Web Expressions - Week 9
October 31, 2005 | Leave a Comment
This week we are discussing Sound! Here are the slides: Week 9
This Week:
- Discussing Sound
- Finish up Animation Lab
- Work on your site
- Blog: How can sound be best used for the visually impaired? Give examples.
Juggling Knives
October 31, 2005 | 1 Comment
I used to juggle all the time. When I was a student at PSU, during the warm months I would hang out by Rounds Hall and juggle on the grass between classes simply as a fun, sometimes frustrating passtime. About a year ago I put my clubs an knives away and hadn’t touched them since. That changed this weekend.
My brother in law came to visit me this Sunday and through some random conversation I learned that he was interested in juggling! He told me that he juggles balls and clubs and has wanted to try knives and torches. Well, thats when I busted out with my juggling knives and clubs and we went to the park to goof around!
Man, I didn’t realize how much I missed juggling and just how fun it was (and tiring)! I’ve juggled off and on for a few years, so I’m not very good by any means…all the more reason for me to start up again.
If you are interested in juggling and you have a good grasp of the concept from juggling balls, then I would suggest trying out clubs. They are frustrating at first but once you get them, it opens a world of opportunity. You’d be able to juggle knives and torches, too! (If you can juggle clubs, knives and torches are just as easy…save for the scare factor)
Here’s what I suggest you get:
Clubs, I use Phatboyz. They are a little fatter than European style and MUCH better than American clubs.
For Torches, go with Dube Customs.
For other juggling supplies, check out Dube.
Oh…and check out my Juggling List on MasterWish.
Web Expressions - Lab 7: Flash
October 26, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Today’s Topic…Flash! w00t.
This lab will work a little differently. We’ll be doing part one as a class so that we can all follow the same steps together and ask questions along the way. Before we get started, here are some terms you should know:
Tween: In animation, it is used to describe intermediate frames often added by an assistant animator or by computer. See tweening.
Motion Tween: In animation, refers to movement of an object along a path.
Shape Tween: In animation, refers to changing the shape of an object.
Export Movie: With Flash, when you save your movie, you are actually saving a file that allows you to open the movie again and edit it later on. If you want the flash movie to be viewable on the web, you must export the movie (which essentially saves it as a .swf file). To export a movie, simply click File > Export > Export Movie, select the folder you want to save the movie in, then click the Save button.
How do you turn in your movies?
Here’s what you need to do:
- create a movie folder in your Home folder on your M:Drive
- create your movies and export them in your Home folder on your M:Drive. (don’t use spaces or punctuation in the name of the file).
- Make a new post on your blog for this lab and create links for each of your movies. The link would be: http://oz.plymouth.edu/~username/movie/movie_name.swf
Obviously, replace username with your myPlymouth username, replace movie with the name of the folder you created in your Home folder, and replace movie_name with the name you gave the movie.
Lets get to it!
Lab (part 1): Moving Objects along a Path
In this tutorial you will learn how Flash allows us to to gain further control of the movement of an object by the use of guide layers. This method enables to you to draw a complex path or guide which the object will follow.
Lab (part 2): Creating Animations with Shape Tween
In this tutorial you will learn how Flash can also ‘tween’ the shape of an object. This allows the shape to change between keyframes.
This one is optional! If you have a desire to learn more about flash and do some pretty cool stuff, do these tutorials:
Lab (part 3): Working with Graphics in Flash
In this section, you will learn:
* Creating graphics in Flash
* Importing graphics
* Using color effectively
* Creating a color swatch
* Layering Flash elements
* Masking content
* Organizing content in Flash
* Reusing graphics as symbolsNOTE: This tutorial starts on page 12 of a whole series of tutorials and continues on to page to 26
Twins : Real Life Twinkie Experiment
October 25, 2005 | 2 Comments
You have seen it in countless movies. If you are a twin, you may have imagined if you could pull something like this off…well, Randy over at Optimal Stupidity clued me in on Real Life Twinkie Experiment where two female twins are conducting an experiment. They have switched places. Here’s the description the site gives:
Can twins really change places without getting caught? My twin sister and I have always been asked by people if we ever change places. I honestly believe there is no way twins can switch places in real life and pull it off. My identical twin sister, Amy, strongly disagrees with me. This debate has been brewing all of our lives, and it’s time to put it to the test.
It is an amazing idea and they have been successful since August! Check out the first blog post for more info.
Web Expressions - End of Week 8
October 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Here are the slides for this week! Week 8
This week we are discussing Animation, namely:
- The Goals of Animation
- Animation Examples
- How Animation Works on the Web
- Compression
- Creation
- Formats
- Embedding
We won’t be finishing this chapter this week, so no quiz on Monday. I have a required blog post for you to do, however. Please create a blog post about Animated banner ads…What types have you seen? Do you like them? Why or why not? Are the effective to you? Are there some you are more drawn to click than others? What drew you?
The above blog post is due next Wednesday.
WTF Hax
October 20, 2005 | 9 Comments
One of my pals sent this image along to me. I almost busted a gut laughing.
Web Expressions - Lab 6
October 19, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Today, we did a catch up lab today with no new information. We will meet on Friday and do some critiques!
World of Fellowship of the Ringcraft
October 18, 2005 | 3 Comments
If you are a World of Warcraft and Lord of the Ring fan, you’ll get a kick out of this: World of Fellowship of the Ringcraft. So Sweet an animated gif!
Protect Your PC
October 18, 2005 | Leave a Comment
This ad says it all.
