Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~op531/internet-art/title.html
For our final project, Oona and I decided to create something which reminded both of us of our childhoods. An idea that immediately starting sparking ideas for both of us was collages. I found my love for collage when I was in elementary school. After school, I would often go home and cut up newspapers and magazines then paste them inside a scrapbook. As I got older, my collages became more sophisticated, and I actually used canvases as material instead of scrapbooks.
Our overall idea is combined with our love for collaging as well as the Melissa and Doug Dress up board game. The idea with the board game is that you are given different props, and you use those props to dress up a figure. With these two ideas combined, we further developed our concept by creating our “dream room.” Basically, our goal was to collage/design a room that we both wanted as kids. We included items such as a waterbed, egg chair, television, my dog, Oona’s cat, and many others! Users can interact with the room by clicking on different elements within the room and read hand-written notes from Oona, and I that explain why those specific items appear in our “dream room.” There are also pictures included beside the letters which are either about where the idea originated from (such as the waterbed gif, that is from the Goofy movie), or real pictures (such as my dog and I).
For the project, I spent a lot of my time finding images online for the room, writing the notes and converting them into PNGs, as well as designing several elements on my computer such as the backdrop, and also the poster-board/collage board. I primarily used photoshop and Keynote to develop these two components. The most challenging aspect for me in designing the backdrop was when making the depth of the room. I ended up having to use different shapes and lines in Keynote to create the proper dimensions needed to make the room three-dimensional. Because I’ve haven’t learned how to use programs to create 3D elements, I ended up having to eye everything myself, and it took longer than needed probably.
While making the PNGs of the letters and some of the drawings, Oona informed me of an app called Superimpose. It allowed me to convert images into PNGs much quicker than using photoshop, which is what I’ve done in the past.
Some additional feedback we received was regarding the layout and design. After briefly talking with Professor Moon, he suggested we added paper in the background or some type of collage. We were able to implement both of these concepts in our final presentation of the project!
Overall. I am super proud of how this project turned out, especially with the limited time constraints and the rest of the major projects we had due for Finals week. Our goal was to have this project simulate our childhoods as much as possible and have a general collaged 2000s theme throughout, and I think we definitely accomplished this. After receiving feedback from my classmates and judges today, some future improvements would be adding sound effects, making objects animated when you hover over them, and also considering adding a conversation between Oona and me at the home page, which would emulate the discussion we had when brainstorming the project idea. Thanks!