Interactive Media Arts @ NYUSH
Link– http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~mne234/week%203/index.html
This was actually a fun exercise to do and I will definitely use these techniques for future websites and projects. One aspect I had trouble with was getting one cat picture to show at a time. At first I had both pictures on top of each other which made it more complicated so I fixed it through my function part of my code.
Theme:
an interactive suspenseful comic
Plot:
We plan to create an interactive adventure comic in which the player must lead the main character (a little kid backpacking through the dark with his flashlight) through the suspenseful darkness in order to find the light and way out. When they approach the light, the graphics will become brighter. If they continue to approach the dark and stray from the light, then the graphics will get darker and scarier.
This comic will split into different paths in which the readers will make a choice on picking. Certain elements will lead to animations in which the mouse can be used. There will also be different background music for different sections within the comic.
Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~mne234/week-1/index.html
Documentation:
While revisioning my portfolio page into a more colorful and styled page, I ran into some issues. One of the first issues I ran into was with the <body> and <head> aspect of the code. I accidentally had another random <body> in the code so it made the link for the language aspect (<meta charset=”utf-8″>) of the page not included. After fixing this, it finally worked and the page didn’t have any odd characters or letters. Another part that I had trouble with was the headers and changing the color, font, etc. I realized that before I had the headers closed off wrong like this <h1/> when it should’ve been like this </h1>. This simple mistake made it so that my entire blog was being affected by the css style, so once I finally fixed it, it worked fine. Besides all this, I enjoyed using CSS to style the portfolio in a better way then before with just html even though it was a bit confusing learning it and having to apply it to atom.
Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~mne234/css/index-5.html
Reflection:
After completing this Css exercise, I found it really interesting being able to change the font, colors, and format of the website. I definitely found it more difficult than html, as it got confusing sometimes with so much code to check and type. One problem I had was with the boxes and having to do the margins and padding. I couldn’t quite get the format right for it in columns, so it still needs to be fixed.
After reading “Understanding Comics,” my entire perspective and awareness on comics has completely changed. Comics are mono-sensory mediums in which are actually very complicated pieces of work. As he mentions when referencing Topffer, that there is this distinction between comic artists not exactly being a writer nor an artist. This made me think of what it truly means to write a comic book as you are combining both an artists traits and writers. I also found it interesting when he explained how we see ourselves in these “mediums” by assigning emotions or certain identities to things where they don’t even necessarily exist. He quotes, “When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details” (30). Due to the fact that we see our own identity in cartoons for example, it makes them even more attractive to us. Our awareness is then invested into inanimate objects (like our clothes or when driving a car).
Another aspect of the reading that taught me more about comics, is this difference between eastern and western style. In Japanese comics, they tend to focus heavily on realistic backgrounds. This gives more aesthetic and puts the reader really into the situation. It’s quoted that, “Words, pictures, and other icons are the vocabulary of the language called comics” (47). He states that while pictures are received in our minds, the writing is perceived. This was interesting as I had never thought of it in this way. It is all our sense that reveal a fragmented and incomplete world.
Within this book, he closely investigates the setup of comics. He explained how closure (lines around the pictures, etc) allow us to connect moments in comics. There are panels that describe each scene, with action to action being the most popularly used. In relation to time when reading a comic, panels are our general indicator of time and space being divided. The sound and motion of this time depends completely on your frame of mind.