The perfect paper ampersand… more to come.

Recently I did a little experimenting with jquery and wordpress. The results were a simple CMS for a full screen gallery using wordpress and the jquery plugin Supersized 2.0. Basically, each post is a new slide and custom fields allow the user to input work materials and dimensions. The only part that remains unfinished is the actual post page which could include a description of the work and more images. Here is the working example before integrating the CMS on the backend.

Finally, I had a chance to figure out wordpress and actually make wordpress my portfolio’s CMS so it will be easier to update. In the process I also updated this little section as well. I can’t believe it’s been over a year since  I posted anything here. It’s just sad really. Anyway, my next project is to use wordpress as a CMS for a flash portfolio site. Now that I know a little bit more about wordpress installations and have a local database setup, I should be all set.

Over Halloween weekend I happen to see the Swedish movie “Let The Right One In” directed by Tomas Alfredson. It is probably one of my favorite movies of 2008 because it is so haunting yet realistic for a vampire movie. The story is centered around the relationship of a 12 year old boy, Oskar, and seemingly 12 year old girl, Eli, who moves in next door with her father. The feel of the movie and relationships of the characters leaves you thinking about the film long after you have left the theater. This quality is what makes movies so amazing, and one that can leave such a lasting impression is very well done. I don’t want to spoil it by giving a synopsis of the plot, but I definitely recommend seeing it.

I recently rediscovered the personal site of Jason Santa Maria, which has been completely redesigned since I was last there. What I like most about the change is that the layout of each post is customized. This gives it a very magazine-like quality that is lacking on the web today. He has also paid quite a bit of detail to typography and I would say that the bar has been set very high. It seems that there are very few designers who have the technical and typographical skill to design as well for the web as anyone in the past has done for print. I can see the attraction that permanence of the printed page brings in all it’s glory, but on the other hand it is not sustainable nor environmentally friendly (people who tell you otherwise are wrong). It’s inspiring to know that there are a few out there who are pushing design on the web. As I write this post on wordpress, it is ironic because Jason helped to design the identity and admin interface I’m currently using. Anyway, definitely check out the site and the work that he’s doing.

(This is an amazing video illusrating an interview with John Lennon. Brilliant.)

I Met The Walrus

“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message. (from YouTube)”

I tried to create something out of an aligning and scaling movie clips demo from class and successfully made the action happen on a click. Initially, I was going to try and have the movie clips mask images, but the scaling caused everything to be distorted, so instead I scaled the images first so that they expanded to full size. At least, I have played around with a lot of different functions, even if it’s not as finished as my previous homework projects. The pictures in the piece are from my collection of interesting found images. View the .swf - hw4

Over the past few weeks I have neglected my writing in favor of concentrating on learning Actionscript 3. On only my 3rd class, I feel like I am really understanding logic of the programing side of flash. In my latest homework I have created a series of buttons that control a robot’s arm movements, a control panel that is drag-able, an object that follows the cursor and used the drawing api when clicking and holding down the mouse. Each class I am blown away by how much easier it gets… conditional statements and variables make things extremely easy. Here is my latest homework: hw3. 

I finally decided to get some formal Flash training and have enlisted in an intermediate flash class at SVA. We are starting to learn the very basics of ActionScript 3 (which I had no prior knowledge of). For my first homework assignment I have used basic event listeners and a mask to create the illusion of magnification and control buttons. It’s really simple, but I decided to spend a little time to make it a fun piece that I can eventually put on my site. I am still putting the finishing touches on the piece and I will post it when it’s finished.

Update: View the .SWF (it should size to your browser window if you have the flash plugin)