now it is called "Let's Mix A Big Gray Song", which definitely doesn't roll off the tongue but did not do permanent damage to my sanity like the Musical House would have. It's an ambitious project that I hope to resurrect someday.
Ultimately, I think that my project is something of a semi-success. It works if you let it load all of the way and hit refresh, which isn't exactly very elegant. It also has problems with looping. Well, it has ONE problem with looping, namely that it doesn't loop at the end of the song. I have got to figure this aspect of the project out, but I really don't have time. Certainly not before the showcase.
Things I do like? Well, I like the graphic design I did. I used Adobe Illustrator's live trace function to mutate various clipart I found into more artsy and contrasted black and white images. I remember Dr. Branch saying a long time ago that it was recommended to never go above four colors on any website, and I took that to heart because it worked with the clean design ideas I had.
Most of all, I think my project is fun to play with, and I hope people enjoy using it!
Friday, April 18, 2008
The home stretch!
Click here for my project.
I haven't made much in the way of programming changes on the project this week because I have been trying out a new way to get the music to work. Per the suggestions of Daisyane Barreto, I have been trying to move the music to timelines rather than loading them into each symbol. I think this is probably the way the music should work. It keeps stuttering in the music from getting all of the tracks off-track. I hope it works because right now, this thing is really chugging along.
In other news, I have to build the graphical elements for the "stage" and searching for all kinds of metaphors, including an actual stage of sorts, but I'm thinking about keeping it very simple. I would love it, honestly, if I could make the site without any directions at all, or maybe have it say, simply "drag." That would be fantastic, and it would certainly adhere to the tenets of John Maeda's Laws of Simplicity (maybe a tad too much!), of which I am a big fan. I won't go into all of them here, but the first two are Reduce and Organize, which is something I need to do in all aspects of my life. Basically, Maeda proposes a continuum between these two concepts:
How simple can you make it? <---> How complex does it have to be?
I don't think my project has to be very complex to be honest. I chose drag and drop functionality because it was very simple and it would make the user feel that interacting with my Flash project was more tangible and satisfying. Dragging something around is a lot better than clicking on it, in my opinion, in terms of immersion, but that could be personal preference. Regardless, I need to make it obvious to the user that they are supposed to drag the object to a certain while keeping my "stage" free of verbal clutter. I really want it to be visually striking.
I haven't made much in the way of programming changes on the project this week because I have been trying out a new way to get the music to work. Per the suggestions of Daisyane Barreto, I have been trying to move the music to timelines rather than loading them into each symbol. I think this is probably the way the music should work. It keeps stuttering in the music from getting all of the tracks off-track. I hope it works because right now, this thing is really chugging along.
In other news, I have to build the graphical elements for the "stage" and searching for all kinds of metaphors, including an actual stage of sorts, but I'm thinking about keeping it very simple. I would love it, honestly, if I could make the site without any directions at all, or maybe have it say, simply "drag." That would be fantastic, and it would certainly adhere to the tenets of John Maeda's Laws of Simplicity (maybe a tad too much!), of which I am a big fan. I won't go into all of them here, but the first two are Reduce and Organize, which is something I need to do in all aspects of my life. Basically, Maeda proposes a continuum between these two concepts:
How simple can you make it? <---> How complex does it have to be?
I don't think my project has to be very complex to be honest. I chose drag and drop functionality because it was very simple and it would make the user feel that interacting with my Flash project was more tangible and satisfying. Dragging something around is a lot better than clicking on it, in my opinion, in terms of immersion, but that could be personal preference. Regardless, I need to make it obvious to the user that they are supposed to drag the object to a certain while keeping my "stage" free of verbal clutter. I really want it to be visually striking.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Desk Crits: Sunny Lim and Suhwa Lee
Project Name: Crisis Management Communications Plan
Creator: Sunny Lim
Looking over your project, I have noticed that the design has changed quite a bit since the last time I looked at it (only a week ago!). It's good to see that you are using the ACA-approved colors and stuff (I know them well). The e-handbook uses a nice bit of ActionScipting, that great book-turning effect. I've seen that one around recently...is it free somewhere? Anyway, that looks really great, but I wonder if maybe the red of the book is a little too dark as a background, but certainly everything seems legible. Also, a concern might be its ability to be updated. I know, from working with the ACA in the past, that they are usually concerned about being able to update material and unless they have access to the raw flash files they can't do that. My suggestion (and you probably don't have time for this) is to make an alternate, "bare bones" no Flash site to complement this one that can be linked from the beginning.
