Week 9

This week I began to make some serious changes to my concept and actually follow a theme which would hopefully tie all the elements together. As you can see from my last post, what I currently have looks very amateurish and is not something which I am happy with. But it was a starting point for me none the less where I would practice all the elements necessary before applying them. I wanted to put to action some of the concepts which I had drawn up, I have also been experimenting with different colour palettes and have been debating over whether I should go with warm colours or cool colours.

After much experimenting with miniature thumbnails, I finally decided to go for neither and settled for a neutral grey instead with a hint of a mossy two toned green.

Stage 3. The new modernised GUI

I have tried to update from my previous concepts by adding a modern touch where necessary and keep from going down the conventional route by placing the menu on the right rather than the left.

Now that I have a concept which I am pleased with I can continue to add the content and use this page as a template for the rest of the pages.

Week 8

This week I began what I thought was the most complicated task so far – selecting the pieces of work which I will be including in my portfolio. I began with choosing some of the work which I had created as a freelancer but then decided against it as I would then have to contact the person who commissioned it and await their approval before proceeding to make use of it. So instead I ended up choosing from my personal pieces of work.

The next step also took me a long time, since I was creating my portfolio digitally I couldn’t just bung it all in to one large page. Therefore I decided to create a separate page for the different categories of work which I would be displaying. This would make it much easier and actually make the most of the digital interface since the viewer can go back and forth between any number of pages tirelessly, and also because they don’t have to remember how many physical pages ago they saw something which they wish to visit again since all the links will be visible on the page at one time.

I’ve finally imported all of the images in to Adobe Flash and am beginning to code the separate components on the page. At the moment I am having a lot of trouble with having the images pop up once the thumbnails have been clicked on, I am also having trouble with the scroll bar. When the content of the page exceeds the content page I have attached a small scroll bar to the side which should allow you to scroll down and view the rest of the content – the problem is that the scroll bar will either show you the content which is right at the top of the page or the content right at the bottom of the page, but nothing in between. This is becoming a big problem as I am having to sacrifice the size of my text and thumbnails to try and squeeze it all in which has resulted in it all looking cramped now. I guess my next task is to find some forums online where somebody can offer me some assistance solving this.

Stage2. Replaced buttons and extended the stage size

Week 7

Having various teachers and mentors over the years I have been exposed to many different methods of creative presentations and solutions. Every time I discover or meet a new artist online I go over to their online portfolio to see what they included in their portfolio, how their composition is and what colour palette they have chosen. I usually ask them what their inspirations were, how they developed their first basic concept in to their current one. I usually forward them ideas for what I have in mind for my own portfolio and always look forward to what they have to say. The CV I have been using over the last year has consisted of a good quality Concord paper base, a print out of a covering letter and a CD/DVD containing samples of my best work.

From experience I have noticed that CV’s that stands out visually or are presented productively are the ones that are the most successful. The responses that I have received from the layout of my current CV have been positive so far so I don’t think any adjustments are necessary on it before being added to my portfolio.

I have begun to create the basic button and scroll bar boxes in Adobe Photoshop; once I have crated these they shall be imported in to Adobe Flash and readied to be composited. I’m sure my design and composition will still change much more before I settle down on a concept, but I’d rather make a start know and start learning what’s necessary in order to give the portfolio full functionality.