Miene.Skins

Upon further discussion with our teachers during the final interim presentation, we've decided to implement our application as part of a website.

Web was 90% completed on 27 Feb'08.

This is a preview of the interface:

http://www.red-nocturne.net/miene

Some graphic feeds.

Our final interface.
Combining Sabrina's & Evone's.

Our premade shapes for users.
Combining the designs from 3 of us.

Our premade designs designed by ourselves.
By Sabrina and Evone.

A complete new idea.

Yes, our ideas were killed, again.

So we decided to work on a new idea of which allows users to make their own ipod skins.

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Reason for choice:
Having one's own skin for an ipod is the current trend
Many money making sites have hired artist to create graphics solely for the purpose of decorating the ipod.

Current flaw:
There hasn't been one that allows you to make your own graphics. They are all pre-ordered here and there.

What we want our users to feel:
To be able to be in control, to feel that they have to power to change things. Which is what most people are looking for

Our solution:
Thus, we have decided to come up with a customizing site for them.
They will be able to custom the colors and gradients, prints will be provided for them to choose from to mix and match
These are not offered by any site on the www right now.

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And moving on a little, each of us decided to start on the interface design first. Here's the preview of the mockup, not yet completed just the rough completed interface.

Sabrina's
Mei Ling's
Evone's

Mockup of interface.

I was in charge of blending all the individual scenes to make up the interface. And this is still in the roughest stage, as you can see,one or two scenes are being forcefully blended together. Will work this out properly if time is at my mercy.

Zoom in if you do not wanna kill your eyes. =/

Refined Idea. #2

To enhance our interactivity level, we’ve decided to implement a wide screen flash application whereby the user will be able to literally “move” in the interface to the different aspects of Japan as well as learn information about it.

Focus:

Previously, our focus had been to impart the usage of Japanese language to people willing to learn. But due to copyrighted issues, we’ve decided to change to a more personal account.

We’ll be gathering, from personal experiences, the different practices and culture of Japan.

Design/Concept:

For the design outlook, we aim to give a montage feel. Like how people sometimes keep a scrapbook to remind them of events and memories. But at the same time, it is not a book concept. It’s just the feel.

Inspirations came from tags like these:

Note: Tags are copyrighted to their respective owners.

Target Audience:

Anyone.

Additional notes:

Go for broke!

Meiling's progress, XD

hmm, this is my progress so far, i'll be doing the girl in the yukata and the temple.


this is the doll i drew and traced in illustrator, later on live traced it again and made the outfit for the girl, blah blah and finally imported it to photoshop to fix the head and body together =D




this is the semi gonna finish stage, still plain, so i'm adding clouds, fun~, *yawns* its getting late, turn in!


Temple
Next day, didn't have time, needed to go out, so found the image, of me!

but, alas, the tip was missing, soooo, manipulate manipulate, so was the other side of it, manipulate all the way with the tip i found in mum's photo




till i got this =D
And the final

somehow the black portion looks off, i shall add the clouds in now~

Ms Evone's Progress.

And here I'm too helping out in the graphics. Doing on the Tokyo Tower(image comes from my Brother actually) and finally a Sakura Tree scene which is made from scratch.

The Tokyo Tower

Cropped in a Montage feel. With the night sky.

Then the night sky with a little red.... ^_^

Spare all the "long process" and this is the final results!
With the Stars in the sky and a "lit" Tokyo Tower.

Cherry Blossom Scenery

Not really "raw" but ya the raw-est layout placing.
The cherry blossoms' leaves are actually brush that I illustrated.
Petals were done in Illustrator.
Duplicating them kills my comp so I decided to convert them to brushes.

Next on, duplicated the Cherry Blossom Tree to have that "depth".

And finally the final scenery is born. :)
Tweaked the colours a bit and ta dah~

Sabrina's Progress

Okay, feels weird putting my own name as the title of this post buuuut, here's my progress anyways. ;)

For our interface, I helped out making the waves, dango and Mount Fuji! Rawr. lol

But for now, I'll put up only for waves, since it's finished with all the effects.

Pen tool-ed out a Japanese wave via reference. Duplicated them, yada yada.

This is the completed, effect-added version of the waves against a sunset background. Ah, the background's not complete however. ^^; All effects are done from scratch with the help of self-taken photographs and PS effects.

Re-Constructing

Today, 9++ am, all our ideas were rejected. We were told our ideas lacked an edge as well as the interactive concept.

Sad, but we went back to re-think everything again. We couldn't use our CODPIT idea as it couldn't fit into any of Adobe's competition criteria.

Thus, we went web-hopping.

Re-constructed idea(s):
Expanding on idea #2, we are planning to make, still a browser-based design, but in this case, you get to control a character with the arrow and mouse keys to "travel" around a vectorized Japan.

With each area you visit, you see information. Not too wordy. The user gets actively involved with literally navigating around the site.

Further re-thinking will be done. Hopefully this gets through to the teachers. ><

Sites visited:
The FWA
10 Awe-Inspiring Interactive Websites

Results after consultation

Idea wasn't full enough, too common, problems like where to extract information from came up. Tho is was plausible, it was too dangerous to meddle with copyrighted issues.
We may have to fall to our CODPIT idea

WEDNESDAY!

We are late. *mumbles*......

Progress #1.

What we aimed to finish by today has been processed.
- Site Map
- Mind Map
- Schematics

Idea #1: Teaching young adults Basic Japanese.


Our Mind Map

Our Schematics


Our Site Map

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Idea #2: Teaching interested people about Simple Graphics Designing.


Our Schematics


Our Site Map

THE Concepts!

After panicking a little when our teacher said to present everything by this coming Wednesday, we managed to squeeze up a few lame but might-not-be-lame, ideas.

And they are as follows...

To teach....:
1. HTML
2. Japanese Language

• There were considerations on teaching Japan culture(not related to no. 2) also, but we're be scrapping that.

3. Making graphics.

• Adobe to Adobe? Dangerous ground.
  

4. Make-up.

• All about makeup and how to use them. We scrapped this however. Copyright issues if we want to get the item itself or something. And also, we're not exactly experts. :p

So...
We have come to decide upon making a browser-based site to teach people the Japanese language. Including a little of their origins. But mainly, just teaching them a few basics.

Reason?
Well, we hardly come across any site that actually teaches people how to properly make use of Japanese. They mostly just give sentences and translations, but never the proper structure.

We aim to do otherwise.

Also, the Japanese language is a highly expendable subject. There isn't much copyright issues to bother, nor any rights to carry this out.

Target audience:
Wide range, but preferably young adults willing to learn.

Expansions:
If our idea gets through, we'll begin to go full throttle. ;)

COMING SOON!
- Information flowchart.
- Schematic (?) (of....Flash? or website? lol)

Hi

STUDIO PROJECT 4, HERE WE COME