So, for the two days before the presentation, after the exams, I was working non-stop. Just barely sleeping and doing the  4th year project for like 16 hours… Kind of intense regime, but, as I see it, it’s just a preparation for the upcoming months.

In order to have a working demo, I started animating the introduction scene to the app. This involved a lot of frame-by-frame animation, which was a pen writing down the name of my app and drawing the various objects on the scene. For that, I took a photograph of my hand and began animating, after getting re-acquainted with the technique, which I remembered by watching this video.

And so, this is my vectorised hand:

From then on, I began putting the “furniture” together and animating the rest.

Here are some screen-shots of the demo:

I’m also going to include the actual slides from my presentation, since they’re not your ordinary powerPoint slides.
Basically, I’m known for not having massive amounts of text in the powerPoint, and  just relying on images, which just strengthen my point.

Okay, so the feedback I received was mostly positive, and I was advised to change a few things. For example, to take out the colour from the sketches and colour them in charcoal. I was also advised to use a grown man’s hand for the animation, as supposed to my more slim and feminine one. I was also told that my Edgar Allan Poe looks like a hipster, and change him a bit more to suit his dark and gothic character, which, with little thought, I have agreed with. Oh, and I should also hold a quill of some sort, to have a better effect of the mood and the style.

Fortunately, the presentation went well, and, as my friends told me, was pretty good.
From this point on-wards, I will make the changes I was advised to make, and keep working on the animations and, in due time, the core code itself.

So, since I didn’t like the previous colouring/drawing style, I had a moment of clarity and came up with a style. A kind of pencil-drawn style. So, this gave me more ideas on the interface.

I thought the opening of the app could be a person opening up a book and drawing out the room with a pen, which will become the interactive interface.

So, I started re-doing the designs. Started sketches and then brought them into illustrator, see below.

I have been researching the styles and colours and furniture and God knows what, and, in the end, I made a master-mood-board (which I grouped into sections)

(note! The images are pretty large, so it might take a while to load…)

Right, now that I look at it, doesn’t seem like I’ve done any research for this, but I’ve been at it for 4 hours now. My brain has started to melt due to me freaking out over the [old] design and how much I don’t like it/particularly enjoy it.
Also, I found this great blogger, who studies creative arts for theatre and film, and her sketches of the rooms/interior and furniture are pretty cool and quite close to what I want my interface to look like. Check out her blog. 

More detail will be added along with the vectors and the colour… 

the upside of this is that I really know how to use the pen tool now… 

do you like the stripey pants and the rosette in the shirt? and the fancy shmancy scarf ? Looks like an illustrated Hugh Hefner … anyway, he’s done, I just need to start coding him and animating him through the interface.