#i wanted to make a whole model sheet following their layout

[eggdrawsthings]

just wanna see what my OC might look like in the Clone Wars style. It's prob not that close but I tried and I had fun :'D

[mackenziedecker]

<h1>Architectural Creating Services For Farm House</h1>

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Landscapes aspects are the prefabricated components which of architectural models. Version makers commonly use copper, aluminum, and steel sheets to make building versions. Designers 裝修報價 use this material to make small buildings for the building design of a road or a community. Considering the complete weight of the architectural model and its security.

Helper Insurance

There are town homes that are improved land approved by the previous Village Block Crown Lease in 1905, and are currently called Block Federal government Lease. As soon as authorized by the Lands Department, this type of village residence can be taken down and also rebuilt, without sustaining land costs repayment. There are also some built on whole lots auctioned by former Area Workplaces, now the Lands Division, after 1905. It is likely that records of the land rents provided during that period were destroyed or lost throughout the Second Globe War. For that reason, the saleability of residences built on these land granted during the pre-war duration may be affected.

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After the system, there are also relevant follow-up solutions such as conflict resolution as well as consumer ratings. The decor price 10s of hundreds of tiny, and also hundreds of hundreds of bucks in huge. Naturally, I really hope that there will be no major adjustments or any kind of troubles in the next 10 years.

C 6 2: Illumination Control

With its marble look design and also three-dimensional, straight style, this job deco ceramic tile is sure to make a statement. Mosaics are ideal for accentuating any type of space in your following project, but they are particularly stunning in washrooms. Whether you wish to add a pop of shade or develop an extra calm ambience, this project deco ceramic tile can constantly please you.

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By producing a 3D model, we highlighted every little detail of the property.

[angelicthor]

billion dollar man - part 5

pairing: tony stark x reader

summary:  after mounting bills and debt cause you to look at alternative means of making money, you’re thrown into a whole different kind of life when one of the most famous billionaires on the block offers to be your sugar daddy, of course in exchange for a different from of payment. non-superhero au.

warnings/genre: +18 only, sugarbaby/daddy relationship

masterlist | billion dollar man masterlist

a/n: feedback is always appreciated! this is a bit of a filler chapter but i promise to get back to the good stuff in the next part ;)

You woke the next morning with a groan, stretching out your limbs as you snuggled further into the sheets after one of the best night’s sleep you have ever had – something you were sure was down to the exhaustion you were in doubled with the luxury mattress you were sprawled across. Your hand reached over to Tony’s side of the bed feeling it empty, the spot where he lay already cold and you wondered just how long he’d been up.

Pulling on your panties and Tony’s dress shirt from last night, the material falling to your upper thigh, you deemed it presentable enough to go and find Tony in - it wasn’t like he had roommates after all. You wandered through Tony’s bedroom, taking in your surroundings for the first time given you were far too occupied to do so last night, taking in the splendour that was the penthouse suite of Baxter building.

You stepped into the bathroom, splashing your face with water and trying to make your hair somewhat presentable instead of the ‘I-had-sex-all-night’ look you were currently sporting. Your reflection reminded you just how much of a mistake it was to sleep in your make-up, black mascara smudged around your eyes and red lipstick smeared across your lips and onto your cheeks which was to be expected given how occupied your mouth had been last night. You washed your face free of the previous night’s sins, relieved as your fresh face was revealed to you and making a mental note to always take of your make-up before passing out for the night.

The design of Tony’s apartment was modern and sleek, every single thing there the latest and most up-to-date model, and you honestly didn’t expect anything less from the infamous billionaire. Walking down the hall, towards the staircase, you noticed there was something that was just missing from Tony’s home but you couldn’t quite place what it was, pushing the thought to the back of your mind as you searched for the man himself.

You found Tony in the kitchen, preparing a cup of coffee in what looked like the most high-tech coffee machine you had ever seen, wearing nothing but a pair of joggers and a black sabbath t-shirt. He turned when he heard you enter, giving you a once over with a smug smirk on his lips, no doubt admiring his handy-work as you tried to tug the shirt lower on your thighs, fighting the heat burning your cheeks.

“Mornin’ Gorgeous, and what a good morning it is; how could it not be after a night like last night huh?” Tony drawled, cocky as ever before he offered you a cup to which you eagerly accepted.

Sipping on what had to be the most perfectly balanced cup of coffee you had ever had, you took a seat at the breakfast bar as Tony leant against it on the opposite side. “How long have you been up?”

“Uh, yeah, about that; I don’t sleep much, you’re probably gonna wake up alone the entire time we do this, hope that’s not a problem.” Tony was unable to meet your gaze as he spoke and you knew you were broaching a subject he wanted to avoid.

“No, no, that’s no problem – how come you don’t sleep much? That big brain of yours coming up with new ways to change the future?”

Tony took the opportunity to steer the conversation away from whatever was bothering him, chuckling as he nodded his head, “Something like that, I normally end up in the lab working on something or other. Sometimes projects just won’t let me sleep, gotta do it until it’s done.”

“Lab? You have a lab - here?” You asked incredulously, what kind of a penthouse had a full lab in it?

“It’s downstairs,” Tony nodded towards the staircase that had both a tier up and down, “I’ll give you a tour of the place after breakfast.”

It was at the mention of breakfast that you realised just how hungry you were, your eyes glancing around the kitchen in search of what might be cooking and finding nothing. You arched a brow at Tony as your gaze flittered between the completely barren kitchen and the man before you, a silent question of ‘what breakfast?’

Tony snorted, rolling his eyes at you light-heartedly: “Yeah, no; I don’t cook, I have never once turned that cooker on and I don’t intend to start – by breakfast I meant food was coming to us.”

“God, you are such a rich boy,” You teased, leaning forward until you were only a breaths way from his face.

“I could have sworn you liked the fact that I was a rich boy,” He muttered, eyes drifting from yours to your lips before he closed the distance between you, lips pressing against yours in a languid kiss.

The sound of someone clearing their throat caused you both to jump apart, you nearly falling out of your seat with the force, your head snapping towards the source of the interruption and finding a tall redhead in the doorway, sharp features and a business-like aura surrounding her. She held a paper bag of what you could only guess was your breakfast and under her other arm she had a dossier folder and tablet.

“Y/N, this is my PA: Miss Pepper Potts, soon to be Mrs Pepper Hogan, she is pretty much the only reason I have any semblance of a functioning life,” Tony introduced you to the woman who gave you a smile and nod in greeting, moving further into the kitchen and placing the paper bag on the island between you and Tony.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Stark has told me a lot about you,” You quirked a brow at Tony as Pepper turned her attentions to him, “I got everything you asked for and I’m assuming everything’s a go here?”

Tony was too busy rummaging through the bag to may too much attention to Pepper, waving her off with a grunt causing the redhead to roll her eyes, her attentions once again returning to you as she pulled the tablet and dossier file in front of you.

“Here’s a contract for the whole arrangement; nothing too complicated, just a simple list of expectations and such. I’m sure Mr. Stark has told you that this ‘relationship’ has to remain a relationship for the eyes of the press and public; so, you won’t be allowed to date anyone else for the duration of this and discretion with such an arrangement is needed, of course.”

You read every line of the contract, your lawyer instincts kicking in at the word but it was nothing to be concerned with like Pepper had said; it was just the sum of money that would be paid, the fact that you would be expected to post on social media flaunting the relationship, you weren’t to talk to any press about the relationship, so on so forth - all the stuff you were expecting.

You signed your name at the bottom and handed the papers back to Pepper who filed them away, placing the tablet in front of you and asking you to place your hand on the screen and then the other.

“This gives you access to the elevator downstairs and I’ll inform building staff to permit you access to the building at all times, and that’s pretty much everything for now. Tony do you need anything else?”

Tony sat with a mouth fall of pancake, shaking his head and trying to talk with his mouth full, the words muffled by food: “No thanks Pep.”

Sighing, Pepper turned on her heel and made her way to the elevator as Tony pulled the rest of the food out of the bag, every type of breakfast you could think of packed into one paper bag and you were beginning to understand that this man didn’t do a single thing by half.

You ate breakfast together, Tony warning you about the press and Babble Babe who would no doubt be featuring you on their page frequently now, but it was nothing you couldn’t handle. After you finished eating, you were taken for a tour of the penthouse as promised; the layout was simple enough but every part of it looked like it was designed for a luxury property magazine, nevertheless there was still something off about the apartment that you couldn’t quite place. The view from the windows was the main selling-point of the entire apartment though, floor-to-ceiling windows that gave you the perfect outlook on New York City.

It seemed crazy that after only a few days your life had changed so drastically; you were in Tony Stark’s penthouse in one of the most luxurious buildings in Manhattan, you no longer had to worry about money, one of the most beautiful dresses you had ever seen – that you could have never afford – was on Tony’s bedroom floor, and in that moment, staring at the bustling city below you, you knew that your life was never going to be the same again.

a/n: i don’t have a tag list but if you want alerts please follow @angelicthorwrites and turn on notifications

[theonyxpath]

Chicago! By Night! What an evocative title that was in ’91. We had seen nothing like it for any of our games. The web of vampire NPCs and their sheer variety could have been overwhelming, but instead it was fascinating. We wanted to keep reading and to learn as much as we could about them, and the vampire society they were enmeshed in.

The gorgeous Coterie Charts were, of course, that perfect bit of visual aid that we needed to refer to during reading – and even more importantly, during playing. Who is she? Do we know who she’s connected to? Does she hate that guy we’re sort of working for?

It added the context, the structure, that we had only been imagining based on the core book. Now we could see how the ideas fit together in one city.

My group was lucky as I had been given the text early in order to playtest and so I could do art and the logo for the book. We got to roam those streets on the lookout for Capone earlier than most, but we also didn’t get to see Josh Timbrook’s full collection of gorgeous and evocative character portraits, so it was interesting to see his depictions later on.

After over a decade of D&D, Chicago by Night was definitely the book that made me fall in love with Vampire: The Masquerade.

Which worked out OK.

Y’know?

      Scion Hero illustration by Chris Bivins

    Naturally, considering the above, when given the chance, we at Onyx Path pitched for a new version of Chicago By Night. Three times! We pitched it for V20, we “pitched” it during our plans for our new edition of VtM, and now, we pitched and are doing the Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition version!

Third time’s the charm, or, I guess, the discipline.

The V5 Chicago By Night Kickstarter goes live at 12 noon Eastern US time tomorrow, Tuesday the 30th (if all goes well, and the many weird-ass things that can screw this up don’t happen). This is a KS to create a beautiful traditionally printed version of the book that we will use as a springboard to get the books into stores.

Backers will get sections of the text of the book all through the Kickstarter, and I understand that our Kickstarter Concierge James Bell and Chicago developer Matthew Dawkins have cooked up a whole series of reveals for that info. Plus, they’ve been working on ways to incorporate backer input without slowing down the book’s progress. We really want to get it out to backers and then into stores as fast as we can.

Certainly, more along the model of Cavaliers of Mars which was delivered a year early to backers, or Monarchies of Mau, on track to be shipped in November, some four months earlier than estimated.

Plus, the text we are revealing to backers is finished text, approved by White Wolf, and set to take a copy edit but then go right into layout. We know folks are concerned about changes to the text that has been previewed, and we’re setting this up so that situation doesn’t happen.

      Fetch Quest illustration by Pat Loboyko

    As for what those sections will contain, well, they’ll present Chicago as it exists NOW in the World of Darkness, and we’ll be continuing to follow Matthew’s preference for writing that provides story-ideas and hooks in every paragraph. Locations that have explicit ideas for play attached to them, and we’ll have Lore Sheets that build out the secrets of the Kindred of Chicago.

In fact, I’m really looking forward to our Chicago Lore Sheets providing that same feeling of “proof of concept”, of a concrete structure, that the original CbyN did for VtM first edition.

And, then there’s the Lasombra.

Their V5 clan write-up will be in there, as well as the shadowy revelation of their current status and plans within plans.  We’re thrilled to be able to be the ones who reveal them to our community, and from what I’ve seen, you are going to be very pleased indeed.

So that’s a huge milestone for us this week, and something we’ve been working feverishly on, but we have a few other things to point out that came up in our meeting today that are happening this week of spooky weeks.

V5 is not the only vampire game in town, as the Guide to the Night for Vampire: The Requiem 2e in Advance PDF form goes undead on DriveThruRPG on Halloween, along with our regularly scheduled Exalted 3rd monthly PDFs.

If we can do it this week, we’ll also be delivering the Backer PDF for Matt Forbeck’s long awaited Exalted 3rd novel to backers!

      Trinity Continuum: Aeon illustration by Sam Denmark

    Before the month is done, you owe it to yourselves to check out the deadly discounts at the HalfoffWeen sale at IPR, and the Halloween sale at DTRPG. (See below in The Blurbs!)

Finally, if you missed last Friday’s interview with Jason Carl, V5 producer and current marketing chap at White Wolf, this is a great week to hear all about the man who’s an expert on both Vampire and wine. And a whoooole lot more as his interview with the Terrifying Trio on the Onyx Pathcast proves. Check that out here, or on your favorite podcast venue: https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/e/episode-23-interview-with-another-vampire-jason-carl/ 

Coming up this week, our Dream Team goes into details on their Dream Games. You know, the projects they would most like to create if time, money, legalities, or common sense were not concerns!

Maybe they’ll make some games we can publish, and add to our existing collection of:

Many Worlds, One Path!

  BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

Lo the darkness that lies like a pall over Chicago. The V5 Chicago By Night Kickstarter arises in October!

We will be opening the casket on October the 30th at 12noon Eastern US time!

Because we know the 2nd Inquisition is out there, let’s establish a fallback plan so if anything happens to delay this, we’ll do it at noon on Halloween, Wednesday the 31st!

We’re also working on the Kickstarter for They Came From Beneath the Sea! (TCFBtS!), which has some very different additions to the Storypath mechanics we’ll be explaining during the KS.  They take an excellent 50’s action and investigation genre game and turn it to 11!

  ELECTRONIC GAMING:

      As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is now live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is both rolling and rocking!

Here are the links for the Apple and Android versions:

http://theappstore.site/app/1296692067/onyx-dice

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onyxpathpublishing.onyxdice&hl=en

Three different screenshots, above.

And our latest, the dice for Werewolf: The Forsaken 2e:

  ON AMAZON AND BARNES & NOBLE:

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue you bought it from. Reviews really, really help us with getting folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Endless Ages Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Rites of Renown: When Will You Rage II (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Ascension: Truth Beyond Paradox (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: The God-Machine Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Curse of the Blue Nile (Kindle, Nook)

Beast: The Primordial: The Primordial Feast Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: Of Predators and Prey: The Hunters Hunted II Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Poison Tree (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Songs of the Sun and Moon: Tales of the Changing Breeds (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: The Strix Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Forsaken: The Idigam Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Mage: The Awakening: The Fallen World Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Masquerade: The Beast Within Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Werewolf: The Apocalypse: W20 Cookbook (Kindle, Nook)

Exalted: Tales from the Age of Sorrows (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Tales of the Dark Eras (Kindle, Nook)

Promethean: The Created: The Firestorm Chronicle Anthology (Kindle, Nook)

Demon: The Descent: Demon: Interface (Kindle, Nook)

Scarred Lands: Death in the Walled Warren (Kindle, Nook)

V20 Dark Ages: Cainite Conspiracies (Kindle, Nook)

Chronicles of Darkness: Strangeness in the Proportion (Kindle, Nook)

Vampire: The Requiem: Silent Knife (Kindle, Nook)

Mummy: The Curse: Dawn of Heresies (Kindle, Nook)

  OUR SALES PARTNERS:

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the Screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there!

https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

And we’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

  Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

Here’s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: http://theonyxpath.com/press-release-onyx-path-limited-editions-now-available-through-indie-press-revolution/

And you can now order Pugmire: the book, the screen, and the dice! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=296

    DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

  For the most horrific day of the year, this Wednesday, Halloween, we are releasing the Advance PDF for Vampire: The Requiem 2e Guide to the Night!

  And we haven’t forgotten our monthly Exalted PDF releases! They too will be coming out on DTRPG this Wednesday!

          CONVENTIONS!

Matt, Monica, Bill, Crystal, and other Onyx Path writers and developers will be at GameHoleCon in Madison, WI November 8th – 11th running demos of Pugmire, Scarred Lands, and more! https://www.gameholecon.com/

Rich, Lisa, Matt, Eddy, Dixie, Danielle, and other Onyx Path writers and developers will be at PAX Unplugged in Philly, November 30th – December 2nd running demos of Scion, Monarchies of Mau, Exalted, and more! http://unplugged.paxsite.com/

Start getting ready for our appearance at MidWinter this January in Milwaukee! So many demos, playtests, secret playtests, and Onyx Path Q&As you could plotz!

  And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM FAST EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

C20 Novel (Jackie Cassada) (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Tales of Excellent Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Scion Ready Made Characters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion Jumpstart (Scion 2nd Edition)

Geist2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Memento Mori: the GtSE 2e Companion (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Distant Worlds (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

  Redlines

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Witch-Queen of the Shadowed Citadel (Cavaliers of Mars)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

  Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

  Development

Hunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)

CofD Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon (Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Spilled Blood (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Wr20 Book of Oblivion (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

CofD Dark Eras 2 (Chronicles of Darkness)

  Manuscript Approval:

V5 Chicago By Night (Vampire: The Masquerade)

  Editing:

Signs of Sorcery (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Aeon Aexpansion (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

C20 Players’ Guide (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Adventures for Curious Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

In Media Res (Trinity Continuum: Core)

  Post-Editing Development:

Ex Novel 2 (Aaron Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

  Indexing:

    ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE:

  In Art Direction

Dystopia Rising: Evolution – Got the fulls contracted out and emails out to artists from the KS about doing some more.

Geist 2e

The Realm

Trinity Continuum (Aeon and Core) – Aeon sketches coming in.

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Chicago By Night – Ready for KS.

