What next?

Hey Gang, Matt here... Gosh but how time flies... Since the last entry, designed both Zirkus and the 30th Anniversary Mardi Gras Parade and Party, worked in Hong Kong designing several productions, visited London and New Zealand to meet with project collaborators and now I'm just thrilled to spend the next few months in front of the computer.

(You can check out how I designed Mardi Gras, including designing for Olivia Newton John and Cyndi Lauper, at my design blog Aberline Sketchbook. Lots of cool videos.)

Tanya, or Ms "Development", is coming from Hong Kong for a short period to oversee our image capture process, install the wikipedia, finish off our high school Oliver Web Quest, sort out our podcasts and the list goes on... It is going to be a really cool time which obviously involves the long awaited redesign of the web site. It seems we have a million ideas just sketched in and now we need to pull them all together. Below are some drafts of what we want the site to look like.


Obviously it will be far more interactive with heaps of resources for people to access. I wanted to keep that "story book" illustrative feel we established in the Beta site. I like the idea of almost no words, just pictures. We need to mix it up a bit though. My agenda as a designer is to illustrate my designs as realistically as possible, when that really is only a fraction of what you can do with our resources. The photo realistic style puts people off sometimes cause they think it looks too complex and maybe not a style they'd want to try. Most of the images on the website are there because they were created for a real design job. So I've got to include a range of styles...

I'll add that to my list of things to do...

In the next few weeks, users will be able to download image kits which means we'll be officially open for business! Hey - I'd love some other people's work on the site. Let me know if you're up for having your illustrations ruthlessly exploited and I'll swing you a kit to two to work with.

On with the relentless pursuit of beauty.

Matt

This month: Drafting the Scheherazade illustration project, and creating a Toy for Aberline.net.

Scheherazade Update:
And while that's not really a Form Finding Function topic, I thought the evolution of some of the illustrations for Scheherazade are kind of cool, and they involve components from Aberline.net.

For Scheherazade, I started making the images by doing some photography that I could base the finished image on. I know this sounds like a infomercial sell, but even I was surprised how the work improved when I started using components from Aberline.net.

You'll see how for the first 4 drafts, my ideas were locked into place, but with the help of these new resources my last draft took a radical departure into a much more free form. Also, it was great working with an image knowing that I had at least 10 other views of that object to work with - rather than trying to make just one image fit a variety of forms.



You can look at the Scheherazade project in more depth here: http://mattaberline.blogspot.com/

Or look at Aberline.net here:
http://aberline.net


Toy:
We just completed a major shoot where we improved all our image collection factors and decreased the image editing time from about 7 minutes an image, to about 2 minutes in most cases. I can't tell you how cool that is - normally editing my standard 60 images a day would take all day but now I can knock it over in the space of a few morning coffees.


This shoot also included the photography for our new toy, above. My good friend, and otherwise very useful man Matteo, agreed to pose for our new dress-em-up game and we've finished the graphic components for this. It's a bit camp I know... Here's the looks you can get:



This new toy will be different from the one we've currently got at Aberline.net under "fun", in that all the image layering can be done online as opposed to downloading the Ishell mini program we have now. Should be online in the next month or two... stay tuned!

Can we do a blog quiz?

We are trying out some ways of communicating and being interactive. This is one of Tanya's ideas... Still working on the beauty part. Possibly it's useful.

**I am removing the link for the quiz as it's suddenly been targetted by spammers! - Tanya, 3 Oct 2007**

l, tan.

Is it fun to have a blog-based competition or poll or survey?	Yep Nope
What genre(s) of costume do you want to see as a downloadable?
Email Address:

Please Unlock The Doors...

Hate to say it but image editing sucks.

My chinese star sign is an Ox - which means I'm supposed to be good at hard slog work - but the relentless boringness of it seems to have done me in... So edit-Matt is taking a few days off editing and doing something much more creative instead - revamping our websites. I'm putting some concepts together then sending them to Tanya in Hong Kong to make work. I was thinking something fun, but elegant (or just clean), and definitely "work in progress"...


