Introspection is Key

Okay.. I have mustered up my courage and I am just going to say it. I have loved designing and creating for as long as I can remember. There has never been something I’d wanted to do more. But this year, I have fallen out of love with what I am doing. I am constantly filled with doubt and I have no confidence in myself, my skill or my taste.

I realized it is because I stopped creating stuff that I myself was passionate about. I need to take a hard look at what I am doing and where I want to go with this before I spoil my passion for myself.

Therefore.. I will be forfeiting some of my blogging marks. I will update my blog and write about my progress, where I am at, what headspace I am in, what I struggle/don’t struggle with.. but I won’t be sharing designs. I am designing for myself. If I am happy with what it looks like then it will be good – regardless of the mark it receives. I need to focus on reaching my own expectations, because after I leave the Academy that will be all I have.

 

Cool, so…

This is the new look and feel and palette that I have been working on. I quite enjoy having tiny pops of colour with the starkness of the muted black and white. I know all the lines aren’t neat and cleaned up yet, but this is just to give an idea of the direction I am taking now – and to get the new look and feel approved.

I decided to make the project more personal, seeing as it is a personal vendetta I have. So when illustrating the dark web and social media and so forth I will be illustrating MY experience of it. Also, because this is so line heavy I might just make 20 second animated gifs with storylines in them in stead of the interactive gifs because I am not sure how great my compositions will look If i have to separate them into blocks.. Still researching that though

 

UPDATE

So, I am restarting my project’s entire execution. Sigh.. I have been working too close to my reference and need to find a way to make it my own. And instead of adjusting stuff, I am going to restart it and try to not reference anything specific. It is going to waste a lot of time but it is definitely worth it and necessary.

Cross my fingers this works out. A bit stressed about the fact that I dont really have consultations and two weeks have been cut from my holiday coz of a family vacation and another two weeks of a very demanding internship. TIME MANAGEMENT IS KEY LENE.

Hopefully I get this project executed on the level that I set out to in the first place.

Test

Why am I even up?

So, this weekend was pretty much wasted on Visual Studies and Thesis Drafts. Yay. The main reason why I am up at 3:13 AM is because my thesis has been queued in Turnitin for 6 hours. I am currently waiting to find out how fucked I am, so I might as well blog while I am in this mini existential crisis.

Good times.

I am currently scamping and sketching out ideas and grids. I have decided to really try and nail this project on paper before I digitize it. I think sorting my thoughts by hand will be much more efficient.

There are some things I need to make sure of in class:

1. At what resolution should I be working?
2. I should be working in RGB? Right?
3. How NSFW can this project get?
4. What should my pixel ratio per gif be?
5. If I work at 1920/1080 then my ratio should be 640×360? (1920/1080 divided by 3)
6. Check If my train of thought is correct.
7. Ask Wessie about show and reveal window opening.
8. How important is colour? Should there be a dominant colour linking the 5 pages? Or should it be random and let the style speak for itself?
9. Also, HOW DO I PULL MY SHIT TOGETHER???

Last year I thought I was the fucking tits man. This year has been very humbling. I have realized that I actually know so fucking little and have honestly barely scraped the surface of design in the last three years. So much learning to do still! But along with this revelation I have also lost all confidence in my skill and opinion. I over analyze everything I make and can’t tell the difference between what I like and don’t like anymore. That is why this project has to be hella fun and experimental. I need a fingerpaint project where I can just go apeshit and let loose. Let’s hope this doesn’t bite me in the ass……and actually fucking works!

Also, I am worried that whatever I make will be nice to look at, but it won’t be well-designed. So I need to consciously also consider my influences and references and really delve into their work so that I can apply the same techniques and practices into my pieces.

I will be doing my colour palette today as well, so stay tuned.

Okay bye.

 

 

Technical Execution

Essentially my site would consist of 5 pages. Each page would be set up in a grid of 9 gifs (3×3=9.) The gifs would be playable on hover or interaction. I will be using this simple code to “cheat” my gif hovers. It basically is a still that is placed over an animated gif and then when you hover it the still becomes transparent, thus revealing the animated gif. Everything on the site will accumulate to a show and reveal website with one or two interactive elements on each page.