Pugmire Roll of Good Dogs and Cats – Art contracted.

C20 Player’s Guide – Sending out the last contracts and art notes.

Aeon Aexpansion

They Came From Beneath the Sea! – Getting more KS art since we have a little time.

Lost 2e Jumpstart – Art contracted.

EX3 Lunars – Getting KS art.

Signs of Sorcery – Awaiting updated art notes.

  Marketing Stuff

  In Layout

Trinity Core – Working.

Trinity Aeon – Inputting 2nd proof notes.

M20: Gods and Monsters – With Josh.

  Proofing

Scion Hero – Backer PDF is out, errata coming in.

Scion Origin – Corrections are in.

Ex3 Dragon Blooded

CtL2 Jumpstart – Adding in corrections.

  At Press

Monarchies of Mau and Screen – At Studio2. Dice and buttons shipping to Studio2.

Wraith 20th – Printing the Deluxe interior, proofing cover this week(??).

Wraith 20 Screen – Printing.

Scion Dice – At Studio2.

Lost 2e Screen – Off to printer.

Scion Screen – Off to printer.

Changeling: The Lost 2e – Printer getting started.

Fetch Quest – Files sent to printer.

Exalted 3rd Novel – Getting ready for backers.

PTC: Night Horrors: The Tormented – Prepping PDF files.

VtR: Guide to the Night – Advance PDF going on sale on DTRPG on Weds!

  TODAY’S REASON TO CELEBRATE: Well, Halloween. Duh.

[mars-the-red]

Circles, chapter 2

fandom: Time Tunnel

Synopsis: Tony arrives back at Project Tic-Toc 10 years too soon, emotions ensue.

I’m tagging @effulgentpoet because she was kind enough to read the first part and just in case she wants to read the next bit; no pressure tho darling

Tony was bundled into the jeep by a still-wary Jiggs, and deposited in Medical, where he found himself unceremoniously stripped of every last stitch of clothing and sat in a gown on a paper sheet while a parade of personnel took readings of everything from the amount of potassium in his blood to how many fillings he had in his mouth. They all wore face masks and gloves. Tony recognized a few of them, but none of them recognized him.

“Where’s Doug?” he demanded, of every single nurse and doctor who took their particular toll. He got a few looks of sympathy, but one of Jiggs’s men, hand-picked to guard Tony while he was poked and prodded, warned them off of talking with a very pointed shake of his head.

“Containment protocol,” Jiggs reminded Doug, who was waiting with ever-thinning patience to speak with their guest. “You wrote half of these measures yourself. No contamination or cross-pollination of the Project. Tic-Toc Base is hallowed ground.”

“Sacrosanct, I think I said,” Doug replied. He looked up at the monitor showing the security feed of the Medical area. “It made sense at the time.”

“It makes sense now,” Jiggs said. “Anyway, I still think it’s a fairy story. Even if there is a Newman at MIT, he’s probably a shell. They would have done their homework.”

Doug grunted in reply. Maybe so, but the only way to uncover the truth would be by talking to this man. He paced a few steps, drifting along the corridor wall without really seeing it.

“Security should handle the interview,” Jiggs said.

Doug turned on his heel. “I’ll handle the interview.”

“Dr. Phillips, you’re too important to this project to put you in a room with an unverified, uncleared unknown.”

Doug pulled one hand from his pocket, held his palm to Jiggs. “He’s not going to convince any of you. I’m going to let him try to convince me. If he is who he says he is, don’t we owe him that?”

Jiggs was fingering the gun on his belt. “You numbers types are going to be the death of me.”

“We’ll try not to be.” Doug resumed his pacing.

* * *

Two hours later, the protocol shifted from discovery to maintenance. The head physician on duty called the canteen for a meal to be delivered to Medical, and Doug, who apparently ranked lower than a plate of chicken and rice, was admitted soon after.

They had put Tony in the suite for containing troublesome patients, with the minimum security of locks, not the plastic-draped and hermetically sealed suite for containing rampaging pathogens. It was a small, minimally furnished room, white tile floor and walls, bright lights, with a cot, chair, and table, where the aforementioned meal had been deposited and ignored.

Tony, wearing a pair of white scrubs, was seated at the table, head in his hands.

Security unlocked the door and held it open. Doug stepped through and it swung closed behind him, with more of a medical swoosh than a jailhouse clang. The lock turned heavily.

“I’m not your guinea pig,” Tony snapped, as soon as Doug came into the room. He picked up his head and glared. The prisoner treatment had keyed him up again. At least, after the decon shower they had forced on him, he felt cleaner than he had in weeks.

“Medical needed to check you’re not a threat to anyone on base.”

“They took a whole unit of blood. What are they checking for, vampirism?” It had made him a little light-headed, so he was perched at the table, rigidly aware of how alone he was. He wasn’t sure he could stand up to go toe to toe with Doug.

“I’m sorry. Why don’t you finish your food?”

Tony shoved the plate away from him. “I’m not hungry.”

“Come on. You’ve gotta be.”

Tony knew that tone. That sensible, friendly, I’m-just-looking-out-for-you reasonableness that Doug could suffocate you with. Tony looked down at his plate of dry chicken, salad, and rice and made a face.

Doug followed his look. “The canteen aren’t miracle workers, but it’s not that bad.”  

“Then you eat it,” Tony said.

Doug set a blue folder on the table, then swung into the chair across from him and swiped a cherry tomato off Tony’s plate. “I’m hungry, too. You know I was just heading to dinner when you showed up?”

“Sorry to spoil you plans.”

“This is a lot more interesting.” Doug bit into the tomato. It was mushy. He tried to hide the grimace. He removed a notebook and pencil from his breast pocket, flipped to a new page, and set it in front of him. “Take me through it again. Name, rank, serial number. Anything, everything we can use to corroborate this story.”

Tony did. Haltingly at first, then picking up speed. It had happened fast for him. The chair of the department calling him into his office, the interviews with bland polite men in suits. Becky had fallen away during the next few months of intense work on that fateful paper and then, out of nowhere, an invitation to defend it as his dissertation.

Doug had been there. A “special invite” to sit on the dissertation board. Tony hadn’t known who he was. He kept that to himself.

It was a rainy day in early April. They started at eight a.m. Tony drew figures and charts and chains of equations until an entire pack of chalk had turned to dust in his fingertips. The questions kept coming. By the end of the gauntlet the street lights had come on outside and he barely knew his own name, until his adviser shook his hand and said “Congratulations, Doctor Newman.”

Doug sent him home to pack. The next day they touched down in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona, under a blue sky full of brilliant sun. Tony hadn’t thought or breathed anything else since.

He knew staffing levels, layouts, equipment, even the make and model of the coffee machines in the control center. Some of the things he described were still on Doug’s wish list, to be wrangled over in endless committee meetings in DC. Some were already in play. Tony answered every question Doug lobbed at him for an hour and a half, trying to place him both in the present and the future, and at the end of it, Doug had heard enough. He was a believer.

Then it was Doug’s turn for show and tell. The test results had all come back; Doug opened the blue folder. The subject was in overall good health, with nutritional deficiencies consistent with some months of deprivation. Slight dehydration, several superficial injuries, and no marks of biological contamination.

“Do you know where the radiological contamination came from?” Doug asked, leafing through the reports. That was the only caveat on Tony’s charts, with a low impact rating.

Tony looked up at him and calculated. The radiation bath hadn’t been conceived yet.

“No,” Tony said. “Must be a by-product.”

Doug caught his hesitation. He held Tony’s eyes for a half-second too long before he finally smiled. “Well, it’s not a threat to you or anyone on station. Good news, Medical can’t see any reason to confine you here.”

Tony was regretting not eating when he had the chance. He was light-headed again. “So now what? You’ll turn me over to Security for their go?”

“No. Come with me.”

* * *

Security stood aside as Dr. Phillips escorted his guest out. Tony took the lead, subtly, guiding them out of Medical and toward the central tower space, the Atrium. He knew these corridors like the back of his hand. He sensed Doug watching his every step, and he saw the guards raise their hand to their ear pieces as he entered their range. He kept his chin held high.

Tony had no codes, no access badges, no biometrics on file, so Doug stepped up to the armored door to the Atrium. He swiped his badge, then turned his eyes to the iris scanner mounted unobtrusively in the terminal.

The doors slid open. Tony stepped out onto the footbridge, veered to the rail, and stopped dead.

The Atrium smelled of fresh paint and hot metal, sawn-off lumber and floor wax. Half of it was still under construction, hung with plastic and scaffolding.

Impossible to ignore, the pulsing, breathing power core was alive with electricity, writhing with nuclear reaction and shunted neutrons. It drew Tony’s whole attention, it drew him to lean over the railing and bathe in its mad refracting light.

Seven years ago, first laying eyes on it, it was the most beautiful thing Tony had ever seen. And in that moment, suspended above its unimaginable power, all the doubts Tony had ever had about his own sanity, his abilities, humankind’s striving against the seemingly unassailable wall of the universe and its laws, had vanished. He knew they could do anything. It was the engine of all their dreams.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Doug asked.

Tony could only nod.

The staffing complexes were still under construction, falling down into the gloom below. Tiny lights, like illuminated ants, were busy some five hundred floors below them, as construction crews dug deeper into the Arizona plate and carved out space for more offices, more laboratories, more libraries, more minds to strive toward this one inconceivable goal.

Tony finally pried himself away. A wave of dizziness crested, then subsided, as he pushed off the railing. “Where are we going?”

“My office.”

Doug’s office was a suite just above the control room. Doug waved him in and followed.

Tony took a breath. The paint smelled sharp and fresh here, too.

The outer room, where Doug had his desk, bookshelves, and seating area, also had a bank of windows overlooking the control floor. His desk was arranged to face them, and the Tunnel was dead center.

Eyes on the prize, Doug used to say.

Goodbye, work-life balance, Tony had thought then.

He thought it now, too. Doug’s office was functional. It was efficient. The furniture was new, with clean lines. Bleeding-edge design in bright woods and angles. Doug’s desk was a nod to his position; lots of drawers, and a desk top with a larger square footage than Tony’s dorm room. Files, always neatly stacked and sorted when Doug could help it . Cabinets full of identical manila folders.

Then as now, Tony was struck by how spartan it was. No pictures, no photographs, no cool rocks Doug had picked up on a whim while out hiking. A rack of plants were oxygenating the room from under a grow light, but they had no personality; Doug had let one of his assistants choose them.

Several diplomas in identical frames were hung behind his desk, but they only gave the who, what, where, when of Doug’s education. No context.

The bookshelves held a hint of life; Don Quixote in several editions, HG Wells, and Conan Doyle, plus a fair spread of the Western canon. Theory featured heavily, and Tony, who had never been much for reading when he could be doing, had once gotten the grand tour. Mathematicians, of course, and philosophers, and historians. And mathematicians playing philosopher, and philosophers playing historian. A busy little section on astronomy that served as a lending library of sorts; Tic Toc Base was situated under some of the darkest skies left in North America, and there were plenty of amateur and professional astronomers in their ranks. Doug had an antique telescope in a leather case propped in the corner. His father’s name was embossed on the strap.

Apart from the bookshelves, the only truly personal touch was the ring on Doug’s small finger, a souvenir from his very brief stint in the Army. He said the brass in Washington liked to see it; but he wore it all the time, so Tony figured that time in the forces was still important to Doug, even when he went back to civilian life.

Tony was familiar with all this. He had stood in this office - and sat, and eaten, and slept - a hundred times. But today he looked around with fresh eyes. Doug had been this obsessed, this driven, this… singular… from the very first days.

Tony looked at the Doug standing beside him. Doug was about his age, Tony realized with a burst of shock. No lines, no gray in his hair, a touch more trim, with basic training not so many years behind. More youthful, physically, but the same eternal, slightly estranged soul.

Tony tilted his head when he realized Doug was staring back at him. “What?”

“I keep thinking I might recognize you,” Doug admitted. “If I just look hard enough.”

“You won’t. We haven’t met yet.” Tony’s brain had finally absorbed that. It had a rather chilling effect: for all he thought knew about this place and these people, they were strangers. He was in a strange land.

And if he wasn’t careful, the Doug Phillips he would come to know, the project he had given his life to see complete, might become something else. The complexity of his situation, and the care he needed to take here, were beginning to sink in.

Tony knew he had gone unfriendly and cold. But perhaps that was for the best. He needed the space in his own head to think things through.

Doug, if he noticed the shift in tone, decided not to comment on it. He directed Tony’s attention to the windows.

“How long until we complete it?” Doug asked.

Tony followed his gaze. The mouth of the Tunnel was still rough, natural rock, shrouded in ghostly plastic sheeting and thick, snaking bundles of cords criss-crossed the control floor. They hadn’t gotten the final design and circuitry completed until 1964. That was six years from now.

“Soon,” Tony said.

Doug looked sidelong. “Soon?”

“That’s all I can say.”

Doug gazed out across the control room. “These last few months... we’ve hit a wall.” 

Tony crossed his arms and remained silent.

“Newman,” Doug said, and Tony barely recognized it as his own name, coming from Doug’s lips like that, “Will you help us?”

[alexanderessex3dstoryart]

Inanimate Objects - Layout Sheet - 15/10/2020

Today, I looked at creating my layout sheet for this week’s lecture to show my learning development process for Inanimate Objects. Working from the lecture, I constructed the layout sheet based from the information that I took a note of. 

The title page was created from rendering a scene off my animatic but I placed my cup character directly looking at the monitor with the screen lighting up the desk for dramatic effect. The idea from lightning just the laptop for the whole set came from playing around with lighting in Maya that I did later on in the layout sheet. The lighting from the laptop was one of the first things I did and the results speak for themself as it provides so much atmosphere to the scene which I feel any more lighting around it or natural light coming into the set would really ruin it as it captures the horror tone perfectly. For this reason is why I have it as the title page.

Art Direction I was initially stuck on as I didn’t know if we had to lay it out all on one slide or complete it on multiple different slides for the layout sheet. Knowing this would be my first attempt, I thought I would go ahead with doing slide and see what happens.

In terms of doing the slide, I took scenes from films that I feel would help bring across the horror genre in my film weather that be looking at the lighting side of a particular shot or the positioning of a frame. With each of these scenes, I used appropriate film language to anlayse how they achieve their shots. This whole process was really enjoyable to do as I really love particularly the drawn segments of me analyse the scenes. Two films I’m most drawn to is definitely Psycho and Lights Out due to how they play around with lighting as i love Psycho’s black and white colour scheme but ‘Light’s Out’ lighting builds up to the action.

3 Idea Panel Board contains three of my favorite ideas that I could of chosen for the project to animate. These consist of the western themed idea, the parallel parking idea and the romance idea. 

This 12 Panel Storyboard is a far more updated version compared to the previous storyboard I boarded in the blog. The reason for this is that I forgot to consider that we could only use three cuts for the film which meant I needed to change the first two scenes of the storyboard to meet with the brief.

The Colour Script is essentially a continuation of the colour script I was doing in the briefing as I really liked how I initially drew/coloured it out and felt it perfectly encapsulated the kind of lighting I wanted to show in the film. Whilst I have one for now, I do plan to make some other colour scripts in photoshop to give the layout a bit more variety. 

Following the tutorials on the VLE, these are my first initial render style frames that I created with my current set. As mentioned before for the title page, I already know what kind of lighting I would like to create for the scene that being using the laptop as the only source of lighting to help create the horror aesthetic to the scene. But out of curiosity, I wanted to experiment with colour landing onto the model to see what kind of results that would produce for me like red and yellow. This was also because I wanted to see if it could complement the white lighting as well. Looking at the renders that were made, I feel they do look good but feel they take away from the overall spooky vibe I aiming for.

[cameron-ashurst22]

Year 2 Weekly Summaries - Week 13

Day 1 - Character Feedback Session with John : Jekyll and Hyde

In todays feedback session ,  John gave me constructive feedback on the two characters I had been working on over the Christmas break. Over the Christmas break I developed two turnarounds and took first hand reference of New York City. The two turnarounds comprised of both the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde characters and heavily drew influence from 1920s New York. The first character is a Wall Street accountant who enjoys playing poker as a hobby. For this character I tried to convey the sense of arrogance that I noticed when I was in New York from watching people walk by around me . John liked that I wanted to draw in a sort of Disney style as he thought the shape language I could convey would greatly benefit the character design as a whole. He also suggested that I should look into the type of fabrics used for the different classes within society and show how that would greatly effect the character design process as a whole. He also suggested that I focus more on the character itself first and later focus on the elements of the setting I had drawn as well. He also liked the silhouette and design of the next character ‘ Ace of Spades.’ Ace of Spades has a similar build to the accountant character as he is in duality with him. The major design difference is that the characters head is an Ace of spades that floats above the torso. Ace of spades is the character I have chosen to model as I feel like creating the Hyde personality will give me more options for the walk cycle and transformation sequence in Maya.

Furthermore, I began to model the character in z brush and started by using the mannequin Z sphere . I added two more Z spheres around the head two give more mass to the head and also establish the shape of the ace of spades early on in the process.  I then added the clay build up tool to establish key landmarks on the torso and began to create the form design on photoshop. Tomorrow I will further develop the model and begin to add further layers of detail onto the design as a whole.

Day 1- Group tutorial with Lindsey

In todays group tutorial I was able to explain my idea for the screenplay as well as show the character designs to Lyndsey. The feedback I received was that it was a good concept and focused heavily of the them of an angle and a devil within Stephensons novel. Lyndsey also suggested that I look at the five stages of a classic tragedy to fully help realise the structure of the narrative. She also gave an indication in into how I would write the dialogue within the scene and showed how I can use a montage within the script to show the progression of the character within the mob. I found this feedback very helpful and I will look to better structure my screenplay and develop the characters family before the incident with the mob itself.