I'm looking at the representive case section and it looks good, though there is a blank box in the upper left that I don't understand. Perhaps a video is going to go there, but it pushes everything down so I have to scroll up and down a bit. It would be great if it all fit on one screen, but, like I said, I don't know what your plans are for the project. At the bottom it says, "Additional information: find out more case" and I think it might need to say "more cases", right? Also, the steps in assembling a crisis team don't seem to be working, but maybe that's because you haven't finished them yet! There should be a space after the comma after the word "sober," by the way; I know that's nitpicking.
I assume you are still working on the simulation because I couldn't get it to work. Also, the resources link was not working, but that might be coming as well.
I hope this helps you, and if you update it over the weekend, let me know!
------------------
Project Name: Online Survey
Creator: Suhwa Lee
Wow. The project looks really fantastic. I think your design sensibilities are good. Everything is very clean and easy to read. On the first page, it should probably say "More DetailS about Online SurveyING or SurveyS" (I capitalized the missing letters there for you). That's just a grammar thing.
The use of voice is great. I think that maybe you could put a note under the audio controller that maybe even says something as simple as "audio," just to let the user know that that's what it controls. Right now, the play button seems to suggest to me that it controls the graphic right above it.
Moving ahead, I think that the quizzes are amazing. More nitpicking: I noticed that the "mail" option in the first survey looks like the graphic has been shrunken but not scaled. It's a little squished-looking. The same goes with the "online" option next to it. It seems strange next to the other two. Also, in Lesson 3, one of the subheadings should say "GuidelineS for designing effective questionnaires." The "q" in questionnaires probably shouldn't be capitalized either. In that section there is a lot of text and it seems different than the rest of the project, which is not so text heavy. Is there any way to break it up, or add audio to it. I'm probably adding to your workload!
Other than that, I find it hard to find fault with the project. Great work!
Creator: Sunny Lim
Looking over your project, I have noticed that the design has changed quite a bit since the last time I looked at it (only a week ago!). It's good to see that you are using the ACA-approved colors and stuff (I know them well). The e-handbook uses a nice bit of ActionScipting, that great book-turning effect. I've seen that one around recently...is it free somewhere? Anyway, that looks really great, but I wonder if maybe the red of the book is a little too dark as a background, but certainly everything seems legible. Also, a concern might be its ability to be updated. I know, from working with the ACA in the past, that they are usually concerned about being able to update material and unless they have access to the raw flash files they can't do that. My suggestion (and you probably don't have time for this) is to make an alternate, "bare bones" no Flash site to complement this one that can be linked from the beginning.
I'm looking at the representive case section and it looks good, though there is a blank box in the upper left that I don't understand. Perhaps a video is going to go there, but it pushes everything down so I have to scroll up and down a bit. It would be great if it all fit on one screen, but, like I said, I don't know what your plans are for the project. At the bottom it says, "Additional information: find out more case" and I think it might need to say "more cases", right? Also, the steps in assembling a crisis team don't seem to be working, but maybe that's because you haven't finished them yet! There should be a space after the comma after the word "sober," by the way; I know that's nitpicking.
I assume you are still working on the simulation because I couldn't get it to work. Also, the resources link was not working, but that might be coming as well.
I hope this helps you, and if you update it over the weekend, let me know!
------------------
Project Name: Online Survey
Creator: Suhwa Lee
Wow. The project looks really fantastic. I think your design sensibilities are good. Everything is very clean and easy to read. On the first page, it should probably say "More DetailS about Online SurveyING or SurveyS" (I capitalized the missing letters there for you). That's just a grammar thing.
The use of voice is great. I think that maybe you could put a note under the audio controller that maybe even says something as simple as "audio," just to let the user know that that's what it controls. Right now, the play button seems to suggest to me that it controls the graphic right above it.
Moving ahead, I think that the quizzes are amazing. More nitpicking: I noticed that the "mail" option in the first survey looks like the graphic has been shrunken but not scaled. It's a little squished-looking. The same goes with the "online" option next to it. It seems strange next to the other two. Also, in Lesson 3, one of the subheadings should say "GuidelineS for designing effective questionnaires." The "q" in questionnaires probably shouldn't be capitalized either. In that section there is a lot of text and it seems different than the rest of the project, which is not so text heavy. Is there any way to break it up, or add audio to it. I'm probably adding to your workload!
Other than that, I find it hard to find fault with the project. Great work!
Thursday, April 10, 2008
So, it's sorta working?
