Some images

First of all, a screenshot of a home page of VANITAS. We agreed on having frame and simple buttons in helvetica (black in up state, white in over state). I made some drafts in Dreamweaver and added script for the countdown as presented in the Gherkin Blog. I think it works quite nice for our interface but it will have to be aligned to the borders (what will be done later:-)


About logo- as it was written in the main blog, we decided to have an arrow and the letters VANITAS inside using the font named BarMKode Inverse designed by Manfred Klein and accessed for free from Dafont.com.
As the gif file was getting ugly rasterised, I remade it in Adobe Illutrator and saved it as png. Here is the result and this is the file I also imported to Flash. It is less pixelated and should be more efficient than using psd assets (file size!!). I did some drafts for the introductory animation in Flash and the logo will be repeated both in the intro and in the main interface to keep consistency.
The intro animation will be simple and limited to white and black colours and simple things such as motion tweening and masking. There will be also an input text field asking to place audience's name and it will be transfered into the home page. I actually did some of drafts in Flash already and place it when I am satisfied; now it is just to outline the ideas. One problem- if we want to use the font by the author mentioned, do we have to contact him? The font was free to download... But the info on the website we took it from did not clarify if it is ok... Well I guess, we have to include attribution anyway, I will include it after Easter. And we will have to seek advice to clarify if we're free to use it. Better late than never. Copyright is complicated...


Concerning the image for the home page. Of course, our canvas will not be left empty! For the home page image I decided to experiment with one of the pics Matthew posted on the Gherkin. I focused on colours and used the tutorial on manual reducing the colour cast in the pictures; difference is quite striking. Photoshop is the king:-)

Guys liked this image for the home page. While working on this section I came up with an idea of bubbles. The figure of a man says something when the audience rolls over him; the skull also gives us some tips:-) This simple effect adds to the dynamic of this otherwise static image. I will post screenshots after Easter, now no access to software; I also want to add some extra bubbles for other objects in the image. And some sounds too; these could be activated by rolling over them... it would act as a surprise. we'll see:-)


And just to note that we put some of Juan texts into the home page information section. I found a useful tutorial how to load text from external sources in the materials from the last term. I designed the buttons and... will post screenshots after Easter. But I kept consistent with helvetica (my beloved font:-) . Nonetheless, I am considering slight change in the colouring of the buttons, but will talk about it next time.

Pax vobiscum,
eb