Author: msf432

A. Design
Our project presents people’s stories of happiness told through their Chinese zodiac animals. Our website’s style is very minimalistic, containing only black as our background and white for fonts.

The start page (shown above) provides a background to the history of the Chinese zodiac, prefacing the user about its origin. Once “let’s go” is clicked, the user is taken to a page presenting all of the Chinese zodiac signs, represented through minimalistic drawings. This page also provides a brief background into what our project is.

Lastly, once any of the zodiac signs are clicked, the user is directed to a page where an animation of the person’s story (corresponding to that zodiac) is being played. On the page, the user also has the option of playing the audio recording of the story being told. The user can than file through to see other stories of other zodiac signs by using the arrow buttons.

B. Process
I think the biggest concern we had when developing our project was the time limit. We were never really in love with our original idea, so we really felt pressed for time after changing our project concept. Although, I think changing the concept was necessary in order to make a project that we were happy with. That being said, after we changed our idea I think we developed our project rather efficiently. We split up the work in a way that Shirley handled most of the coding and I handled most of the artistic elements. It really made sense for us to divide work this way because the animations had to be done on one main device, also from previous experience keeping the coding to one device makes the process a lot less complicated. If I were to do this project over again, despite wishing I had more time, I think planning out our visual elements before hand would have been beneficial to our process. We were kind of lost for what we wanted our aesthetic to be, so when we finally came to a design we liked we just stuck with it. While I do like how the design turned out, I struggle to justify its connection to our project’s concept.
C. Future
There are definitely a lot of things I wish I could’ve accomplished through this project if I had more time. A lot of people recommended that we add more stories (preferably of varying ages) to showcase how there may be similarities across generations relating to people’s Chinese zodiac sign. Additionally, I think a general increase in interactivity would make our project a lot more user-friendly. Primarily due to the time constraint, our only options for users is to click through the pages, but we can definitely incorporate some other ways of switching pages that may be less traditional. Specifically, I think in our showcasing of the animations we can incorporate some fun ways of mimicking an actual flip book. As suggested by our professor, it could be interesting to have the flip book progress with the moving of the user’s mouse, playing from start to finish as the user moves from left to right across the screen. I think all of these additions could definitely raise our project to a more complete, developed stage.

CLICK HERE to see our project!

Project Description

Our project tackles the traditional meaning of the Chinese Zodiac, one that attempts to predict anything from your personality traits to love compatibility. Instead of pursuing tradition, our project focuses on the stories we all share, regardless of our sign; namely, our happiest moments. We gathered stories of happiness from people that represent every Chinese Zodiac sign, accompanied by a hand-drawn flip book. The overall dark, spooky aesthetic contrasted with our light-hearted stories and illustrations serves to highlight our concept of breaking traditions. Too often people search to horoscopes or their Chinese Zodiac for answers, in place of actively pursuing their goal. We believe following this dark theme highlights our critique/ nuanced take on Chinese Zodiac.

Process

Our project suffered a delayed start due to changing project ideas. Fortunately, we were able to gather all of our assets with plenty of time to figure out logistics. Shirley mainly handled the coding, while I conducted interviews and made the flip books. I believe we split up our work rather efficiently, and working on separate assets allowed us to progress through our project in a timely manner. Because our project is more art-based (images and text), there were few coding problems to overcome and we were thus able to spend more time adjusting our layout.  

Post-Mortem

I’m very pleased with how our project turned out, especially due to the delayed beginning. I think our project actively captures what we set out to do, serving as both a visually-appealing and purposeful work on the Chinese Zodiac. Obviously, if we had more time, I would’ve loved to develop the flip books even more, both in length and interactivity. However, I don’t have any regrets with our final project and I’d be happy to continue developing it in the future. 

Our final project will serve as an online “mad-lib”-type interactive project. Users will be given the choice to choose between three stories, each with its own options along the way to customize as they see fit. User interactivity includes inserting a name to be used for the character, choosing what actions the character will perform, selecting the character’s clothes, among others. Granting the users the ability to shape the story as they wish, our project acts as a light-hearted, collaborative environment where anyone can make stories of their own.

Our project builds on inspiration from the works of both “The Flippist” and Peter Veverka. “The Flippist” is a flipbook artist whose achieved fame through his intricate flipbook videos on YouTube. His flipbooks cover a variety of topics, ranging anywhere from the Avengers to Usain Bolt to love stories. The vibrant images and intriguing storylines engages the viewer in less than a minute. The Flippist’s drawing style varies from video to video but overall there is consistency within each story. We are inspired by the way he chooses to tell his stories and admire the transitions he utilizes between scenes. We hope to reach the same level of smooth transitioning when making our final project.

In addition to the Flippist, we were inspired by Peter Veverka’s stop motion film called “In the Box.” The video was cleverly made and pushes the reader to figure out the significance behind the film without any use of dialogue. Veverka’s keen use of sound effects and background music allows the viewer to follow along with what is happening in the story. Especially, the sound of the clay walls moving and the figure tapping its foot gives the viewer a deeper understanding of the story’s progression. Choosing to refrain from narration was a smart choice because it allows the viewer to see the hidden message through the movement of the figure.

Our project will utilize a number of mediums to convey our story. Instead of following the ‘normal’ flipbook style of hand-drawn drawings, we will take pictures to give off the effect of a flipbook. Seeking inspiration from Peter Veverka, we plan to add sound effects that correspond with users’ choices and background music to set the overall tone. The project will be made using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and will provide the user a number of options to adjust the story to their liking. Trying to maximize user interactivity, there will be opportunities for users to change colors, type in text, and fill in gaps in the story. The three options for our stories will be (1) A day at the park, in which users select options such as where to go and what activities to perform (2) A day in paradise, in which users can select a vacation spot and choose options such as what to eat and (3) A rainy day, in which users choose what leisurely activities to perform and how to maximize their day indoors. Our stories have no direct relation and our various choices exist solely to provide the user with more options.

Reading Rachel Greene’s piece on the history of net art made me realize certain things about net art that I may not have otherwise thought of. Firstly, by nature of the art existing on the web, and not in a specific location, anyone can contribute, making the art form all-inclusive. Especially in regards to collaborative internet art projects, the ability to get users from an array of different places makes the end result that much more interesting. Secondly, the art form heavily embraced feminism of the 90s, allowing artists like Olia Lialina an outlet to share stories on a larger scale. When browsing the internet for net art projects to write a blog post about, I came across several of Lialina’s works, including her “My Boyfriend Came Back From the War.” While simplistic, her use of dialogue and images develop the tone of her work rather effectively. Her piece definitely is slightly overwhelming, with the creation of new boxes almost every time a line of dialogue or image is clicked. My assumption is that that is her intention, though I cannot definitively say exactly how that serves her greater purpose. Nevertheless, I believe ‘true’ art should raise debates about ‘true’ meaning, and I think her work (as well as many of the other net art examples I came across) does just that.