The good news is - the image content we're getting at Hero Frock Hire is probably the best we've ever got - and we're managing to standardise the approach which is going to make all the packaging done later a lot easier. But same old story, some of the ones we did first, just aren't as good technically as the ones we're producing later... so I'll have to make that annoying-tough-call about reshooting some things. Also, we've had the lovely Anna Gleeson visiting from New York in the studio as a model, and a mini-film maker before she dashes off to her exciting life in Tokyo. That means heaps of new blouses and garments that require sleeves! She certainly puts the old wooden manniquin to shame.

In addition to this blog, I also have my own blog where I talk about any sort-of external projects and at the moment is the Scheherazade Illustration Project. Basically I'm putting both the illustration resource and my illustration skills through their paces.

So the end of month deadline for the first downloadable has been well and truly missed - but we have:

1. A general idea how to package the files
2. A 3rd party digital asset distributor that can process payments for us
3. Some great images with our best ever technical standard
4. Some footage for a little "making of" film!


Back to the beauty... Matt

Lock the Doors!!!

Tanya and I have set up a few outrageous goals to make happen by the end of this month and subsequently, I think the best thing is just to be locked in front of the computer for the next two weeks. We're aiming to produce our first DOWNLOADABLE by the end of the month. We're aiming for 1200 images on a particular theme - and in this case: Victorian-Period Female Working Class. The means producing three hundred and somethings images a week, and each one takes at 5 - 10 minutes to produce... The good news is, despite the passing of summer into autumn, it is still warm enough to go swimming at the beach!



The picture shows one of our packaging tests - the new plan is for the user to download all images of each object as opposed to the one by one method.

We're also looking at producing our first offical toy, like the paper doll game on the Use It page - but this time we want to do Farmer Boy goes to Mardi Gras. The idea is to have two distinct looks and I think we'll get that! I created a costume with Matteo Olivi, who assisted me at Mardi Gras many-a-time, and we'll be using that as a base.

Sacré Coeur and the Big Giant Head

Mr Matthew gave a one hour costume-design lecture-with-questions today at Sacred Heart in Chi Fu (Hong Kong). He did it from his sun room in sunny Bondi. It was a follow up to the two hour costume workshop last week, when kids brought in their costumes and designs and presented ideas and he gave feedback. The earlier one was more fun, authentic and messy as the kids were really invested in their work and their questions. This time everyone was trying to be good for the cameras and it killed the excitement. It's exciting to get a workshop with an outsider when you're in highschool. I'll get the video and put it online.

I've been ignored by one webhost/designer and rejected by a second (he's moving away from small business). I have a meeting with a third on Monday afternoon.

The meeting with Suzanne the accountant was fun. She talks really fast and you have to keep up. She's full of ideas and cross-references and asides. I like it. She's really a part of a community of women in business and I started to realise that if I register a business, I'll be one too. Crazy.

Things we will do this week:

1) A year plan with timeline and maybe a five year plan. [tan & matt]

2) Make a web page to keep brilliant ideas in existence, but out from underfoot. It should have the following categories:
done
urgent
soon
later
maybe someday
[tan]

3) Start on the first 1500 item zip-pack. [matt]

3) And make a list of stuff, knowledge, connections we have and call it 'captial'.
[tan & matt]

That's Bonnie's idea. Bonnie is a fab new friend who works with insigniam and thinks in extended metaphors. Also full of connections, asides and cross-references.

I also have these qualities.

I said it elsewhere, but I am really starting to notice something about women in business. A certain (explosive) flavour. I like it.


bed time for frances

l, tan.

sole, partnership, company, whatamie

Well Suzanne the accountant is already a rockstar. She sent me a pile of homework (as requested), for example her article on how not to stuff up a small business.

Should it be a small creature that is really us, or an independant company. If we call it aberline, what if Matt wants to sell it in 10 years time. Will he feel weird selling his name and seeing it do things in the world without him? Will he really have to change his name to 'Matthew Photo-Real-costume-resource-database'?

Her powerpoint says if you plan to deal with Americans or work in construction, you better get a limited company for when they sue you.

I'll make an appointment to see her this week. I'll ask if it's a good idea to start with a parnership or a sole thingy and scale up to a company when we need to. When we have some actual capital to protect.

What do you reckon Matt?

Steve from Jump hasn't given me my quote yet. That's annoying.

Talked to Katie and she knows two costume people we should get on board (as beta testers). One is House of Siren Guy who we didn't get around to seeing when Matt was in HK. Another is a guy who's in Bangkok, forgot his name.

Sleepy now. Goodnight!