Category: Ann Chen

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Final Project Reflection (Shirley Liu)

A. Design

Matt and I worked together for the final project. Our website has a very minimalistic theme using black and white as the main colors. We chose a font that was very blocky and geometric to match our theme. We presented twelve different stories of happiness told through a flipbook like animation of the animal.

 In our website, we first briefly explained how the Chinese zodiac came to be in order to give the user some background if they have not heard of the Chinese zodiac or if they wanted to know a little more about it. We then provided a link that brings the user to the main page with all the different animals. There, the user learns of the aim of our project as we give background into the process of the project and how we went to interview many different people. When you close the information box, you are able to click on the different animal squares and see the stories of 12 different people. Once you click on one of the animals, you will be presented with a page that includes the audio clip alongside a flip book like animation corresponding to the zodiac animal. If the user wishes to see other animals, they can go back to the home page and click on the one they want to see or use the arrows located at the bottom of the page. The order the animals are in for the website is the order that they are in for the Chinese Zodiac.

 

B. Process
For our project, we were nervous because of the time limit due to changes in our ideas. Our time was limited because it was really hard for us to decide on a idea for the final project. In the beginning we wanted to do a mad-lib inspired project with flip books made to cater the user’s choices. However, we were not too invested in the idea and were not completely interested. After speaking with the professor, we realized that we should making something that we actually enjoyed and were excited about doing. However, we eventually came up with an idea that we were excited to work on because it included interviewing people which I thought was very interesting and pushed us to find people and hear what they have to say.  Even with limited time, we were able to finish the project on time and have a website that was functioning and what we wished to accomplish. Matt and I split up the work pretty evenly with Matt handling the drawings of the animations as well as the collection of the audio while I worked on coding the website and zodiac icon drawings. At the end, we ran into some difficulties putting all the elements together but in the end we were successful in combining all the elements.

C. Future
I really enjoyed working on this final project with Matt and I loved listening to the stories from everyone that we interviewed.  I believe we achieved our goal of wanting to create a website that presented the Chinese zodiac in a new way however we are lacking in some elements. It would be cool in the future if we were able to collect more stories from around the world and if we added an element where the user is able to tell their own story and add a flip book. Some people in our class suggested that we add stories that varied in ages to present the idea that there are things in common between older and younger generations linked to one’s Chinese zodiac sign. Moreover, if we had more time I think adding more interactive elements to display the stories in a new way would make it more interesting to the user. Being able to surprise the user for each animal would be pretty interesting because they would have something new to look forward to when they clicked the arrow button. Overall, it was a pleasure making this website as we were able to achieve something that started out as a drawing in my journal. It would be really cool to further develop our website if we ever get a chance to as the concept is pretty interesting to me. 

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Final Project Reflection (Matthew Fertig)

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.

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Final Project: The Perfect Student – Sebastian Lau (Chen)

Design:

Our project is meant to dispel the notion that there is a perfect human. We made this project not only as an imitation of Jørgen Leth’s “The Perfect Human” and “The Five Obstructions”, but as a response to it. 

We have a video of “The Perfect Human” to give our users an idea of what we were trying to emulate. In addition, we referred to the user as the perfect human so that they would be more interested in seeing what the videos (and what we) considered to be perfect. 

We also added “The Five Obstructions” since we thought that it was vital to our thought process when we were considering how we should edit our own videos. I wanted the website design to be quite minimal both in terms of what was on the page and even the color scheme as I felt like it would fit “The Perfect Human” better.

These are our three actors for our videos. We had an athlete, a professional and an environmentalist. We picked these attributes as felt like they represented traits that would be considered admirable in students. Users could click on these pictures to show individual videos shot in the same way as “The Five Obstructions”. 

At the end of our website, we had “The Real Human” to show that people do make mistakes and that’s what makes us human. We used blooper footage to represent this as we felt like they were lighthearted mistakes that show that we aren’t perfect and in fact, these imperfections are something to be celebrated or enjoyed rather than disliked. One might also see that the background color has changed since the first part of the website. I added that to a) signal to the user when we were switching from Jørgen Leth’s films to our own and b) claim that our interpretation of what a person should be is more “pure” or “innocent”.

We used Chinese instruments in our audio to reflect the setting of our videos (NYU Shanghai) rather than pulling directly from the soundtrack of the films. 

Process:

Based on the feedback I think our message was received well and clearly enough for us to get our point across. While we didn’t originally intend for it to be funny, I don’t see our audience’s unexpected reception of the videos as a sign of failure. I think the look of the website was somewhat successful. Some people mentioned they liked the color scheme, but at the same time, the website was too minimalistic or unclear. I would probably just add more indicators next time, similar to the downward arrow I had in the beginning. In addition, I wanted to add some text over the individual photos when users hovered over them (like “The Athlete”, “The Professional”, “The Environmentalist”, etc.) but I didn’t have time. Some things I discovered was how difficult it could be to coordinate artistic styles even in a pair. When Winny and I were filming, I feel like the way I recorded was different than how Winny did, and she had to edit my footage to make it fit the established theme better. I also discovered how important it was to stick to either using “px” or “%” for my arrangements as I think it led to buttons being in the wrong place compared to the pictures. 

