Photo used: Day at Tubbs Hill, 2016, Nancy Fu

My interview was influenced by Ready Player One because throughout the book it mentions a lot of technology from the 80’s, I thought it would be interesting to interview someone from an older generation to compare how much technology has developed over time. When I listened to the StoryCorps projects I realized a lot of the interviews were anecdotes from the past. So, with Marty’s interview I decided that when she would explain a story it would be better than her just answering a few questions of mine. Since a story is different for every person, however, anyone can answer a simple question. So, with that I had decided the best way was for a combination of anecdotes and answers. At first, my interview was very broad I asked many questions related to the basic use of technology as well as how it was like using technology growing up. The raw audio of the interview that was recorded had actually taken 42 minutes, however, it was the easiest way to get Marty to talk to me naturally and I had gotten a lot of stories out of the interview.  I conducted  the interview with the flow of her answers, sometimes I would let her talk about her past, other times I would ask questions following to what she had asked. I feel like I have a better understanding on Adobe Audition as well as audio recording and editing. It was hard at first when I was recording because I had never done it before, however, after a few test recordings I found it to be much easier. Editing the audio would be frustrating at times, however, after completing project 4 I realized that editing audio wasn’t too bad at all it just took a lot of time to make everything flow smoothly. Using my smartphone to record the audio was good. Yet, I felt like if I had used a better mic I would get to pick up the sounds of the bus driving in the beginning of the intro a lot better than what it is on the audio track. I did use a creative commons sound in my interview  as background music.  I had found a calming piano soundtrack by Podington Bear called Up Up Up:

http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Podington_Bear/Piano_IV_Cinematic/Up_Up_Up

I was able to apply the audio soundtrack because of it having a creative commons license that allows me to adapt the audio.

Here is the interview:

https://soundcloud.com/nancy-fu-131009221/an-interview-with-marty

 

Photo used: Mountains from Within the Car, 2016, Nancy Fu

For Janae’s Project 4 her choices for the interview questions seemed to have related to Ready Player One because she asks about different uses of technology and how much technology has advanced throughout time. Much like the book there were different uses of the technological items and the advancements in such short of time. Many of the items that were mentioned aren’t even very relevant today. Her interview reflects some of the StoryCorp aspects when Janae asks about certain questions there are anecdotes about how much the past has changed from now and it was interesting much like StoryCorp to hear other people’s opinions and experiences. The transitions throughout the audio project is very smooth. The interview doesn’t sound choppy at all. I liked how smoothly the edits were. However, I feel like maybe the music could be extended and faded out towards the end because the audio kind of feels like it comes to an abrupt stopping point. The introduction to the audio is very beneficial because she explains who she is interviewing and the reason why she is interviewing him. The supplementary music allows for the interview to feel lively and happy. It sets the tone to be relaxed and it allows the listener to really enjoy the interview. Yet, I feel like the volume on the supplementary music could be quieter because sometimes it is hard to listen to the interview conversation because the music sounds overpowering. I could imagine the 5-minute cut being played on the radio, because there really has been a lot that changed throughout technology. The mention of floppy disks and flip phones that once flipped out to full keyboards aren’t even used now and they are hard to find because of the new technological age. So I feel like this conversation would be a relevant topic to listen to on the radio.

Photo used: Photography at Tubbs Hill, 2016, Nancy Fu

The web design is clear and well-organized and is easy to navigate with the menu bar spread along the top. I like the aesthetics of the design because it is dark and goes well with the surrounding theme of the website. One thing I might suggest is going into more explanation on the homepage, maybe adding an image or something to expand the home page. With this it can help the home page look bigger. Adding widgets could help with the expansion. I like the contrast between the letters and the background, there isn’t anything that is hard to read either. You could also try to go into the CSS and edit the font.
You could write a little blurb on the projects in your portfolio page. Even though you’ve explained them in your blog it could be beneficial to write a little caption to explain to someone who might have clicked on your portfolio first rather than your blog. For the blogroll you could add images of your project to link the reader to which post is which. It allows the reader to connect the writing to a visual depiction of what’s being explained.
There’s a good sense in hierarchy because your website displayed through the main menu. The choice in the way the pages are laid out makes sense and is clear what you want the person to see first. It’s a good choice in theme and I think everything flows smoothly aesthetic-wise. It’s creative in the sense that you can tell that as a theme the law enforcement side is clear. You could also try and match the titles with maybe the colors of the cop car used in the header image. This can make the images and posts match to even more making the theme more apparent.

Photo used: Photography at Glacier National Park 2017, Nancy Fu

My web portfolio is clear, well-organized, easy to navigate and use because I provide clear indicators of where the tabs are at the top of the screen. Everything is easily accessible, and the font and font colors are easy to read as well.

I enjoyed using the aesthetics of the twenty seventeen design for my final web portfolio because it provides a nice header that eventually becomes smaller. The theme was also very versatile when picking colors and other fonts using the CSS coding. It presents each page smoothly with different options on how I can present images, whether or not I want to feature an image on the top of each post or page. It’s very picture based which I personally enjoyed about the website theme because I have a lot of photos and projects that I wanted to display throughout my pages.

The hierarchy readings that we had done from the previous design readings helped me decide on what I wanted to have displayed on each web page. In relation to question one and two the hierarchy of design is shown through my webpage because I have each page ordered by what I had felt was most important to presenting my web portfolio. From the start we have the home or landing page, but from then on, the reader of the website can get to know me. The blog page has a drop-down menu in case you want to access each post one by one or you can read them all at once. I did the same for the Portfolio page, so the reader could choose which one they wanted to read further into.

