The Zohologica - interactive illustration

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[Jonael Tomeskrift]

*An excited Jonael walks in, holding the end of a huge rectangular canvas covered with a red flowing sheet of silk. The far end of the rather long yet thin object is held by our talented artist Seeker*

*the still concealed canvas is carefully set down on the table*

... and now we wait

Haha, I can't tell you all enough about how enjoyable and exciting this project with Seeker is... as a result of which I find myself here, posting, but I just couldn't wait quietly any more ^^ I can only hope that once we complete it you'll be able to share in that excitement and dedication that we've both put into this project. Although we're not quite there yet, in true 'advertising stunt' fashion, here's a wee teaser for you all

Some of the very perceptive of you might have started putting together the pieces that have slowly seeped onto the forum throughout the past months or so, still, I think (or dearly hope ^^) that even those of you aren't able to guess the full extent and detail of this little project.... or do you? Any thoughts or ideas out there yet? In any case, sit tight and look forward to this enjoyable little sparkle of a project. Updates will follow

[Artimidor Federkiel]

Sounds great to hear that you make progress, Jonael & Seeker! The picture is definitely an interesting teaser for what's to come - very well made - Though I wonder who's hiding there behind the curtain on the other side, and what's there in front and on top... But I guess as I have been somewhat informed I have a rough idea what awaits...

Anyway, now the question is of course: When is "soon"? Cause as I remember from personal experience that's the shaky part... The teaser thing I made for Nepris II has as first line "Coming this falll..." (and that was last year) And I'm still working on it...   Anyway, I hope to see it more sooner than later of course, but I know that good stuff takes its time. Good luck at any rate on finishing this ambitious project, Jonael & Seeker!

[Seeker]

Anyway, now the question is of course: When is "soon"?

I would say days to weeks (more like days).  At this point we are not working on months to years like you are Arty.   


Also just to pique interest there have been others that have unwittingly contributed to this project.  I will ask for permission/forgiveness later.  

[Deklitch Hardin]

oh ... you used my Kyrattin picture, didn't you seeker?

Dek

[Jonael Tomeskrift]

If everything goes well, and nothing crosses my path unexpectedly, I should have a first version up in a couple of days ^^ *hops about in excitement*

[Artimidor Federkiel]

Great to hear, Jonael!

If you need someone to look at the thing before you want to post a first version, I could have a look. But then again, maybe it's better tom first complete what you have and get some criticism when you post the first version. At any rate I'm looking forward to see the result

[Jonael Tomeskrift]

Aye, I'm sure there's a whole army of mistakes in there, like you said though I think right now we need a bit of feedback and passion from the audience to blow some fresh air into the project.. Not that we've lost interest, haha, quite the opposite actually. But we've looked into it in so much detail that some fresh opinions and looks might lead us in interesting new directions. No doubt there'll be a lot of the 'technical' things to fix under your guidance eventually

[Jonael Tomeskrift]

A slump in inspiration, problems in the coding on the night before, coursework... none of those managed to stop us meeting this deadline! ^^ The idea was inspired by a fascination I had/have with those pc-encyclopedias you get for kids. I remember sitting on our first ever computer, and scrolling through this gorgeous panorama of landscape, the speakers crackling atmospheric sounds of the area, animals hidden throughout the landscape, just waiting to be discovered! It was a pretty simple concept, with a photographics background, and clicking on the animals opened entries on them, zooming out you could also select different climate zones on our planet earth... Well, this whole passion sparked this idea:

It's been an absolute delight working on this with Seeker (~100 emails were exchanged during the making of this interactive illustration, which is probably pretty close to 'email-abuse') and after putting a lot of effort and care into this, we are finally ready to hear your feedback, comments and scrutinizing observations! Just bear in mind, it's a beta.. there are still bits missing, and finishing-off ideas which haven't been implemented. Bringing out any and all mistakes or errors you can spot would be much appreciated none the less though.


.. so, without further ado, I present, The Zohologica - Interactive Illustration

Art, I've sent you the .swf, if you have a way of hosting it and allowing it to be embedded into the post..
Until then, to see the file in it's designed size, click on the 'play flash full screen' below the screen in the bottom right hand corner^^ sorry for the inconvenience

Edit Artimidor:

Just uploaded the movie on the Santharian server, see here: The Zohologica - this link opens it directly in full screen!

[Valan Nonesuch]

Jonael, the rubit and sys'nean have the same text!

[Jonael Tomeskrift]

Jonael, the rubit and sys'nean have the same text!

Noted, we've got individual texts for both, but obviously something went wrong with the labels there, I'll fix that

[Artimidor Federkiel]

Very nice movie so far, Jonael! And thanks for helping out with getting all those single pics together, Seeker, and drawing the whole zoo frame!  Aura +1 for the both of you of course! (More to come, as I cannot award multiple auras at once...) Must have been quite a challenge to combine all kinds of existing animals, draw new ones, put them all together in a reasonable way to be able to present them all and making sure the perspective makes sense, then provide own descriptions etc. - While there's still some work to be done, it looks already very cool at the moment.

