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I really should not go into details, as all that are needed to know are already presented in our report. So I shall just start from where my job was concerned. Just a brief summary, we met up a few times and were baffled over our concepts. As mentioned already, there was none in our group of 4 who had any skills in flash or catalyst. Jael was the only one who had little experience in catalyst prior to this project. So our concern was to keep the interactive part as simple as possible, while we focus more on the concept. But it was not easy, as even though we knew that we had to keep the interactive part as basic as possible, we did not know if our ideas would work for the interactive part because we simply did not know how and what we can do with catalyst at all. Thanks to Jael who enthusiastically went to figure out and play around on her own, at least we had a better idea of what catalyst could offer us.

The concept was a difficult one, we changed a few times due to the uncertainty of whether the technical part would be feasible. In the end we went with the idea that we presented in tutorial class, the one about many objects in a room( or just a setting in general) revealing stories of their own when users click on them. The class seem to like the idea and gave quite a few valuable suggestions that we took in and better improved our idea with. So it evolved into a final concept-

The Hoarder.
Our third concept(out of 3) focuses on the life of a hoarder, who collects all sorts of junk from all sorts of places. We felt that the myriad of objects lining the walls of a hoarder’s apartment would provide a very interesting tapestry of stories. Naturally, having come from different places, these objects would have very fragmented stories behind each of them. Clicking on each object would then reveal to the user the story behind it.
We also decided to loosely tie these fragmented stories up with an overarching theme of loss so as to give the idea of how people are tied to each other in subtle, implicit ways– whether they are aware of it or not. Loss may manifest in many different forms, may it be in the physical or emotional sense. These items in the hoarder’s cluttered apartment will depict loss in one way or another– for example, a child’s lost toy, the loss of a life, etc.

To make our lives easier, we decided to use images that are already available on the net to piece the collage together. However the interactive part we will use original content( video, photos, illustrations).

So as the rest were busy too, I decided to do the photoshop part of this project for the next tutorial where we had to present it to the class. Searching for photos are actually not as easy. I had to find the type that suits our theme and also skewing them according to the perspective of the room that I had found.




I went with this anyway, as it looked more realistic as an apartment.

This was what we showed during tutorial:

A very rough mock up of how our final prototype will look like.


And groupmembers gave feedback that we needed to add much more objects around the house. So here's the 2nd draft:




But Lydia said it was not cluttered enough, so here goes, SOMEMORE!


raw

with filters to give it a more cohesive look:

#1

#2

#3

#4

Personally I prefered #1 and #3, I was fine with #2 too. But I thought #1 may be too dark, so I would have pushed fr #3. But Jael used #2 in the end, and desaturated it.

My job was pretty much done already, so we got together for another meeting regarding the interactive part, and I did an illustration for the doodle story.









I passed it to Jael to scan it in and subsequently to Siauyong to make a flash animation out of it. (That was the only thing that Siauyong had contributed to the whole project apart from her reflection...)

Then I helped Lydia with a bit of the report while we waited for Jael to complete the final prototype which turns out to look like this!





when chandelier is clicked, the whole room is lit up.


when object is hovered over

examples of interactivity (when certain objects are clicked)

video


text+image


flash animation


images

when we click on the white translucent space, it brings the user back to the original image.


Finally, my reflections on this project as taken from the report:

This project is interesting in that it forces us to create from scratch, whether it was the idea, the concept, the implementation, and then consider feasibility and if our own abilities allows the idea to become a concrete piece of work. Since from the start we already knew that none of us had the technical skills of using flash, we tried to keep our ideas as simple as we could. The brainstorming process was not an easy one, because even if we simplified our ideas, we had to include some form of interactivity, but we do not know if it was workable as we were not familiar with flash. At the same time, we do not want to be limited by our lack of skills and create a work that is too simple. Hence, we decided to focus heavily on the concept to make up for the simple interactivity. As my job was to create the image using Photoshop, I had to make sure that the individual objects piece well together from an aesthetic point of view. From searching for the right individual images to making choices from a few alternatives, it was a task which requires much focus on details such as painting in the shadows and light casting on the individual subjects. The angles and intensities of these two quantities are different on every object as the light source comes from the window from the centre of the room. Hence, as objects are placed all around it, I had learnt how to gauge where the shadows should be casted and so on. I also had timely feedback from my group members, such that their suggestions helped me improve the overall aesthetics of the piece. Although making this collage was a tedious task due to the large number of individual and random objects, I thought it taught me about perspectives (foreground and background and following the angle of the room) to really zoom in on details at every corner and also choices of placement of each object.