Day 2- Open media lab modelling session

In todays open session made major improvement to the model of the my character. I decided to start again from scratch as I have found that this is the best way for me to improve. Using the skills I learned yesterday from the previous model I was able to quickly establish the land marks and key areas onto the body. I also found that I sculpted the head of my character much better than previous iterations as I was fully able to achieve the rounded curves around the base of the head. On the contrary I need to ask for support on how to fully detach the head away from the neck to give a true reflection of the character I had created in photoshop. This will also support the form of the torso as I am currently building up mass along the shoulder and towards the traps. But if I make the mass to large it will greatly effect the build of the character in relation to the head itself. By moving the head upwards I can complete the base of the ace of spades and begin to create the collar of the shirt for the character. Furthermore, I need to work on creating the hands for the character as they are too small and thin due to smoothness of the arm. I need to add more mass to the palm of the hand in order to establish positions for the fingers and thumb relative to it.

Day 3 - Introduction to Retopology 8th January 2020

In todays session with Adam I was introduced to retopology. For this we exported a head from Z-Brush to Maya. For this Adam advised not to scale as it transferred into Maya as this would mess up the high res sculpt created in Z brush. I started using the quad draw tool around the main landmarks of the eyes and mouth. By creating a loop around these this made it easier to connect up rather than starting from one point. I tried to not create triangle or have any gaps. As well as not having a 5 point intersection from quads as that would cause major issues when baking within Maya. I am looking forward to retopologising my own character after I have finished modelling.

Day 4 - Narrative strategies screenwriting

Preparation for screenplay- many screenwriters begin with a beat sheet often bullet pointed. The stories key events and incidents- anything that moves the story forward is a beat.

Preparation: the outline:

Written to help you visualise your story

A bit like a short story. Write in full sentences and paragraphs. No need for fancy language

Always third person, present tense

Flesh out each beat by adding detail and description

Try to think like a camera - don’t waste time on what can’t be shown or heard

Doesn’t (usually) include dialogue 

Can include slug line/ scene headings

Screenplay- 1000 words 

Reflective essay - 1000 words

Running time of a screenplay is estimated as 1 minute per formatted page

As a rough guide assume 150 to 220 words per page.

There is no set word count per page: it will vary depending on 

Dialogue

Scene action

Use of white space 

Formatting 

Screenplay written in Courier 12 point font 

Celtx and written duet is free screenwriting software

Show what works on screen as animation 

5 basic conventions

1.Give each new scene a heading or slug line - written in caps. 

INT/EXT interior and exterior 

Location 

Time of day

New scene begins with change in time or locations

2.Slug line is always followed by scene action/description(even if just a single sentence)

Scene action- the non dialogue bit of the script

All the actions and descriptions

Introduces and briefly describes characters and locations

Cover any other relevant scene’ business’

Keep description simple, clear, visual.always write in present tense

Limited to what we can see and hear on screen

Characters name in caps first time only 

Descriptions are brief

Lead the eye- show us visuals in logical order

Splitting the action is if you want to show a series of separate actions simply place each action on a new line

Montage is exactly the same layout 

Spec script is written for a reader. It rarely includes camera angles or scene transitions

However all scripts traditionally begin with fade in and end with fade out an the end

3. Dialogue layout 

Headed by the speakers name

Appears in a central column down the page 

Single spaced

Less is more -film is primarily a visual medium

Can be broken by lines of actions

4. Parenthetical's

To show who a character is talking to 

Or if tone contradicts meaning

Mainly used these days for little bits of action that occur during dialogue 

5.sound

V.O - voice over

O.S - offscreen not in shot

You can put important sound effects in caps 

[louisrunh260-blog]

Some Valuable Kitchen Renovation Ideas

"Have you ever went into a Lowes, Home Depot or Costco and asked to see the owner? Naturally not; that's absurd. It does nevertheless shed some light on why acquiring services from the huge box shops regularly ends in disaster. Let me say at the outset that I have nothing versus the box stores. In reality I invest numerous thousand dollars there every year. If I need a product they bring I select it up, take it home, plug it in and utilize it. If it doesn't work effectively I return it for a replacement or my cash back. No issue. Have you ever tried to return a kitchen or bath remodel? Of course not; that's ridiculous too. That's another reason the huge box model doesn't work well for complex design/build projects. Make no mistake the box shops want quite to offer top-notch services as well as off the shelf products. It's not for absence of desire that they fail. Why would a property owner consider buying a kitchen or bath from a store like House Depot or Lowes?

There are 3 primary reasons:

1) We presume the cost will be better because we benefit from their leveraged buying power.

2) We assume they will be around in case we have any service warranty problems in the future.

3) They offer financing and/or other incentives.

Let's analyze these one by one. Initially, while it is true that large chains buy more volume than a lot of retail outlets, they likewise acquire some items (eg cabinets) from name brand name manufacturers that are not of the same quality as those the manufacturer provides their retailers. This provides package store with much better margins however at the expense of the homeowner who is getting a product of slightly lower quality marketed under the same brand name. Secondly, while many large chains have great return and service warranty policies, when you add outdoors subcontractors and the subcontractor's subcontractors to the equation it becomes very tough to deal with any of the myriad concerns that can turn up during or after a kitchen or bathroom remodel. Finally, the offer of funding or some other token incentive will never ever compensate for the problems and frustrations frequently associated with box store building and construction projects of any size. Also, most retailers have access to 3rd party financing and want to include a sink or some other product to close a sale.

Let's go through a simplified example of contracting with a box store to have a kitchen redesigned. First the property owner visits the kitchen area department of the shop either with measurements of their own or to schedule the shop to send out somebody to their home to collect the necessary details. So the first person the house owner has contact with is the salesperson in the shop. Next a second person visits the home and sketches a layout which is reclaimed to the store and provided to a designer, which may or may not be the original salesperson.

The designer develops a kitchen design and invites the property owner to the shop to evaluate it and look a cabinet and counter top alternatives. If other choices are to be made, such as plumbing or lighting fixtures, the property owner will need to work with people in those departments to make those choices and get the products required. Presuming that the house owner approves the style and accepts the price they then spend for the full price of the cabinets and maybe the counter top product also. The task is then turned over to the expediting department to purchase the materials and pick the subcontractor to offer the task to. This subcontractor in many cases has actually never ever seen the job and is working off a pay sheet that determines what they get paid for each task of a job.

It is worth noting that the main subcontractor, rarely if ever, works on the job himself. They pass the project to among their subcontractors who in turn uses whatever labor is at their disposal to do the job. None of the subcontractors who actually do the work desire to continue working under this plan any longer than they have to. For something, the pay isn't that excellent. The box shops squeeze the primary subcontractor so they can use attractive prices to their consumers. The main subcontractor in turn squeezes his subcontractors so that he can make as much as possible on each task. The subcontractor who does the work will give up as soon as he has a much better offer or can get a job of his own. Often this happens in the middle of a job. It's not tough to envision what type of issues that produces. The cabinets are shipped straight to the client's house where somebody should be waiting to accept the shipment. If the subcontractor who is to do the work is even a little professional he will examine the order for damage prior to deconstructing the property owner's kitchen thus preventing a major troublesome hold-up if among the primary parts has actually arrived harmed.

Now you have some idea of the variety of individuals involved and how no one person has followed the project from the very beginning to a delighted conclusion. This approach offers too many opportunities for miscommunication, absence of follow up and general passiveness which lead to the horror stories everybody has become aware of often times. If a kitchen area or bath remodel is in your future, consider finding a smaller sized, possibly household owned business where personal attention and responsibility are the trademarks. Cabinets and countertops are commodities. The success and stress level of the project will be identified by the care and professionalism of the person you deal with and they should be there for the whole job."

[ourwaywardfestivalcollectorworld]

Introduction to Client-side development

Main elements of client-side application

Website scripts run in one of two places – the client side, also called the front-end, or the server side, also called the back-end. The client of a website refers to the web browser that is viewing it. The server of a website is, of course, the server that hosts it.

Distributed systems use client-side elements for users to interact with, these client-side elements include,

·         Views –what users see (mainly GUIs)

·         Controllers –contain event handers for the Views

·         Client-model –Business logic and data

 Development technologies    

There are two main categories of coding, scripting and programming for creating Web Applications: Client-Side Scripting is generally viewable by any visitor to a site (from the view menu click on "View Source" to view the source code).

Below are some common Client-Side Scripting technologies:

·         HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

·         CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

·         JavaScript

·         Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)

·         jQuery (JavaScript Framework Library - commonly used in Ajax development)

·         MooTools (JavaScript Framework Library - commonly used in Ajax development)

·         Dojo Toolkit (JavaScript Framework Library - commonly used in Ajax development)

Top Web Development Frameworks

·         Angularjs

·         Laravel

·         React.js

·         Node.js

·         Tensorflow

·         Symfony

Client-Side Development Technologies

Rich and interactive portal web applications use a variety of technologies such as Ajax, JavaScript, JSON, and patterns such as REST. These technologies and patterns allow developers to create increasingly responsive and highly interactive web applications,

·         JavaScript

·         Ajax

·         Disc JavaScript Framework

·         Portal-Aware XMLHttpRequest

·         Web-Based and REST Style Services

·         JSON

·         Ajax Toolkits

Elements in HTML

Structural elements, header, footer, nav, aside, article

Text elements:

·         Headings –<h1> to <h6>

·         Paragraph –<p>

·         Line break -<br>

Images, Hyperlinks

Importance of CSS in Web Development

Cascading Style Sheets, commonly known as CSS, is an integral part of the modern web development process. It is a highly effective HTML tool that provides easy control over layout and presentation of website pages by separating content from design.

Although CSS was introduced in 1996, it gained mainstream popularity by the early 2000s when popular browsers started supporting its advanced features. The latest version, CSS3, has been available since 1998 and was last updated in September 2008

·         Improves Website Presentation

·         Makes Updates Easier and Smoother

·         Helps Web Pages Load Faster

 The 3 main types of CSS selectors

1.      Type selectors-

 Type Selectors are very simple. They correspond with any HTML element type. For example, add the following code to your blank CSS file; these are three simple Type Selectors

 2.      ID Selectors-

 We assign elements IDs when they are unique on a page; there is only one “intro” section on our page.  This is important, because two elements cannot have the same ID. When an element has an “ID” we can access it with a CSS selector by placing a pound sign (#) in front of its ID value.

 3.      Class Selectors-

 Class Selectors are very similar to ID Selectors. The major difference is that while a certain ID should only be assigned to one element, we can assign the same class to as many elements as we want.

Complex Selectors

CSS3 brought new selectors, opening a whole new world of opportunities and improvements to existing practices.

1.      Child Selectors-

 Child selectors provide a way to select elements that fall within one another, thus making them children of their parent element. These selections can be made two different ways, using either descendant or direct child selectors.

 2.      Sibling Selectors-

 Knowing how to select children of an element is largely beneficial, and quite commonly seen. However, sibling elements, those elements that share a common parent, may also need to be selected. These sibling selections can be made by way of the general sibling and adjacent sibling selectors.

 3.      Attribute Selectors-

 Some of the common selectors looked at early may also be defined as attribute selectors, in which an element is selected based upon its class or ID value. These class and ID attribute selectors are widely used and extremely powerful but only the beginning. Other attribute selectors have emerged over the years, specifically taking a large leap forward with CSS3. Now elements can be selected based on whether an attribute is present and what its value may contain.

 4.      Pseudo-classes-

 Pseudo-classes are similar to regular classes in HTML however they are not directly stated within the markup, instead they are dynamically populated as a result of users’ actions or the document structure. The most common pseudo-class, and one you’ve likely seen before, is: hover. Notice how this pseudo-class begins with the colon character,:, as will all other pseudo-classes.

CSS Media Queries

Media queries in CSS3 extended the CSS2 media types idea: Instead of looking for a type of device, they look at the capability of the device.

Media queries can be used to check many things, such as:

·         width and height of the viewport

·         width and height of the device

·         orientation (is the tablet/phone in landscape or portrait mode?)

·         resolution

Using media queries are a popular technique for delivering a tailored style sheet to desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones (such as iPhone and Android phones).

 Ways of using CSS

1.      Inline CSS

 First off, we can include CSS directly in our HTML elements. For this, we make use of the style attribute and then we provide properties to it. We can also set multiple properties inside the style tag if we wanted. However, I don’t want to continue down this path, as things start to get messy if our HTML is cluttered with lots of CSS inside it.

 2.      Internal CSS

 The other way to include CSS is using the style element in the head section of the HTML document. This is called internal styling. In the style element, we can give the styling to our HTML elements by selecting the element(s) and provide styling attributes. Just like we applied the color property to the h1 element above.

 3.      External CSS

 The third and most recommended way to include CSS is using an external stylesheet. We create a stylesheet with a .css extension and include its link in the HTML document, one stylesheet can also be imported into other HTML files, so this is great for reusability.

What is Library, API, Framework, SDK, and Plugin

Library is group of classes which helps in development easier. Library project can be included into main project. Where you can use classes and resources to build new features.

API-

     API abbreviated as “Application Programming Interface”. These are set of interfaces which       enables application developer to interact with hidden methods and classes in library.

Framework-

      Framework is set of libraries. Framework has set of protocols which helps developer to develop the application. Developer needs to follow these protocols, if he wants to develop service with the help of any framework.

SDK-

      SDK is group of library, which help in development and it uses particular system.

Plugin-

      If certain feature is not present in your application and it cannot be developed using your SDK or framework then we include plugin externally in our application. Plugin are added as dependencies in project’s maven or gradle.

  JavaScript 6

ECMAScript 6 is also known as ES6 and ECMAScript 2015. Some people call it JavaScript 6.

Some of [ECMAScript 6’s] major enhancements include modules, class declarations, lexical block scoping, iterators and generators, promises for asynchronous programming, destructuring patterns, and proper tail calls. The ECMAScript library of built-ins has been expanded to support additional data abstractions including maps, sets, and arrays of binary numeric values as well as additional support for Unicode supplemental characters in strings and regular expressions. The built-ins are now extensible via sub classing.

There are three major categories of features

Better syntax for features that already exist (e.g. via libraries). For example:

·         Classes

·         Modules

New functionality in the standard library. For example:

·         New methods for strings and Arrays

·         Promises

·         Maps, Sets

Completely new features. For example:

·         Generators

·         Proxies

·         WeakMaps

[annasdesignblog-blog]

Week 4 - Guest Speakers

Over a course of two weeks, we had the pleasure of welcoming different guest speakers, coming from graphic design, illustration and animation backgrounds. It was a great experience as I haven’t had the opportunity to attend a talk from a professional designer, nevermind three different ones from various industries. 

The first guest speaker that came to the university was Korky Paul, an award-winning illustrator of children’s books, most famous for his work for the Winnie The Witch books. These are books I owned and loved when I was younger, so I was really excited to meet the illustrator behind them! The Winnie The Witch books are worked on with Valerie Thomas, who writes the text – the two don’t have a personal relationship, despite collaborating on many books together as all the work between the two is done through their editors and agents; I found this particularly interesting, as I thought authors and illustrators often worked closely together.  

The talked consisted of Paul giving an insight to his work process, describing in detail how he starts an illustration, right until the finished product. Paul creates his work with bright watercolour paints and pen and ink; his work is recognisable by an anarchic yet detailed style. Each illustration take roughly five days to complete due to the detail; in a standard 32 page picture book layout, which Paul described, there are about 24 pages of illustration as the other pages are used for titles, copyright text etc – this information was extremely useful, as now, if I were to create my own picture book, I would know the layout and what each page consists of. Typically, the illustrations Paul creates are over a double page spread, so he creates 12. As a starting point, Paul researches the object he is going to draw. In this case, the process he described came from Winnie’s Dinosaur Day book – the key subject is dinosaurs, so Paul looked at images of dinosaurs, their habitats and behaviour. He noted that he was surprised that no one really knows what colour dinosaurs really were, which gave him the freedom to paint them any colour he wanted; he normally creates quite realistic work, as stated earlier, so being able to pick any colour to work with was exciting. After this, Paul studies the text he has been given; he strongly pointed out that there must be a connection between the text and images as the Winnie The Witch books are children books, and the images exist to help them understand the text, which is why they must reflect the text. A first rough draft of a drawing that is inspired by the text is created. Paul doesn’t simply create this on a clean sheet - he considers the layout of the book, so the text has its own space, enabling it to stand out, and not be covered by images. He also considers bleed and trim when it comes to printing, so he isn’t drawing on edges that will be cut off.

The first rough draft (image belongs to Korky Paul)

After the first draft of the drawing is created, he uses a photocopier to enlarge the drawing to the correct print size, and places this on a lightbox, a vital tool when it comes to illustrating considering to him, making it easier for him to copy what he’s already drawn. The drawing is the improved by fixing composition, design and text positioning. Inks, specifically Kanadahar drawing inks and a dip pen, are used to draw over the pencil lines, and those are then erased. The photocopier is then again used – this time to copy the drawing onto watercolour paper. Again, pencil lines are drawn over with same inks, then erased. Before using watercolours, masking fluid is used as a base, then peeled off. Then, the painting beings – Paul uses Schminke Horadam Aquarelle watercolours. He starts by painting the background, then midground, and foreground last. 

Painting progress, and finished painting (image belong to Korky Paul)

All the finished drawings are lastly scanned into his Mac, where he uses InDesign to place them into a document which is then sent to his editors.

Images placed in InDesign (image belongs to Korky Paul)

During the talk, Paul shared his drawings of all the illustrations he had done for this book, and we were able to see the in person the rough drafts, outlined images and the finished ones - this was really inspiring as it was a different experience getting to look at it in person and seeing all the detail close-up, rather than just what was being shown in the presentation. I took some images of the outlined images; I got given page 24 and 25 to look at, which again was interesting as I got to see what the other illustrations in the same book were like.

