Tonight I tried out a new software called Jing which can be used for screencasting (up to 5 minutes worth) and screen captures. Typically I use the "Print Screen" button on my keyboard and then pop open Photoshop for cropping. Then I've got to save for web and ultimately upload to Blogger (or somewhere else). Jing is making the screen capturing a snap! I can crop and annotate right from my desktop. Too cool! And it's free!

I did the screencast below as a test. Unfortunately YouTube just did not know how to handle it so I had to upload it to Jing's partner site Screencast.com. I also uploaded the photos there (for this blog at least). So below you're seeing the embedded item coming from ScreenCast. (All well and good but I'm limited to 2GB of storage and 2GB of transfer per month. I'd much prefer to have it up at my webhost where those bits are "unlimited" BUT I'm lazy and don't want to write my own embed codes when this site will do it for me.)

Anyhoo - I used the software to review Coraline.com which is a great movie site (I think). (Special shout out to Adrea who got me to visit the Coraline site!)

(Coraline.com's intro begins with a nice "in concept" explanation as to why the site takes a long time to load.)

And here's my screencast about the software and the movie site (note that the site does not display in real time in the screencast.... the actual site flows fluidly employing the parallax effect).

(The only big issue with this embed is that I have to manually resize it to fit in this blog space. When you start playing it there is a small rectangle in the bottom right - click that to view this full screen.)

So I totally love that site! It reminds me of the EPK (Electronic Press Kit) for A BUG'S LIFE. (Which I gave a presentation on when I was in a class called "The Business of Independent Production" back at Emerson College. I also spoke on the movie sites for PRACTICAL MAGIC, a re-release of THE LITTLE MERMAID and the Vince Vaughn PSYCHO - so that gives you an idea of how long ago I started paying attention to this stuff. I remember that back then the BUG'S LIFE website was THE END ALL BE ALL of websites. We were all talking about that site back in the day. Sigh... memories.

So Coraline's treatment is wonderful and I'm hoping that 9 The Movie will get equivalent treatment (because that story just looks more interesting to me). Right now the site is just a placeholder frame holding a trailer.



Sites mentioned in this post:

-Coraline.com
-JingProject.com
-Wakoopa.com
-9TheMovie.com

Labels: 9, coraline, jing, screen capture, screencast, wakoopa

Someone told me that a good comp takes about 4 hours to make. I sat down to do some branding for my Fried Green Tomatoes fan site at about 10pm and at the end of it I had my new logo item - the green heart tomato. And then I played (which you should always do) and came up with this lovely photoshop/illustration. I call it "MY Sacred Heart."


My Sacred Heart by ~Ravie13 on deviantART

Labels: illustrator, photoshop

Oh thank the Computer Gods (I think)! Here I was thinking that my Adobe Illustrator CS3 was just totally busted. I've spent the last few months on and off trying to figure out just what the problem was. It seemed to freeze whenever I tried to open or save a file. Finally I ended up creating a new user account on my computer which seemed to work (but that was a short term solution as I wanted my normal desktop with my Google sidebar back!).

During my holiday break I completely cleaned the computer, backed up data, uninstalled my entire Master Collection and then reinstalled it all only to find that.... it still didn't work! DRATTTT!!!

Today I ended up devoting my whole day to troubleshooting and spent the last 3-4 hours following the step by step instructions on "freeze" errors in Illustrator. Then suddenly it occurred to me... what if I'm not describing this problem accurately?

So I took a step back and recreated the problem. Open Illustrator. File. Open. Window appears for a second and then disappears leaving the program looking like it is frozen. However when I did a Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the Task Manager... the program said it was "Running" and not "Not Responding." So wait... was it actually still working? Could it be that my window had just disappeared but that it still existed and Illustrator was forever waiting for me to make a decision about just what I wanted to open? I decided to google that phrase ("Illustrator open window appears and then disappears") and THAT led me to the CORRECT Knowledge Base article over at Adobe. Apparently this is a problem stemming from using my OS Dialog (instead of the Adobe Dialog) and having two monitors. PROBLEM SEEMS TO BE MOTHER-EFFIN' SOLVED!!! (I think.)

So if you're googling the same thing and you happen upon this post - Go Here: http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb403268

Thank the Baby Christmas Jesus .. I can now get back into my love affair with Illustrator!

