I haven't posted anything here since October.

I admit that I have been kind of lazy about blogging.

Anyway, I have been playing a lot of Pet Society these days, and I think some of the decoration themes are very attractive, colour-wise. So I decided to collect some colour palettes from my rooms in Pet Society.

This first one is from the Wonderland theme. It's mysterious and magical. The colours are cool and low key.

I sampled two palettes from this because the different elements had different combinations of colours and I think it's worth sampling all the colours.

This first palette was taken from the wallpaper in the background:

And this second palette was sampled from the lake in the middle ground. Some of the colours are similar to that of the first one, but they are less saturated.

The other theme I sampled was the Autumn Faerie theme. Again, I sampled various parts of the whole piece because of the different colour combinations.

This first palette was taken from the leaves at the top of the wallpaper:


This second palette was sampled from the Faerie four-poster bed. The colours here are more saturated that the previous palette and they stand out more. Giving it good contrast against the background:


This third palette is very similar to the first one, but I sampled it from the mushrooms in at the bottom of the wallpaper. The reason I made another palette was because of the interesting colour combinations:


Anyway, at the moment, I am trying to fix my CS4 and make a new layout for my blog, so once that is done, I shall post updates.

Until then, enjoy the beautiful colour palettes, ^_^

I have changed the header for this blog.

As usual, it is transitory, temporary. Until the next one, that is.

The map used for the background is an actual KL map. And the compass was the one I made a while back, the font is courtesy of DaFont.com and I used Photochop! to throw everything together.

That is all for this update, there is nothing more I have to mention.

End.

Anyway, below are some colour palettes that I think can inspire me when doing my mobile and screen interfaces. I found pictures with the keyword "happy", so don't laugh at the pictures, ok!

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First Palette!

This palette is called "Happy and Strange". I named it after the picture that inspired it.

Image is courtesy of =ThePockyMonster on DeviantArt. This is actually my favourite palette from the three that I will post on here, mainly because I like the colour scheme, it makes me feel floaty. Very interesting. Haha!

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Second Palette!

Again, I have named the palette after the image that inspired it. It's called "Happy Chicken". The last colour is white, I should have put a border round the palette because it doesn't show up on my blog because of the white background. *sad face*

Anyway, yes, image is courtesy of =vaporotem on DeviantArt!

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Third Palette!

Ok. I really like the art piece, but the palette is weird. I guess there were just too many colours in the oil painting, I just chose a little bit of it and sampled colours from that. Not too happy with this one, but I reckon it will look very nice against white.

Palette is called "Happy Street". Image courtesy of =Leonidafremov on DeviantArt. Awesome piece, I think, ^_^

So the questions are:

After watching the videos, I realise that organising the whole process into a flowchart will illustrate a clearer picture of how exactly the interface would work. Drawing out the sequence of tasks and outcomes will help to avoid any lose ends and undesired oversights in design. A planning process.see the whole thing at a glance

With interactive cards and such, the whole point of it is to get the user from the beginning until the end, with some interaction in between. It's all about planning , I guess. By specifying exactly what kinds of tasks you will be using, how the tasks are all co-related and what outcome is to be achieved, you will have laid out a roadmap for the users.

So basically, they help to organise ideas in a visual way say you can see the whole thing at a glance.

Now! I must go stalk my friends' blogs and comment on their posts.

Anyway, I have just finished watching the video resources that we got, on Monday, but I could only find one on YouTube. But then most of them were roughly covering the same things, so I will just embed that one video here, yay!

Hi there!

Our most recent assignment submission was a "series" of icons.

So, building on that, we are required to collect user feedback in order to improve on the design.

So, I need your help!

All you need to do is answer the following questions in regards to my icons:

1. Can you tell what each icon represents?

2. Is the function of each icon clear enough, or did you have to think about what it was?

3. Based on colour, do the icons appeal to you?

4. If I designed a website for you, would you want to use these icons?

5. What do you dislike about the icons?

6. What did you like about the icons?

7. What about the workmanship? Do you think the finished designs are neat/messy/tacky/cheap-looking/6-year-old could do better?

8. Last question! Any comments to help me improve them? Anything I should keep/lose?

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Alright, thank you in advance for your help, I shall thank you again properly once you've posted your feedback in a comment!

Alright.

Icons are due this Friday.

I have finished one vector one almost.

Almost.

I made this one accidentally.

See, so some accidents are a blessing in disguise! It's very ugly, colourwise, and I haven't completed my icon yet, I just want to post the umbrella before I make any more changes.

Saved the file as PNG this time.

I am proud of myself, I did this without the use of online resources. But then again it was by accident.

Oh well.

Yes, I have done another tutorial.

I guess it's because we only have one MM subject this semester, but I assure you, next semester, I will update so frequently, you will be so tired of seeing the new entries. Yes, I said "you" but I don't know who I was referring to.

Anyway, yesterday (because it's after midnight), we had our first DDMM class in a week or so. We didn't have classes last week because of the Starlite event. Yes, so class yesterday was good. Was mostly critique sessions.

In other news, I made this pretty compass thing!

I reckon the method in which the alarm clock was made was more systematic. I like systematic. Yes, anyway, I followed the tutorial to the letter, but I wasn't very happy with the way they apply the shadow. They used the"Mesh" tool and added points in the sphere, coloured the points and then resized (squished) it to get the shadow.

It's over now, and I think that we all gained a lot from the sharing sessions. We had a lot of talented people come talk to us about their personal experiences, the problems they faced, what they gained and the way in which they went about bringing their ideas to life.

There was a team building exercise, however, our class did not participate become our Monday lectures could not be rescheduled. So, this section will be short.