Anyway, I've now uploaded the movie to the Santharian server, see here: The Zohologica and also updated your initial post by adding the Santharian link as well.

Some technical notes, Jonael!

- A preloader of course wouldn't hurt if a larger file like this is loaded.

- The mimsy has its tail caught behind the glass cage - so you need to move its layer up methinks.

- The fence with the runnerhog is also partly behind the glass cage mentioned above!

- The descriptions could have a caption with the name of the animal. Some descriptions could also be split better in paragraphs for better reading.

- The guide isn't highlighted as all the others, that could be done as well.

- In general the text size could be larger, but then again you won't be able to get the whole text into the frame and you'd need some sort of scrollbar or arrows to turn a page or something. That's all not so easy as I understand in Flash...

- Fade in would also look good on the texts, but I don't know how you concepted the texts to be shown - you include a graphic element as well with these diamonds. So one could think about fancy things like larger, half transparent animals at the bottom of the text, depending on where you move your mouse, fading in, just to see a better, enlarge picture.

- The mouseover with large chunks of texts of course has the disadvantage that moving around changes a whole area and it looks a bit "twitchy". A possibility would be (as they often do it in similar applications) to display the animals name e.g. at the bottom of the screen when you mouseover, a click the leads to the entry on the right (ideally faded in), and from there you'd get via another link to the Compendium entry. This just as a suggestion. I know it's not always easy to change some conceptual things in Flash - it all depends mainly on how you plan it initially.

- In the long run we could maybe add a background music. Grinch made his sound playing method available outside of Santhworld, and we've used it e.g. at the burning sword movie, so that should be possible. Maybe we could even play some sounds here and there?

Anyway, so far some first comments... Very neat idea and lovely realization with a lot of attention to detail! Great work, you two! 

[Jonael Tomeskrift]

First off, thanks so much for uploading this Artimidor, much appreciated! I'm glad you're liking what's there so far. As you said, there's no end to the credit Seeker deserves for nicely bringing all the animals together into a single composition ^^

Right, onto the technicals:

- A preloader of course wouldn't hurt if a larger file like this is loaded.
 I'll look at putting one in. Would you have a standard one, ie like the one for the site, or nepris which I could implement into the file, or should I go with a new one all together?

- The descriptions could have a caption with the name of the animal. Some descriptions could also be split better in paragraphs for better reading.
 I'll add captions, as for the paragraph structure, I can give it a shot, I'll use comments and feedback on the next version to see if I get it right?
 
- The guide isn't highlighted as all the others, that could be done as well.
 This was done on purpose. My thinking behind it: While all the other highlighted objects in the frame are animals and beasts, the Kaemis is a human, so in a way doesn't really seem appropriate to throw him in the same boat as them? ^^ If others see this differently though, I can add a highlight to him, possibly a different colour to solve that aesthetic issue?

Actually, with this point I wanted to raise an issue I couldn't conclude on my own: I'm sure you'll all notice how the highlighs are hand drawn, slightly rough. My reasoning behind choosing this style over a smooth exact highlight around the animals was to give it a more natural feel, let the highlight blend in a little more, rather than seem like an artificial action which breaks the natural composition of the illustration... any thoughts on whether that worked or not?

- In general the text size could be larger, but then again you won't be able to get the whole text into the frame and you'd need some sort of scrollbar or arrows to turn a page or something. That's all not so easy as I understand in Flash...
 This shouldn't be a problem, just means a couple more buttons and frames (probably the crude way about it, but I should manage ^^)

- The mouseover with large chunks of texts of course has the disadvantage that moving around changes a whole area and it looks a bit "twitchy". A possibility would be (as they often do it in similar applications) to display the animals name e.g. at the bottom of the screen when you mouseover, a click the leads to the entry on the right (ideally faded in), and from there you'd get via another link to the Compendium entry. This just as a suggestion. I know it's not always easy to change some conceptual things in Flash - it all depends mainly on how you plan it initially.
 I see what you mean there, I'll definitely have a look into it

- In the long run we could maybe add a background music. Grinch made his sound playing method available outside of Santhworld, and we've used it e.g. at the burning sword movie, so that should be possible. Maybe we could even play some sounds here and there?
 I would love that, I had a look around at adding sound, but couldn't find a way around it without breaking copyright rules ^^ If Santharia has access to sound files though that'd be fantastic. It'd add so much more atmosphere

[Irid alMenie]

Very nicely done! One comment that I have: Three different animals get the text for the two-tail, which I think only belongs to the little animal sitting on the thiefling cage You get the same text with the pink animals and the lizardy animals in the middle.

[Seeker]

YAY we got it up.  Excellent work Jonael on the technical aspects.  A couple more items I noticed on first perusal:

1) We spelled Haloen without the "n".
2) The Aj'Nuvic is from the dessert.  Yum.

I hope everyone likes the idea here. This was dreamed up by Jonael.  Hopefully this is a place you would enjoy visiting. 

[Deklitch Hardin]

2) The Aj'Nuvic is from the dessert.  Yum.

Maybe it has a sweet tooth?

In any case, great work Jonael and Seeker

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