There have been a few ideas that are of interest and because of my personal need to produce art work, all interests lie in the aesthetic/artistic area of the digital web art. The web experience that is at the forefront of my mind is a work in progress and is loosely based on ‘Chinese Whispers’. Rather than concentrating solely on words, pictures and visual representations will play a major role. There have been various artists that have explored this concept and I am looking to try and take this one step further by using other internet technologies. Initially I was looking to use a web cam but on reflection, I'm not really 100% positive about this idea due to the limitations of home users having this available. The idea was to do visual ‘Chinese Whispers’ by broadcasting a drawing that I am doing over a webcam to someone else. They then get a limited time to study the picture and then they have to try and copy the results as closely as possible. Once that person has finished their piece they then broadcast it to someone else for the same amount of time and then they also draw it. I think that by limiting the time span that you are allowed it means that there will be a degree of memory used which will increase the chance of getting variation and a more interesting result. It may be possible to upload a picture to the web, you start the game and get the limited time to view the piece before it fades away, you then draw and upload your piece. It could be an on going game where the next person that wants to play sees the second persons drawing etc. Up to six drawings. ‘Six degrees of separation’.
My second idea which is the one that I will work with is taking aspects of the first idea but I will put a simple flash drawing interface. Users can interact directly with the web space and be creative without the concerns of computer peripherals such as a web cam or scanner. I wanted to base my art project on the 5-15 year old girlie age bracket however, I would like to provide CSS style sheets for two-four different demographic groups. Male/Female/Adult/Child. Taking all of these combinations into consideration I will probably have a title page where you can choose which of the four groups you belong to. I don't want to limit the interest in the project by making it so blatantly childlike for adults as I feel it has scope across the board.
There will be time constraints on the web construction and I am hoping that by keeping it simple I may well achieve what I have set out to do.
For this idea I will need to have a dynamic web page with PHP. I will need to set up a local test area for checking my PHP coding using http://zappa.tvu.ac.uk as my webserver and a MySQL database to store information in. I will start off simply by learning to save the drawing to the database and then I will add more functionality as I go. It is difficult at this stage to know how simple this process will be due to a general lack of programming knowledge or understanding of PHP.
I will research how to connect my database to the flash drawing interface. I will also research how I can allow the participants in the game a visual for a 10 second time period only. The first artist will enter the game and draw a picture, which they will then be saved to the database. The next person that joins the game will get to see 10 seconds of the first persons drawing and then they will be re-directed to the drawing area. They will draw what they think they have seen and then they will save it. The third person that joins the game will see the second persons drawing for 10 seconds before being directed to the drawing area, this will go on until the sixth person saves their work and then the pieces can all be displayed together in the gallery. I think the flash online drawing interface will add more interest and more degradation off the design, as there is a definite skill to drawing with a mouse rather than a pen and paper.
Here are a few research ideas based on the 5-15 years old girl persona:-
I was looking at candy striped fabrics, flowers, bubbles and candyfloss as brainstorming words. Some of the photos below are resources that I found using google images and other ideas are ones that I scanned into the computer and modified slightly using Photoshop to create more interesting effects:-
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Here are a few of my initial logo design ideas:-
This was my first idea, I was hoping for something a lot more organic looking. It looks like a coat of arms.
I like this one it is a lot more organic than the first idea. I feel it suits the girlie persona much closer.
This one is simple but effective, maybe this would be suitable for the male website if the colours were amended.
This is my favourite idea I will start with this and see where it goes.
Here are the mock up button, male and female character designs and full screen ideas for my art project.
The first full picture one is the enter page and the second one is the welcome screen.
This is the boys version of the welcome screen, similar to the ladies but more appropriate with the alternative colourway.
I presented my work today, which is always useful to get feedback. Whilst I had decided two different web spaces one for girls and one for boys Ian expressed concern about stereotyping and adding this kind of constraint to my project. Taking these comments into account I have modified my design ideas by appealing across the board rather than making any gender assumptions. I have shown below the modifications and whilst I haven't changed the design too dramatically I have changed the feel of the web site by the colour choices I have made.
This is my flash interface, simple but suitable for the requirements of this project. It is adapted from an existing one that Ian sent me for my last project.