We had three speakers talk to us on Tuesday. They spoke about their project: "Fight Masters: Silat", which was a documentary they had made for the National Geographic Channel. The documentary follows an American marine, called Joel Champ, who embarks on a "journey" to become the first westerner to gain three strips on his Silat black belt. His shi fu and mentor, Sam, believes this "journey" to be a rite of passage.

Our three speakers for that day were, Justin Ong (director), Khairun Lamb (cameraman) and Steven (forgot his surname) was the representative from Young Jump Animation (CGI). They discussed the conceptualisation, pitching of the idea, thought process, execution and pitfalls they encountered along the way, among other things. It was an interesting talk, however, I feel that it was a little lost on me because I did not know any questions to ask.

Please click on the link below and then click the "thumbs up" icon to vote!

I have just finished the bronze clock!

I don't know how it turned out and I am not sure whether or not I am happy with it.

Anyway. I have learnt a very important lesson by doing this assignment. I just started making the clock without checking to see what colour mode I had set the document to. By default, it was set to CMYK, so when I attempted to post the finished clocks on this blog, the colour was all messed up.

So, it is very, very, VERY, VERY, very, VERY important to check the colour mode thing BEFORE you start doing your assignment. I have finally changed all the colour modes to RGB.

Anyway, after I finished the bronze clock in Illustrator, I exported the file to Photochop and played with the colour balance to get a blue colour scheme. I like the blue, but I'm not sure if the light and shadow play is realistic enough.

The BRONZE one

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Now playing: Third Eye Blind - How's It Going To Be (1997)
via FoxyTunes

It is so much more fun than it sounds, you know! Anyway, I just post mine here!

S-button. It's pink! First attempt, so don't look too closely.

Will try to write some more entries over the weekend.

That is all.

People were paired up and, with the powerful weapon that is Photoshop, we created a little pixel avatar/buddy/thing icon of the other half of our pair.

I made a mini-Liang Shing.

The end.

My dashboard of my main account was getting a little too crowded.

So, Nongkyndong will no longer be posting here. Instead! All posts will be made by the Melatoninja. Now, I do realise that this point is extremely pointless seeing as both pseudonyms (pen names?) refer to me. I do believe that it will be relevant one day. But not today.

Anyway, still have a lot to do to this blog. It is a work in progress, so this isn't the final layout.

This is a short update.

So, please let me know what all you will be getting before next weeks class, k?

So, basically, we have to list ten things that describe us. I don't think it's a top ten sort of thing. Just ten random things. I'm going to use headings!

I was born between 20th May and 21st June, so that makes me a Gemini. I don't really obsess about the whole astrological "profiling", but sometimes it is pretty accurate.

I like to move around, different houses, different towns, different countries. I don't like staying in one place for too long, I get restless. I guess this is because my dad moved us around a lot when I was younger. I like the whole process of moving; sorting out the things you need, throwing out the things that you don't and not being able to throw out certain things.

I tend to accumulate unnecessary things, always rationalising that I will have a use for it some day.

I enjoy reading. But, I haven't done much reading this year. Ten (not Top ten, random ten) of my favourite books are:

I like to listen to bands of the 90's. The songs make me nostalgic because I remember them playing on the radio in my childhood. Rock, any kind of Rock, from the 90's is seemingly timeless, it just gets better with age. But I do like a lot of new music too. I listen to everything, my taste in music is very random; any genre, any artist (except Akon). I don't usually admit this in public, but my playlist has some pop; some Britney, Taylor Swift and Mandy Moore. Haha! But listed below are ten (random) songs from my iTunes "Top 25 Most Played" list:

Anyway, new blog!

Now, I know I have had many "new blogs" in the past, only one of them actually having stood the test of time, but this one here is for school, so it will probably endure. I hope. Anyway, the others have faded into obscurity, like those oh-so-awesome One Hit Wonders, because I never maintained them.

Maintaining multiple blogs requires each blog to focus on something different, to keep things interesting; unless you don't mind writing the same things in all of them, in which case you don't need much new material, therefore the maintenance of your many blogs will not be so much of a challenge.

I will just explain this blog under some broad headings before I start properly utilising it, like, properly.

The URL is supposed to be funny. It is a combination of the words "melatonin" and "ninja". I decided to use this name because I actually have a Google Account by the same name that I have never really used for, well, anything. The only reason I registered that user name was so nobody else could take it. Because someone already has the one I wanted, which was "Serotoninja". But it's ok because I've visited his blog and he writes very well, XD

Melatonin - is a hormone secreted in the pituitary gland. It helps regulate sleep/wake patterns in mammals, among other functions. I like this hormone because when I was in Medical school, this topic really piqued my interest, ^_^

Ninja - in Japanese history, a ninja is a warrior specially trained in unorthodox methods of war. Like, spying, espionage, etc., etc. Now, we just use the word very loosely. I have ninja shoes, but that's for another post. On another blog, haha!

I will be using this blog in an attempt to better organise my "school things". And related things. It's a good thing my other blog has absolutely no substance, because that means this one still has a chance at survival.

I have tried to use a white background to keep this blog "clean". (That word means more than you'd think.) Big contrast with my other blog, which has a darker background and is much messier.

The Chat/Shout Box - This widget is called Loose Change. Again, this is supposed to be a joke. Because of the expression, "two-cents worth". Loose Change, get it? Yes, I laugh at things that aren't particularly funny.

Oh well.

Alright, so that's pretty much the long and short of it. This pilot entry is just an excuse to fill up space and create some labels because I don't like how new blogs are always so empty.