The second guest speaker was a former University of Derby student, Ian Cherry. Cherry has passion for sports, especially football, and this is what he focuses his graphic design work on as he specialises in designing typefaces that are used on back of football shirts. He currently works at the Derby County Football Club, and has an impressive history of designing for clubs like Real Madrid, Manchester United and Hull City. Cherry’s talk consisted of his journey from leaving university to now, which was really interesting and inspiring as it was relatable to me. 

Cherry’s first job was at a sports company - SportingiD, which focused on personalising sports kits. Cherry was a Design Assistant - he applied for the role when still at university; despite not having the required experience, his hunger to succeed and passion for sport made him stand out and get the job. Cherry mentioned that the difference between time given at university and in a job has a massive difference - at university, the time given allows for a lot of potential ideas to be explored, developed and experimented with, whereas at a job, the time given always varies - sometimes as little as a couple of hours can be given as a deadline, but that’s just the reality of working as a designer in an unpredictable field that is sports. Ideas are rarely sketched and developed; having to learn to come up with good ideas quick is a vital skill, and one that comes with more practice and experience. After being a Design Assistant for a while, there was nothing but success that followed - Cherry was promoted to Graphic Designer, and designed for many football clubs including the famous Real Madrid three times, all thanks to his creative fonts, attention to detail and ability to work fast. This lead to another promotion - Senior Graphic Designer, which eventually lead him to go back to Derby as he got the most out of that job as he could. He was offered a job as the only Graphic Designer at Derby County Football Club. There, he designed a font that is not only used for the shirts, but the football club as a whole - the font is featured on posters, social media material, season tickets etc. The current campaign he described is dedicated to football fans, with the slogan “nothing without u”, appearing prominently on all Derby County Football Club material. Cherry touched upon that all the images used were taken by a photographer who specifically works for Derby County Football Club - he doesn’t use internet or stock images. This ensures that he always has the copyright to the images he uses, as well as originality as no one else will have access to these photos. Although, there is a downside to this - picking out images can be very time consuming, as you are unable to search for one specific image as you are when using Google Image search for example.

Cherry noted that the campaign covers all sorts of formats, such as digital and the physical tickets, so the typeface and images used must be flexible and adaptable in order to fit every format. Cherry oversees two designers where he currently work, and describes his job as no week being the same - consistency appears at times, but the job is unpredictable which makes it really exciting and busy. 

The last guest speaker was the animator Samantha Moore, an award winning animator and researcher. Moore specialises in creating animated documentaries; she had a breakthrough with ‘doubled up’ (https://vimeo.com/19516862), an animated documentary about the artist's shock at finding out she’s pregnant with twins, to music by artist Adam Goddard, shown on Channel 4 and many festivals after. The film was praised for touching on the topic of balance between being a mother and an artist, which isn’t covered in mainstream media. Following this, Moore created animated documentaries such as ‘An Eyeful of Sound’ (https://vimeo.com/11649675), a visualisation of life with synaesthesia; the short film takes a selection of every day sounds and animates the responses of real people who suffer from synaesthesia put together to music and sounds from Adam Goddard once more, as well as ‘Loop’  which animates molecules and scientific process via 3D modeled animation, worked on with Dr Serge Mostowy at Imperial College London. This video is used to explain how the cytoskeleton responds to intracellular pathogens by assembling into septin cages within a zebrafish infection. Moore collaborates with experts on the subject she is focusing her animation on very often, and is one of the things she’s most known for - this is the same for music as she always works with music professionals to create sounds, and never uses anything pre-recorded. She also works with real people when researching and interviewing, and always ensures she’s accurate and always sends her process to check back and see if what she’s created matches the experiences of the people she interviewed - this was very important in the living with synaesthesia project for example. Moore also often sketches and photographs her visits to inspire her and help her create ideas, as well as ensuring her work is accurate again if she has photographs and sketches to refer back to. Despite this, Moore still mainly works digitally, although the project she is working on currently, ‘Bloomers’, a film about an underwear factory in Manchester is created by printing on fabric, meaning it’s something different to what she creates normally. 

To me, the visit from Ian Cherry was most inspirational as he focused on graphic design and the industry I aspire to be working in soon, therefore it was important to listen to a successful journey from graduating to where Cherry is at now. I also loved how he was a student at the university, as I got a taste to experience a real, successful University of Derby graduate story. I am not dismissing the talks from Paul and Moore - there were elements in both their talks which were interesting and related to me, such as Paul’s mixed media and experimental journey to the finished illustration, as well as Moore’s advice and tips on collaborating, but the talk from Ian Cherry was just most interesting and inspiring to me personally.

[tisfan]

Stark Truth

Chapter Four of that Tony/Doom fic that nobody asked for and I just can’t seem to stay away from... things are looking grim for our boys...

To Victor goes the Spoils - A Stark Reminder - Doom’s Day Scenario

At least, Tony thought, looking around at the burning city, the Avengers weren’t the only superhero group who regularly made mincemeat out of their surroundings. Hulk was really smashie, and Captain America hadn’t yet decided that opening a door was easier than crashing through the wall, not to mention the number of bad guys who tended to use Iron Man as their own personal wrecking ball. 

On the other hand, Johnny Storm was literally burning the place to the ground. Human Torch? More like human dumpster fire. Tony sighed. Fire, like biological weapons, didn’t care who was killed. Tony picked his way carefully through the burning building, getting feedback every few feet to make sure the floor was still stable and the roof wasn’t going to come down on his head. 

This was the warehouse that Richards had decided was probably storing Tony’s tech -- not certain what, and an in depth examination of Stark Industries records hadn’t shown anything missing. If the building hadn’t been on fire, Tony would have left it til the battle’s end to start putting pieces together. It bothered him to be letting others go into harm’s way as he examined crates and files, downloaded computer databases, and tried to figure out what Doom was up to. 

Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t fighting; the doombots were annoyingly persistant and several dozen of them had followed Iron Man into the building. They were also fairly standard grunt troops and not any of the specialized attack modulars that the Avengers had dealt with before. If Tony didn’t know better, he’d suspect they’d caught Doom entirely by surprise. 

He wasn’t sure he did know better, but nothing with Doom had ever been as easy and uncomplicated as he’d believed it should be. So, yeah, probably a trap somewhere lurking under the whole mess. 

In one room, Tony discovered a full layout of a superlatively upgraded Doomstahdt. Latveria’s founding, centuries ago, had given it some gorgeous architecture, for like, the 1200’s, but these days, the mud huts and fantastical cathedrals were a little out of date. Modern plumbing was scarce, and while the population was generally better off than some parts of the world, Tony knew families in coal towns with more luxurious  homes than middle-class Latverians. 

Except Doom seemed to be planning some major upgrades. Skyscrapers towered over the surrounding landscape, modern high-rise apartments, overly generous green public areas, underground power lines. This was going to take billions of dollars, years of work, but when it was finished… Doomstahdt was going to rival such modern cities as Singapore and Taipei.

Mobile readers, there’s a cut here. You can access Tumblr from your browser to read the rest, of check out the whole story on A03

“Guess Light Bright’s doin’ him a favor by speeding up the clearing process,” Tony muttered, leaning against the table to study the layout. At the heart, several meters underground… was a full-sized arc-reactor power source. Self-reliant, clean energy. A warm light for all mankind. Tony felt a peculiar squeeze in his chest. 

The underground power generator had some improvements, even to Tony’s model, amplifiers and storage cells. Tony had JARVIS capture some images; this deserved more scrutiny than he had time for right now. At least he knew what Doom had stolen, except really, Stark Industries kept careful track of the arc-reactors. Surely he would know if one of them were missing, if even the components had been illegally salvaged. 

Maybe it was theoretical, something Doom was planning, but hadn’t yet acquired. Still, it made Tony nervous; the arc-reactor was a great power source; could be used to anything. To run an entire city, or to power hordes of Doombots. Better check it out. Tony launched himself up to continue a search of the burning building. 

Doom watched from the sidelines; enough out of the way that his Doombots would do their job, along with the servo-guards, and others, without drawing attention to himself. He issued commands; keeping a small group of rotating servo-guards to occupy the Fantastic Four, the rest were directed to civilian evacuation and preservation tasks. 

Already, Richards and Storm had dropped over several buildings and completely disrupted emergency services in the city. Doom wasn’t even certain what they were here for; Doom had not been involved in anything besides infrastructure in the last several months. 

After tearing up several squads of guards, Doom finally stepped out, commanding his guards to act as if he was merely another Doombot, serving for the moment as the Voice of Doom. 

“What do you want with Doom?” he demanded, marching up the street to where Richards was involved in disgusting gyrations with half a squad of servo-guards, arms and legs stretched to ridiculous and grotesque lengths. 

Richards started yelling about illegal tech and weapons programs. Doom sneered behind his mask. 

“Doom has acquired nothing that is not necessary to the comfort of the population of Latveria,” Doom declared, putting his hands on his hips in aggravation. He should have known that he would not be allowed to rebuild his nation. 

“You should know that Stark’s tech is watched very closely, Von Doom,” Sue said. She wasn’t visible, not that that was anything new. 

“Should we forget, just because Doom rules this nation, that there are half a million people living there who just want good lives? These people, who live in an enforced monarchy, we should just allow Johnny Storm to blow up their city because he’s angry with Doom?” Doom gestured around at the burning city. “Whatever Doom has done in the past, the people of Latveria deserve better!” 

“They deserve better than you!” Johnny Storm yelled. 

“Perhaps,” Doom said. “But that is not your choice to make. You have come to Latveria on invasion, with no evidence. Doom --” Doom turned. The warehouse was burning. He squinted; a figure in red and gold armor whizzed past one of the windows. Iron Man had been strangely absent during the battle in the city. 

Doom narrowed his gaze; the fire was spreading rapidly through the building, racing toward -- 

Shit. The fuel packets for the arc-reactor. Stable, safe energy, but not when some idiot set it on fire. The explosion would put a crater in the middle of Latveria the size of Sudbury crater. “Fools!” 

Doom turned his back on the Fantastic Assholes. 

Richards tried to head him off -- literally, stretching his neck so far out to make a loop around Doom’s retreating form -- “This one’s him! Get him, Ben!” 

No. Doom did not have time for this nonsense. He tore free of Richards’s grip, moving as fast as he could. Tony could not, could not be in that building when it blew. 

Richards grabbed him again. 

“Idiot,” Doom growled. “If the core melts down, everyone will die!” 

Doom burst into the building. The air snapped, subtle, popping Doom’s ears. Sue Storm had surrounded the entire building in one of her force-shields. Well, at least she wasn't as stupid as Richards. What she saw in that man anyway was more than Doom could understand. 

Doom raced to the storage facility; the fire was already thick and even though Sue had contained the building, there was enough oxygen that it wouldn’t go out immediately. The red and gold of Tony’s armor glinted across the room. 

One glance was all it took. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, doomed. The core was already burning. 

Iron Man gazed into the crate, then snapped his head up to stare at Doom. There was no reading his expression behind that mask. “At least I’ll take you with me,” Tony snarled, the voice modulated by the armor, stripped of nuance. 

“No,” Doom said. “I’ll take you with me.” 

The core melted. Doom took three steps and crossed the room, weaving his magic behind him. A containment shield for the core, by necessity, stretching to fill the shield Sue had already locked down. The force from the inside was going to be a thousand times that of Hiroshima. Doom flung another, to protect Tony from the heat and sudden lack of oxygen, and then the building went up. Red and yellow flames engulfed everything, like being thrust suddenly into the middle of a volcano. Doom reached, grabbed Iron Man’s hand, and teleported them away. 

Tony wasn’t expecting to wake up. One of these days, he was going to be right about that. Something would explode in his face and he’d just not ever wake up from that. God, sometimes he was looking forward to it, because waking up after being exploded always, always sucked. 

Sometimes less than others; being blown up in Afghanistan had decidedly been worse. 

Tony was flat on his back, but the material under him was relatively soft. 

His body ached, but he’d had worse muscle pain after a few days of blackout drinking and partying. Not that he did that as much anymore so he wasn’t used to it. 

And there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room with him. Tony risked it and opened his eyes. 

It was decidedly not a hospital, despite the bag of fluids that hung on an IV stand by his bedside. Tony traced the line down to where it fed into the peripheral port in his left hand. 

The room was decorated, richly furnished, and the bed Tony was situated on had silk sheets, a rich, glowing gold. The other furnishings, a wardrobe, table, desk and chairs, were all elegant and tasteful, if not necessarily to Tony’s taste, at least to someone’s. 

Tony looked down at himself; he was wearing a white linen sleep-shirt of some sort and his wounds had been tended, cleaned and wrapped. He felt sort of shitty, but that was probably a result of battle and being exploded and not the care he’d gotten. 

He was, in a word, confused. 

Tony scrubbed his right hand over his face and swallowed; his throat was dry and he was thirsty. His hand continued down the side of his chin and then stopped cold. Something encircled his neck like a collar. More exploring proved that entirely right. He was wearing a god damned collar. Like a dog. Like a slave. 

Tony got to his feet, heedless of the IV stand, which pulled over and tugged at the site. Tony ripped it free, wincing a little. He pressed his fingers over the bleeding skin and held it down to staunch the flow. There was a mirror over the dresser on the far side of the room and he headed that way, aware of the plush carpet under his feet. What the actual fuck was going on? Where was he? 

The mirror threw back his face, a little beat-up, which was normal. Black eye, again. 

And a silver and green collar locked around his neck, metal, solid. 

Fuck. 

The door behind him opened and Tony reached for the first object he could find to use as a weapon. Not that a vanity bench was going to do him lots of good. 

The last person he expected to see was in the doorway. 

“Rabun!” The vanity stool fell from nerveless fingers and smashed into the floor, breaking into pieces. “What are you doing here?” 

Rabun spread his hands, his expression pained. “I live here.” 

“You work for Doom.” Tony’s voice was flat. His heart ached in his chest and he could barely breathe. But Rabun would never see that. Stark men are iron. 

“I work for Latveria, yes.” Rabun didn’t smile, didn’t try to explain, didn’t say anything. He pulled out a chair from the table and practically fell into it, his whole body screaming dejection. 

“You. Work for Doom. You work for the --” 

“Do not,” Rabun interrupted, cutting off Tony’s tirade, mid-rant. “I work for Latveria. I work for my home. I cannot change where I was born and I cannot change who I was born to be. I regret that this has come to pass. I did not wish you to find out in this manner.” 

Tony should be angry; he knew this, knew it like he knew his own name. He should feel betrayed. Lied to. Deceived. He should hate, with every fiber of his being, the man before him. He didn’t. Watching Rabun stare at the table, his whole body weighed down with grief, Tony could do nothing but ache. “It would put us at risk,” he said, slowly. “If it were known. Have I put you at risk, then?” 

“Not just yet,” Rabun said. 

“Doom saved my life,” Tony said, again, taking time with his words. There were too many questions, asking them would give away too much. He had to be careful, very careful, here, and lock away his heart. “Why would he do that?” 

“For me,” Rabun said. 

“He knows? About us?” What us? Was there an us anymore? When he didn’t even know the truth, when everything they’d made together had been built on a carefully constructed lie? 

“Doom knows,” Rabun said. “Doom has always known.” 

“It was a trap.” That wasn’t a question, but Rabun held out one hand, entreatingly. 

“No,” Rabun said. “If Doom had wanted to entrap you, Doom would have used bait.” 

Whatever ill-conceived thoughts Tony had harbored fell away. He would have fallen into that trap; he would have done anything, paid any price, if Doom had dangled Rabun in front of him. Tony had never been exactly reasonable when it came to threats against the people he loved. There were so few of them that fell into that category, Tony couldn’t stand to lose any of them. 

“He knew, and he did nothing?” That, Tony found a little hard to believe. 

“Doom knew. Doom allowed it. So long as it did not interfere with the project. The risk was not from Doom, but Doom’s allies. And enemies. Who would see you, who would see us, as an opportunity to exploit.” 

“So, why, then, are you not at risk?” 

“The world thinks you’re dead. Richards believed he was mistaken that Doom was in the explosion,” Rabun said. “Doom has made a public statement about the invasion. For once, the world’s outrage is enflamed on Latveria’s behalf.” 

“So what happens now?” Tony couldn’t help but raise his hand to the collar that someone -- probably Doom -- had put around his neck. 

Rabun winced. “For Doom, for you, for me,” Rabun said, “it would be best if you remained here. Not; I would prefer not as a prisoner.” 

“You might as well not sugar-coat it, sweetheart,” Tony said. “If I’m here for the rest of my life without being able to leave, or have anyone know I’m still alive, that’s a prisoner, whether I’m in chains or not.” 

If possible, Rabun looked even more despondent. “I know,” he said. “I wish I… that it had not… it’s worthless, my apologies. But you have it. This is not what I wanted for us.” 

“Us?” 

Rabun turned his head, eyes squeezing shut, his mouth twisting with pain. “I still love you,” he said. 

Tony blinked. His eyes burned and his throat ached. “You never said it.” 

“My great shame,” Rabun said, “that I could not say it when you would have believed me.” 

“Yeah.” 

Rabun sat there a while longer and both of them looked away, not able to meet the other’s gaze. Finally, without a word, Rabun stood up and left the room. 

Tony could not miss hearing the door lock behind him. 

He waited, until he was certain Rabun would not hear him, and then Tony fell to his knees and mourned. 

Years of experience, working hand in hand with spies and assassins, had given Tony more abilities than he’d had when he was a prisoner in Afghanistan. He could pick locks; he could subvert enemy robots, he could redirect the security cameras. 

He even managed to find tools and get the damn collar off his neck, which was a relief. 

What he couldn’t do, however, was actually leave. 

Tony arrived on the surface (because of course Von Doom had thrown him in some basement level type dungeon) and stared, aghast, at what had once been an amazing, if primitive, city. 

The city was abandoned; half of it burned to ash; smoke poured out of a few basements, the blaze still going hard underground. 

The warehouse that Tony had been in was completely gone. In its place was a sphere filled with what looked like a thunderstorm on fire. 

