First meeting/proposal

I went back to University today for the official start of my 3^rd and final year of study. I had a short 15 minute meeting with James Field and Sarah Humphries were I had the opportunity to give a brief overview of my hopes and ideas for my final year project. During this meeting we discussed the work I had done over the summer period and we talked about the next stages of development.

The overall feedback on my project ideas was extremely favourable and I am happy with the results of this meeting.

Jay did suggest to me that my project would need to be developed using action script 3 of which we will be learning this year but I cannot afford to wait for these lesson as this would undoubtedly slow down the progress of my project so I am going to undertake my own independent learning to try to stop any potential delays.

Learning 3D

As part of my project I have chosen to recreate fallen buildings in digital 3D. This is something I have never tried before so as preparation I have been following an online 3DS max training course on Lynda.com.

I completed this course today and I now realise I will need further training to reach a point at which I will be able to develop the required parts of my project.

Through the course entitled 3ds Max 2009 Essential Training I have gained an understanding of the 3DS max 2009 interface and I have learned different modelling techniques and principals that will be useful to me during this project and beyond within my potential career path. But I feel I need to develop further skills so I will now undertake the beyond the basics coarse in order to enhance my skills further.

Phillip Shakesby

Contradicting Evidence

I bought a copy of the Hull Daily Mail’s history news paper (Flashback).

Within this edition there seems to be some contradictory evidence regarding one of the buildings I intend to feature in my application. This edition seems to indicate that the building was not destroyed by enemy action during World War 2 but in fact it was still standing in 1946. This contradicts the information I researched at the Hull History Centre and a previous article featured within the Hull Daily Mail which can be found online here:

http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/hull-daily-mail/mi_8073/is_20100624/story-historic-buildings/ai_n54193878/

I have contacted the author of the article to try and clear up the confusion.

Logo development

When I started designing my logo I had a couple of ideas to work with. I knew it had to represent the time period featured within my application and it had to represent what the application is or does and if at all possible both. I drew some sketches trying to come up with an idea that represented the app view below:

Some of these sketches are based around the location in which my application is used and others are based around the process of viewing.

I also knew that the type face would be extremely important, I wanted to use something that represented the historical aspect of my application so I examined a number of different serif typefaces, comparing them and making judgements based upon differing aspects of their forms but I did seem to develop a pet hate for the similarity between the serif L and the number 1 and this had a large influence on my choice of typeface. I settled upon Cambria as it has relatively strong diagonal and vertical hairlines and the L is less like a number 1 than in other fonts.

To learn more about the Cambria typeface see below:

http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/1112393

I then tried to develop the sketches further digitally using my chosen typeface view below:

I then settled upon a design that I feel is appropriate as it seems to me to show the element of viewing. With the structure of the logo in place I then tried using colours from the two possible colour schemes I was considering view below:

I finally settled upon this design view below:

Colour Scheme

Choosing a colour scheme for any application is extremely important and I believe it can make or break a product. I looked at my mood boards and had some ideas based largely around the history aspect of my application but I also wanted to balance this with the modern aspect of the technology.

I have tried using Adobe Kuler website in the past in an effort to use the principles of colour theory and it has not usually yielded positive results. This time I decided I would try it again and I chose a few colour schemes for consideration view below:

I then developed the colour schemes further as I wanted to balance out the mature darker colours against a crisp white colour, to contrast the historical and modern technological parts of my project. View below:

I narrowed my decision to two colour schemes and after experimenting with them in my logo development process I settled upon this one below: