Interaction Designer Craig Dennis » Illustrator

Xbox 360 Illustration

Craig — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:46:30 +0000

Watching Russell Smith do some illustrations of TVs, a Playstation III and some speakers today on another project I was inspired to try some myself. I decided to pick an Xbox 360 Elite (None of that Playstation III nonsense) and found a picture online which was placed in the Illustrator file for reference. Then the drawing and manipulating started.

I love Illustrator because you can zoom right in and the quality of the image remains constant because it was drawn with vectors.

Anyway, below is the final result. If you want to take a look at the finished illustrator file I have included it here for your pleasure.

Hardcore Illustrator

Craig — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:54:15 +0000

I have been playing around in illustrator for about an hour watching the final of The Apprentice, this is the result. I was trying to create something simple and not really sure what the outcome was going to be. I’m pleased with the result so I thought I’d post it up for all to see.

Presentation Preparation Finished

Craig — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:24:50 +0000

I have just finished creating the slides for the summative assessment. Adapting from the formative slides, a few are the same but most have been edited or completely changed. A few new sections have been added in, the most funny of which is the ‘Scenarios’ slide. Detailing a series of events about the txt alert part of our concept works. Taken in 5 minutes with a camera phone and a further 5 minutes Photoshop time, they’re not the best work I’ve done but I think the rough edges adds to the charm of the story.

Flo also wants us to create a sentence to describe our project so I might add that in to one of the first slides. The very first tag line I came up with seems to work ok in this context so here it is again.

“Real-Time Route Planner: Saving The World, One Stop At A Time”

Here is the presentation. I have to say thank you to Fraser Ferguson for stepping in last minute and being an actor for us.

Formative Presentation

Craig — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:36:13 +0000

I was expecting the presentation to be inclusive of other members of the class, but no it was just each group or individual with Flo and Dave. Valid feedback was received and the main thing I got out of it was that our idea (Myself and Robert Andre) is very VERY large in scope and we need to refine down each aspect we want to present. Flo made a good point that we should present as if we were pitching to TFL and not only to someone with technical understanding but also to someone who could potentially buy the idea of us.

With this information we have decided on 4 things to prepare for our final presentation (even though they are slightly off brief).

1. Plan a route through multiple points (done but with manual if statements).
2. Create a flash animation of what the interface will look like and what information it displays.
3. Have a small demo video showing real-time implementation of an SMS text based system.
4. Have an image map that allows the user to select the route directly (might have to be a flash file rather than php as I can’t get the selection to input the data into a ‘$_GET’ field.

Here’s the presentation we used for the formative anyway.

Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Bean

Craig — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:28:09 +0000

I’m sitting in Green ITC at the moment while Yuki is photoshopping her last image to go into the presentation and Omari is redoing the sections that he left at home. I have expanded on the PowerPoint presentation and have now done the layout for the wall print. I’m not sure how much it is going to cost but I don’t really care – after today it is all over!
Having said that, the last 2 days have actually been rather enjoyable. I seem to work best when under pressure. yesterday I created a PowerPoint presentation and theme, created the layout for the wall print and also created a garden bean as well as a seat/bike rack. Images below.

I might post once more after the presentation to reflect on how it went. We are scheduled for 1.50pm

Salutations.

The Kiosk Bean

Craig — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:26:24 +0000

Here is a redesign of the initial kiosk concept I did, using the form of the bean that the rest of the Platz will be using. I have swapped the colours for in use and not in use as people associate red with unavailable, I suppose the blue should really be green to symbolise available but on a colour gamut blue is opposite red meaning they go best together. The new design fits better with the overall design but I’m not really a big fan of it, I think the initial concept is better in overall design but then I’m not designing for me, I’m designing for the Platz. Oh well, one more sheet for my sketchbook.

Illustrator, My Hero!

Craig — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:25:08 +0000

Today was spent in Illustrator again, not such a bad thing as I’m really quite good at it now. Anyway Omari was working on some sketches of the final idea. I’m not really bothered what it is as long as its done! It seems as though our group is now not the only one fractured, people don’t seem to be able to let go of their ideas and let other people improve them. HELLO! Its called compromise?

Regardless here is the result of a few hours Illustrator work:

Pod-ing?

Craig — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:30:20 +0000

So I have been working in Illustrator on the connecting points within the main structure. Lets call them pods. It’s been very difficult to get the perspective right and for some reason I just can’t use gradients in Illustrator, so I had to switch over to Photoshop to create some lighting effects.

Anyway, here is the result of a few hours work:

Off to bed now as I have a personal tutorial tomorrow where I get to say what I have learnt from this project…does Illustrator count?

How Many Beans Make…a Concept?

Craig — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:23:11 +0000

Today was a little disappointing considering we were supposed to pull it out of the bag. Yuki worked on some 3D modelling and I used illustrator to produce a concept using the bean idea but Omari was unfortunately very ill today and so his Vector Works skills were lacking. Anyway here are the images of our concept that most (I stress MOST) of us have agreed on and so are pursuing with. Not much time left and all that.