MileMarker 20: Release An Animated Movie!

Big news from #rdcHQ this week! Part One of the Cobwebs Movie has been released on the World Wide Web! We are really jazzed about this milestone as it includes all of the work since last season!

We are completely amazed at the creativity and teamwork that went into this production! The incredible Cobwebs Crew wrote the script, invented the characters, created the art as well as the animations, and even composed the music! Be sure to check out Nathan Malamud’s latest original composition “In The Mist” during the screen titles leading up to the first chapter. We haven’t seen anything like it anywhere, and that is because it is composed out of 100% original Cobwebs Creativity. Mad props to the entire Crew!

Our next launch date is September 2013 … just in time for the Rural Design Collective Launch Party as well as the Oregon Coast Film Festival … Stay Tuned!

MileMarker 21: Mockup A Home Page

In addition to the movie release, each member of the Crew created a mockup of the front page of the Cobwebs website to accompany the diagram we drafted previously. A lot of great ideas came out of that brainstorming session, and we’ll be making a road map for many of the excellent suggested features. Cobwebber Gabby McCutcheon came up with a most clever idea for the home page that we’ll release this Fall.

MileMarker 22: Learn About Animation Concepts

Jerry McManus joined the meetup today and led the Crew on their first foray into 3D animation concepts and in-depth Blender Basics. It’s going to be exciting to see where the Crew takes Cobwebs as they journey into an exciting new realm of knowledge.

Go, Cobwebs Crew, Go!

Hola! This week at #rdcHQ we had a typography primer in our in our Codes of the World Track. Although the focus is specifically on the graphical diagrams being created, many of these principles apply to MathML which we will explain in a future blog post. The typographical topic came up when many of the diagrams had callouts that were condensed beyond recognition.

MileMarker 19: Correct Typographical Misconduct

Although our goal is to reproduce these graphics as faithfully as possible, we make it a rule that if trying to read the text puts us in a bad mood by causing eye fatigue, we can exercise a little creative license and improve the legibility.

Most professional designers agree that manually condensing a typeface in this manner when it wasn’t specifically designed for such optical gymnastics is extremely …

Kelly Extra Condensed typeface specimen from the 19th Century from Thinking With Type

When a quality typeface is designed, each element is taken into consideration. The fine details of each letterform are often destroyed when an amateur designer overrides them with the myriad of software controls in modern page layout and illustration programs. And although it is outside the scope of our Codes of the World project to explore the subtle nuances of typography, we pause a moment to reflect on the letterforms that so many obviously take for granted. *Sniffle*

Image appropriated from the oh-so compellingly titled blog post “Kerning, Tracking, and Leading (The Essentials of Typography and Time)”

Although several quality charts diagramming letterforms exist on the Internet, the one above is a personal favorite as it includes the oft-overlooked finial, not to be confused with the phineas which looks something like this …

MileMarker 17: Improve Safety Standards

Greetings from #rdcHQ! Last week, we got started on our first collection of documents focused on disability and accessibility. This begins our Standards Sprints where documents will be chosen that focus on an area of interest where our designers want to make a difference. We began with a few graphics focusing on safety in one of the Rural Design Collective’s favorite places … the theatre!

“Example of signs indicating a facility and its direction” from NZ by NM!

MileMarker 18: Deconstruct Complex Images

We’re just getting started on this tour of documents from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany! Many include icons, signage, simple schematics and more complex perspective drawings such as the one below. The first step is to assess the collections and break the illustrations down into components that can be reused.

… Go #rdcHQ Go!

Busy Days at #rdcHQ! Cobwebs College is a blur of activity with amazingly productive sessions from both the animation and website teams to support all of the fantastic work of our illustrators to date!

MileMarker 14: Begin The Cobwebs Website.

The first order of business <g> was to get a clear picture of the website based on our earlier brainstorming session. The Cobwebs Crew came up with a very simple framework to launch by our art show in September:

Our spiffy site outline inspired by our 2011 WordPress Track

MileMarker 15: Write Some Code!

How can anyone talk about building websites without writing a little code? This week, we focused on basic website concepts such as the structure of an HTML page, hypertext links, and the invisible metatags that talk to search engines.

We emphasize how these very basic elements of a web page are the building blocks of all code. Links always have to terminate, every element has to close (or self-close), and spelling, punctuation and neatness ALL COUNT! … Thinking about code at this level at an early stage is important even if the tools can do some of the work for you.

We set up a little sandbox at the end of our meetup so anyone interested can track our progress. Things are going to get interesting, so … Stay Tuned! …

MileMarker 16: Have A Private Screening!

… and it looks like we have enough footage to have an informal private screening of the movie highlighting the work on Cobwebs so far this season. The screening will take place at Point.B Studio during the 4th of July Jubilee in Port Orford, OR (beginning tomorrow and running through the weekend).

A still from “Cobwebs — The Animated Series” by The Cobwebs Crew