Work-in-Progress 2
Revised Soundscape
The bulk of this work-in-progress snapshot consists of my revised soundscape, which can be listened to above or on the soundscape section of the WIP 2 page. I decided to expand upon the concept I attempted in the first soundscape, creating an entirely new one from scratch.
I used some of the sounds from the first soundscape, but I also downloaded many more sounds to complement them. Interestingly, many of these sounds, such as the spaceship launch and the test voice, came from NASA’s official SoundCloud page. It was cool to be able to incorporate some authentic sounds, and the test voice in particular I think ended up being one of the most successful parts of the soundscape.
Besides an expanded sound library, the other main difference is that I made this soundscape in Ableton Live instead of Audacity. As a result, I was way more easily able to apply effects on clips such as EQ filters, time stretching, and pitch editing. This allowed me to create a much more layered and interesting soundscape, as I am far more comfortable moving and stacking clips in Ableton as opposed to Audacity. Perhaps more subtly, I believe Ableton Live applied automatic time stretching to the clips to align them with a BPM, as is Ableton’s default behavior. I left this as is because I think it adds a sense of rhythm to the soundscape, even if it isn’t necessarily a musical song.
As for the content, I extended the concept of my monster attack from the original soundscape to create a clearer narrative structure. In this soundscape, the spaceship takes off, floats through space, and then the monster attack triggers a chase through the halls, guns firing, and the creepy aftermath of the whole event. I ended up being unhappy with my original soundscape, as I found that it sounded like a collection of space-related sounds rather than a soundscape with any sort of thematic or narrative through-line. I tried specifically in the revision to create a story, so that it wasn’t as aimless compared to the first soundscape.
As a whole, I am happy with the result. It was a ton of fun to create a soundscape in Ableton, with its powerful tools and familiar workflow. I think my revision is more focused, more polished, and more soundly edited. That, along with the decision to expand the soundscape to four minutes, really made this a project I was happy to work on and improve.
Website Design
As for the website itself, I made a few subtle additions from the first work-in-progress that I think really helped my concept display itself across the site. For a super simple change that I think improves the aesthetic of the site a whole lot, I took a suggestion from the class and changed the width of the secondary navbar to 75%, creating a cascading look for the two navbars. As for the background color of the navbars, I know we said in class that the black background might be a little too strong, but as of now I’ve kept it in because I was unable to find another color that both fit with the scheme and made both yellow and green text readable. I think the black is an acceptable compromise for readability.
This also applies to the tables I’ve created, which were necessary for the skills logs. I also think that adding the black background to the table header row and the mouseover row helps to contextualize the black background of the navbars on these pages.
Tables were very finicky to work with, I found. It was difficult to get the CSS exact so that the table was both formatted properly and aesthetically pleasing. As they are, they might be a little cramped, but changing padding values makes the table break seemingly at random. I think it’s readable as is, so I’ve again kept that as a compromise.
I compromised a lot to keep the yellow and green color scheme in, but now that I have more sections to the website I think the benefits were worth it. I mentioned in my first work-in-progress that the tops of pages were color heavy, while the content was unfortunately white and bland. The different headers, links, and tables on my new pages more evenly distribute the “color splash” effect throughout my website, creating the bold look I was searching for. It’s not perfect, as different content pages have varying levels of color, but I like the effect I was able to achieve as a whole. I think it’s a fun motif that connects the entire site.
Lastly, this is the first time I have placed embedded media in my website in the form of images and Clyp.it embeds. These were simple additions to the site, but they make the site feel much less stale, and in the case of the Clyp.it embeds specifically they also allow for my media to be played without forcing the user to go to an external site.
I feel like my website is coming along nicely as the class continues. I think my dual-navbar design served me well, as I did not know whether it would be appropriate as I added more content. As it is, though, I am happy with how my website navigates and how it presents everything that I’ve worked on so far.