Today we learnt about Health and Safety and how to keep healthy when working on computers. We learnt the importance of good posture and having our chairs at the right settings so we don't get back pains ect. We also learnt about the importance of giving out eyes a break by either looking away from the screen every now and then or going on an eye break. 

Mascot designs

These are my basic designs for my two mascots for my website. The one on the left is my design for my traditional mascot, I tried to incorporate traditional drawing material like paper in the dress, the binder on sketchbooks on the arms, a sharpener hair ornament and socks that look like pencils. I like the design a lot but I dont like the yellow in the socks so I'm going to change that for my final design to a grey. The one on the right is my digital mascot, I tried to make her look futuristic and I also tried to incorporate the on switch from a computer. I like this design a lot as well but I don't really like the hair.

These are my final designs and I will be using these images for my enter page. I changed the socks to tights on the traditional mascot but the rest of her design stayed the same. The digital mascots design changed the most though as I decided to add a green into her colour scheme so that her top looks more like a computer hard drive. 

To make the digital mascot I used a program called paint tool sai and my graphics tablet. For the traditional I drew the sketch in the same program, printed it out then coloured it with pencils.

Time plan

Capturing with Wordle

Today we used a website called Wordle to capture our selves with words. We then made one for someone else, I made one for AJ. This created an interesting design and I may use it again.

Change of my website and new proposal

I am changing my whole focus of my website. I have decided to do this because personally I am not interested in the website I would be re-designing and it's hard to incorporate the capture method of drawing into a website about jewellery. Also if the subject of the website is something I personally am strongly interested in then I'll have better ideas for it.

I want to design a website for manga and anime artists with tutorials, contests, anime and game reviews and a place to post people's original manga. I want to make this website because although there a load of websites with similar purposes, some are bad at one thing while good at another and vice versa with other websites, I want to make a website that's good at all these things and user friendlily. I also want to make this website because it's a kind of website I would use.

The main website that inspires me is DeviantART, it has a simple logo and mascot and the layout is neat and easily to navigate, the problem is since it is aimed at all artists there isn't specific focus on the manga/anime style, it's just a sub category. Another website is Manga tutorials, it has a lot of tutorials but they are very poorly presented with only small preview images as well as confusing categories. I really want to use DevioantART's idea of having a mascot but I also want to incorporate the more simplified navigation from Manga Tutorials. To help keep the website easily navigated I'm going to split it in half, one half for traditional art and one half for digital art. I would also like to have an animated front page of the site with a mascot for each half of the website, traditional and digital, that take you to one of the different homepage's depending on what mascot you click on; this will be all animated in flash.

While researching both DeviantART and Manga tutorials I realised that most of the site is made up of images, which makes sense. Therefore I will be using traditional drawing, scanning and tablet drawing a lot, both in vector and bitmap. My mascots will be bitmaps made in photoshop and an art program called paint tool sai, my logo will be a vector and so will any animations. I've also decided to make a font for the traditional part of my website by getting my friend to write the alphabet in pencil and then I will scan it into the computer, as for the digital side of my website I will use an existing font called OCR A Std. For the front page I will use my digital camera to take a picture of a computer screen with a sketchbook in front of it so I can edit it in photoshop to add the websites two mascots, the digital mascot on the screen and the traditional mascot on the sketchbook. Because this is the only photo I am taking there’s no need for any special lighting or effects to be used. I may also record videos for some of the tutorials and use an internet sound bank for button clicks.

The main problems with the existing sites it is too hard to find exactly what you want. With my website the first page you get to choose if you want traditional or digital art by clicking either on the digital mascot in the computer screen or the traditional mascot on the sketchbook. This will either take you to the traditional or digital homepage which will have links to Tutorials (basic, line-art, colouring, background, specific programs/pens), Contests (Joint or just traditional/digital), Art (shojou, shouen, chibi, all) and Anime/manga reviews (this links to the same page whether you get to it via traditional or digital.)

Cover page and double spread in Neville Brody's style

In the holidays we were asked to make a cover page and double spread page in the style of Neville Brody. His work has a good mixture of a bit of photography and strong bold fonts in different colours. For the cover I found a nice stock image of a woman throwing flowers in the air and I decided to have her throwing words up in the air too. I decided to use this rounded font I have for a soft kind of look and I inverted the colours and changed the hue to pink for the word love. I then realised that the photo was too detailed and took away from the text so I filtered it and lowered the saturation.

For the double spread I tried to do something more in the traditional Brody style. I used a bold font and a bit of colour as well as rotated/flipped and different sized letters.

I didn't really like doing this but I really like my double page spread. If I had to do this again I would try and keep the design simple unlike my cover which was over crowded.