“What the hell?” 

“A warm light for all mankind,” Doom said, stepping up next to him. 

Tony didn’t allow himself to flinch and Doom didn’t… do anything. He just stood there, staring at the orb. 

“What happened?” Because even at the worst possible moment, Tony couldn’t help that cat’s curiosity about him, that need to know, followed up by the need to fix. 

Doom stood stiffly, hands clasped behind his back. “The arc-reactor core is melting down, constantly recycling, as more and more heat builds up. It is self-sustaining. Each moment, the force of it grows exponentially. Yesterday, it would have wiped out most of the city and surrounding countryside. Today it will flatten Latveria all the way to its borders and somewhat beyond. By tomorrow, half of Eastern Europe. In a week’s time, it’ll crack the planet down to the core.” 

“Holy hell,” Tony choked out. 

“Indeed.” Doom might have glanced at Tony; it was hard to tell with the mask that hid Doom’s face from the world. His voice, like Tony’s when he was in the armor, was modulated, emotionless. “Surrounding nations have closed their borders. Doom’s people cannot evacuate to a safe distance.”

“How long can the shield hold?” Tony shuddered. The shield was magical, something Tony rather abhorred, but at the moment he was willing to overlook it in the face of not being liquified immediately. All that Rabun had spoken of, earlier, was a lie. Doom had never intended for Tony to live. Or perhaps Rabun had not known. 

“Doom does not have enough data to be certain,” Doom said, “but Doom believes that the force will be too great to withstand within ten days. But Doom is planning to release it this day. The fate of Latveria is trivial, compared to the world. It will be remembered as a great disaster.” He tipped his head in Tony’s direction and said with a certain deadpan humor that Tony didn’t know Doom was capable of, “Perhaps they will even call it Doom’s Day, in the history books.” 

Tony couldn’t help but choke out a laugh. 

“You let me escape,” he said. 

“Yes,” Doom said. “All of Doom’s citizens are as far from here as they can get, with orders to storm the borders, if they must. You will join them. Doom will have no more deaths.” 

“And you?” 

“Doom will remain here,” Doom said. “Perhaps Doom can shunt the force of the blast. If not, Doom will still not abandon his home.” 

Tony stared at the orb, calculating furiously. “What day is it?” 

Doom gave him the date and Tony added the moon’s current location to his calculations. 

“You have a plan,” Doom observed. 

“Yeah. As it happens, I’m not in favor of large holes in the planet,” Tony said. “Conditionally.” 

“Name it.” 

Tony waited until Doom turned and gave Tony his full attention. “I want Rabun Alil. Let him go. Whatever hold you have on him, whatever he means to you, whatever he does for you. I want him to be free.” 

“Doom wishes he could do that,” Doom said, and even with the voice modulator, he sounded sincere. “It is not possible.” 

“Why not? He’s one man,” Tony demanded. “We’re talking about your entire nation, millions of people in the surrounding countries. What is he to you that you can’t let him live his own life?” 

Doom raised his hands to his mask. He touched two studs at the neck and lifted the iron faceplate free. He turned to face Tony, familiar silver hair spilling into his face, the amber eyes sad. “Because he’s me,” Rabun -- no, Victor fucking Von Doom -- said. “And if I ever meant anything to you at all, Tony, please… help me save my people.”

[oliviarthomasba2a]

Week 9 Summary - 03.02.19

Bestiary

This week I’ve managed to nearly complete my character in the pre-animation stages. Having UVed, I’ve been able to paint my creature in 3D coat, giving it the desired colours and shading I wanted. I’ve also found the use of a ‘fur’/hair brush has helped to give it a little bit more depth and shape - creating a slight impression of fur.

After this, I went into Maya and attempted to add some fur textures. Using a video tutorial online I was able to have the ‘hairs’ to the model and adjust the amount and size of them - deciding which areas would be more dense and thick compared to areas like the face that would be a lot shorter. This went rather well and the tutorial was easy to follow, however, I got to the plugin section and struggled with how to add the colours underneath. Therefore I think it’ll be best to talk to Adam or someone at uni next week to assist me with this aspect. Otherwise, I think I’m almost ready to begin animation.

Over the weekend I shot the reference footage of the live action background that’ll feature in my animation. I know that I’m aiming for something a little more complicated and lengthy than what I’ve been instructed, however, am keen to give it a try.

Something I was really keen to include was the ‘interaction’ with the live action items - therefore I filmed sections of the footage that had a movement like papers flying and curtains moving that will hopefully represent the actions and influence from my creature - really reinforcing the idea and concept that it is in this environment.

I’m unsure at this point how to successfully animate my character with the backgrounds, for example when it falls off the table how will I hide the bottom half of the creature to create the illusion of 3D environment and is actually ON the table. This is something that I’ll need to discuss with Jon at uni so I have a full understanding of the process and can actually being the layout section of the animations. 

Character Performance

This week for the character performance section of my work, I’ve managed to just about create a full stepped version of both characters in the scene.

The lip syncing wasn’t easy, however with the assistance of my pre-animation work like the dope sheets and video references of the mouth shapes, it went okay.  It’s quite hard to tell currently as the animation is in stepped and therefore is very jumpy, meaning that it is hard to see if the animation and shaps flow well and in sync with the audio. 

My reference video of the acting as a whole has been very helpful and I’ve referred to it a lot. It’s really nice to see what each character is doing and at what point - however, I’ve taken these poses and slightly exaggerated them in the animation, since this is something animation can do really well. 

This week I’m going to begin the spline version of the animation and begin to clean it up, hopefully finishing it relativity soon. First, though, I’d like to get some feedback from people at uni and see if both character’s actions are understandable, while also are expressive and work well and are in time with the audio. Using this I can make any necessary changes before I move onto the next stages. 

[technacad-blog]

The Best, the Rest, the Rare: 100 AutoCAD Tips You Should Know

From Cadnotes.com by Edwin Prakoso 

We all want to use AutoCAD better, more productive, and easily solve problem when we have one. So I compile 100 AutoCAD tips in this article, and I hope can help you. Many of the tips were written by other great CAD bloggers, you may want to follow their blog/site as well. So this is it: the best AutoCAD tips, the rest that many of us miss, and some of them are very rare. If you happen about my age, you might know I pick the name from Helloween compilation album ;)

Create and modify

Tip 1. How to: Create an Arc with Specific Length

Everybody knows how to create an arc in AutoCAD. If you need to draw an arc with specific length, do you know how to do it? See this tip how you can create an arc with specific length!

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Tip 2. Align Tool: Move, Rotate, and Scale Your Object at Once

Align is often overlooked by many AutoCAD users. Instead of using move, rotate, and scale separately, you can do it at once using this tool.

As Robin Capper said, it’s a forgotten AutoCAD hero! See the animation how to use it in Robin’s post.

Tip 3. How to Control Linetype Scale

We use linetype to control the object appearances. It can be dashdot for center lines, dashed lines for hidden lines, etc. Sometimes we have a hard time to control the linetype scale. And we can’t see the linetype as we expected. It is not that difficult actually.

See this tip: Controlling Linetype Scale is as Easy as 1,2,3!

Tip 4. 10+ Ways to Select Objects in AutoCAD

When you use modifying tools, you need to select objects. Selecting objects sometimes can be tricky, especially in quite a complex drawing. This tip have 10 ways how you can use the object selection. Useful for beginners, and some methods might be missed by advanced users. See the complete list!

Tip 5. How to: Create Angular Dimension Larger than 180 degrees

Do you need to create an angular dimension that shows angle larger than 180 degrees like below? You probably have found that you can’t create dimension with angle larger than 180 degrees after selecting those two lines.

You can actually… You can create it by selecting the lines’ vertex. Read more, and see the animation how to do it here.

Tip 6. How to Match Only Selected AutoCAD Properties

MATCHPROP is a great tool to match object properties. I used to draw everything and match the attributes later. It was quicker sometimes (but I won’t recommend you). The most obvious is when we get a drawing that is created with different standard. Sometimes we want to match only some properties between objects. Many of us don’t realize that we can choose which properties to match. I found this a couple years ago, quite late I guess. There is See the options below.

Read the complete tip here.

Tip 7. How to Link Cells Between AutoCAD Tables

We can create and use tables in AutoCAD almost as powerful as in Microsoft Excel. We can also use formula and do simple calculation. But do you know that we can use the value from cells in other table?

See the detail article in JTB World by Jimmy Bergmark.

Tip 8. How to Maintain the Attributes Value when Exploding

Block attributes is a nice tool to have. We can use it to preserve text style and size as annotation block. Drawing title and title block is a good example. The problem is when we need it explode it somehow, we will loose any information we put in the attribute.

To preserve the values, do not use explode. Use BURST instead.

Tip 9. How to Maximize Your Hyperlinks Usability

Hyperlinks are very useful to provide information for your objects. You can link any object to the manufacturer/support website, technical support email, specification documents, etc. See the tip how to reference to objects using hyperlink here. JTB World blog also has a good basic tutorial how to use hyperlinks.

They even write in very detail tip how to extend the capabilities. You can refer to a specific page in pdf, specific sheet and cell in Excel, etc. Find out the details in this page on JTB World Blog. Murray Clack also gives a tip how you can use hyperlinks to navigate between paper space and model space. See tip no. 12 here.

Tip 10. How to: Enable Snap to Hatch

Old AutoCAD version allows you to snap to hatches. In later version, this is disabled by default to optimize performance. However, if you want to enable this, you still can turn it on in drafting settings.

This behavior is controlled by OSOPTIONS system variable. Read more here.

Tip 11. Import XY Coordinates from Excel into AutoCAD

Do you need to draw lines using coordinate from excel file? The best application to do this is Civil3D or other site modeling software. However, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it using vanilla AutoCAD! Read the

details in Shaan Hurley’s Blog

.

Tip 12. Change Your MText to Lower Case or Upper Case

You might made a mistake and want to change the text case… either to lower case or upper case. Do you need to re-type it? No way! It is easy to do.

Right click in the editor and select the CHANGE CASE option.

Alternatively, press [Ctrl] + [Shift] + U to set the text to upper Case OR press [Ctrl] + [Shift] + L to set the text to lower case

Thanks to Brian for the tip!

Tip 13. Group When You Gotta Keep ‘Em Separated!

If you need to modify object together, selecting them could be tedious. Especially when your drawing is quite complex. Block is an option. However, working with blocks mean that we need to edit in as a whole. Group might be more appropriate for this purpose. There are some benefits that you can get by using groups when you think block is not the right solution. See below. Block will only allows you to have one grip point, unless you create dynamic block. Groups will maintain the original objects’ grip, but you can easily select them in one click.

See Brian’s tip about group in this article. And that is a funky title Brian!

Tip 14. Eleven killer AutoCAD macros for viewport

Do you work with viewport and layout? Paul Munford shares eleven great macros to make you even more productive with viewports! Read all the eleven killer macros here.

Tip 15. Get the Most of Multiline Attributes

AutoCAD now allow us to use multiline attributes. This of course will take many advantages from multiline text (not all), not just using simple single line text!

Now we can use text mask.

Now we can create stacked text in attributes.

And more multiline advantages!

Note: To enable stacking in block attributes, we need to change the system variable ATTIPE to 1.

This tips was submitted by Murray Clack in our contest before.

Tip 16. The Forgotten Dimension: DIMROTATED

Do you ever have problem when dimensioning when the objects are staggered? Using DIMALIGNED can’t do this. A great tip from Murray mention that we can use DIMROTATED. See the comparison between DIMALIGNED and DIMROTATED below.

There is no documentation or toolbar about it. It might be forgotten, but I’m sure you will find it really useful! This tips was submitted by Murray Clack.

Tip 17. Fillet and Chamfer for Quick Modify

OK, you know what are fillet and chamfer for. Do you know that we can use fillet and chamfer to quickly modify objects?

Trim and chamfer can be used to quickly create a corner. Use 0 as the radius (or chamfer distance). They will extend or trim the lines. Hold [shift] to override the radius/distance to 0 temporarily.

The method above will join the lines as polyline, if one of them is a polyline.

Use fillet to create arc to close parallel lines, regardless on the radius defined.

Tip 18. Align Texts Using Quick Properties Palette

Do you hate quick properties palette? Don’t! I know that many users immediately turn it off because it makes AutoCAD slow and when the palette appears, it can block your view. However, you should consider using it after read this tip. You can use it to quickly align texts using quick properties palette. See this nice tip on CAD Forum.

Tip 19. Filter Objects Using Quick Properties Palette

Another reason to use quick properties palette. We can use it to quickly filter our selection. Orhan Toker shares this nice tip on Daily AutoCAD.

Tip 20. How to: Create Multi Colored Line

Do you need to create a line that has multi color like below? It looks impossible, but yes you can make it!

A nice trick by Vladimir Michl. See how to do it here in Xanadu!

Tip 21. How to: Convert Spline to Polyline

Do you need to convert your splines to polyline? The easiest way is if you have express tools installed. You can use FLATTEN to quickly convert them. However, there are more ways if it fails. See the other ways to do that in CAD Panacea.

Tip 22. How to: Modify Objects With Non-Uniform Scale

This is a challenge for me before. I tried to create a circular railing. In elevation view, it should be getting tighter like below.

The solution is quite simple. But it’s a boring repetitive task. You need to create the railing panel as a block, then insert it with different scale on one axis. See the complete explanation here.

Tip 23. How to: Create 2D Isometric Drawing in AutoCAD

AutoCAD has a setting that allows you to draw 2D isometric diagram. You can activate the ‘isometric mode’ by changing the snap grid style. See the details how to set it in this post: Isometric Drawing in AutoCAD

Tip 24. How to Create Isometric Text and Dimension

In tip 23, you know how to create isometric drawing. But do you know how to create isometric text and dimension like above? See how you can do it in AutoCAD Isometric Text and Dimension

Tip 25. How to: Create Isometric Dimension Arrow

Many people may not notice about this one. See the dimension arrow in the isometric drawing. It doesn’t look right. It suppose to look like below.

This tip will show you how to create an isometric arrow for your dimension. This tip can also be used to create your own dimension arrow. See the tip here: Isometric Dimension Arrow

Tip 26. How to: Force Styles to Match Your Standard

One problem we have in daily work: we need to match some drawings to our styles. Creating new drawing to match our dimension styles, text styles, layers, etc is easy. The problem is when we already have a drawing with different styles. Or worse, the styles have the same name but the properties are different! This tip probably can help: enforcing Dimension Styles Across Your Drawings

Tip 27. How to: Select Objects with Windows Behavior

AutoCAD is a very unique application. It has different way to use shortcut. It has different way to ask input from the users. While other application use dialog box, AutoCAD use command line. And selecting objects is different to. In most Windows application, when we select a new object, then the previous selection set will be cleared. We need to hold [ctrl] or [shift] to add objects to selection set. You may not use AutoCAD that much, so you want AutoCAD to behave like other application you have. You can set the selection behavior by changing the PICKADD system variable to 0. The default value is 2.

Manage

Tip 28. How to: Set All Objects’ Properties to ByLayer

I never like when I receive drawings with many of the properties are overridden. Especially if they are all are drawn in Layer 0! Sometimes I need to change the properties back to ByLayer. It should be easy to do, just select the objects and change it from the properties drop down menu… right? Not really! Objects’ properties within blocks will not be changed. We are lucky that we have this tool: SETBYLAYER.

If you have problem using it, see the detail here.

Tip 29. How to: Purge Persistent Layer

Purge is the first tool that come in mind when we need to purge our layer. However, some layers are persistent and can’t be purged. If this annoys you, then this tip can be the cure. See this tip how to remove the persistent layer in JTB World.

Tip 30. Which Objects are on Which Layer?

When we have a quite complex drawing, it is become hard when we need to check which objects are on which layer. Our hero to easily check this is Layer Walk or LAYWALK.

See the animation how it works here. Mark W Kiker also write a detailed tip on his blog here.

Tip 31. How to: Place Dimensions or Hatches to a Predefined Layer

Managing layer standard sometimes very hard to do. We might miss changing the layer accidently before placing our dimension or hatches. If you do care about layering standard and want to prevent your user from making mistakes, Vladimir Michl shares this tip. This is 5 ways you can do to prevent the mistakes in Xanadu.

Tip 32. How to: Create Layer List from a Drawing to Excel Table

Need to report all your layers and their properties to an Excel table? Don’t be afraid… It’s easy to do! You can use this tip by Jimmy Bergmark.

Reusable contents

Tip 33. Reduce Your File Size by Using Block

Block is one of the most important productivity tools, I wrote many tutorials about it, even write an e-book to cover only this topic. Using reusable content is faster, easy to manage, and can be used for many automation later.

What interest me is Robin Capper found that using block will also decrease your file size significantly. Thank you for sharing Robin. If you have more than one instance of your object, consider to use blocks. Especially in 3D, it can reduce file size significantly.

Tip 34. How to: Create Tool Palettes From Block Libraries

If you already have a drawing that you consider as a standard, you may want to use the blocks from that drawing. The easiest way to manage the blocks is using tool palette. So do we need to open the drawings, drag and drop each block to the palette? No way! You can use design center and create the palettes just with a few clicks! Open design center, find you file. Expand the (+) sign, right click on blocks. Do you notice the ‘create design center’ tool? Click it and you will have all blocks in that file in a palette!

This is why you should consider to have drawings as block libraries.

Tip 35. How to: Re-path AutoCAD Drawing Reference Files

How can you update and re-path AutoCAD drawing reference files such as other drawing files, fonts, or plot configuration files after a path has changed? Reference Manager is the answer for this mess.

See the details in Shaan Hurley’s Blog here!

Tip 36. How to: Duplicate Block Definition

When we want to create a similar block from existing block, how do you do it? Explode it and recreate block with different name? You will have a lot of problem when you have block with many dynamic block parameters and actions! In dynamic block editor, we can save the block as different name. Yes, there is ‘save block as’ tool in open/save panel!

