Ffiles downloads

'Drop Shadow and Glow Effect'

I thought choosing an implementation using text would be useful as text is frequent in a lot of artworks. I liked this particular effect as I felt it was quite professional looking and could be used for a business website or would be good as a bold introduction for something, perhaps like a movie title. I was originally looking for some a bit psychedelic so I could relate it to my first artwork, which is influenced by the 1966 acid summer. I couldn't find a typical 'groovy' looking feel I was looking for but I feel I could manipulate this effect to suit this specific theme. The simplest way to do this would be my changing the colours of the original text. Instead of the solitary, static and formal style that the text originally displays with grey's and blacks, bright and rainbow colours would work perfectly to give the text a more warmer and chromatic style, allowing it to fit into my theme. The other obvious way to differentiate this text would be to adjust the font to a more hippy and less block like style. I would also put the words an an angle, or make them disordered, definitely not as straight as they are in the download form. By applying all or some of these options this would surely alter the downloaded effect to suit my Acid summer theme. 

'Script Art'

Sticking with the theme for my first artwork I think its quite obvious while i chose this download, its perfect for the Acid Summer concept. The concept deals with the year when LCD was still legal and a lot of people (in america at least) were taking LCD and Acid, which is very hallucinogenic and a highly psychedelia culture existed. Which is why the colourful and 'trippy' nature suits the theme precisely. I think it would be awesome if i could have a video or montage in the centre of the illusion/effect, or even have images that transform into the whirl. Both of these options would increase the hallucinogenic and drug like complex, yet I am fully aware that my skills on flash are possibly not ready for this sort of animation. The other simple thing i would do would be to ensure that the colours of the swirl were all bright and vibrant, eliminating the darker tones to keep to such a hippy like culture for the theme. 

'Preloader Love'

I thought it would be wise to look at the preloaders as we would need to use them once we had made more complex artworks by the end of semester (hopefully!). Most of the preloaders were didn't look very exciting but this one in particular i liked, it had colour and wasn't the average loading block like a lot of the others. Both the picture itself and heart effect that the mouse makes can be altered to suit many different themes and styles. This would allow me to use the same template/download for many different artworks by changing and manipulating the images. Sticking with the first theme that I am going with of Psychedelia culture, I would make the main image into a combination of 'Peace,Love and Happiness', a somewhat slogan of the hippie culture of the 60's. Using icons instead of words, I could mash together a peace symbol, a heart and a smiley face, (or something similar), and once again use a range of vibrant colours. For the mouse image, I could use any 3 of those symbols or something else to do with the theme such as marijuana leaf or music note. 

'Italy Map with Link'

I chose this download as it was similar to an idea I had for another concept. I wanted to create a sort of travel log of places I had been to but by showing through tracing flight paths across a world map similar to what you see on international flights. It would then allow the user to zoom in on specific destinations where I could add information, photos, music e.t.c. This download would help with the latter part of the concept. To alter it I could give wider information rather than just the city name, and of course I would be including other parts of the world, as well as Italy. I could stick to the download by using a hover to highlight a city and include its name, and then when you click on it you get more information and a photo of the city rather than the outline. This concept could be used a personal overview of my travels as well as a amateur travel information for other viewers.

'Drag and Drop Experiment'

I chose this download for yet another idea I have in the works. Its a bit vague at this stage but it was similar to the experiment. I wanted to make a 'What's in the Jar?' type of interactive art piece. There would be about 5 stages and you had to guess 1 ingredient/potions in each stage out of 4 ingredients, to make the final product in the jar. For example the first stage could have an empty jar with the options of perhaps, A. tea, B. Urine, C. Goats Milk, or D. Berocca. And you had to drag and drop one of the ingredients into the jar and choose the 4 correct ingredients to win.  If you mixed the wrong ingredients something odd could happen like an explosion or making a frog e.t.c. It could have scientific theme or perhaps a witches and wizards theme or something similar. 