Labels: adobe, illustrator

Damitol! Back in Web Design 2 class (otherwise known as "Introduction to Web Design") at the Art Institute (Los Angeles) we were asked to design a site for a fictional drug known as Damitol. We were to design the site in Fireworks (at the time it was still a Macromedia product) and the site was to include an original logo design (for whatever our particular version of Damitol did), the logo of the pharmaceutical company and a link to their website. We needed a set number of pages and it needed to look as real as possible (though it wasn't required to ACTUALLY be a full-working website... it was a "design" class after all).

Well I'd just seen the GENIUS movie, CHILDREN OF MEN, and so I was inspired to make my Damitol a suicide drug. I completed the assignment, uploaded it to the school server and that was the end of the story... I thought. Turns out I did a great job at SEO and if you actually Google "Damitol" my site is the first to show up. (Or at least it was... I just deleted it's old location today.)

This led to me getting a rather long email from a "good hearted person" who "found my site humorous" but thought that I best take it down because I was linking to a real pharmaceutical company and using their actual logo. (OK ... good point.)

So that was like a year ago and I finally got around to finding the old files and changing the logo and updating the thing.

My version of Damitol now lives here! (I get this dark sense of humor from my mother... just so you know where to place blame.)

Labels: damitol, logos, web design

I just found this site and now feel compelled to visit every site listed and make sure that my standard username is registered at all of them! I want to see the red "TAKEN" on all of them!!!! http://usernamecheck.com/

Labels: interesting site

Labels: browsers, google chrome

Today somebody sent me a great site which just puts the artwork of website preloaders on display. It sounds like a joke but really when you just take a minute to look at what is essentially miniature artwork - it gives it a whole new spin (pun intended).

PrettyLoaded

It's also a great site for preloader inspiration.

Labels: flash, inspiration, look book, preloader

Same designer?

Labels: poster design

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Official Site (http://www.benjaminbutton.com/)


I am very confused by the official site for the Curious Case of Bejamin Button. This is magical movie, directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, already nominated for awards...etc. etc. etc. I go back to "magical" for a second here - I expect MAGIC from this site. I want to know why he ages differently. I want to know where on Earth he lives. I want to know how he affects history. I want to know more about the friggin' story - at the least - in one place.

But the site is a mish mash of oddness akin to scattered papers on a desk.

The first thing I see on loading of the site is this undefined quote area:



It quickly loads the latest reviews (which makes me think it's powered by some back end Javascript or XML files) which is fine... but the placeholder text could be a little more interesting. On my end it took about 15 seconds before a real quote filled this placeholder and in that time I was scratching my head.



Next I enter the official site (that's why I'm here after all) and it takes EONS to load. Not only is it taking eons but I'm not actually sure where the loader is since it's clearly a time line relating to the story and not a traditional loader. The text on this loading screen is about as interesting as the site gets (in my opinion). Finally I've loaded all the data but nothing changes... only after a few moments of puzzling do I realize that the text "continue" has been added to the bottom of the screen (you'll have to scroll down if the site doesn't fit perfectly above the fold in your browser). (Of course I hadn't noticed that it appeared because I left for coffee while it loaded!)



I'm in the site finally and suddenly it's Where's Waldo starring Brad Pitt. Giant black and white pictures pull in to Benjamin Button at various ages amidst cityscapes or crowds... which might have been interesting as a site intro but this IS the site. The time line seems to be progressing as the pictures zoom in... that doesn't even make sense. Just because we're now zoomed all the way to Pitt does not mean 10 years have passed!?! And having seen the movie - I don't even see how they relate - except in the obvious way (Benjamin Button getting younger as the fashions/architecture get newer).



But maybe there's more? No, not really. The only things on this official site are the giant zooming pictures (the pictures had to be huge in order to zoom in to Pitt without ugly pixelization ... thus the huge download size I guess... but was it worth it?), an audio track and a gallery.



The gallery just sits on top of the giant zooming pictures (which continue to zoom) creating an "interesting" contrast. It might look amazing if it were still but as the picture in the back is still moving... it's distracting.



So what about watching the trailer or reading about the cast/story/etc.? You might expect to find these things on the official site, right? But no! When you click on "View Film Info" we're taken to a NEW site... MSN Movies ?!?! That's where the bulk of the data on the cast and story is. Including the trailers.

But then if I were to click on "Watch Trailer in HD" I'm instead taken to the Apple trailers site... even though the trailers were already on the MSN page.




Find Tickets and Showtimes takes me to 3 different movie ticket buying sites but that's not shocking. Apparently the Benjamin Button site isn't an information provider but rather a hub... a hub that takes too long to load to be a hub. Overall... pretty and atmospheric. But there's no magic.

Labels: movie site review