Thank you for Murray Clack for the nice tip!

Tip 37. Using Mask and Alignment in Dynamic Block

Dynamic block can be very useful. There are so many tricks that we can do with dynamic block actions. In this tip, you can use align tool for schematic drawings (P&ID, electrical schematic, etc).

Not cool enough? Add mask so when you place the symbol, your line is automatically ‘trimmed’. When you need to move it, you don’t need to modify the line, because we never actually trimmed it! Read the tip here. See another magic with masking in door block here.

Interface and accessing tools

Tip 38. Using Shift Key Combination

Every body want to work faster. And probably using less key or tools. Have you used the [shift] key to speed up your work? You can access shortcuts, override tools, etc by using [shift] key. See the common 6 [shift] key combination here.

Tip 39. AutoCAD Command Alias

The most powerful shortcut in AutoCAD is the command alias. You simply need to type L then [enter] to activate line. C for circle, etc. If you are interested to see the complete list of the command alias… or may be want to customize it, you can see and edit your acad.pgp file.

See how you can see and manage this alias commands.

Tip 40. AutoCAD Keyboard Shortcuts

Almost all AutoCAD users (99% I believe) know the AutoCAD pgp shortcut. At least how to use it. But do you know the shortcuts using function keys (F1 to F12), using [ctrl], [shift], or [alt]? CADForum has the list. See the AutoCAD shortcuts list here.

Tip 41. How to Cycle AutoCAD Commands

If you new to AutoCAD, and saw how the veterans and AutoCAD ninjas using the command line, you probably want to do the same. The problem is AutoCAD has so many commands and system variables. Someone told me it was like 900 something. The good thing is, most command in command line also use similar name in ribbon. Then we can cycle to find the tool. For example, you want to create a rectangle. You tried to press R [enter], well it’s not the right one. Neither is RE. No need to guess like that. Enter the first (or several) character and press [TAB] to cycle between commands!

Tip 42. How to: Control Mouse Wheel Speed

Do you ever feel your mouse wheel is zooming to fast? You can change the ZOOMFACTOR system variable. The default is 60, higher value will increase the zoom speed and lower value will decrease the speed. 3-100 is the valid value. Thanks to Shaan who share it on his blog.

Tip 43. How to: Reverse Mouse Wheel Direction

And do you ever feel the wheel direction is going the wrong way? If you use Inventor primarily, then you want AutoCAD to behave like Inventor, not the other way. I know you can reverse Inventor wheel. But you can use ZOOMWHEEL to control this behavior in AutoCAD. Shaan Hurley shares this tip in Between the Lines.

Tip 44. Optimize Your Palette Placement

Autodesk has introduced palettes in AutoCAD. The advantage of using palette is, you can change the value on the fly, without having to click OK and close it like in dialog boxes. It is much easier to use, and you can always let it open and put it somewhere on your screen. The problem is having all the palettes open will take a lot of screen space. This tip will share how you can optimize the palette placement. So you can have the advantages without sacrifice your screen space. Read the detail here.

Tip 45. Setup Your Workspace with Initial Setup

Workspace is very useful when you need to work with different environment. Or at least when you need to set your own interface, template, etc. Since AutoCAD 2010, Autodesk introduced Initial Setup. This is a wizard that you can use to easily setup your settings. What I love the most about initial setup is we can easily define our template and industry. Read about initial setup in Brian’s blog.

Tip 46. Pin to Make It Stick!

Do you have favorite files or favorite tools? You can make your favorites sticky in application menu or other part of your screen. See the pin icon?

If you like it, then pin it! Brian shares this tip on his blog.

Tip 47. Control UCS Icon Position

When we open a new AutoCAD drawing, UCS Icon becomes available and will be locked at the origin. However, if the origin remains in the middle of our drawing, UCS Icon will disturb us as it will always be in the view. The solution is very easy… You can change UCSICON system variable to Noorigin.

Try to see UCSICON properties too. You might like what you can change here.

Tip 48. Control Extended Tool Tip Behavior

Since AutoCAD has ribbon, Autodesk introduce ‘extended help’ when you let your pointer a while on a tool. This is a great feature for people who just learn using AutoCAD, and when we want to know a quick explanation on a tool.

For the veteran users, this extended help might not be so great. You might feel the tool tip disturbs you. See how Brian’s shares his tip to control this behavior.

Tip 49. How to: Use Classic Layer Dialog

Layer Properties dialog box is now using palette. You can change anything without having to close the dialog box to apply the changes. However, if you for any reason the palette and want to use the classic dialog box… don’t worry. You still can have it.

It’s all about system variable. See how you can control this behavior in Daily AutoCAD.

Tip 50. How to: Use Ribbon Shortcut Key

Every application has shortcuts. AutoCAD might be has unique shortcut in command alias. But now we can use ribbon shortcuts that can be applied to applications that have ribbon! Microsoft Office applications have this shortcuts, and all Autodesk applications with ribbon also have it. See how to Maximize Your Screen and Speed Up with Ribbon Shortcut.

Tip 51. How to See Complete AutoCAD System Variable List

In many cases, you can change the options through option dialog box. However, there are many that requires you to change it in system variable by typing it in command line. And if you seriously want to create custom command or going further to programming, you need to know the system variables. System variable might change from version to version. Even if you are a veteran programmer, you might need to check them from time to time. Read this tip: how to: see Your Complete AutoCAD System Variable List

Tip 52. How to backup system variables

If you have express tools installed on your machine, then you can see the system variable list and change the system variable easily. You can open a dialog box that show you the list, show you the current value, initial value, and the description about what it does. The nice thing about this tool is you can backup and restore your system variables when things go wrong!

Read how you can backup system variables here.

Tip 53. Cool Way to Open Your Drawing: Drag and Drop Your File!

Sometimes I just hate to open files from dialog box. Some files are not easy to find from a small dialog box, so I need to find it from my Windows Explorer or doing search/find. It would be a waste of time if I have to point my open dialog box to that file location. So what do I do? Just drag and drop to open it! This is also useful if you have several application that can open the same file type. You can drag to application that you want to open it. See the other way to do it in this tip!

Tip 54. How to: Use Sub Object Selection Filter

Autodesk now allows us to modify objects using the sub-objects. We can use sub objects to quickly modify objects, either in 2D or 3D. To easily select the sub-objects, you can use the object selection filter.

See how to use sub object selection filter and modify your objects here.

Tip 55. How to: Protect Tool Palettes

Currently I and my colleague are trying to submit a project to develop a drawing system. It means we are going to create their reusable contents, templates, drawing standards, and some customization tools. Then here comes a question: How we can protect the tool palettes?

See this tip how you can protect your palettes!

Tip 56. Make Your Ribbon Panels Sticky!

Having ribbon interface sometimes so annoying when we have to move to different tabs frequently. We can just tear off some panels I use frequently, and stick to home tab. See Shaan Hurley’s tip on AutoCAD 2010 Sticky Ribbon Panels.

Plot, publish and share

Tip 57. Pack Your Files as an e-Transmit

We are now living in 21st century (unless you read this in the next century). Most of us rely heavily on digital data. Also when we work with AutoCAD. The problem when we send our files to the others is sometimes we left our files behind.  Either a reference file (XREF), plot style table, custom fonts, etc. Don’t worry, AutoCAD has the right tool to pack all files that relate to the drawing to a zip file, ready for you to send. You will not miss any files again! Read the detail here.

Tip 58. How to Rotate Viewport in Layout/Paper Space

If you are a surveyor, civil engineer, or architect, we need to draw in model space the real-world coordinate and orientation. However sometimes we want to rotate the drawing orientation to match the paper for plotting/publishing purpose. See this tips how to rotate your viewport in Xanadu.

Tip 59. Five Steps Preparing AutoCAD Plot

Setting up plot for beginners often become confusing. Using scale, setting up title blocks, etc… Plotting is actually very easy. Simple. Just click plot or publish then you’re done. But there are some rules and steps you have to do when you draw and arrange your model in layouts, it’s already started when you create your file! See the tip how you can prepare your AutoCAD plot easily

Tip 60. How to: Render 3D Drawings as Wireframe

This question has been asked a couple times. Can I render my 3d drawing as wireframe image? Not really. But you can plot your drawing to image… as wireframe, sketches, or anything you can define as visual styles. Read how you can render Wireframe Image from AutoCAD

Tip 61. How to Plot .PLT or .PRN file

Do you get .plt or .prn file, and want to plot it? This is a tip on Xanadu how to plot your .plt or .prn files.

Tip 62. How to Create High Resolution Image From AutoCAD Drawing

Do you need to present you drawing in Word or PowerPoint document? We need to create an image from the drawing. The common way to do it is by capturing the screen, but the image is not good enough when we place it. We want to have high resolution image and apply our plot styles. Have you ever try to plot it? AutoCAD has Publish toWeb plot drivers, so you can get JPEG or PNG format! If you need more file format, you can also add new plotter drivers, so you can get uncompressed image like TIFF, TGA, or BMP! Read the detail here.

Visualize

Tip 63. How to: Create Sketch Like Drawing

The image above was a regular drawing. I didn’t actually create a sketch, but we can manipulate the visual styles, so it looks like a sketch. See how to create the sketch here.

Tip 64. How to: Show Bump Maps Real Time in AutoCAD 2011

AutoCAD has developed further than just a 2D drawing application. The biggest advantage is when you use it as vertical product platform like AutoCAD Architecture. But in vanilla AutoCAD, you can also can impress people with the 3D capabilities. In AutoCAD 2011, you can show bump maps in real time. Shaan Hurley shows you how to do it here.

Tip 65. How to: Create Different Drawing Representation with Layer States

Do you need to turn on/off layers frequently to show different drawing representation? Or do you need to represent your drawings differently in different viewports? You can do that easily using layer states. See how you can create different drawing representation here

Automate and customize

Tip 66. Take Your Drawing to the Next Level with Data Extraction

Again, AutoCAD can be used further than just as drawing tool. You can use the data and create reports such as schedules, set out points, part lists, and holes table. This is a post that list how you can use data extraction. Shaan Hurley also give an example to use data extraction for creating part list.

Tip 67. How to: Quickly Count Your Block

Although DATAEXTRACTION can give very detailed information, sometimes you need to just quickly count your blocks to give an idea about your design. BCOUNT is the right tool for this. Brian Benton mention this tip in his blog.

Tip 68. Reporting Hatch Area With Field

Text field is also a useful automation to report almost anything in your drawing. In title block, you can use title block to automatically show the plot date, file name, etc. You can also report area using field.

Shaan Hurley wrote a nice tutorial about this here.

Tip 69. How to Create Your Own AutoCAD Linetype

AutoCAD already has many linetypes. However, to fulfill your needs or to match local standard, you might need to create your own linetypes. If you have express tools installed, it is not hard to do. Read the complete tutorial here.

Tip 70. Georeferenced Image in Vanilla AutoCAD

This functionality only available for AutoCAD Map, Civil3D, and Raster Design. If you use vanilla AutoCAD, you can use this free utility. See the details and download it here.

Tip 71. Translate Your Text Object to Other Language

Need to translate your texts to other language? This is a tool that’s design to do that!

See the details and download it here.

Tip 72. Using AutoCAD Startup Dialog Box

Do you miss the old AutoCAD startup dialog box? I love the startup dialog because we can choose our template before let AutoCAD create a new file. For the simplest template, we can choose metric or imperial. If you want to show this dialog box every time create a new drawing, set system variable STARTUP to 1.

Tip 73. AutoCAD Info in Windows Explorer

Every file has meta data information. The information can be useful to have a quick look before you actually open the file. You can set the windows explorer to show the meta data when you choose to view details.

See how to do it here.

Tip 74. Working with DWG Properties

This is the advanced tip of exposing the file meta data. Further more, you can customize more information to show on windows explorer.

Interested to see more? This is a very nice detailed tutorial how you can optimize this DWG properties.

Tip 75. How to Set Previous Version as Default When Saving

Do you have different AutoCAD versions in your company? If you do, one problem that you will find is the file version. You need to save it as to lower version. Sometimes you forget to do it, and your colleague can’t open it. To prevent that to happen, you can set AutoCAD to save the files to older version of AutoCAD, by default. In the file dialog box, select tools>options.

In this example, I set it to AutoCAD 2000.

Tip 76. DWG TrueView: Open and Convert to Any DWG Version

This is the opposite problem from tip 75. What if you have older version of AutoCAD, but you receive files saved by later version? One file might be easy, you can ask someone to convert it to old version. What it you have dozens, hundreds drawings?

You can use DWG TrueView, a free DWG viewer. Not only open DWG, you can save the files to older version. You can also batch convert all files in a folder. Download DWG TrueView here: http://autodesk.com/dwg

Tip 77. How to Add Your Own MTEXT Symbol

If you right click your mouse when using MTEXT, you will see a contextual menu that allows you to add predefined symbols. You can add your own symbols or text to that menu.

To put your own symbols/text, you can use this AutoLISP code here from JTB World.

Tip 78. Using Custom Field

Field is very useful in many cases. Many drawing and object properties can be shown by fields. However, you might need to create your own field. Brian write this step-by-step tutorial how you can do it here. Brian uses sheet set custom properties on his post.

Tip 79. How to: Create a New Command in AutoCAD

If you want to learn how to create a new AutoCAD command, this tip could be useful. This is not an advanced tutorial, but at least can give you a quick look how to do it. This tutorial use some simple macros, changing the current layer’s properties to ByLayer. See the tip here.

Tip 80. How to: Add Command to Contextual menu

Now that you know how to create a new command, how can we add it to contextual menu? We want to select objects, right click, and see the tool. If you want to know how to do it, read this tip here.

Tip 81. How To Create A Ribbon Panel

Now you can create a new command on toolbar, new command on contextual menu. How about creating a ribbon panel? If you do love using ribbon, then you would like you have your new command on ribbon. See Brian’s tip how to create a ribbon panel.

Tip 82. How to Use Local Help File as Default in 2011 Version

AutoCAD 2011 (and other Autodesk products) now use online help file as default. For some reason, you probably don’t like it. You can change the default help file to local help file. It is still using html file, but at least it always use local file. See How to: Set Local Help File as Default in 2011 Version If you still don’t like the html help file and want to use the old chm style, see the tip from Shaan Hurley here.

Tip 83. How to: Label Coordinate in AutoCAD

This is a tip how you can use dynamic block and field in vanilla AutoCAD. You can easily place an annotation block to label your coordinate. It is very easy, and you only need AutoCAD to do it! This is quite popular tip in CAD Notes.

Read how to do it in How to: Label Coordinate in AutoCAD

Tip 84. How to: Report Multiple Coordinates in a Block

This is similar with tip 83. The challenge here is having more than one set out points and report them from a block. The example is extracting set out points from a Gully.

Read this tip: Reporting Multiple Coordinates in A Block

Troubleshooting

Tip 85. AutoCAD Installation Troubleshoot

Having problem installing AutoCAD? Then you are not alone. Installing AutoCAD mostly is easy. But there are many prerequisite that installed before AutoCAD installation. Most of the installation failure happen at that stage. You may want to check everything before start installing AutoCAD. Or you can check this list when the installation fail. Read the installation check list here.

Tip 86. Troubleshooting AutoCAD Graphic Issue

Every year AutoCAD configurations get more complex. For example, one large jump in complexity happened in AutoCAD 2007 when Autodesk introduced Hardware acceleration. This is a check list of troubleshooting AutoCAD crashes that could be graphics related. See the information here on Between the Lines.

Tip 87. AutoCAD is not Accurate

If you work on a large drawing or draw objects far away from 0,0,0; you might find out that your drawing is no longer accurate. To solve this problem, you can try to reduce the coordinate number by do the following:

If you don’t need to use global coordinate for your model location, then move your model closer to 0,0,0.

If you need to use global coordinate, consider to use larger unit (m or feet, or even larger. This occur mostly in mm unit)

You can also consider to draw your model at 0,0, and use global coordinate in master plan only. Place your model as external reference (XREF) using global coordinate in master plan.

Another good workaround suggested by Dave Wolfe: We can draw the model at 0,0. Then create a saved UCS to define project location. Anytime you need to retrieve coordinate for project location, you can activate the saved coordinate.

Tip 88. Fixing AutoCAD Ribbon

Sometimes ribbon is just broken and you will see only this text: The ribbon does not have any tabs or panels currently loaded.

If you see that error, this is a tip how you can fix your ribbon in JTB World.

Tip 89. Enabling/Disabling Multi Processor in AutoCAD

Have you used your Workstation multi processor support for AutoCAD? Not sure? See how to control the system variable in Xanadu.

Tip 90. How to Improve Sheet Set Manager Performance

If you feel your sheet set manager (SSM) has a performance issue, then this might be able to help. Read the complete tips to improve Sheet Set Manager performance.

Tip 91. Clear ‘Sticky’ Sheet Set From Recent Document List

Even if you select “Clear Recent Document List” the Sheet Sets comes back to Recent Documents in the Menu Browser after a while. They actually comes back if you run the Sheet Set manager (command SSM) and have anything in that SSM Recent list. A side effect is that today’s date is used even if you have not even used that Sheet Set for a long time.

If you have problem getting rid of the AutoCAD sheet set from recent document list, try this tip.

Tip 92. Open File Dialog is Missing

Have you ever find when you try to open or save file, you don’t see the dialog box? Instead of dialog box, you see the text below on command line or dynamic input.

The problem is system variable has changed. Type FILEDIA in command line then press [enter]. Enter value 1 then [enter] again. You should now see the open file dialog box back to normal.

Tip 93. Open Multiple Documents in A single AutoCAD Session

AutoCAD can open multiple files in one AutoCAD session. We expect that AutoCAD will open another file in opened session when you double click a DWG file in Windows Explorer. But what if every time we double click a file in explorer, it will open the file in another AutoCAD session? To make AutoCAD open the file in one session, you need to set the system variable SDI to 1. If it still doesn’t work, try this tip from a discussion in CADTutor Forum.

