We were only 12 students and most of the topics we worked on during the past one and a half years were very practical. There was also a cooperation with the private applied arts college Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule (btk) for some of the courses, which I highly appreciated.

The first semester was filled with many short projects, like for example: creating a song lyric, working on different texts about media theory, talking about image interpretation or the combination of media and architecture.

We also had to hold several speeches. One of them was at the New National Gallery in Berlin during our visit of the exhibition “Modern Times. The Collection 1900 – 1945″. I’ve chosen to speak about the image “Young Men from Papua” by Emil Nolde. It was very interesting to research about Nolde and his support for the Nazi regime. But as all forms of modernism was rejected as “degenerated art”, also his works were condemned. Afterwards I had a whole new (negative) view on the South Seas works and Nolde himself…

There was also a project were we should explain the word “Heimat”, something like “home” in English, in a short animation or presentation. I’ve chosen a short animated flash film, but it was really hard to come up with good ideas to explain the meaning.

My courses at the btk during the first semester were: “Human Factor in Design” and “Informationsvisualisierung”(information visualization). They were both very interesting, with a different teaching style, compared to our university of applied sciences in Brandenburg. Something like a more “school” like atmosphere.

In Human Factor in Design we talked a lot about usability and the strategies to develop and test stuff, thinking about the final users. At the end we handed in a project plan, with personas, user journeys, wireframes and a final usability review on a chosen project. I’ve chosen a new Dress Up Game, which I’ve developed in the next semester.

In Informationsvisualisierung we worked on different information visualisation styles and concepts. Our final assignment was to present all of ones Facebook friends in an original style and include some calculations with data one can get from the system about those friends. My final app really worked, up to a certain extent.

(part 2 will follow)

So we wanted to create a little character that would help children visiting websites. It should use some sweet animations and talk to the children to let them know where they are and what their possibilities were on the website. Furthermore it should also become a little friend to them, so that they would like to visit the website and the character again. Our first idea to achieve this additional idea was a “clothing” possibility, so that one could choose the look of the character and it’s accessories as you can see in the little preview at pinkbunnylilli.de.

This is the cover of our bachelor thesis. The illustration was done at the very last minute in a hurry… but I still like it.

Our first step was to think deep about our project and what we want to achieve and we visualised those thoughts in this colorful mind-map.

We also did an online survey with some firms who would possibly use this kind of gimmick on their platform and included the feedback into our work. We asked questions like: where they would use a character like ours and what it should help the children with on their specific platform.

My practical part in this whole work was to create the character itself, animate it in different positions and actions and include the changing parts and accessories.

I used three different programs to design the character. First of all Photoshop, for the first impressions and design options for our online poll on my gaming page. The second was Illustrator, because the character needed to be vector based in order to animate it smoothly and with llustrator there are plenty of options to create great vector graphics. And finally there was Flash, in order to animate the character and code some of its options and the connection between my part and Thomas’s.

As there were a whole bunch of different characters to choose from in first place, I’ve started an online poll on my www.pinkbunnylilli.de website and the winner (by just one vote) was some kind of green flubber like something called “Wobble”. I’ve also animated the bunny at the end because it became our second test character, as we were planning to make the whole system suitable for different characters and platforms.

Wobble now got three new colors to let the children choose their most preferred. It also got some accessories and arms to be able to do things at this point. You can see some of thouse things in the little preview at pinkbunnylilli.de.

Now there was still a lot of coding and interlacing left, to let the character easily change its parts and accessories. Not forgetting about the connection of my part and the integration into the portal Thomas was working on.

To create the different character animations also used a lot of time…

…but it was lovely to see the final character come to life at the end.

The structure of every single animation got very complex in the end.

But all in all it was fun to create our bachelor thesis together. At the end our system never got to a final version. Some issues with the integration and some reaction time problems stopped us. Never the less, we got a very good mark for our colorful work and thereby finished our computer science studies.

In autumn 2011 I’ve now started with my digital media master studies.

master studies part 1>

shape challenge

style challenge - Chris Sanders

In this contest-series you will get a different task every week, such as creating characters out of various shapes or based on a theme and then creating its opposite or other unusual stuff. The contest  to create a character in the art style of Chris Sanders was one of the hardest up until now. It was really very difficult for me to try to keep his style and not returning to my own….. and well … I think I’ve missed the tasks and DID my own style but it was fun to try anyway…

profile challenge - teenager

theme challenge - "rococo" fashion/mood

While it was really challenging to create some stuff after those different tasks, it was also very interesting to look at the pictures, the other users on DeviantArt cam up with. Sometimes others got a similar idea then oneself and sometimes it was really great to see what else people could do with those shape tasks for example. So it’s really sad that I haven’t got the time to do this more often…

imagination challenge

Here’s a link to the DAC page on DeviantArt. Please show me your works if you’ve done some too.

re-imagine challenge - "Goku" (DragonBall)

]]> http://www.luiseschroeder.com/dac-design-a-character/feed/ 0 http://www.luiseschroeder.com/studies-part-3/ http://www.luiseschroeder.com/studies-part-3/#comments Sat, 02 Oct 2010 23:33:04 +0000 Luise http://www.luiseschroeder.com/?p=796 < part 2

In 2008 I’ve created a little flash based portfolio with a short intro animation. Because I still had trouble to paint in Flash I’ve created the drawings for the animation pixel based … so the result is a little awkward … also the loading time is not acceptable but I’ve included 2 short videos. One is the short 3D film about the Phagocytosis mentioned in studies (part 2) and the other is a stop motion Lego film which I’ve created together with a fellow student in 2007. You can watch the portfolio at my DeviantArt page.