I think this is my "think upper duck" moment. I've gotten the ActionScripting pretty much working, but the sounds are clipping and occasionally stuttering, meaning that the tracks get off from each other and create the dreaded cacophony that I keep harping on. I wonder if the clipping is caused by the volume being set at too loud a level. Really, the whole thing is just chugging away right now, with framerate dips and skips galore. Because the audio is streaming (10 1MB apiece MP3s working in concert!) it seems to tax Flash's capabilities. I might have to move the audio elements to timelines or something, but I'm not really sure what to do here, to be honest. The response to the project at the showcase was encouraging, but I'm still not sure the thing functions well enough to be called a success.
Also, my drag-and-drop elements overlap each other right now and that causes Flash to get confused. When one of the elements sits on the other one it activates it, which is frustrating. I want to create boundaries or borders for the draggable elements so they don't get the opportunity to overlap, but I can't find the code anywhere. I like the interactivity of drag-and-drop versus just turning something on and off with switches. It feels more visceral this way; the motions increase interactivity and make the user think they are actually doing something.
I've spent so much time working on ActionScripting that I'm not sure if I can start over again to get this thing working. What I will probably do is create a dummy project to fool around with while keeping my current progress intact. I still have quite a bit of graphic design ahead of me, too. That aspect of the project is taking longer than I thought. I'm trying to adhere to two or three colors only, but some of the comments at the dress rehearsal seemed to suggest that my project appeared drab, so maybe I should inject some new colors here and there.
Also, my drag-and-drop elements overlap each other right now and that causes Flash to get confused. When one of the elements sits on the other one it activates it, which is frustrating. I want to create boundaries or borders for the draggable elements so they don't get the opportunity to overlap, but I can't find the code anywhere. I like the interactivity of drag-and-drop versus just turning something on and off with switches. It feels more visceral this way; the motions increase interactivity and make the user think they are actually doing something.
I've spent so much time working on ActionScripting that I'm not sure if I can start over again to get this thing working. What I will probably do is create a dummy project to fool around with while keeping my current progress intact. I still have quite a bit of graphic design ahead of me, too. That aspect of the project is taking longer than I thought. I'm trying to adhere to two or three colors only, but some of the comments at the dress rehearsal seemed to suggest that my project appeared drab, so maybe I should inject some new colors here and there.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
I hope this works...
The recording session went very well, though I must say that I came up with a much different song than I expected. I thought I was going to create an ornate, orchestral tune that would have lots of different elements with which to interact. Instead I wrote a three chord rocker that's not exactly muscular, but not exactly a musical pushover. The instruments used are as follows:
Bass drum
Snare drum
Ride Cymbal
Maracas
Tambourine
Piano
Synthesizer
Treated Piano
Bass
Background vocals
Lead vocals
That's still plenty of instrumentation to use and more than enough for me to wrangle for the scope of this project. I'm breaking down each recorded track into a separate mp3 and loading those into Flash. And this is where it gets tricky. Everything has to line up perfectly, and if there is any delay from track to track then the whole thing will descend into cacophony, which is a word that keeps coming up in the journal entries, much to my chagrin. I envision (and hear) the entire thing in my head, but I'm really worried about getting it to work.
I have pretty much got the actionscripting finished insofar as I have made the stage where the graphical instrument representations will be animated and "create" sound once placed. I have gotten the animations to work. One thing I would love to do that eludes my grasp is make it so that each dragged element bumps up against the other instead of laying on top of each other. There has to be an easy bit of actionscripting out there to get around this.
Of course, none of this matters, as The Arcade Fire beat me to the punch. There budget is probably much greater than mine.
Bass drum
Snare drum
Ride Cymbal
Maracas
Tambourine
Piano
Synthesizer
Treated Piano
Bass
Background vocals
Lead vocals
That's still plenty of instrumentation to use and more than enough for me to wrangle for the scope of this project. I'm breaking down each recorded track into a separate mp3 and loading those into Flash. And this is where it gets tricky. Everything has to line up perfectly, and if there is any delay from track to track then the whole thing will descend into cacophony, which is a word that keeps coming up in the journal entries, much to my chagrin. I envision (and hear) the entire thing in my head, but I'm really worried about getting it to work.
I have pretty much got the actionscripting finished insofar as I have made the stage where the graphical instrument representations will be animated and "create" sound once placed. I have gotten the animations to work. One thing I would love to do that eludes my grasp is make it so that each dragged element bumps up against the other instead of laying on top of each other. There has to be an easy bit of actionscripting out there to get around this.
Of course, none of this matters, as The Arcade Fire beat me to the punch. There budget is probably much greater than mine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)