Cardboard Computers
Well basically in this reading it talks about the Utopia project which was about how new media tools should be designed in relation to the quality of work they produce. Today, concepts from the Utopia projects originating from Scandinavia are used throughout the world in the field of design. It starts talking about the relationship of typographers & Journalist in the news room, how before layout software technology came into the picture each professional had their own space & task. With the incorporation of new computer layout software in the 70s, the spaces & professions were merged & had to worker closer together causing some friction between the 2. It then goes on to talk about the importance of mock ups & how they encourage hands on experience, that they are “understandable & that they are cheap to create.
Experience Prototyping” Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri
In the paper “Experiencing Prototyping” it talks about how “Prototypes” are basically representative of the concept before the final product comes into existence. Many group of designers, like for example the ones at Apple & Xerox typically try to push the limits of traditional methods of prototype development. What experience prototyping is, is “what the user looks at, feels & hears while using it.” Also to be considered are the influences of contextual factors, like social circumstances, time limits & the environment.
“What Do Prototypes Prototype?” Stephen Houde and Charles Hill
In the reading of “What Do Prototypes Prototype” the authors talk about prototypes are widely recognized to be a central way of exploring & expressing designs for interactive computer artifacts. The authors talk a little bit about the problems with prototyping about how it can be difficult for designers to communicate vivid prototypes to broad audiences in which the feedback from users is evoked by the prototypes.
5 in 5 Project reflection
Hey, so today I’m going to be writing a synapsis of my 5 in 5 project assignment. Well basically, I came into this project confident that things would go very smoothly & very easy. I thought that it would be a rather easy project because I had 5 projects in my head & a goal that I wanted to reach. Okay simple enough. I originally started out in my head with the idea of illustrating 2 new characters (Analog) or by pencil in this case & coloring them as separate digitally projects for an analog book that I wanted to create merging them into one digital/Analog project for the last project. I didn’t really anticipate the technical computer problems that I ran into, e.g. gathering reference/research material to use via my computer software & having a massive trouble shooting session with my hardware/software, which consumed most of my first day to fix. So, since that happened I had to take my project into a different direction in order to complete the 1st project in time. So instead, I used this 5 in 5 project as a kind of jumping off point to come up with a process or structure that I wanted to follow for future projects. Not to say that the process I came up with would not change due to outside influences, but I still wanted an idea of the way that I intended to work for other projects. With that said, I have posted a picture of what my mockup/prototype book looks like & where my 5 in 5 projects went into the book to give you an idea of what my thinking was.
5 in 5 project#1, So for my first assignment, I decided to do an illustration of the main character from a story that I’m writing by means of pencil & paper. I attempted to show the beginning process in which I used to create a new composition. Originally I started this project with the intention of doing a completely new character instead of an existing character. That didn’t pan out the exact way which I originally planned so I changed my project to accommodate with the time I had left. So basically I tried show the process of the creation of my artwork in steps. Even though this 1st project was very basic in nature it was still an important part of my process that I felt should be documented. I basically tried to explain what composition was to the readers so that they would have a better understanding of what I was referring to. I went into in some small detail my preferred method of working with composition called “The rule of 3rds” in which the artist divides the area into thirds in both directions & adds four circular points where the lines cross as the basic focal point of my drawing. Afterwards I went into explaining what a gesture drawing was, which in this case was the main focus for this project as far as completion as I set new parameters for the project. Most gesture drawings takes not more than 2 minutes. So that was my constraint for the first project.
5 in 5 project#2 , So for this project, which was analog, I got a bit closer to what I originally planned to do by completing a full pencil outline of a figure commonly referred to as “line art”. From there I gave a brief explanation of what line art was & gave myself a 40 minute time constraint to complete this project.
5 in 5 project#3, Originally I started out with the idea of doing a full digital coloring project by converting my hand drawn pencil figure but then realized I had not really prepared it for digital coloring & had to add an extra step of inking it digitally. That came in pretty handy as I normally ink my work by hand but decided to do it in Adobe Illustrator. It was helpful because had I inked my work by hand, it would have taken much longer to do & I would not have a very good file as a point of reference to the coloring software of my choice. Believe it or not, I actually don’t really do a lot of my inking by computer. But because of the nature of this project, the time constraint involved, I had to think of the quickest most efficient way to get my illustration inked & ready to add color to it. My constraint was a 1 hour limit giving the amount of detail involved in the character.
5 in 5 project#4, I once again ran into some issues with time on this 5 in 5 project. I have not colored my artwork in such a way before so it was kind of experimental for me & I learned a lot from coloring my work this way. Like for example, realizing I had not enough RAM/Memory to do the entire iteration of the figure for the final render, so I had to work up to the point where my computer crashed. After seeing my computer crash several times I had to end the project because I hit the 8 hour time constraint that I gave myself.
5 in 5 project#5 After running into many rendering problems with the memory on my computer in my last project, I decided to do a fresh new project from scratch, to test if I would be better suited working from a different software that would not crash my computer during my final renders. My project was to model a 3 story dining room & I gave myself a time constraint of 1 hour to finish. I found the software was more efficient in RAM usage & will most likely use it in my future projects lke my thesis for example. If I had to do this project again, I would use this new software from the beginning as to prevent me from repeating the same problems I had going through the process in the first place. I learned that thinking how something is executed & actually executing your ideas, can be 2 different realities.
Cardboard & Paper Prototype
