Joe Pietruch's Blog

The day of reckoning has come. Here’s a link to the final piece: http://testing.jp-design.net/Consensus/

All things considered, I’m marginally pleased with my work on this project. I know the “finished” site is lacking transitions and mouse-over states. Functionally, however, it’s pretty sweet. The biggest issues are a matter of re-skinning and tweening.

This piece was an experiment in ActionScript 3.0, and the more I learn about the language, the more I like it. Please feel free to leave your opinions in the comments here, or even post them to the flash project!

Paperman is my idea for a flash game whose style is informed by claymation/stop-motion/pixelation photography. The user will control a paper cut-out and attack evil office supplies. One neat aspect of the game is some of the behind-the-scenes work will be visible during game-play. For example, check out the proof-of-concept below that shows a crank-turned background (NOTICE: This game has been altered from its original format. It has been formatted to fit this blog.)!

  As part of the Dynamic Persuasion course, we regularly peruse the internet hoping to find some gem of an internet advertisement. On this particular excursion, I’ve happened upon three different marketing techniques. While I’m sure there are “correct” names for them, I’ll call the sites’ strategies names that make sense to me: “Send-A-Friend”, “Illustrative”, and “Real-World.” Read the rest of this entry »

  I’ve been on somewhat of a block hiatus for the last week and a half. The reason for that being I’ve been trying to keep up with everything I had going on (and doing a passable job at it). Recognizing the feeling from my last three quarters, I acted upon in early, and have withdrawn from 7 of my previously 20 credit hours, leaving me with a comfortable 13.

I regularly try to do too much. This quarter has to be different because it’s senior year and I’ve realized I have next to nothing put together for my online portfolio. After turning in mediocre work for a couple classes, I realized it’s probably better to do a couple things really well than a lot of things poorly.

Here’s my new schedule for this quarter. It’s still pretty full, but much more airy than it was. I’ll be capitalizing on the extra time in two ways. First, I’ll be able to work on projects when I would otherwise have been in class. Second, I won’t have the overhead of the homework from those two classes. All in all, I gained about 12 extra hours a week that I can fully devote to other coursework.

I’ve been burnin’ the midnight oil because I was crazy and decided to take 20 credit hours this quarter. Here’s the latest progress on Consensus: detailed comps of my proposed design!

First is what you might see as a pre-loader when first visiting the site. Second is what the homepage would look like, the tiles each representing a different poll of opinion. Last is what a poll would look like, after clicking on one of the tiles from the previous image.

I sometimes question the honesty of photography. Personally, I prefer taking photographs as compared to making photographs. I like to think all good photographs are luck and good timing, even if I know that’s not the case. I’ll just stick my fingers in my ears and sing loudly, “La la la… la la la… la la la,” whenever I hear someone talk of photo-manipulation.

In reality, I can see it from the other side, too. The camera is just another tool of the artist, and any extra control the artist can gain over that tool is justifiable in pursuit of the image. The ends justify the means. It doesn’t matter how you get there, so long as it looks amazing when it’s finished.

For this project, we were made to make photographs. Sure, there are the basic elements of light, perspective, depth of field, color, composition and subject to consider -  but we don’t have to rely on all of those coming together spontaneously. If you want a spider on a flower, go and CATCH the spider and BRING it to the flower. It might be dishonest, but it makes for a lovely picture.

(Oh, and before you go crazy, I just used the spider as a hypothetical situation. There isn’t really a spider on this one!)

Alright. For those of you looking, here’s where I’ll be putting info relating to the Innovation and Invention class I’m taking this quarter. If you aren’t familiar with the class, it’s where we set out to do something we don’t know how to do. Currently, we’re working towards the goal of a set of tools and environmental elements that encourage collaboration, even across distances. If it sounds vague, it is – but that’s why you should check out this page: http://casci-web.rit.edu/%7Ecollaboratorium/

Today I muddled through ActionScript 3.0 for the first time. It was very messy, but I finally got something I’m happy with. Here for your interacting pleasure, the one, the only (so far) Consensus Black Box:

There are three “characters” on top of each other. Click one of them to enable movement with the arrow keys. It still needs a little tweaking, and certainly real graphics (rather than the stand-in black boxes (hence the name)), but all in all, I’m satisfied with it. Read the rest of this entry »

The web is shifting from static sites that purely inform users, to dynamic sites at which users interact. User input allows for fresh, mutable content — and this aptitude for change motivates users to return to the site.

User polls and voting have been around for some time. My proposition for project 1, entitled Consensus, is a “Web 2.0″ user poll.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a long time coming, but jp-design.net has (finally!) been extended to include this blog! Here you can expect to find postings related to my coursework at RIT, personal and freelance projects, and whatever else I find suitable to include.