Friday, April 27, 2007
Final Flash Project
For my Final Flash Project I turned my book design project into an interactive animation. This allows you to view a Biography of Vincent Van Gogh or go back and view 5 of his most famous paintings. It also allows you to scroll over the paintings and view information about the particular painting. I personally think the Van Gogh Interactive Animation is a very cool way to get information about the well known artist, Vincent Van Gogh.
Photo Gallery
My Photo Gallery is set up just like a website. In order to view the Photo Gallery, just click on Photos on the main page. The photos that are on my photo gallery are all of my 2 little nephews, Owen and Liam. So I like to call it the, "Crazy Aunt Katie Brag Site"
Book Design Project
Vincent Van Gogh
Both Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet are known today for their great artistic talents and skills as a painter. Both of which were influenced in their painting styles by impressionism. However, while Claude Monet was devoutly an impressionistic painter, Vincent Van Gogh simply encompassed both the techniques and colors of impressionism to form a new personal style which has come to be known as post-impressionism. Post impressionism is a movement that represents both an extension of impressionism and a rejection of the inherit limitations of impressionism.
Impressionist art is a style in which the artist captures the image of an object as someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it. They paint the pictures with a lot of color and most of their pictures are outdoor scenes. Their pictures are very bright and vibrant. The artists like to capture their images without detail but with bold colors. Some of the greatest impressionist artists were Edouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot and Pierre Auguste Renoir.
Claude Monet is generally considered to be the most outstanding figure among Impressionists. The term Impressionism actually derives from his picture Impression: Sunrise. When a title was needed in a hurry for the catalogue of the exhibition in 1874, Monet suggested Impression. Claude Monet was born in 1840 and began painting in 1858. He continued to paint until his death in 1926.The most famous of Monet’s paintings include Water Lilies, San Giorgio Maggiore at Giverny, Irises, The Japanese Footbridge, Water Lily Pool, Water Lilies at Giverny, Fishermans Cottage on the Cliffs at Var, and Impression: Sunrise.
However, immediately following Impressionism was a French art movement known as Post Impressionism. The most famous artists in the Post Impressionist movement were Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Henri de Tolouse-Lautrec. These painters showed a greater concern for expression, structure and form than the Impressionist artists did. They rejected the emphasis the Impressionists put on naturalism and the depiction of fleeting effects of light. The post-impressionists are also concerned with light, but it is not as much of a central concern, and their personal styles differ greatly.
One of the most famous of the Post Impressionist artists is Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh was born in 1853 to a Dutch pastor and ended up attempting several unsuccessful careers as both schoolmaster and missionary. In 1880 he became a full-time artist. Van Gogh's early work, during his Dutch period was heavy and rich but subdued in color. After his contact with other painters in Paris, with Japanese prints and the work of such original colorists as Delacroix and Monticelli, Van Gogh's style changed radically. Van Gogh began painting in the new artistic style that became known as Post Impressionism. Vincent then began capturing his exuberance and passion for the surrounding countryside. Among hundreds of paintings from this time are the famous Starry Night, Sunflowers, Starry Night over the Rhone, Café Terrace at Night, Cornfield and Cypress Tree, Olive Trees, Wheatfield with Crow, The Bedroom at Arles, The Night Café in the Place Lamartine in Arles, The Mulberry Tree, Church at Auvers, and Wheatfield under a Cloudy Sky.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Hypertext Project
My hypertext project is a humorous and interactive form of hypertext. The purpose was to give the viewer an interactive way to vote for the president that they would elect in 2008. It gives a humorous election result once the viewer votes for who they want to be the next president.
If you wish to vote again, just hit the refresh key.
If you wish to vote again, just hit the refresh key.
Hypertext Writing
The “Delta Thrives” Hypertext
Just by looking at the story “Delta Thrives”, before reading a word, I could tell it was very different. This hypertext interface is formatted similar to a comic strip. It was made up of one really long strip with a variety of photos, each describing what was happening. There was text that was put in different areas throughout the images to describe who was speaking or thinking at the time. Different fonts and sizes were used to describe emotion throughout the story. Although, this hypertext story was very weird, I have to say that I really liked how it was set up.
I especially like how the interface was set up because it wasn’t like anything I have ever seen before, it was unique. This made the entire thing more interesting to read because it provided the reader with text as well as images. However, unlike most stories, the text worked with the images to tell the story, rather then separately. The images were the primary thing that was telling the story, and the text was working with the images to enhance and clarify what was going on in the story. In most stories, even in children’s books where images are a large part of the story, the text is the primary thing that is telling the story and the images are simply there to clarify. In “Delta Thrives”, it was the other way around. Perhaps that was why I liked it so much.
Have you ever heard someone say, “A picture is worth a thousand words”? Well that is exactly the base of how this hypertext story works. It provides the reader with images and allows the images to speak to the reader, and then it adds text to clarify exactly what is meant in the story. The text itself isn’t being used as an image as much as it is a part of the actual image. They could not work alone. The story would be impossible to follow if either the text or the images were missing.
In this particular story, it’s not only the set up of the interface that catches the reader’s attention, but the story itself. The story takes place in the future. It never says the time period that the story takes place. However, it is made obvious that it is taking place in a futuristic setting through the photos and events that happen throughout the story. The story starts off by saying that cats can fly airplanes. If that was all that it said then perhaps one might conclude that it simply takes place in a world where cats are just as smart as humans. However, the images proved to us that this world was nothing like the life we are used to. It is made up of giant spheres that exist 7,000 meters above the sea and are all connected by giant tubes that would take you from one sphere to the other, which I can only assume are like cities.