 

Home Page 00: (The Web)

This will be the collective look and feel of everything the web stands for. From here on the viewer would navigate to the other pages. This page is very simple and beautifully animated with no hectic code seeing as it is more of an introductory page to what the website is about.

Page 01: Search Engines

I have nothing here. Yet.

Page 02: Social Media

So a cool idea that I thought I could implement is a random status generator of shit that you honestly can’t say out loud. Kind of a mix of opinions, expressions, insults and confessions. Don’t at all look at the look and feel. It is gonna be made baie mooi.

 

Page 03: Clickbait & Viruses

So I want the middle block of the 3×3 grid to not be accessible. Kind of playing with the idea that everybody is attracted to clickbait and it always directs you somewhere, but on this page you can’t access the button because fuck you. Also for that block I am thinking of changing the cursor to a middle finger so that every time you hover over it your cursor becomes a middle finger or something. Fuck you for falling for clickbait.

Page 04: The Dark Web

Here I would essentially have to create two canvasses. the front canvas would be our dark sides of the web. Our search history and guilty pleasures. Each gif would open like a window and be placed over a darker version – the ACTUAL dark web. The web behind the web. Not sure how the reveal would work yet but I am currently researching it.

Children Trafficked – overtime you click you traffic a child.

Presentation Feedback

Here is my concept Presentation that was Due as of Tuesday 22 May

My overall feedback was quite positive.

Happy with the subsections and the things that are linked to them. Feels that they are well thought out.

There is a concern that has risen that the executional style of the project might be a bit ambitious. Specifically to execute the level of style that I am opting for.

I had a concern that the website might not link well enough to insomnia, but was reassured that because it was a personal experience and because it is mentioned it will be fine. It is not about how the people link insomnia necessarily but rather how they experience the website.

Wessie thinks I should access the dark web… Just putting this here as a disclaimer.. ha.. ha.. selling kids and buying guns and such..

 

Yas.

 

Look & Feel

This will be the structural content and grid of my website:

Each page will be navigated to from the main page which is a holder of all things web.

My look and feel concept is essentially to have an animated canvas of gifs that play the you hover over it.

Note to self: Add “I’m Feeling Lucky” to Search Engines

Enisaurus is a major influence in look and feel when it comes to the grid aspect. The way the separate entities work together to create a whole and a bigger picture is really interesting and also extremely effective.His work is also super overwhelming with a massive ton of information at once and you kind of have to search for things before the become clear – JUST LIKE THE WEB.

I was also thinking that instead of looking at just Enisaurus I should also be looking at things that might have inspired his work. Like Mayan Calendars and stain glass.

Then we come to executional look and feel. I love love love love this and feel like it offers a super organic look and feel to something structured and digital like the web. It adds to the irony. I enjoy the fact that all the line widths are the same and that the colors are quite flat.

Concept & Narrative

My personal experience with insomnia has and forever will be linked to the internet. I am either not sleeping because I can’t get off the internet or I turn to it as a way of passing time when I am struggling to fall asleep. I have come to realize how ironic it is that I turn to the web like it is going to solve my insomnia – which it obviously only essentially worsens. When I wake up I am frustrated and angry with myself for spending so much time on the internet going through senseless status updates, fake news, stupid cat videos that never end and so forth. 

Only Bitches Sleep will be a satirical, interactive and animated website that comments on our nightlife personalities, online experiences and essentially all aspects of.. The Web. 

I know that it is extremely ironic that I am mocking the web by using the web. BUT this is my way of saying fuck you to the internet for all of the sleepless nights and frustrations. 

To me, this is like that epic moment in a movie where the villain presses the detonator button and the hero just smiles because he placed the explosives in the villain’s lair. So yes, the web is dead. DNR.

This project is an abstraction of my personal experience. It is an expression of my experience and is fun for people to interactive. Nothing more, nothing less.

My thinking is that having an oversimplified idea leaves no excuse for kak execution. Here’s hoping!