At the end of our study time there was an event called: “Informania”. This event is hold every year and most of the students present some special projects they’ve taken part in. After a little contest it was decided that I should create the Logo for this event. This was a very stressful time and so many different people were adding their ideas to the project. You can find some Logo ideas here.

At the end basically this Logo was used for the posters, the flyer and the rest of the design of the whole project, like this light installation at the evening of the event itself:

Now it was time for the practical. After some thoughts about working for a small company in Berlin and cutting film material, three fellow students spoke to me asking to create a corporate design for their company. So I’ve worked for three month on the logo and the design of their Internet presence. Here are some ideas for the Logo itself and here is the final Logo the three of them decided on:

I’ve also worked on some mascots, which should be used at the website and with some projects of the company:

The final design of the website looked like this:

So this was all the most interesting stuff of my studies for the bachelor degree.

In the next part you can read about my bachelor thesis…

bachelor thesis >

It’s a very beautiful and old city. All the historical buildings with lots and lots of ornaments and decorations… The most amazing building for me was the Schönbrunn Palace. Habsburg monarchs were living there, such as Franz Joseph and Sisi. The park around the palace also includes a maze, a greenhouse, an old zoo and on and on …

The zoo is one of the oldest in whole Europe. It doesn’t look so big from the outside but with all the small hidden paths and animal houses it sure takes a lot of time to visit.

In and around the Innere Stadt of Vienna are a lot of places of interest too. Such as the Mozart monument, where a whole bunch of cute Asian tourists were making dozens of pictures … and so did I too.

The food was very delicious and it seemed very healthy too! (Well, except of the ice cream and the Sacher torte of cause.)

At a subway station I even found a digital number of eaten schnitzels since 1. January. The number was rising while I was taking this picture. I wonder whether they really connected every restaurant in Vienna and collecting the information just for this funny number presentation?!

I only was disappointed about the shopping streets. I somehow was expecting something “more”. But maybe I wasn’t searching on the right streets. So tell me where the great shopping places are hidden in Vienna and I will visit them next time.

We also had some courses in the field of 3D and film production. Our first task was to create a little animation of the planets and the sun rotation and to model a small room with a desk, some chairs, pictures on the wall and glasses in Cinema 4D.

In the course computer animation we’ve created a short 3D film about the Phagocytosis, a cellular process. After a small storyboard we’ve combined 3D and 2D animations to introduce the process :

We’ve also worked with the green-screen technique in the course media technology video. We filmed the dog of a fellow student (my own dog didn’t wanted to cooperate) and placed him into some other scenes with the help of shake:

Together with 2 fellow students we also produced a little image film for our university. We filmed the material, developed some characters who present the information and did the compositing:

part 3 >

To begin with, there were, of cause, also a whole lot of courses like math 1 – 3, programming 1 – 3, algorithm and database or automata theory … here are some impressions:

So many formulas and calculations … I’m often getting into the mood to scribble next to them.

There were also courses like business administration, security or law which were very interesting too. But the best of all was all were all the media courses.

In in the course media design in 2008 we’ve learned about typography and color contrasts:

Also some small games were developed during some exercises in different courses, like a little bunny pacman or a small interactive comic panel:

part 2 >

www.ingokuczera.de

Furthermore, you can find a little gallery with some examples of his art, a short biography, and some media and press releases. Under media you can also watch a little video of him, of cause just in German language.

While my father was often described as a musing and gloomy person, I’ve especially like his last pictures, because they’re so colorful and illustrative.

You can examine the whole tower here: Bunny Tower

You can also add your own room up there. By clicking the “Make Room” button on the top left, you can download the template. There is even some furniture and other stuff given as a starting point.

So tell me when you’re room is ready

Please wait some seconds till the drawing process is shown. Or try to reload the page if nothing appears.

“Odosketch seeks to recreate the decidedly non-digital experience of working with a sketchbook. Its papery textures, variety of brushes and intentional imperfections make you forget you’re working on a screen.” [from the website]

That’s true because it’s often hard to get the brush to draw at that exact place that you want it to. But somehow that makes the charm of this project even bigger. It’s really great to grab some ideas by doodling around on the platform.

There’s also the possibility to re-watch your drawing process with the playback feature. I LOVE to watch the drawing again also in between because I can think about the picture and what’s still missing more efficiently. It’s also fun to watch the pics of others and how they’ve started.

Sometimes I just miss the “return step” possibility but as they want to have a realistic sketchbook I think this is necessary. There are also some featured sketches on the main page. And lucky me I’ve also got 2 times chosen for a featuring. I was very happy realising it although this means nothing special.

Go and visit the project on your own if you like to: odosketch by odopod
Or visit my little gallery there: pinkbunnylilli at odosketch
Sometimes the website is a little slow.