Writely
October 18, 2005 | 4 Comments
Zach over at NoSheep! wrote an article about Web 2.0 and the Long Tail that intrigued me. That article linked to another article by Tim O’Reilly that discusses various services that are getting heavy notice on their innovations on the web. One has really caught my eye….Writely.
The gist of this application is that its a Word Processor online! You can type documents (much like you can with MS Word or OpenOffice.org) through a web interface. The application has an auto-save, hot keys, exporting to HTML and Word, HTML editing and the ability to publish to blogs! Oh, and the sweet part about it…you tag your documents and can distribute them with other users. I teach a course at Plymouth State University and the last quiz that I administered was typed up using Writely. I’ve done a few other documents since then and it seems extremely slick.
That doesn’t mean its perfect. Writely is still in Beta (as most Web 2.0 apps are) and I have a few issues with it so far. When you export a Writely document to Word, it works but the formatting looks a little off. Also, there are a number of features that are provided in a full-fledged word processing application that are not yet provided in Writely. But thats what the beta is! Check it out, use it, make suggestions.
If you haven’t checked it out…do so. It’ll be worth your while.
http://www.writely.com/
Web Expressions - Week 7
October 14, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Here are the slides for this week! Week 7
Today:
- This week’s slides
- Website Critiques
By Next Week:
- Finish up the Photoshop lab
- Do your blog posts!
- Read Chapter 3 in our book! We’ll be talking about Animation :D
Web Expressions - Lab 5
October 12, 2005 | 1 Comment
In this lab we will be using Adobe Photoshop Elements to create and edit images. This lab will consist of 2 parts:
- Videos on some basic tools and menus
- Assignment for creating two additional images
To Open Photoshop Elements: Click the Start Menu > All Programs > Classes > Web Expressions > Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0
Videos on some basic tools and menus
These videos are from Photoshop Elements User and are hugely more useful than reading step by step instructions on the various tools. They take some time to watch so you may have to watch them throughout lab as well as on your own time (in order to complete the second and third parts). I would urge you to watch a video, then try doing what it is discussing before moving to the next video.
Here are the ones I want you to watch for this lab (you can watch more if you want to learn more cool stuff):
- Interface
- Layers, Part I
- Change Colors
- Cookie Cutter
- Photo Filter
For videos 2 through 5, make your own image using the techniques explained and save it as a jpg (File > Save As, then select *.jpg from the filetype drop-down list) then post it on your blog.
Additional Images - Image 1
The first image I want you to create from scratch is a banner image for your webpage to go at the top of your website. (an example would be the banner at the top of my blog that has my blog title and my feed).
- Click File > New
- Set the width to 800pixels (for starters) and the height to 90 pixels.
- Fill the background with the color of your choosing (it should match the color scheme of your website)
- Add some text…the title of your site, maybe a slogan, etc.
- Find an image to accompany the text and put that in your banner image.
- Save the image as a *.gif and put it on your website
Additional Images - Image 2
Create a humorous image using certain features available in Photoshop then post it on your blog. On your blog post, list the techniques that you used to create this image: E.g. various filters, smudge tool, clone tool etc. (use at least 5 tools). Be creative :)
Web Expressions - Week 6
October 3, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Here are this week’s slides: Multimedia.
For this week:
- Multimedia
- File Formats
- Artist’s Note
- Webpage Lab (continues)
- No Class Next Monday! Columbus Day :)
- Required Blog Post:
Artist’s objective: Describe what your personal goals for your website are. What you do hope to accomplish for your audience? What sort of reaction are you hoping to illicit? Is your web site humorous, informative, beautiful, or otherwise engaging? As the semester progresses feel free to update your objective as you develop your web site.
MasterWish
October 2, 2005 | 2 Comments
If you have ever made an Amazon wish list (or any wish list feature from any store), then you know how handy it is…how easy it can be to add items. But, despite the wish lists’ ease of use, you typically end up with managing more than one list…which is an irritating task. Enter: MasterWish, a new kind of wish-list. For the better part of this year Jon Emmons, Zach Tirrell and I have been working hard on this site and we are happy to announce that it is now ready for prime-time.
Ok, so whats the deal with MasterWish? Why did we make it? What is its purpose? Well, our goal was to create a centralized wish list site to house your needs and desires (as most wishlists do)…but we wanted the wish lists to be store independant. With MasterWish, you are able to create lists of items from any site you want (heck, your items don’t even have to be from a website…you can add items that you want to pick up at the grocery store). My friend Jon said it best when he wrote:
MasterWish is a wish list site with a whole lot more. Items on MasterWish can be from anywhere. Make up your birthday list with items from your favorite online vendors, but don’t stop there… You want things that may not come from online vendors. How about that nice lilac you saw at the garden center? Or that circular saw from the hardware store? Add those too! You can list items from anywhere and enter a web URL, a description of where to find it, or both!
Once you have a bunch of items you can organize them into lists. I have lists for music, videos, kitchen toys, and more, but the great thing is items can belong to more than one list. My birthday is coming up so I created a birthday list and added items from all my categories to it. It’s that easy.
The other big difference with MasterWish is you can control who sees your wish lists. You can create a wish list of what you want from friends and one for family and control who can see them.
MasterWish is still in beta, so we’re still working on improving and streamlining the site. If you have any suggestions please leave them at the Bugs & Suggestions link. We’ll do our best to implement everyone’s suggestions.
I hope you enjoy the site, make lots of suggestions, and get everything you wish for.
