New blog site!

OOOPS. I completely forgot! o_O
I've been posting at my new blog location here: www.michellemauk.com/blog
Please redirect, rebookmark, whatever you need to, to that new location! I'll probably be shutting this one down soon.

Thanks!

Love,
Michelle

The latest solar image...Albireo

I've been experimenting with simplicity. Now, I'm not a simple designer. I LIKE bold. I like graphic. I like strong colors. I like a lot of stuff going on. I think because I'm pretty self-contained, I express everything in my design work. However, I understand that sometimes "less is more", so I'm challenging myself by taking something big-like...SPACE, and trying to do simple, simple prints of it. Interestingly, the fact that space is in itself massive to us in theory; visually, from our POV, it looks very small. The moon looks like a quarter, Mercury is but a small dot on the horizon, stars are interchangeable to our eyes. It's kind of our own self-importance that we equate our relative being in relation to that infinite space by focusing on what we can see ourselves and its relation to us in the here and now. I think with that, I can understand why so many civilizations viewed the Earth as the center, and the universe as something that revolved around the Earth. It's a component of the human mind and the human spirit that we desire to be a part of something larger-yet at the same time, we are so visual that at times we overlook the incredible massive EVERYTHING that extends beyond our realm of sight. It's the whole, if you don't see it, it doesn't exist.

Which brings me to this. This is Albireo, the Dual Star. I know-"Dual Star?", you're probably thinking...that's gramatically incorrect! WELL. Here's an example of perception of space in relation to the human eye. From Earth-visible by the naked eye, Albireo looks like a single star. It's only upon busting out a handy dandy telescope that Albireo is actually two stars-a small blue one and a large gold one. Imagine the amazing things that we can't see that must exist out in the universe-beyond our universe-beyond our mind's eye. I like to think of that sometimes. Okay, long-winded post over. :)

Who says art people don't like astronomy?

We don't like math. Strike that-I don't, but I like staring at the stars. :) A couple poster "minimalist vector style" images, centering around an astronomy subject. The two here are the Moon and Mercury as seen from Earth, and the star cluster M13. But done in the super flat illustrator style of moi. (Kind of like-it's their sheer vastness condensed into uber 2D flatness?)

Anyways-kind of an interesting experiment with working with minimal shapes and subjects-while still hoping to express the vastness of space. :P

Look Book page up!

As it goes - the Look Book page is finally up! Only a...*ahem* couple more pages to go, right?! :) There are three looks right now, I've definitely got four, and hopefully more to come.

Anyways-that's it! Check it out at: www.vectordemented.com/lookbook.html

Vector Icons!!!

Sooo-I was looking at my desktop, and I realized I use a lot of custom icons. So I began thinking..."I want to make my own! It can't be that hard, can it?"

Well-making the actual ICON isn't hard. Making it an actually working icon took a little bit of research, some digging for my OS X.4 install disk for developer tools that most private individuals probably never realized are on that disk, and some searching for icon file extension programs. All that, and I was only able to make Mac only icons. Unfortunately, until I can get my grubby little hands on CS4...or I'm willing to buy a program to convert pngs to icos, Windows users will have to wait. Sorry!

SO-here are the four sets! All part of my vector demented insanity project. Because I don't have OS X.5 or higher, I can't really use Candybar to customize my application icons, so all of these icons are hard drive and folders. But-when I can, and I WILL upgrade at some point...I'm going to customize everything! (Most people do this with cars, I do it with computers.)

You can download the icons for free from Vector Demented.

They are only for private and personal use, so if you want to use something of mine to brighten up your Mac desktop, here you go!
Instructions on how to use them are on the icons page.

Still trying to get it all done! It's coming along. :)

Testing...testing...

After hours...and hours...testing the site-I think I've finally gotten the front page of Vector Demented to look the way I want. Of course-there aren't any OTHER pages yet, but I'm working on it.

I decided the main thing was to link the different SWFs in different HTML handlers. This allows me to build in more animation in each area, without worrying *too much* about the file size of the subsequent SWFs. this should hopefully allow for the site to load quickly from one to another.

I am still not sure if I'm going to do a separate blog for Vector Demented, or just keep everything linked into this one. I haven't decided yet. Hmm.


So, the site is now linked through my website, and even though it's painfully incomplete, the site is up-so I can continue testing and modifying things as it goes.

www.vectordemented.com

The beginning trials of building a Flash site

ARRRRGH.

That's pretty much how I felt all day trying to get back into making a Flash only site.
It's been a little bit of time, and going back into Flash is NOT like riding a bicycle. I would forget how to do things, I'd start thumbing through manuals-things wouldn't work right...it can be such a frustrating program.

But-luckily, I've managed to get through about 30% of my front page. There's still a lot to go, and I need to fix a couple of things I noticed going weird with my programming. Still-I'm relatively happy that things are starting to come together.

So right now, I managed to put together an HTML/CSS basic entryway, and I've managed to put together the front interface of the site with a little animation. Since the front end is still relatively unheavy, the site loads really fast. If you have DSL or CABLE.

Anyways-you can see the beginnings here:

http://www.vectordemented.com/test1.html