Reviews Week 3

13 Blackbirds

(Im not 100% if this is the correct title)

I like how interactive and extensive this project is. It is based around a poem as far as i believe and this is incorporated into each individual piece. The 13 different animations are all very different to each other, at still manage to each be well done. Some were amusing such as the blackbird and the man and woman, the drawings of the people were good but childish which made it funny. Otherwise were purely simplistic such as the 1, a blackbird amongst white mountains, it was rather serene. And the 3 blackbirds in my mind was slightly  airy and indeed interesting. 

Overall, all the artworks combined into one piece maintained an interest for the viewer, and gave a range of animations and web artwork. These pieces complement each other and the poetry alongside it.  

Ten Thousand Cents

I absolutely love the concept behind this artwork! The first layout of the hundred dollar bill looks almost completely normal and it is interesting how they present the zoom ins. By combining a snippet of the real piece of the bill and the drawing that each artist did. It wasn't until i went further into the site, to find out about it more that i could truly appreciate it. It explained the concept of thousands of artists doing tiny individual pieces of the same artwork, and showed some explains. This also showed how some artists didn't follow the dollar bill drawing but instead did little doodles or wrote notes. Viewing the whole dollar, you wouldn't notice these little differences, i really like this blindness to the viewer. And also how the artist can sneak little personal things into a massive piece of art.

This was a brilliant idea that used artists from all over the world and i really adored it. 

Reviews

Thank You Andy Warhol

As a fan of Andy Warhol i was immediately drawn to this piece. It was very fun and quirky and enjoyable..... to start with. It has supposedly a million thank you's (i never made it that far) and the first about 600 is interesting, however im pretty sure it was on a loop so i lost interest. 

The little creatures were cute and i thought that there voices/pronunciation was done quite well. The way they had to take breaths and speed up so much that it they weren't really saying thanking, or were swapping the words. I thought it added to the creativity and interest and was in some way realistic. The writing wasn't very interesting, i think that it could have been changed and manipulated much more to add to the interest. Even with the characters on a loop the writing could have easily enough kept doing new things. Overall the artwork was cute and a good idea, but a million thanks you was far too much, unless perhaps i missed out on something that occurred far into the counts. 

Drone Machine

First of all the word Drone, is very precise, the airy noise the vacuums made immediately reminded me of Star Wars. I chose this piece as I am doing a music major and we talk about music being presented as art and also using other machines or noises to make music. I thought it was very inventive however could have been conveyed much more brilliantly, the scan of vacuums in the room was a bit drab. Keeping with the track of the artist who put lights in the vacuums, i would have made them different colours and perhaps made the room pitch black so that you could only see the lights when they light up. This would have created a multimedia front for the music and would surely even attract a wider audience looking for a club style element. It would also have been interesting to see what sounds the vacuums made when move around and onto different surfaces. 

Deus Digitalis

I quite liked this piece, it was very pretty and the fast pace kept you more focused that it would have otherwise. I think it would work well if it was put up in society somewhere rather than on the internet, somewhere it would generate a larger audience that wouldn't get bored with it. Like a projection on the side of a building, or in an art gallery, the regular and variety of foot traffic would open up the art-piece to a big audience and therefore would maintain its awe. I think it would have been cool to have been more interactive, like if you roll over a certain square then the square changes, or the changing sequence starts from that particular square. I liked the idea that it was influenced by the stained glass windows in chapels, it would certainly be interesting to make this art-piece into a faux window at a chapel or church. 

Lets Make Sure Everything is A Thing.com

This piece was very interactive and cool. You could manipulate the domes so that the stars would move differently, you could make all completely fast, or slow. I thought that the artists had put in extra thought in the way that by moving 2 sets of domes together and therefore clashing the stars, produced a few extra stars of a new colour, the colour of the 2 formers stars mixed. It was certainly entertaining for a while to move around the domes and see what you could do with them and the stars. I thought it would have been cool if somehow the stars  could escape and just go all over the screen, or perhaps you could misshape the domes. The piece reminded me of outer space, so perhaps a cute little extra would to have had a spaceship fly through the screen, or try to dodge the domes, steal the stars maybe?