My ePortfolio

Visit here please.

http://scah.cdu.edu.au/2011/NMD201/s212973/eportfolio/index.html

Final design and layout

I have come up with three different page layouts for my website.The first is the index.html or the home page. This is the visitors access to my website and gives the option to go directly to one of five options.

1. About - information about myself

2. Current Projects - what I am working on

3. Gallery - collections of images

4. Video - access my videos

5. Other Media - websites and other

These five options use my main template I created

with Dreamweaver. This template has a smaller version the logo and all selections (including home) located in a column to the left. To the right is a column full of links to sites that I find interesting or are useful as a resource. Sites that include my own content such as Vimeo and blogs are also included. In the centre grey section are images that act as links to the third page style.

The third style is similar to to second. The differences include a different banner and no links in the left column. The middle grey section can be used to place a gallery of images or embed a video

Design layout

I have decided to stick with a white background with grey content areas. Keeping the site design simple will allow my artwork to stand out more.I still like the idea of a darker website, kinder to the environment and easier on the eye. I may look into creating the option for visitors to decide. Another option that would be good is for the user to choose a website size that suits their screen size.

Site Design

I have already begun the collection of previous works to include in my e-Portfolio, some examples are located below. I have decided to keep the banner I created last year for a flash based website. This was drawn during NMD201 Semester 1 and it includes a selection of sketches and ideas from some of my journals.

I have done two versions. Below is the original black on white and an inversed white on black. I still have not decided what background to go with.

I am still deciding between a white background of a dark grey. I like the idea of keeping website color to a minimum, possibly absent. Any color will come from the images of my work, allowing the work to stand out from the website. The aim of my e-Portfolio will be to show off my artistic skills although I will be showing off some website designs with hyperlinks to other sites I have made.

"Summer Shade", Acrylic on canvas (3'x9') 1998.

This is a painting I had done while while studying at North Adelaide School of Art (Advanced Diploma in Applied and Visual Arts).

Tables

Week 10 class work includes creating tables.

Here are 12 of my favorite things.

Dream Weaver

We have been introduced to Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.

A very useful program.

The ability to edit a website as it looks is much easier and faster than typing out the HTML code, although typing the code is still fun and rewarding.

To the right are some examples of what I have done. Visually not what I want my final website to look like but it

is giving me the opportunity to test out page layouts.

I would like a page of galleries that allows a visitor to quickly navigate with ease to their desired destination.

Im thinking a single image depicting the work arranged in a column with brief details to its right. From here you can enter a page dedicated to the work with additional images and information.

Interactive Web-based Product

Our next assignment is to create a portfolio in the form of an interactive web site.

This assignment will give me the opportunity to showcase my work, providing me with a convenient tool to show potential employees.

During class in week 7 we played around with coding in raw HTML. This is something I had done last year, although back then we were using CSS for web design instead of just working with HTML.

To the right is what I put together for the class task. I didn't put too much e

ffort into it, just played around with some of the HTML tags. It links to another page I made as well as several other sites and my e-mail. The image is what a candle flame looks like in no gravity.

What I have been doing though is creating simple sites like the one to the left. They only contain other sites that I visit the most, making it easier and faster to get to these sites. I have made

others, specifically for other classes.

Final project

This is the final short film. A larger copy can be found on my Vimeo account . I have called it "Alone".

The concept is that of an astronaut manning a space station on his own. With no company he gradually becomes insane.

All of the film I used comes from www.archive.org, most of it a combination of old black and white film and NASA documentaries, along with a short film called Gary Rising (1998), directed and produced by Jesus Rivera.

The voice comes from a show called "Telephone Time, The Stories of John Nesbit" the episode was "I am not alone". The story was about a polish resistance fighter taken captive and held prisoner by the Russians. there was a part in the centre of the film where the voice of the captive fit in nicely with my film.

Final class work

Week five is the final week for class tasks, next week the final project is due. This week we were introduced to effects. We were shown how to drag a desired effect onto the clip and tweak them to create the effect we want, including key frames to animate the parameters over time.

Our last job was to experiment with text generators and include one in our weekly task.

In my clip I used the luma key effect on a fish bowl clip so the fish were swimming on a background with a tree and fish prints. The text I used is a type writer effect.

Week 4 class work

This week we were introduced to motion tabs and key frames. We played around with the basic motions Scale, Rotation, Centre and Anchor point as well as attributes like Crop, Distort and Opacity.

Our task for this week was to layer nine clips into nine tracks and by using the above motions and attributes to minimise and move each clip in a way that shows all clips at the same time in a 3x3 grid.

I wanted to go a step further though and I made it so the middle one shrinks and the two sides, top and bottom change perspective creating a passageway effect.

I did have another version where each clip was aligned properly creating the grid effect but I lost it when my external HDD became corrupted so I rushed this one together.

Classroom Task 2

Week 3 tasks involved transitions and motion. Unfortunately Monday was a public holiday so we had no class that day. Although the class was rescheduled for Friday I already had a class to go to that day. I was able to do the tasks required in my own time and create the clip below.

This clip includes four shots, all from the same site as my other clip. There are three transitions in total, the first and last transitions were created as individual clips and merged together creating another transition (hard cut). The first transition is a cross dissolve with no fading out, this gives an an effect of time passing by. The third transition is also a cross dissolve but this time the clip fades to black between the shots.

Classroom Tasks

Each week we have been given a task to do in class so we can gradually learn how to edit film. The first week was spent searching for useable film stock (film that has been licensed under creative commons for editing by other people).

The second week was used to learn how the FCP interface worked (a little hard to do when your logon account is not up and running).

Tasks included basic editing using:

- The blade tool in the timeline

- In and out points in the viewer

- Subclips

As well as layering tracks

- Adding new tracks

- Adjusting opacity

Below is what I had put together during the second week.

Two shots have been used, both downloaded from the same site (Unable to remember at the moment but I will look for it and note it down on this blog). The first shot is a fish on a white background swimming across the screen. This I have made 50% opaque and copied three more times, staggering them as subclips every two seconds. It now looks as though there are four fish swimming across the screen following each other exactly, the first very transparent and each becoming more solid. Finally I added a clip of white smoke flowing from right to left on a black background. This was also made transparent. This was to give the effect of the fish swimming into the smoke.

New project idea

Last week a friend from Northern Editions (CDU's Printmaking Studio and Gallery) asked me to do a bit of filming for them. They had come into possession of a series of 'fish' etchings that were created in the earlier part of last century. With the help of local high school students, prints were made from these etchings that were later hung in the gardens surrounding the Norther Editions building.
Using one of the uni's HD camera's I have filmed the students hanging the prints as well as shots of the prints on their own. I figured this would give me the opportuntiy to help out a friend (as well as Northern Editions staff) and give me an awesome subject for my project.

NMD201 - Intermediate Studio

The second semester for this year sees me creating a short film in NMD201 - Intermediate Studio. The first half of the semester is going towards editing video in Final Cut Pro 6. After the mid semester break we will be working on creating a website.

In the beginning we were all tasked to select a theme to work on. I was thinking of playing with politics and old school cartoons, using cartoon footage with politics for sound. Although since deciding that topic I have come across a site with an interesting selection of video to choose from. All free for anyone to use.