Storyboard Version 2.0

After the first version of the storyboard, I received a lot of suggestion from my supervisors and classmates. So I did these improvement for the 2rd storyboard:

1. Simplify the color in to 4, which will be blue for the usual items, orange for the animated focus characters, and black for lines and text, white for the background.

2. Remove the unrelated things and different style, because the screen of the website is small.

3. For the dressing part, add the way we use in children's dress book.

4. Use the style of water color and childly hand drawing.

3D Automatic Models of Different Body Shape

Last week, a friend told me about an amazing 3D modeling web service about fashion design, which is the creation of OptiTex.com.

OptiTex online 3D model creation

As you can see, this service aimed at building a 3D model automatically based on the data of body size the user enter. This service was realized with CAD, what the user get would be a sequence of images of different angle of the model. They only offer a female face and a male face, so the outcome is kind of limited. And as you should enter more than 20 numbers to require a balanced model, the outcome sometimes would need some adjustment. Anyway, this is a convenient service and you can download the image easily.

I'm going to use this service to help me simulate the 12 body shape in Trinny and Susannah's bodyshape theory.

Reference:
1. OptiTex online 3D model creation(OptiTex International Pty Ltd) [Online] Available from: http://ws.optitex.com/optitexwebapplication/demo/snapmodel.aspx [Accessed 16st May. 2012].

An Experiment on Image Sprite

I have posted a blog(Image Sprites, Easy Animation) of Image Sprite and I really like this way of animation. In this experiment, I used some open resource images of clothes from zool.com.cn and create a large image as the basic background.

The Basic Background

The Image Frame that Shown On Website

It's glad to see that this experiment go along well with most browser. Feel free to visit it and give me some suggestion.

Life Drawing Pratice

This semester I takes a life drawing class on every Thursday morning. The teacher is very nice, and after this practice for two month, I really fall in love with this kind of sketch.

Sketch@ Oct.

Sketch @ Oct.

Sketch @ Nov.

Sketch @ Nov

At first, I was lack of experience and always feeling to shy to draw. After each picture, I just wondered oh, what the hell am I drawing! Then the teacher told me to focus on the lines and scale of the body, and be more confident to starting drawing. Now it's great that I began to just enjoy the feeling of drawing, and then I look back to my drawing, somethings I started to like it, cause you can see your improvement through these 2 months.

For the next 2 month, I'm going to do some drawing practice on Models of different body shape, and try to do so sketch on fashion design, hope this will contribute to my project.

Art Style Inspiration——samuel123

For these months, I am trying hard to find the art style for my project. I want it to have light, cause I want to show the mouse position by a drop of light. And I want it to be pleasant and comfortable. When I saw the gallery of samuel123, I knew I got it.
From his website, we see that he's an artist from UK, and he's always drawing a mole named Otter in specific occasion.

Otter and the Mothby ~samuel123

This one is my favorite, telling a story about Otter met a moth. I really like the curious face of Otter, and the desk and book make the scene full of fun.

Here are some more his works.

staying up all nightby ~samuel123

Halloweenby ~samuel123

This one made me think about Cinderella's magical pumpkin car.

Otter Bandby ~samuel123

To find more about the story of Otter, you can visit I am Otter.

By the way, I really recommend the website deviantart, where you can discover many awesome artist, their self description and their favorite art works, so you can see what inspires these artists.

Interaction among Apparel, People, and Mirrors

During the reading, I spent 2 days to visit the museums in Edinburgh, and this really gave me a lot inspiration. Here are some interesting methods they use for people interact with apparel.

Mirror, Drawing and Dresses(From Museum of Edinburgh)

To display the old fashion of Edinburgh, the museum show some real clothes besides some drawing above the closet. The mirror nearby gives the visitor an impulse to try them on.

An Rotating Closet(from National Museum of Scotland)

This is really cool! By rotating different level of the closet, visitor can make the role drawing on the cylinder change their apparel. It's funny and easy, children love it. I think it's also useful for my project.