When researching for conversion programs/emulators for flash last semester, we came up fairly dry. Even though there were a fair amount of projects within the realm of flash preservation, many were unmaintained, slow developing, or dead in the water. And so, we went forward with figuring out an alternative solution, manually converting with only the swf files. It grew to become a fairly daunting task, specifically because the best tool we had to recreate interactivity, Canvasser, does not support multiple pages (which many of the interactives contain). Also, many of the interactives were very extensive with the content within them, and would take a lot of time to reproduce.

Luckily, it seems that a semester later, a new project has arisen, produced by the team at Newgrounds.com, one of the largest maintainers of flash content today (games and animations). They have a strong incentive to keep everything running as if nothing ever happened to the eyes of the end user, and so good, usable progress on their project ruffle.rs is available. I’ve been able to test things, and while it’s not complete (which I assume it will be before flash dies this year), it can emulate the primitive scripting of the Hebrew interactives fairly well in this proof-of-concept phase.

They obviously look identical to the original flash file, and that’s because it essentially is running the flash file, but through WebAssembly, not flash player itself. I have a couple things to look into. First, I need to check compatibility with all interactives. Secondly, scaling is a small issue, where it’s not very clear how the size of the div aligns with the actual size of the flash file, and black bars are produced (a possible workaround is just to make the background black like I’ve done, which masks it). Lastly, there is an image with image caching, in which images load incorrectly most of the time with caching. I’ve tested this by disabling the cache in the developer tools, and the images fix. Luckily, though, it’s already been marked as an issue on the github, and I assume it will be fixed soon. .

It’s midterm season…

I worked on a couple more trainings this week and started answering web support requests. For the trainings, I made a gif and flashcards in photoshop.

                                               

 

I will be working on the Center of Identity brochure project, it’s my first design project.

SJCS Logo Update

project: SJCS Logo Update
Client /Prof: 

Initial Task:

Dear Suloni,
I hope you are doing well and have had a good start to the new semester. I am hoping you can help me (or know someone who can) with a draft of a revised logo for us. Our current logo is blue and white as seen here: here. (I have also attached it below)

In the last few years, we have invested a lot of work branding our events, activities, and publications and we always use the logo as part of the publicity. However, UT’s colors are “Burnt Orange.” Thus, we often find that we have to go an extra few steps to make the connection between the SCJS and UT obvious. The current color scheme doesn’t make that connection for people right away.

I am therefore asking the Schusterman Foundation, our donors who have to give permission for us to change the color scheme, whether they would be willing to consider allowing us to change the blues to shades of burnt orange. They have yes to considering it but would like to see a draft of such a logo. Can you help me with that?

Everything else would stay the same, just the color blue would change to orange for UT identity.

Warm wishes,
Tatjana

 

Original:

Updates:

Client Feedback:

Dr. Lichtenstein really likes the orange and tan variant you’ve made. They want to make another edit to the logo’s lettering, and would like to see a Roboto font used for “SCJS”.

Client Feedback:

Dear Valerie,
What are your thoughts about the shadows, that was something people though looked outdated, Would it not work to just have the letters now depth?
Tatjana

 

Texas Polish Logo

project: SJCS Logo Update
Client /Prof: Hans Boas

Initial Task: creating a Polish flag logo similar to the German flag logo/word mark on www.tgdp.org

Reference:

 

 

FINAL:

PSY317L Course Visual Collection

project: PSY317L Course Visual Collection
Client /Prof: Prof. James Curley

 

Color wheel , shape manipulation, and PS paintings

I worked on a few more basic trainings this week.

In Illustrator, I learned how to do image trace and shape manipulation. These are patterns created with the image trace of a rainbow dinosaur and some shapes.

This color wheel was also made in Illustrator with blend shape and gradient. The cubes at the bottom are swatches for RGB and CMYK.

For the Photoshop painting training, I painted a chia drink bottle. These are the process photos.

I also made my caricature ↓

Third week – Basic Trainings

I completed the Illustrator logo training, these are the final products.

I will be working on the Cascade intermediate/advanced training. So far I have learned how to add a new page, how to customize buttons and how to create a chart. This is the progress on my test page.