Future:

I think in the future I would obviously fix all of the stuff I know we did wrong already. In terms of new additions, I would have liked to try out different music tracks because we had the same music track for every video and it became a bit repetitive. Furthermore, I would have liked to try out different editing styles, like rapid cuts featured in “The Five Obstructions” Cuba video. Originally, before teaming up with Winny, I wanted to recreate the Leth’s films using films like some of the Avengers movies or Alien. While I am not too sure whether this would have as much of an impact on the user, it is something that I thought would be fun just as a little project that showed how movies often display their protagonists as perfect, or at the very least, extremely admirable people. More specifically for the Alien one, I think it might have been interesting to use footage that showed the Xenomorph as they are meant to be quite literally the perfect organism.

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Final project reflection(Update for Critiques)— Angel Yang

In the final presentation, we got some critiques from our classmates, professor and fellows, they are very valuable and worth to reflect.

  1. Better to use some colors which are easy for the audiences to read the text.
  2. Use a theme line to connect all the sites (e.g. a food trip along the Silk Road), instead of letting the icon move randomly and without intention. Also, use some region to represent the food instead of picking only one city.
  3. The initial position of the little guy is not obvious enough, and people might not notice it. Maybe put it in another corner (e.g. in the sea).
  4. set a button, if you click the button the icon will change, not only the man, woman the other animals can also be included.
  5. The instructions for clicking the mouses/pressing spaces are a bit confusing. And both using mouse and the key is quite confusing too.
  6. the border of the map is quite confusing. Drawing a map can raise some sensitive debates on borders. Focus more on the food instead of the map.

I think that although what we are creating is artwork, what we should consider is more than the art. We can’t complicate it to a political issue or social issue. I think I should think more fully next time.

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Final Project Reflection [Ta-Ruedee Pholpipattanaphong (Ploy)]

link to the project: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~zy1193/project4/project4.html

A. Process

Our project is based upon the idea of the different foods in various places within China. Since both me and my partner, Angel, love to travel, we find that one of the big considerations is the food. We feel like food is a big decision factor in where we would like to travel. Furthermore, since I am a foreigner, I am very fascinated by the food China has. For instance, Shanghai food is pretty sweet whilst Sichuan food is very spicy. I am very excited to explore the various flavors and the unique types of food around China. Therefore we decide to explore the foods within China and the interesting facts behind that food. We chose 5 destination which corresponds to their well-known food.

This is our main page: The users are intended to navigate the map to the different places labeled by using the arrow keys on the computer keyboard. 

 

After entering the page, a well-known dish would show up. All the images are hand-drawn by us using Ipad. I drew 4 pictures each for the food so that the images can move around just like an animation. So for instance, the images below changes from 4 sticks to 2 sticks and from a text that slanted to the right to being slanted to the left. Within this page, there would also be the sound of the cooking method. We recorded all the sounds in the dorm. For instance, for this lamb skewer, we used oil and garlic to make that kind of barbeque sound. 

 

Later on, the audience is to press the mouse to enter to the information page. In this page, we first give the basic information about the food and then we went into detail and explores more specifics such as the raw material, cooking method, environment, culture, myths, and etc., with relevance to the food and place. 

B. Process 

What worked especially well is that our initial plans were clear. We are on the same page and therefore we work well with the images of the outcome and the goals in our minds. We also divided the work out pretty well. Since the coding requires a lot of work, Angel quickly took charge of the codings. Then I did all the drawings. After that, we came together and did all the audios together. Then we divide the research parts up. After Angel created the first main page and one of the model sample page, then based on her codings, I create the last 4 pages. We communicate throughout the process and try to solve all the obstacles together. We also decide everything together. I believe that our teamwork is the strongest benefits of this project. 

There is nothing that didn’t work. However, something that we would like to change might be using more of the codes. For instance, we wanted to change them into the next page with a transition of cutting the image into half and then it enters a new page, however, we couldn’t find the code that the computer could manually do. Therefore, we decided to create this process by ourselves, by cutting the image into half and then applying the animations with the code. Since we have 4 images for each of the 5 foods, we ended up spending a lot of time editing the images itself. Throughout the process, we used a lot of trials and errors. Even by cutting the images was hard itself as it needs to be perfect between the two split images so that they fit perfectly together. Therefore, we spent a lot of time creating something that the computer should be able to do easily. This is how we did it: 

C. Future 

Given more time, I would like to spend more time on the code. Try to incorporate more codes and functions in our pages. I would also like to think deeper behind the ideas that are portrayed (critiques from project presentation). For instance, from the feedback we received in the project presentation, the map is a controversial issue. Therefore, I would want to step away from the political standpoints and change the map into something else. In addition, we received critiques such that maybe we should explore more on the purpose of the color, place, and food. From the background colors that are randomly used, I can think into the purpose behind those colors and use a meaningful color that conveys something. Next, I would want to make the project more appealing and visible by attracting the audience to the text as well. What we could definitely change is that increase the size of the font and the color of the font that are not easy to read. Lastly, I should think about where to put the man because, from the first page, it is not clear that the audience is controlling the man.

I am very proud of this project because we achieved our expectations. However, there are a lot of different aspects where we can implement in the future.