Tip 94. Speed Up the Print Process

AutoCAD 2008 introduced to us BACKGROUND PROCESSING for plotting. The theory behind it is that it will free up your computer while printing so that you can continue to work. It sounds good. I like it when I am publishing something or batch plotting through the sheet set manager. The problem is that when you print behind the scenes, it takes longer. It takes longer because the computer is processing the printing, and processing your work. So I tried it. I switched it off and WOW!! The old printing speed returned. I have kept it off and my printing is much faster. See the complete tip from Brian how he optimize the printing speed.

Tip 95. Mouse Pointer is not Moving Smoothly

Do you ever find your mouse pointer not moving smoothly and jumping all around? If you take a good look, the pointer is actually snapping to drawing grids, and jump to the next grid intersection. You probably turn on the grid snap by accident. Press [F9] or turn it off from drafting settings.

Learn and knowledge update

Tip 96. A Simple Guide: 12 Steps to Master AutoCAD

Learning AutoCAD can be difficult when you try to learn by yourself. This tip has 12 steps you can follow to learn until you finally mastering AutoCAD. Do not rush it. No body can become a master in anything overnight! Read A Simple Guide: 12 steps to Mastering AutoCAD

Tip 97. Ten Ways to be More Efficient at AutoCAD

While tip 96 talks about the steps to learn AutoCAD, Brian Benton shares a tip to learn to be more efficient or productive with AutoCAD. It is a nice guide after you follow tip 96. But don’t jump to this tip if you just starting to learn! Read Ten Ways to be More Efficient at AutoCAD

Tip 98. How to Stay Up to Date with AutoCAD

This is a guest post by Ellen Finkelstein on CAD-a-Blog. This post shows you many channels and resources you could follow to stay up to date with AutoCAD. There are so many of them, either online or offline. Read How to stay up to date with AutoCAD

Tip 99. New Features Workshop

Do you update (I would say UPGRADE, but new doesn’t guarantee better) your AutoCAD software regularly? Or do you update it in intervals? Regardless, it can be difficult to know and understand what the new version has to offer. There is a built in tool inside of AutoCAD that will help you know and understand the new features and improvements in AutoCAD. It is called the New Features Workshop!

Tip 100. Using Info Center to Follow Your Favorite CAD Resources

The last one. We spend most of our time using AutoCAD (well, some of you do). When we get busy, we miss the updates from our favorite CAD resources. Don’t be! The good thing about web 2.0 technology is RSS. We can see the updates using RSS readers, or even AutoCAD! If your computer connects to internet, do you notice the pop up from info center on your right screen? It is the updates from predefined resources!

[linaritonga-studio]

Final Design Reflection - Obliquity

Throughout our project, we have overcome challenges and made discoveries which have led to our final concept. Overall, I feel as though Riley and I have both put a large amount of effort in creating this project, and following the exercises every week we could work well collaboratively. We had always arranged days to work on our project as well as set individual tasks. 

Within the first weeks of the design process, we started with three movable angled structures which conveying concave and convex in John Dickson’s Space diagrams. We had also created these in the workshop, as this was our first time using the tools in the workshops this gave us more skills to use further in our project. This led to the idea of light and dark to create an enclosed atmosphere. However, in this process, we found that our structures were not very stable. We were given the idea of placing them on a bigger platform and to attach wheels on to this making them mobile and interactive. I found that this was a successful addition to our structures and had worked well with the ideas and activities that followed. 

In week two’s drawing exercise, we wanted to create a representation of darkness. I had created the drawing tool which followed a similar idea to the structures in week one by constructing movable brush head. To emphasize the darkness on the drawings I used black pant with a thickening agent to create a textured effect. Although through the process of drawing, I felt that I enjoyed the making and building we had done in week one. I found that constructing in 3D form was more experimental.  

In week three to further elaborate on the concept we modelled our idea of darkness. We wanted this to demonstrate the idea of capturing light and infinity by using reflection and the natural light. Our model consisted of two triangular forms, one larger than the other with a black exterior and a mirrored interior. Hanging in the center of these two triangles I had painted a black Polystyrene ball to evoke a tense atmosphere and a sense of dense darkness. We had hung the model to the three structures surrounding it whilst it spun creating fill that void and interior space. We found this to be one of the most effective models we had made and sparked ideas for our project.

In week four’s mapping exercise, we wanted to extract the different layers of the site, the natural environment, infrastructure and the connectivity of visitors to the site. Using the Geomaps site I mapped out the infrastructure onto one layer on Photoshop and the forest onto another layer printed out the maps onto a transparent sheet. The third layer we used pins connecting it with red string to show the movement of visitors around the site. We did this on a mirrored sheet using a map of the site as a guide. We then hung these from the ceiling with the mirrored at the back. This created an interesting effect as the layers projected on the mirrored sheet creating one whole map. I found this to be successful as it had given us a better understanding of the site and modelled well. 

In week five’s gateway activity, this is where we started to think about our final design idea and project for the Arataki Visitors Centre. Looking back at our structures we wanted to mimic the same ideas and form but somehow Make these into a gateway. Because the structure was movable we could play around with them and gave us a better idea of what we wanted the gateway to be. We then started to create models of the posts. First, we tried to use small popsicle sticks. However, this did not hold as well it didn’t create the exact image we had in our minds. I then decided that it may be easier to just draw out the angled posts onto the card and cut them out. However, this was a very tedious job and we both thought that laser cutting would have been a better option. However, we liked the way it had turned out and decided that this would form our final design.

During our final design weeks, I had mainly worked on putting together the two A1 drawings as I found that the best way to layout the project was to do it on Photoshop, which I had easy access to. We also worked on drawing out our plans, sections and elevations. Riley’s focus was to do the section and elevations and then I would take them onto Photoshop to render. When doing the drawings, I think that we both agreed that we liked the result of hand drawing them, but then also merging it with a form of software to enhance it. Doing the drawings by hand also gave us the chance to figure out ways the posts work in terms of mechanism and anchoring. To show this, we both drew out diagrams demonstrating mechanisms and the potential angles which the posts move at. When making our model we both wanted to show the topography of the site as this would affect our project. I then had scaled a 1:50 map of our chosen area within the site with the contours. Using the scaled map as a guide we cut out the contours out of the card and layered them. I had also made up a simple model of the Education Centre so that we could see how our project would look in relation to other aspects of the site. Another aspect which I wanted to add to the model was trees, as this is the most important aspect of the site. This would also give a better sense of the surroundings and how the project works alongside it. We wanted to use our gateway we made in previous week we also thought about the rest of the grass area. We decided to surround it with the angled structures to create a welcoming recreational space.

As we started to put our project together and add more greenery to the model, we throughout about the potential of the concept. We thought about ways which we could add more functionality into the park space such as forms of seating or shelter so that it becomes a more social space. I also suggested that since we used a lot of reflective qualities in our process that moving forward, we could incorporate into the posts. This would create an infinite effect as the posts would reflect the trees as you walk through the path and would give an increased sense of denseness. During the critique session out guest, Andrew Denton suggested that in the future we think about the function of the pathway in relation to the Kauri Dieback. He suggested that it could contain the chemical used to clean shoes before entering the forest so that the disease doesn’t spread. Moving to the next steps of the project I want to work with viewing the forest without touching it. 

[valeriegwavuya444-blog]

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INFS 5093 | SYSTEMS PLANNING ASSIGNMENT

 INFS 5093 | SYSTEMS PLANNING ASSIGNMENT | INFORMATION SYSTEMS

COMPUTER ASSIGNMENT HELP

Introduction

This assignment consists of

A case study, which requires you to apply your learning from the systems planningmodule.

An ethical analysis which requires you to apply one of thereadings provided on the course website.

A conceptual development and reflection section which requires you to consider how systems planningtasks impact on a systems development project.

The feedback sheet lists the assessment criteria. Look for it on the assignment’s webpage. Take note of which sections carry the most marks.

Note that this assignment’s word count is 2602without your answers, so

Don’t worry if the final word count seems high.

Also, there are some diagrams in this assignment so don’t worry if your final word count seems low.

I suggest that you draw thediagrams by hand, photograph the drawings and insert the photographs in this file. If you prefer, you can use Word’s drawing tools (or some other drawing or modelling software) but you may find working with pen and paper is faster, easier to amend, less cumbersome and more reliable with respect to layout.

Instructions

When referring to the exemplars on the course website, read the old assignment specifications carefully because the assignments differ every study period.

Recall: in the previous study period, students spent an average of 24hours on this assignment.

Pace yourself accordingly.

For best results

Do not attempt to complete the whole assignment in one session.

Work slowly and carefully.

In addition to the instructions on the course website

Do not overlook the ‘Why?’ questions.

Read the case study carefully.

Keep track of the hours you spend.

You are encouraged to make assumptions where necessary. Scope for assumptions has been deliberately included in this assignment because it is often necessary to make assumptions openly when dealing with a client who is under-informed with respect to technology. Please label your assumptions clearly. Here’s an example from a previous study period,

Assumption: As the passengers of Titanic II may be from any nation, I have assumed a currency converter is required for the ticket-purchasing function.

Case study: Socrates & Co

You work at IT Foundry as a Systems Analyst.

Socrates & Co is a bookshop specialising in new, second hand and rare books. It is located on a busy shopping street, close to several university campuses and has been in business for a long time. Today, it’s managed by its owner, Joanna Diakou, but it was started in 1938 by Joanna’s father, Stefanos, who was a well-known local intellectual. When he established Socrates & Co, Stefanos gave a lot of consideration to the store’s interior design and location. It came to be well known as a place where people are welcome to escape the noise, rest their feet, and sit and read without being disturbed. There are comfortable armchairs between the shelves and people can have snacks if they are careful. Over time, Stefanos came to know many of his customers by name and Socrates & Co built a reputation and a loyal customer base almost entirely from word-of-mouth recommendations. Stefanos retired in 1974 and turned the business over to Joanna, who at the time was recently graduated with an honours degree in the humanities. She has maintained her father’s practices and has come to know her regular customers by name and people know they can come to Socrates & Co and find a warm welcome, insightful and witty conversation, or quiet solitude.

Although she draws a salary from Socrates & Co, Joanna doesn’t consider the time she spends there to be ‘work’ – instead it is simply her lifestyle. She goes to Socrates & Co every day except Sundays. Four other people work there: Kavya Amal works on Mondays and Thursdays; Adam Matchoss works on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays; Rajavel Sulake and Priyam Farrukh (store manager) both work on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Kavya, Adam, Rajavel and Priyam are postgraduate coursework students whose schedules change every semester. Priyam has worked at Socrates & Co for five years and is paid a higher wage because she manages the store on Sundays. All of the staff love the relaxed atmosphere and they deeply appreciate Joanna’s attitude because, as long the customers have what they need, Joanna doesn’t mind if the staff work on their assignments while they are at the store. The store’s opening hours are the same every day: 11am to 7pm.

However, Joanna has recently been unwell and has come to realise that perhaps Socrates & Co could afford her an additional afternoon off if she didn’t have to spend so much time on keeping track of inventory, sales, special orders, rosters and all the other little administrative tasks. Also, Kavya and Adam are students in an IT department and they both think Socrates & Co really ought to expand into ecommerce, with an app and a website. Joanna is not entirely sure what this would entail, but she trusts Kavya and Adam and she decides to investigate further.

One of Joanna’s regular customers is Andrew Frawley. He is one of your workmates at IT Foundry. When Andrew came into the store, Joanna asked him for advice. He immediately advised Joanna to work with you; you have more experience in ecommerce and publishing than Andrew. She agrees to a meeting, which Andrew arranges between yourself and Joanna.

You talk to Joanna about Socrates & Co and you realise its significance extends to the wider community: even people who never buy a book can enjoy reading in the peaceful atmosphere. You learn that Socrates & Co has long-standing relationships with thirty-four publishers and you know that seventeen of the publishers (the larger ones) offer B2B ordering, returns and invoicing. You talk about various business processes. For example, you discuss how Joanna sources rare books and you discuss the Socrates & Co text-book sales service (on a 5% commission) for uni students. You talk about the process for replenishing the second hand stock and the process for when a customer makes a special order. You are sure there are other business processes Joanna has not mentioned; payroll comes immediately to mind and you begin to identify other overlooked business processes. Joanna also tells you about a project she has had in mind for some time: she wants to start a small café in one corner of the store, for which she has obtained a licence.

You can see potential for supporting Socrates & Co business processes and for supporting Joanna’s plans for a small café, both without disrupting the Socrates & Co reputation. However, as you are a seasoned professional, you don’t rush in. Instead you suggest that Socrates & Co funds a preliminary investigation of a potential future IS project. Joanna agrees to the cost, your manager approves, and when one of your existing projects closes, you begin the Socrates & Co preliminary investigation.

Understanding the business

Recall: you can make assumptions in this assignment (as noted above). Also, you can use the course forum if you have any questions.

Develop a business profile for Socrates & Co. Focus on business activities, how the business is organised, resources, customers, suppliers and future directions.

Given below is the business profile for Socrates & Co.

  Business Profile: Socrates & Co.

    Overview

  Socrates and Co. is a legacy bookshop set up in 1938, engaged in retail sales of text books, rare books and new books in fiction and non fiction categories. The company’s mission is to expand its operations into the e-commerce space and provide services through a mobile app and a website.

    Activities

The company is engaged in following activities:

·         Retail sales of books (text books, fiction books, second hand and rare books)

·         Sourcing/procurement of books from its network of publishers  (currently has 34 with some of them offering returns)

  Some of the internal functions of the company are:

·         Payroll management (manage payouts to its existing staff, salaries etc.)

·         Inventory management (manage stocks of books and handle new purchases)

  Business Organisation From its current scale of operations, Socrates & Co. can be categorized as a small scale business. The business is organised as:

  ·         The company is headed by Joanna, the owner of the book store who manages the overall functions.

·         There are 4 staff members who work part time—Kavya Amal, Adam Matchoss, Rajavel Sulake and Priyam Farrukh.

·         The company has engaged an external IT solutioning firm called IT Foundry to do a preliminery investigation for the implementation of an Information System.

    Resources The company’s key resources are:

·         Human Resources

o   4 part time workers taking care of the retail sales, inventory management and administration work.

·         Financial Resources:

o   Cash Deposits of 0.5 million AUD

o   Antiques having estimated net worth of 2 million AUD

o   Bills receivables of 50,000 AUD

·         Other Resources:

o   Antique furniture

o   Victorian era building (of monument value and tourist attraction)

o   Rare collection of victorian era books (original copies)

  Customers ·         Strong existing customers base, which stems from the popularity of the original establisher Stephanos, a renowned intellectual of 1930’s.

·         Customers include tourists and walk-ins who come to visit the building to enjoy the ambience and architecture.

·         Also includes university students who come for text books (the building being in close vicinity to universities).

Suppliers The company has a strong supplier base comprising of 34 publishers with whom it has long-standing relationship. Amongst the 34 suppliers:

·��         2 are special vendors dealing in rare books

·         17 are B2B publishers who offer easy returns of unpurchased books

·         15 are text book publishers

  Future Direction ·         The company plans to foray into e-commerce and online sales by establishing a website and a mobile app.

o   The online presence will create wider presence and expand the scale of operations for the company.

o   It also wants active presence on the social media and increase the word-of-mouth customer base by way of online reviews and polls.

·         The company wants a mobile app which will perform similar functions as the website.

·         In addition to the above, the business also wants to set up a “reading café” to generate revenues from walk-in tourists who only wish to explore the architecture and ambience of the building.

  Create an organisation chart for Socrates & Co.

The current organisation structure for the business is as follows:

List four of Socrates & Co’s main business processes.

The company currently handles all its processes manually and does not have an automated system to capture inventory, sales, orders or the administrative activities.

The key business processes and sub processes are:

Process Sub process Sales

  ·         Invoice processing

·         Maintaining cash registers

·         Customer checkout

Supplier management

  ·         Prepare purchase orders

·         Handle returns and publisher invoices

Inventory management ·         Replenish stocks

·         Update records

Finance ·         Payments to suppliers

·         Payments to internal staff (payroll processing)

  Given below is a functional decomposition diagram (Systems Analysis and design, ninth edition, Ch. 4. Requirements Modelling, Pg. 150) summarizing the key business processes.

Draw models for two of the business processes listed above, including events, processes and results (an example is available on p11 of the text book).

  The business process models have been described below for:

Sales

Supplier Management

Do Socrates & Co’s current business processes support its future objectives? Why or why not?

No the current business processes alone are not sufficient to support the future objectives of the company. We need additional processes to support the future business objectives:

We need a transaction processing system(Transaction Processing, Chapter 1, p.15, Systems Analysis and Design, Tenth Edition, Rosenblatt), so that the sales data, order details, and customer details are all entered automatically into the system:

Hardware such as bar code readers will be needed.

Point of sales solution will be required wherein the sales manager can enter details at the time of sales.

Staff will have to be trained on the new system of retail sales

We need a dedicated staff to manage online sales. The person will be responsible for:

Taking note of everyday orders.

Ensure the orders are dispatched correctly.

Ensure the database is updated and running smoothly.

Look at customer grievances posted online or failed orders.

You now have outlines of the Socrates & Co business processes but you need another meeting with Joanna to double check some details and to discuss project constraints. At the meeting, you sketch diagrams on the whiteboard outlining four of the main business processes. Then you ask Joanna if the processes share data, and if not, could they share data in the future.

Joanna says, “Well, no, they don’t share data … wait, what do you mean exactly? Because I know what sales are made when I check the day’s transactions and when I know the sales, it helps me figure out if I need to order more stock. There are other things that overlap too, like the rosters and the payroll.”

You explain that’s exactly what you mean and you ask her to describe more ‘overlaps’ in the Socrates & Co business processes.

