Custom Markers

I have been trying to get my application to display custom markers and finally I have managed to get it working, see below:

Progress Presentation

Today was our progress presentations, I presented my work and it seemed to go pretty well, although Sarah Humphreys did question my decision to use 3D creations of the images rather than photos and this was my answer and reasoning; “using 3D recreations of the buildings makes my application different to any other applications currently available, it helps to avoid any potential copyright issues and I would also like to learn 3D design”

I feel it is important to challenge yourself and our projects should not just be easy, safe options, they should be challenging with calculated risks that help us to develop and evolve as designers, without stagnation.

After the presentations we were given feedback and I was told that my website is not very good and needs work, as it looks too corporate and grey, this gutted me as I have already had extremely positive feedback about my website. I Know I am not the most visually talented designer and I feel the design could be improved but it is nowhere near as bad as was made out.

They also feel that I should look at the possibility of not using 3D recreations for my application and if I do use 3D not to use 3ds max but to use Google Sketch Up instead. I am not sure whether they are worried about my ability to learn 3D and produce the buildings in time, or whether they are worried about my skills visually and they think I will do a rubbish job of the buildings.

The feedback comments today have really knocked my confidence and even I am a little surprised at how down I feel. In the past staff have indicated to me that my visual skills aren’t great but at the same times they have acknowledged that my stronger skills are my creative ideas and confidence. I have recently started to believe that my visual skills have greatly improved and I must thank Gareth Sleightholme for his help in that department but today’s knock is making question whether I really have progressed? I think the reason I am feeling so glum is a disappointing realisation that maybe I have made no progress and I am not cut out for the visual side of design, (I can’t code that well either, maybe I should give up now lol). This post may look as though I am not able to take criticism but I feel that is not the case, it is simply a case of disappointment and I will take any advice offered and try to improve my work.

On a more positive note, in my depressed state I tried to move forward with my application and I have managed to add an opening welcome and information screen and an icon on the menu panel, see screen grab below:

Website design

I have had a website layout and design in mind for a while and now it was time to build it, I have put together a wall paper for the back ground that features images from the application’s locations, see below:

I have made a conscious decision to build the site at 780px width, as my target audience has a wide variation and there may be users who look at the site on non wide screen monitors. I have been struggling with m CSS positioning today but I think I finally got there, see screen grab below:

This is still subject to tweaking but it’s not a bad start.

Location markers

Up until now I have only been able to display my current location marker, I have been trying to add markers to represent the two locations I am developing the application at, my home and the HSAD New media studio for testing purposes. All attempts had previously failed and today I was pulling my hair out for about two hours writing complicated functions and variables, until I decided to try moving a simplified version of my variable to another part of the code and it worked. I was over complicating things that would not work even if right, as I was doing it in the wrong place lol but we learn from our mistakes.

Website and twitter

I recently bought the url hullhistoryviewer.co.uk for this project but I did not purchase any hosting. The plan was to add it on to my pjshakesby.com domain and point the url at it but having never done this before I was a bit apprehensive. It was actually quite easy to do and is now working, I just need to get my site finished and uploaded.

You can see the website at www.hullhistoryviewer.co.uk

I have also created a twitter identity to help promote my application, to add use #@hullhistoryview.

Very Little Progress

The last few weeks have seen little progress with this project as I have been busy finishing my client project. The client project has now been handed in and now I can devote my time to this project.