I've gotten faster at this stuff just by doing UI. Weird.
Who's wrong, who's right?
I wouldn't call myself a UFO nut by any stretch of the term, but I do follow the developments of various UFO related reports with a rather skeptical eye. And of course, I prefer to live in a world where everything hasn't been discovered and with at least a slim chance of the unknown. Even with doubts, how boring would it be to live in a world with nothing left to discover?
There have been various sightings reported, not for decades but for centuries, and if vague cave paintings of the prehistoric unelectric man qualify as anything to go by, perhaps even millenia.
Now an Irish astronomer says that he's successfully tracked these unidentified flying objects, and whatmore, he claims to be able to track their pre-specified flying patterns and accurately predict when and where they'll show up. Even a skeptical man like myself can admit that things are heating up, what with the weird mutilated corpse showing up in Russia few days ago, FBI's Rosewell documents disclosure (even if with a healthy dose of x-files's ball-busting ambivolence).
Fact remains that things on the subject continue being reported. I myself have seen stuff I can't explain (glowing orbs) and stuff I can chop up to obvious planes of unspecified model. The government seems to know some stuff, and the disclosure is beginning, perhaps due to Julian Assange knightly, if condomless, attempts at improving the open flow of information. The Queen Majesty's little sheep-infested greenland has already fessed up most of what they know from the past. Some shinnanigans are still uncommented on, like the disappearance of Lincolnshire's enormous torn-off (AND LOST) wind turbine. I mean how do you just LOSE a wind turbine?
Christians, feel free to give props to the levitating Jesus and blame the devil for chicken pox. Who's crazy?
UI Design : MGH Institute
Check out the PDF for the full 6 screen presentation!
Pretty self explanatory. Stuck at HQ, but I'd still like to see this app run someday. Though I'd probably update the clips at the top - they're a little too goofy. :D
UI Design : FireScribe
Ohhh glory. This was so fun. This was going to become the user interface for an ipad app made specifically for the Fire Department. It took me a while to figure out the glittery car-paint though, and the way to light it.
By the way, I realized my last post was actually corrupted because you couldn't open the thumbnail. This has been rectified, so now it's enlargeable. If something like this should happen, please let me know. :D
UI Design: LawTrack
So, this was done ages ago. It was fun. The app was supposed to let you (the cop) track perps on the go. I pretended to be the David Fincher of UI designers and had fun with it. The blue writing is taken directly from Zodiac letters. A little crazy, I know. But had I been a cop and would I have used this, using this app would've been the highlight of my donut eating & parking ticket filled day. Also, this design is special because I designed it at non-retina scale, which is something I haven't done since.
Way back when...
Acrylics on canvas, arranged in a cheap manner of a sideshow clown.
Grady
There's nothing that drives me more nuts than people who have art done for their product and coming to me with files that have flattened text layers and vector masks. Take it a step further and cease to put things into folders. That's the mother of all inefficiencies - a graphic artist not doing their work right, not spending the extra .5 seconds to group layers thematically. I can dig that renaming layers and folders can be a waste of time sometimes, because with most files you can spot a repeatable pattern in the generic layer naming conventions.
Improper Photoshop work ethics give employers vast amounts of inefficiencies, wasting money and time. It wouldn't be a bad idea to give seminars to companies who have larger amounts of graphic artists so they don't waste thousands of dollars a month on things that could've been avoided altogether had the artists been professionally trained.
It's not exactly what I had in mind when I started this out, but I might still come back to the version I originally intended and finally make that into a poster. Anyway, I started going over the sketch in digital paint, then after about an hour of work, just as it was starting to look pretty good, Photoshop crashed and I realized I forgot to save. Turns out that was probably for the best, as I developed a new technique for illustrating doing this. This piece took me about 4 hours.
Oh yeah, and it's suppoed to be Michael Douglas' character, Grady Tripp, from the Curtis Hanson movie, Wonderboys, based on a novel by Michael Chabon. I feel like Curtis Hanson isn't given proper credit for all the amazing directing the film's seen, the subtlety in character and pacing. Confusing trailers made this movie a sleeper hit at best. Then again, Curtis Hanson's trailers seem sort of confusing to me anyway.
Secrets
Signing NDAs means keeping secrets on daily basis. It's a part of our jobs. But the sweetest secrets kept are the ones that you consider secret yourself.
From a project I'm working on.
Steve Young Football: Of Interceptors and Pigs
Steve Young Football hit Gizmodo a second time! This time with the CrossFire Spoof Ad.
So during the production, it was decided that there should be a number of obstacles. And among these obstacles were two interesting ones:
The Interceptor is basically a huge football player that deflects the player. I wanted to go a little deeper than that, so I wanted him to be a cross between a gorilla and Mickey Rourke. To make him even more menacing, I figured he should sport a nice SS style helmet. I was actually looking at gorillas for reference, too.
Pigs were planned since the very early days. Only as we progressed did we realize how wrong the idea of a pig holding a football in its mouth is. Which explains the look on the face of the pig in the app icon.
Originally the pig had a longer snout, because I was going for more of a hog. But I think the final pig (right) worked out just fine, with the mole above its lip.
Steve Young Football Coverage
Where is Katamari Damacy Now?
Keita Takahashi has left Namco today. What does this mean? Well, recently he's been quoted for being "disillusioned" with the gaming industry and 3D. (Here and Here and Here)
I was definitely a latecomer to Katmari Damacy. And once I saw it, I was hooked. The depth of the King of Cosmos' character and the relationship between the Prince and the King of Cosmos, and then the relationship between the King of Cosmos and his father all seemed somehow very profound. They were telling legitimate stories through very abstract means. Not only through highly imaginative fairy tale, but also through a videogame.
Boy did I roll those Katamaris around to please my Pop... What I loved the most though, is that I could actually feel for Prince. To some extent, everyone in their life has a figure of authority and the scenes in the game, even if conveyed mainly in text, bring up familiar feelings.
Now, I can speak for what playing Katamari has taught me. It has taught me that there is a time where small things no longer matter and one has to move onto larger things, or else you won't make the Katamari as big as it needs to be in time. Katamari here being life. This, I feel, is a vital life skill, which, other than in this video game, is hard to come by through such fun and practical means. So I won't lie if I say that playing this game has had a therapeutic effect.
I'm not the only person to feel this way. University of Wisconsin professor, James Paul Gee, states in one of his papers, that Katamari may be in fact, one of the most beneficial games to brain development. Keita Takahashi then made Noby Noby Boy. I only got that for iphone, since I don't own a PS3, but again, the game is an abstract concept of symbiotic relationship, helpful in forming the thought process behind relationships.
And then he just took off. I can't wait to see the playground he's working on.
But why would he be so sick of the gaming industry to leave it altogether after he's done such genius games? Maybe it's because focus isn't on how the games can be beneficial, but on realism in graphics, immersiveness in the game and other "important-for-marketing-but-really-just-a-slice-of-the-whole-pie" parts. Maybe it's because Namco keeps releasing new versions of Katamari and the point of the game, present in the very first Katamari Damacy for PS2 has now been distilled to be mild and easily digestible. I don't know.
But I do know for a fact that I'll be showing my kids Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy. I've gained a ton from Katamari Damacy that I want to share with future generations. Hopefully the PS6 of the tomorrow will be backwards compatible, or at least the emulators will run well. I hope Keita the best into his future. I hope he keeps bringing us work in context that provides us with perspective. (Hey Keita, if you read this, let's make a children's book together. :D)
Oldschool
It's been a long long time.
To get things going, how about this? This is a character design for a project I've got in the works.
*This blog is a sort of a sequel to the 99 bottles of beer on the wall blog I had some long time ago. On this blog I'll be showing the effects of various graphical things I've picked up along the way. Just putting some up there.