I felt like WordPress’s templates and Content management systems influenced my creative process and design decisions because it gave multiple of themes to choose. However, at the same time I felt hindered by the choices given because there wasn’t a lot of things that you could change because some of the themes were rather limiting to what you could and couldn’t include.

Photo used: Sunset at Home, 2016, Nancy Fu

The choice in colors and the character style matches Ready Player One with the idea of an 80’s theme in the way the character is drawn. The avatar seems to fit into the OASIS world as a commoner, because of the lack of weapons that are apparent. Her headband and turtle neck sweater makes me think of the 80’s as well. To match the 80’s theme there could be brighter colors used for the outfit or the background of the poster. There isn’t much typography or hierarchy in the project, however, a suggestion might be to list the items the avatar is wearing, or certain character traits, skills, or abilities so that the person looking at the poster can be aware of who this character is. Using different colors can highlight what is and isn’t important to create a contrast for the reader. The character’s shirt can be edited to look more even by using different kinds of shapes to build a shirt. This can also be accomplished by using the pen tool in illustrator, since it allows you to grab different anchor points using the direct select tool. With the gradient on the sunglasses or glasses, by using the gradient tool you can change the direction of the gradient, with this it can change the character’s glasses to look like there is light reflecting at the same angle. Shapes using different colors could also be built into the background to provide the background a textured look aside from just having the background be plainly white. The avatar could also be bigger because that is what the poster should be mainly focused on and the details of the character could be smaller.

Photo used: Fox Theater, 2016, Nancy Fu

The opacity and layering effects make the collage feel very cohesive with the color choices because there are mostly grays, whites, and some blue. The theme of the collage seems dystopian because of all the dark colors that were chosen. The couple of copies of the guy with the virtual reality glasses make it seem that there’s a sense of futuristic view to it. Regarding the person there could be another smaller version of the person towards the bottom to make it feel like there could be a sense of direction downwards. Another idea could be contrasting the person to a different color because it would pop out more and it would be less blended in. A possibility is adding maybe a drop shadow to the items overlaid on the top so then it wouldn’t look like it’s just in the background. Different colored items could be placed upon the collage as well so that the eye has something to focus on mainly and then it starts noticing the details around the background. The shuttle could be less opaque, by this I mean having the space shuttle less blended in with the background and more of a solid object, so it pops more. You could also experiment with the colors the layers allow you to make color overlays upon existing layers. Using this you can possibly try and make certain things a different color and see if that makes a difference. The idea of space is a neat concept especially for a collage, but I think if you want items to feel less of being in the background you could cut out more things to put in the foreground and because it’s a collage you can mess with the positions of certain items to make it seem different. With that you can also make more things using juxtaposition and maybe contrasting more items using different sizes. Overall, it’s a cool concept and I really like the idea of it.

My character is meant to fit into the virtual world of the OASIS because she wants to win the Hunt and fix the area around her and to prove to her parents she can do other things. She achieves that by being a Gunter who likes to work by herself unless she finds other members that she slowly warms up to and once she trusts them for sure she’ll befriend them.

I wanted a comic style avatar because when I thought of the OASIS it seemed like an action comic. I felt like this style of drawing was appropriate because it seemed like the book Ready Player One fits this description of having an avatar fight for you like many of the online roleplaying games where a person can design an avatar and have the avatar fight in battles much like the book itself. In many of the player vs. player or (PVP) mentioned in the book reminded me a lot of some of the popular animes that are like this concept.

For my graphic design choices, I chose to choose the name of my avatar in a different font to show that there is a difference, along with making the name a lot larger than everything else in the poster to show the reader of the poster that her name is the most important thing that the person should know.

The different Illustrator tools I had used were a various amount. I used the pen tool, mainly because the pen tool allowed me to edit different anchor points and if I drew something I could add more anchor points if needed with the add anchor tool then edit it with the direct select tool. The direct select tool also came in handy throughout this project. However, I used layers a lot more in this project, since it was easier to organize my work. The gradient tool also came in handy trying to adjust the gradient direction as well.

Dystopian Collage 

My design for project one was heavily inspired by our common reading book, Ready Player One. I wanted my project to show the dystopian side of technology and how sometimes we can be so connected to the world with technology but at the same time that we tend to be disconnected to the world around us. The book uses a lot of technological items but the big focus was on virtual reality or VR. Therefore, the main photo that I wanted to use was a person using a VR headset. There is reference to George Orwell’s book 1984, I used this photo for a logo on top of the VR headset because of the dystopian nature of the book felt like it’d connect with this project as well. The photo of the buildings reminded me of the stacks mentioned within the book. I had decided to erase parts of the stack for the other buildings in the background to be seen trying to make the stacks seemed distorted in a way. In terms of the different tools used, I used the quick mask tool a lot because I had a lot of images that blended within the background so it had taken a while to cut out the images that I wanted to use for this project. I had used a lot of layers for this project, trying different ways and styles of placing different cut outs on top of different layers. I also used many different layer effects, such as drop shadow since I believed the effect of drop shadow really makes the project seem like there are different pieces being placed together. The eyedropper tool as well as the paintbrush tool. Both were used a couple of times within my project, I had to match the color of the original photo in order to mask over a couple of imperfections when I was cutting things out with the quick mask mode. Some of the quick selection had taken off some parts of the image that I had used. Which I later decided that it had made a cool effect to really tie in the dystopian feeling of my collage.