Degree Project (2023)

After creating a bigger purpose, of educating people about animal endangerment for my website, I researched more examples for websites that had a similar purpose or merely presented data. FYI, I placed the link to these references according to its placement at the very bottom. These websites included data and statistics without looking boring and repetitive so I thought it would give me better ideas on how I would approach the information side of my website. On the other hand, the next websites are some references I found for the more mundane aspects of my website, such as the hamburger menu and story layout. I wanted my website to be intuitive and reactive without being boring so I tried finding some examples and came up with these. Based on my findings, sometimes simplistic is best and small animations can go a long way. References: Anterior Atlassian Wanderful  A Light in the Woods   Jess and Russ

The Boat The Boat is an interactive webcomic based on the short story 'the Boat' by Nam Le. The story is about a young girl's journey from Vietnam as an asylum seeker. Something I noted about the website is its lack of an about page, thus I don't really understand the purpose of turning this short story into an interactive webcomic. I assume that it was meant to reach a larger audience by creating a more popular method of story consumption, a webcomic. I believe the story was a way to bring attention to refugees fleeing from Vietnam to resettle in other countries by boat after the Vietnamese war ended in 1975. The transitions between each page are very smooth and flawless with a subtle hint of animation with certain objects within the illustration or even just the rain effect throughout the story. When scrolling, different effects are added such as shaking comic strips to mimic the effect of a shaking boat as per the story the boat.  There were also changes in the backg...

The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant This was originally a French children's book called ' Histoire de Babar'  by  Jean de Brunhoff. It became so popular that it was turned into an animated TV series in broadcasted around the world in over 30 languages. However, I will be talking about the English book which is called 'The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant', it's about Babar the elephant who avoids capture after his mother was killed by a hunter, by escaping to the city, where he is befriended by the kind Old Lady. He becomes educated and experiences human culture, eventually being crowned King of the Elephants after he returns to the forest.  The story of Babar the elephant has a similar setting to the story of my elephant, both blending into human society to escape kidnappers and meeting a friend. Reading it again as an adult, I have many questions, like how Babar got over his mother's death so quickly or why the Old Lady gave her money and even a car...

Species in Pieces This website was the best thing I've ever found, it's an interactive exhibition showcasing 30 endangered animal species, it was made to educate, inspire and provoke thought on the topic of the animal's survival. Honestly, it's quite similar to how I imagined presenting my data and information on the African elephant.  The part below shows how one can select a piece and learn more about a different animal, each piece holds a different type or species of animal. This non-linear form going through the piece of animals is like the chapters of the novel on my website, each chapter holding a random set of information about the elephant. The following images below are good inspiration for the layout of the data. They also included some idle animation which I find really uplifts the whole mood of the website, making it seem playful yet serious. Everything is kept within the center of the page and there isn't too many buttons so users will not get confused....

The past 2 days, I visited a couple buildings with historical value, one was the Rundāle Palace Museum and the other was the House of the Black Heads. The palace had these screens placed in almost each room that allowed guests to learn more about specific items in the room, allowing visitors to change the font size and click on whatever they like, and I thought it was similar to my original ideas for my website so I decided to record it to sort of reference it or just to better understand what they did. Of course I took a couple pictures of the place too (can't say they were very good though), and they just gave off very grand vibes with very detailed designs. I also found the small details on their "heater" very cute.                    The house on the other other hand had a screen that flipped like a book which also looked quite fun so I had also took a recording of that as well. Despite it being a "house", it was one of the bigg...

 During the final tutorial I talked to Steve about my cultural context. He told me about how I should look into previously made projects or stories similar to what I plan to do, giving an example of Babar the Elephant. Now this was a title I haven't heard in a long time and even completely forgot about. I mentioned it being a childhood story of mine and I even brought it up with my family. This led to a rabbit hole of rereading the story of Babar the Elephant and realizing the horror that is his marriage with his cousin that I had no recollection of. On the bright side this example gave me the chance to research previous stories I watched or read that I had long forgotten, stories like Okja, a Korean movie on Netflix about a special pig who was stolen from her friend to be marched around for the profit of greedy humans and eventually slaughtered for food. There was also Dumbo, a Disney classic about a clumsy elephant escaping his life in the circus.  With the new angle I plann...

After my tutorial I took the opportunity to reassess my approach towards my degree project. Steve mentioned doing something bigger that could make a change in the world. Honestly, I liked my story and I love animals so I didn't want to change the story, so I focused on what I could change with the help of my story instead. Setting aside the idea of changing the avoidance Generation Z now have towards reading, I tried to think of finding something that I believed in and wouldn't mind supporting or influencing others with.  This was when I thought of animal extinction. Throughout my years I have always done topics and projects in relation to animals due to my love for them, and I noticed that many animals were facing extinction, this reminded me that elephants were actually one of them. Thus I decided to correct my story according to the new route I was going for. I researched about it, and found that the African elephants were facing endangerment so they would be the animal I fo...

So, since Steve mentioned going to visit the Women in Revolt Exhibition to understand examples of radical ideas, I went. However, funny story I went with a few classmates and we went to the wrong art gallery but in the end we made it in time before it closed. Since we rushed from Tate Modern to Tate Britain, we ended up arriving before our appointed time so we just explored the place. Here's some pics I took of the ones that interested me, or I guess were particularly peculiar? Now is some of the pics I took from the Women in Revolt Exhibition, I actually really liked these, I thought they were pretty funny from the lady being a car and running people down to just puns on an image reminiscent of Winnie the Pooh. Out of all of these I actually quite liked the overalls as a piece, it had a symbolism, it was easy to understand and it was actually quite cool. Apparently it's meant to show how the overalls are filled with different objects representing different tasks that women had...