Of course, the most obvious part of this particular story is the fact that the one girl and the main character in the story, is naked the entire time. No doubt this is one very shocking additive that keeps one reading on for answers. Is this woman just naked for the fun of it, or is it for a reason? Is that how everyone in that world lives, without clothes? However the only answer that we get to these questions is the fact that she’s very sexual. Just about half the things she speaks of are her orgasms. However, that is only one of the reasons why I find this story to be very weird.
In the story, the girl sees a whale die and feels an emotional attachment and ends up taking a ride with the whale to “find out where dead whales go”. But that’s not even the weirdest part, when she was on this swim with the dead whale, she heard music and realized that “in the world of the living, a new blue whale was about to be conceived”. Then, she was swimming with the rest of all the whale sperm toward the whale egg, and she thought “what would happen to me if I went into the egg? Would I be reincarnated as a blue whale?” That is probably what I thought was the weirdest part. It takes a really big imagination, and honestly a very scary mind, to think up something like that.
But other then the fact that I think the author is pretty weird, I have to admit that the way she set it up was very cool. It’s written like a blog entry, like she is talking directly to me. But it’s almost as though she is speaking through the pictures. Some parts of it seem slightly poetic to me though. Like when she said, “Though not a word I heard could I relate, the story was quite clear”. This line seems like it belongs in a poem to me. But the set up isn’t like a poem at all. This hypertext is set up like a long strip of images in the form of a story. It can’t really be read out of order, unless you chose to read one part before the other. Overall, I think this is good writing because it has a very unique and interesting arrangement and it catches the reader’s attention. Granted, the author has some very weird ways of getting attention, but the important part is that it works.
Just by looking at the story “Delta Thrives”, before reading a word, I could tell it was very different. This hypertext interface is formatted similar to a comic strip. It was made up of one really long strip with a variety of photos, each describing what was happening. There was text that was put in different areas throughout the images to describe who was speaking or thinking at the time. Different fonts and sizes were used to describe emotion throughout the story. Although, this hypertext story was very weird, I have to say that I really liked how it was set up.
I especially like how the interface was set up because it wasn’t like anything I have ever seen before, it was unique. This made the entire thing more interesting to read because it provided the reader with text as well as images. However, unlike most stories, the text worked with the images to tell the story, rather then separately. The images were the primary thing that was telling the story, and the text was working with the images to enhance and clarify what was going on in the story. In most stories, even in children’s books where images are a large part of the story, the text is the primary thing that is telling the story and the images are simply there to clarify. In “Delta Thrives”, it was the other way around. Perhaps that was why I liked it so much.
Have you ever heard someone say, “A picture is worth a thousand words”? Well that is exactly the base of how this hypertext story works. It provides the reader with images and allows the images to speak to the reader, and then it adds text to clarify exactly what is meant in the story. The text itself isn’t being used as an image as much as it is a part of the actual image. They could not work alone. The story would be impossible to follow if either the text or the images were missing.
In this particular story, it’s not only the set up of the interface that catches the reader’s attention, but the story itself. The story takes place in the future. It never says the time period that the story takes place. However, it is made obvious that it is taking place in a futuristic setting through the photos and events that happen throughout the story. The story starts off by saying that cats can fly airplanes. If that was all that it said then perhaps one might conclude that it simply takes place in a world where cats are just as smart as humans. However, the images proved to us that this world was nothing like the life we are used to. It is made up of giant spheres that exist 7,000 meters above the sea and are all connected by giant tubes that would take you from one sphere to the other, which I can only assume are like cities.
Of course, the most obvious part of this particular story is the fact that the one girl and the main character in the story, is naked the entire time. No doubt this is one very shocking additive that keeps one reading on for answers. Is this woman just naked for the fun of it, or is it for a reason? Is that how everyone in that world lives, without clothes? However the only answer that we get to these questions is the fact that she’s very sexual. Just about half the things she speaks of are her orgasms. However, that is only one of the reasons why I find this story to be very weird.
In the story, the girl sees a whale die and feels an emotional attachment and ends up taking a ride with the whale to “find out where dead whales go”. But that’s not even the weirdest part, when she was on this swim with the dead whale, she heard music and realized that “in the world of the living, a new blue whale was about to be conceived”. Then, she was swimming with the rest of all the whale sperm toward the whale egg, and she thought “what would happen to me if I went into the egg? Would I be reincarnated as a blue whale?” That is probably what I thought was the weirdest part. It takes a really big imagination, and honestly a very scary mind, to think up something like that.
But other then the fact that I think the author is pretty weird, I have to admit that the way she set it up was very cool. It’s written like a blog entry, like she is talking directly to me. But it’s almost as though she is speaking through the pictures. Some parts of it seem slightly poetic to me though. Like when she said, “Though not a word I heard could I relate, the story was quite clear”. This line seems like it belongs in a poem to me. But the set up isn’t like a poem at all. This hypertext is set up like a long strip of images in the form of a story. It can’t really be read out of order, unless you chose to read one part before the other. Overall, I think this is good writing because it has a very unique and interesting arrangement and it catches the reader’s attention. Granted, the author has some very weird ways of getting attention, but the important part is that it works.
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