White Drake :: Web Design and Development :: Indiana

Well, I completed the main look and layout for this website weeks ago, but Walker Racing was taking up my time. Now, I finally uploaded the main page of the adfed site to the stage server for viewing. For some reason, the middle nav bar isn’t showing up, but that should be fixed shortly.

http://www.adfedeci.org

For my animation class, we have a project where we have to recreate a famous painting using Maya (a 3d program). Here is my progress so far:

A lot of stuff still needs to be done on it including the whole animation process. I also might re-work the models a little bit. I will keep you updated as it goes. Here is the original for reference:

The Disintegration of Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

The following is a paper I wrote for my Art 311 Animation class.

Postmodernism in Anime

Defining postmodernism is like trying to define love. You can realize that it is present, but it is basically indefinable. Unlike with love, you can divide postmodernism into different genres to better explain what it is all about. For example: Postmodernism in Japanese Animation (Anime) could be explained by the use of 3D programs rather than traditional drawing to created Anime films.

With the invention of 3D programs such as Maya and 3D Studio Max, it has become easier and easier to create anime style 3D animations using cell shaders. According to the cinema and anime article by Lamarre, “one often reads that cel animation has become old hat, that the future of animation lies in digital animation.” While, I believe this to be true for the most part; I believe that cell animation will still be a large part of anime in the future. Anime has been a big part of Japanese culture from the first part of the 20th century and I don’t believe that will change anytime soon.

While Hyperrealism (or the art of simulating something realistically) is a new and awesome concept; everything has it’s own style. There is no doubt that realistic art and animation will continue to be popular. With fluid, physics, shading, and reflection effects coming more and more advanced, sometimes it is hard to decipher CG from real life. This is especially useful when dealing with special effects in live-action movies. However, like there are different genres of music; there are different genres of art. Anime is just simply one of those genres that people will continue to love. Not only by the Japanese, but by Americans and other cultures as well. Since the 1960s, Americans have been watching animes such as Speed Racer and Cowboy Bebop to name a few popular ones.

Some anime artists are reluctant to make the switch to 3D because anime is traditionally a drawn art even though 3D animes are always originally sketched out. However, I believe that using the power of computers can only help make anime better. The frame rate will be much smoother, render times will be low, and effects can be created that drawn art simply can’t do.

This is what has been taking up a lot of my time lately. I didn’t design the site, but I did put it together. I made the nifty CSS nav at the top and spliced up the images and layed everything out.

One site that I did design though that will be available for viewing soon is the AdFed ECI website. I’ll keep you posted on that.. it’s looking pretty cool so far.

As for mudpuddlz.com and specializedcomposition.com. I believe they are pretty much finalized now.

Also, I bought ifake.net. I am not going to reveal what it is about yet so no one steals my ideas, but I hope it will be cool. If I ever have any time to work on it.. I will try to get it up soon… well.. soonish.

Overall, I plan to have a network going in the future. Here are my plans:

White Drake Network (www.whitedrake.com)
The General hub for all of the sites on my network. For now, only the blog, the studio, and ifake. In the future, I plan to expand by creating useful and/or entertaining websites to add to the Network.

White Drake Blog (www.whitedrake.com/blog or whitedrake.wordpress.com)
The site you are on right now… but maybe with a bit of a makeover

White Drake Studios (www.whitedrake.com/studios)
The company portion where I can provide my design services. Web Design, Graphic Design, Advertisements, etc…

iFake (ifake.net)
I’ll let you know when the site actually gets going.

Links to check out:

Walker Racing
Mud Puddlz
Specialized Composition

First of all. Sorry I haven’t updated in a while. School started and when I am not doing school work, I am doing work work. So, I have been very busy lately. Anyway, on to the laptop.

I purchased a Sony Vaio at Best Buy for around $1100 (on sale). I figured this would be the best way to go. With a laptop I can pretty much work wherever I want… as I am not home very much at all.

The model number on the laptop is: VGN-FE660G

Specs:

Processor: Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2300 (1.66 Ghz)
Ram: 1 Gb
Hard Drive: 100 Gb
Screen: 15.4″ XBRITE Widescreen
Graphics: Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 128MB
Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support

So, it is basically equivilant to an expensive macbook

Right now I am dual booting Windows XP Media Center and OSX Tiger.

My wireless card doesn’t currently work in OSX because OSX doesn’t have a driver for the Intel Pro Wireless 3945ABG. So, I bought a Dell TrueMobile Mini-Pci card for it that I have yet to install. I need to open it up.. so wish me luck in not breaking my new toy.

Links to check out:

Vaio at Best Buy
SonyStyle Website

Aside from more terrorist airline attacks, today wasn’t all that eventful. The other day I created a header (the thing at the top with the sports equipment) for Joe’s website that you can check out at:

www.sportscardfreaks.com It’s Expandable … ooooooooo!
Other than that, I have been putting the finishing touches on:

Specialized Composition
and
Mud Puddlz

Me, Matt, and the Dan’s went to B-dubs for 50 cent boneless wings… mmmmmmmm

Today was great. To celebrate the hiring of another new Media Designer, Doug, all of the employees went to lunch at Bravo in Indy (Castleton to be exact). Well, except for Rob .. who is on his honeymoon and Karlene, who has been on vacation or something. Bravo is a nice Italian place and I ended up trying gazpacho for the first time and calamari for the second time. I didn’t much care for the gazpacho as it seemed like I was just eating cold salsa. Everything else was really good though. Thanks Mike. Anyway, I got to officially meet the other half of the company. Everyone that works for SpinWeb is really laid back and down to earth and I really like that about the company. Hopefully, they will keep me for a while.

Electronic Paper, epaper, eInk… whatever you want to call it. It is cool. This is the stuff you always see in futuristic movies. A digital image displayed on something as small as a piece of paper. It is still in the developmental stages as of right now, but there have already been a few companies that have taken advantage of E Ink Corporation’s technology.

The coolest thing I have seen done with it so far is Seiko’s E-Paper Watch:

Unfortunetly, only 500 of these have been made and they will cost over $2000.

They have also implemented E-Paper into such things like a Lexar JumpDrive:

A Weather Wizard:

A Sony Reader:

And several others.

Philips and Polymer Vision have created a Rollable epaper device.

In the future, they say that the device will have animation and a full color display. Here is a future vision of their “Dream Phone”:

Other Links to check out:

Polymer Vision’s Rollable ePaper Device Videos
E Ink Products
More Pictures

mudpuddlz.com

One of the websites that I am currently working on at SpinWeb is Mud Puddlz (a store for baby clothes, toys, gifts, etc.)

The more and more I work on these cart sites, the better I am getting with CSS. I was skeptical about using CSS at first, but I am beginning to realize the great possibilities that can be achieved with it.

I have been wanting a Mac for so long, but didn’t want to spend the extra money. I was waiting for the ability to run OSX natively on PC parts. Now that Macs are using Intel chips, it is easy to run OSX on regular PCs using OSx86. Supposedly, it is even faster on the PC parts. The nice thing about this is that I can dual boot to either OSX or Windows and I can upgrade my hardware easily.

Here is a way to build your very own Mac for $200.

I already have some of the parts in my current PC, so I am going to go with a bit more of an upgraded processor.

Some more links to check out:

UNEASYsilence article
OSx86 Project
OSx86 Wiki
Wired Article
InsanelyMac (Pics of PCs running OSX)