“Well, the cash sales determine the next morning’s bank deposits, but the POS transactions just happen automatically. Also, you know how the sales tell me what to order? Well, I also use a bit of knowhow, like when Michael Sandel’s latest book came out, I knew it was going to sell quickly so I ordered quite a few. Actually, I can say the same for several other authors, like Sam Harris. He sells quite well these days. Hmm … come to think of it, if the new system knows how quickly an author sells, then it could keep those authors in a special list, couldn’t it?”

You agree that’s one of the functions a system could provide. But you point out that it wouldn’t be able to figure out whether to stock new authors because they wouldn’t have a sales history.

Joanna says, “Oh, that’s ok, the publishers know the store so well, I can usually rely on their recommendations. Then I just order a few copies of what they recommend, unless I think the author wouldn’t work at all. It’s especially easy if the publisher takes returns of unsold stock.”

You say, “Like Fractal Publishing? They do that for one of my other clients.”

You recall that Fractal Publishing is one of the B2B publishers and that they are going to upgrade the security of their B2B system next year; as are Continuum, MUP, OUP and Stanford Law Books.

“Yes, we’ve had an account with Fractal for ages! Do you know Jane Berne? She’s my account manager.”

“No, but let’s stay on track. If you email me a list of publishers that take returns and a description of the important ‘overlaps’ we can look at some other things. About the app… do you want it to offer the same transactions as the website? Or do you have something else in mind?”

“I’m not sure. What do you recommend?”

“To keep costs down, let’s keep the transactions the same for now and if you need to review that decision in future, you can do so. But, transactions aside, the website can have other features if you want it to. It doesn’t have to be only sales.”

“Really? That’d be great. We can advertise our different Writers’ Week events. I need to talk it over with Kavya and Adam, they’re bound to have some suggestions. Oh! Can the customers review the books they have read?”

“Sure. But let’s be a little cautious with respect to budget and schedule. So perhaps we ought to …”

The discussion carried on for another fifteen minutes before you shook hands and estimated that you would finish the preliminary investigation within a week.

Preliminary investigation

Conduct a SWOT analysis for the future information systems project.

Described below are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of this solution.

Strengths:

Good number of existing customers will help push online sales: The existing customer base and word-of-mouth recommendations will bring users to the online portal. The target customer base will expand across all customer categories:

The books will be available to everyone browsing the Internet, thus giving every bibliophilic an option of reading the book information as per their own convenience, irrespective of the location.

The project will enhance the customer experience, as there will be no time constraints for making the purchase, making it available 24/7.

Online marketing: Word of mouth recommendations for a particular book will transform into e-recommendations thus making it available for a larger audience and helping them in their decisions when they are looking up for the similar content.

The company can promote the website on social media to get reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations.

The company can post information on special events such as “writer’s week” on either social media or on its website.

Online users can browse through categories such as “Publisher Recommendation”, “New Arrivals” and “In stock now” to get the best books.

Sales data to make informed business decisions/deeper insight into customer preferences: Managing sales will be easier as the process will be automated and handled completely by the Information Systems:

The transaction-processing database will be able to provide details like which publications are generating maximum sales. It will also be able to tell, in which months the sales are the highest.

The online sales system will give important insight into the customer behaviour:

Which books are being searched the most?

Which books from “Publisher Recommendations” are selling most?

Which age group are majority of customers from?

Which region are the majority of order being placed?

No adverse impact on walk in customers: The bookshop’s heritage architecture will be promoted on the website, therebyattracting tourists and walk-ins, which can generate additionalsales. The website and social media presence will generate awareness about the bookstore and its services.

Weaknesses:

Need for Training: Lack of hands-on experience in using an information system might pose challenges. The staff will need training to operate the new system.

Need for full-time staff: The new business model mayrequire fulltime staff or dedicated roles for staff members to manage activities properly.

Need to “professionally manage” publishers and suppliers: Currently the business is being run on personal relationships and reliance on publishers who have long-standing relationships with the company. Many decisions are taken “instinctively” with respect to sales and reordering of the books. This approach may not be very helpful in future when sales expand and more publishers will be required to fulfil sales orders. A more professional system will be needed to manage the supplier relationships.

Opportunities:

Tying up with universities, pushing textbook sales from university websites: We can tie up with universities to boost textbooks sales through Socrates website (universities can direct students and online users to Socrates website for textbook purchases, and get 5% commission).

Launching Offers and Schemes: Various online marketing strategies can be applied—for example, “limited time period offers” can push the online sales.

Web Advertising: Advertisements can be posted on the website or the mobile application for the upcoming events suchas“writers meet” etc.

E-Books can be made available through the portal.

Café and additional services: Additional business idea like having a Café inside the bookshop will be an attraction for the customers who wants to enjoy their reads with a cup of coffee.This feature can be promoted online to increase walk-in customers and show them the enhanced experience.

Online reviews: The future system will allow the customers to post reviews of the books online. People can also reviews their bookstore experience and give comments.

Threats:

Coping with the change: As the orders increase, the need to expand supplier base will also emerge. This would mean additional resources, expanded network of suppliers, and further investment in terms of time and resources. Not being prepared for this up scaling can lead to failure, loss of reputation and customer trust.

Customers who are not tech-savvy: Customers in the older age group (60-80 years) might find walking into the bookshop much easier than using the modern technology and hence they might refuse to make use of the application or website.

Negative Impact on Walk-in Sales: If the website fails to generate the desired publicity about the bookstore, then it might lose some of the existing walk in customers,who wouldprobably just make the purchases online.

Dependency on technology: A smart phone/tab/laptopis a mandatory requirement to access the website or the mobile application,as well a good Internet connection is needed to utilize the web services. Customers without this facility might not benefit by the project.

In one sentence, state the opportunity.

By establishing a transaction processing system,an online portal, and mobile app, Socrates & Co. can expand sales, supplier network, and walk-in customer base, besides generating word-of-mouth publicity through active online presence.

Outline the future project’s scope with Must Do, Should Do, Could Do and Won’t Do lists.

Must Do:

Set up a database for:

Books available in the store

Books under special orders

Rare books

Prioritize the platform (Android/iOS/Blackberry) on which the mobile application will be made available first.

Design and develop the website:

Provide information regarding all the books available within the bookstore

Provide categories such as “publisher recommendations” and “best sellers”

Ensure that the publishers agree to the format of Drop-Ship(provide goods by direct delivery from the manufacturer to the customer).

Ensurethat the online sales system is launched without disrupting any of the current business processes.

Set up theonline payment system via credit/debit/pay pal.

Document and process the legal formalities for setting up the website or mobile application.

Should Do:

Plan the transformation in phases—create a project plan while ensuring that the current business is not adversely impacted.

Suggest a better inventory management system including storage of the inventory.

Plan training for the resources to access and manage the new system.

Suggest a book renting service for online users.

Provide the option to pre-order the books online or by placing a request at the store.

Could Do:

Provide “Cash on delivery”services for the customers placing online orders.

Provide the rare books for a limited period on rent (by placing request online).

Provide customer service via e-mail (since a call up service would require additional resources) to ensure a positive customer experience and grievance redressing mechanism.

Provide facility of international shipping of orders.

Provide option to rate the books online by using a “five-star”rating format—one star being the lowest and five indicating the highest ratings.

Publish “frequently asked questions” on the website.

Make arrangements for a transaction processing system for the Café which may be opened later on in the bookshop (the owner has already acquired the license and in future, may require an integration into the existing system)

Won’t do:

Providing E-Books for the mobile application or website users

Posting detailed book reviews(since this will require an additional resource to scan through and finalize the content before publishing it online)

Identify two approaches to fact finding you would use in this case and explain why you favour these approaches.

The two fact-finding techniques  that we would use are:

Conduct series of interviews

Observe Operations

Interview: Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why

Since a new inventory system is being developed, we will need more information regarding the sales history besides other elements from the past history of the bookshop, as proper sales information is not being maintained currently. Also, the first download of information given by Joanna regarding the business might have missed supporting details which will be captured during interviews and help us in documentation of the facts and figures. The details can be captured by conducting series of interviews with the owner of the bookshop as well as the employees working as part time.

What How Where Who When Why  

What processes are being followed?

    How is a procedure performed?

  Where are the operations being performed?

  Who performs each of the procedures within the system?

  When is a procedure performed?

  Why are the processes important to the business?

Observing the ongoing operations

Socrates and Co. does not maintain a record of its day-to-day activities thus observing ongoing operations will help in providing an accurate picture of the sales process and the workflow.By close observation, we will be able to understand the roles and responsibilities accurately, which will later help us in allocating the tasks and roles in the new information system.

For projects such as this one, estimates for cost, benefit and schedule are required prior to decision-making. Write a list of the tasks you would undertake in order to estimate the cost of the future project.

We will evaluate the Economic Feasibility of the project, which means:

Calculating the benefits of the proposed project

Dollars saved per fiscal year or per month

Intangible benefits to the business

Calculating the Total Cost of Ownership

Cost of resources (including IT staff and users)

Cost of required hardware (bard code readers, PCs, laptops, servers)

Cost of required software (in-house development or vendor purchase)

Training cost (time required to train each employee)

Cost of licensing and legal approvals

Consulting fees by IT Foundry

Cost of postponing or not developing the project

We will also perform a Schedule Feasibility Analysis to understand:

The timeframe within which the project can be implemented

Acceptable time overruns (tolerance to extending the timelines)

Socrates & Co can budget $25,000 for the proposed project. Is this enough information to make a decision on the project’s economic feasibility? Explain.

This information is not enough to make a decision on the project’s economic feasibility. To get a clear picture of the economic feasibility, we need clear calculation of:

Cost in terms of resources (effort required by IT staff to develop and implement the system)

Cost of required hardware (bard code readers, PCs, laptops, servers)

Cost of required software (in-house development or vendor purchase)

Training cost (time required to train each employee)

Cost of licensing and legal approvals

Consulting fees by IT Foundry

Cost of postponing or not developing the project

A project is considered economically viable if the benefits exceed the incurred costs. We will have to deep dive into the intangible and tangible benefits to ascertain the exact worth of the project.

Ethical analysis

Consider the Socrates & Co case study.

Suggest one amendment to Socrates & Co that won’t incur heavy costs, but will

Deliver long-term benefits to the wider community.

Foster growth in any related or relevant industries.

Explain how your amendment will achieve these two outcomes.

One amendment to Socrates & Co that would deliver long-term benefits to the wider community and foster growth in a related or relevant industry would be:

Allow renting of text books to students

Allow renting of rare books to senior citizens and aged customers.

The above two amendments will not cost any additional money, but will generate goodwill and thus better word-of-mouth publicity for the company. Goodwill is an intangible asset to a company, which provides long-term benefits by way of generating positive customer outlook.

In future, as the company forays into online sales, many aged customers might feel “left out” due to lack of technical knowledge. In the online forum on the course website, a fellow student has said “people of old age still prefer person-to-person contact and they need personal attention. They wait on long holds just to talk to a person and get their query answered. This could either be due to difficulty in using the system or they don’t rely and don’t trust the automated system with certain things like making payments.”

Old people may not be able to make the purchases and for them, coming to the store and renting out old books would be a boon. Also, students from weaker sections of the society will find it extremely beneficial, to be allowed to rent some of the books. All these services will generate positive customer impact and a sense of social responsibility by the company.

Joanna is very happy with the project plan you produced and has almost decided to move on to systems analysis with you and IT Foundry. In her enthusiasm, she shows your project plan to Kavya and Adam, who are delighted to view a professional project plan and very keen on the project, especially as some of the ideas they had for the website have been included in the planning.

A week later, Kavya and Joanna are working together and during a quiet moment, Kavya suggests that Joanna can save money by giving the project plan to Kavya and her friends so they can do the project as part of their masters program. That way, Joanna would get the technology for free and Kavya and her friends can work on a real-world project. Kavya says the finished product will be just as good as what IT Foundry can produce.

In responding to the questions below, consider Grodzinsky, Miller and Wolf (2012). This reading can be located on the course website.

With respect to ‘the rules’ what is the main ethical issue?

With reference to ‘The rules’ the main ethical issue is that Joanna might be influenced by Kavya’s idea and breach Rule 2 (Rule 2: The shared responsibility of computing artifacts is not a zero-sum game, Grodzinsky, Miller and Wolf, 2012, Pg. 16) by withdrawing the project from IT socrates and providing it to Kavya and her friends. The company IT Foundry (Creator) trusts Joanna (User) and will honour the relevant licensing agreements and will not use the information provided by them in an unpredictable way. Also, if Joanna is willing to give the project to the graduates, she should seek IT Foundry’s permission and then proceed with the projects with Kavya and her friends. In this case, Joanna is ignoring her moral responsibilities and knowingly committing an action that is unethical and a breach of trust.

With respect to the trust model what is the main ethical issue?

As per the model of trust(Grodzinsky et al., 2011, Pg. – 17),Joanna might breach the principle number 2 – Trust is a decision by a to delegate to b some aspect of importance to a in achieving a goal in order to reduce cost for the development of the project, which is a main ethical issue. Thus, when Joanna and IT Foundry were almost planning to move on with the IT Foundry for the analysis of the project, out of enthusiasm, she shares the plan with Kavya and Adam. Kavya suggests that there can be some savings done on the cost by giving the project plan created by IT Foundry to her friends who are pursuing master’s and can use that as a part of their project work. Also, Kavya and her friends are eager to work on the project since it will be a real time application.

What implications arise from the two ethical issues identified in questions 13 and 14?

There are chances that Joanna may change plans of engaging IT Foundry with the project since she will benefit with Kavya and her friends implementing the plan as a part of their Master’s program for no cost.

Also, Joanna might lose trust of the IT Foundry which might also hamper the relationship which was built by her and her father with few of the publications that she deals with like Fractal Publications, Continuum, MUP, OUP and Stanford Law Books etc. (Assuming that IT Foundry will be handling their future security upgrade of their B2B system)

From Joanna’s point of view, what options are there? Identify four options.

From Joanna’s point of view, the options she has are as follows:

She has to be completely honest with IT Foundry and propose that she would like her employee Kavya and her friends to do the project as part of their major project as it will save her a lot of money

Or else she can continue entering a contract with the IT Foundry and not share the work with Kavya’s friends.

Also, Joanna has an option to stick with IT Foundry as the provider of the new information system and get Kavya and her friends to collaborate with IT Foundry to work on the project together.

Finally, the last option is get only the initial proposal from IT Foundry and then wait for a period of time and with further consultation then finally decide to proceed with the project at a later date.

From a Joanna’s point of view, which option is best, and why?

From the options above, the best option from Joanna’s point of view is option 3, where she can get IT Foundry and Kavya and her friends to collaborate on the project and work on it as a team.

Implementing this will benefit Joanna since she is a trusting person as well as the IT graduates since they will get hands on experience by working on a real world project with professionals.

Also, IT Foundry has invested time and effort to come up with a likeable project plan which includes ideas from Joanna and her team thus if both the entities work together they will avoid breaching any principles or rules and can end the project without any disputes.

Hence, the moral thing to do is to keep IT Foundry informed of the decisions taken as it wouldn’t be ethical to steal the work they did for Joanna and give it exclusively to her employees to do as a project for their university.

Option 1 and 2 gets eliminated since it is not ethically correct to use IT Foundry’s work elsewhere. Also, option 4 is time consuming since Joanna, might have to wait for indefinite period and can be ruled out.

Conceptual development and risk identification

Consider the Socrates & Co case study and the systems planning you have completed. You may have completed the planning tasks with a lot of care. If so, your planning is more likely to be effective in supporting future project activities.

Consider a situation in which the planning tasks were conducted in a carelessmanner.

With respect to the systems planning tasks you completed above, identify risks for each of the following stakeholders. Your answer should have eight unique risks (two per stakeholder).

Socrates & Co.

Socrates and Co. may withdraw due to budget issues and might not choose to continue with the future information systems, which will lead to the project closure prematurely.

Since Socrates and Co. has to work simultaneously on running the existing business while planning for the future information systems, there might be lack of commitment and cooperation which might cause gap in the requirements gathered.

The wider community.

Since Socrates and Co. did not have any online presence, it will be difficult to market the website or mobile app to a wider community

Since new to the market, people not familiar to the bookshop will take time to trust the brand.

The IT profession.

IT Professionals (Kavya and her friends) are inexperienced and lack the skill and knowledge since they are still pursuing their degree hence working in a professional environment with IT Foundry willimpact the project schedule since they might require training to complete the task.

The students collaborating with the IT team to work on the project might withdraw mid-way from the project creatinga resource shortfall.

Your own future work tasks (assuming the project goes ahead).

The assumptions while planning the project might be inaccurate and some of the information might be misleading.

Might have overlooked some information, which will be important at a later stage of the project thus incurring more costs to the customer.

Select two of the risks from question 18. With reference to these two risks, what are your conclusions about the importance of attention to detail with respect to system planning?

Note: future assignments will ask you to reflect on the answer you give.

Tworisks from the above question are:

Socrates and Co. may withdraw due to budget issues and might not choose to continue with the future information systems, which will lead to the project closure prematurely.

The assumptions while planning the project might be inaccurate and some of the information might be misleading.

Conclusion:

The risks mentioned above highlight the need for attention to detail while calculating the budget and defining the scope of the project. We need a detailed analysis on economic feasibility to mention what all costs are going to be incurred. The owner of Socrates and Co. is looking at accommodating additional services like opening a caféwithin the current budget. If we don’t look into the details of what it would entail, it will create of shortage of funds, and risk the project before the scheduled end date, thus forcing the owner to withdraw the project prematurely.

Not for assessment

How many hours did you invest in this assignment?This information will be provided to future students in this course.

We have invested the following effort in compiling the answers:

Group members: 5

Effort spent per member: 6 hours

Total Effort: 6 hours x 5 = 30 hours

Thank you for the time and effort you have invested. I look forward to reading your submissio

Assumptions

Assumption with regard to Roles Allocation: Joanna is the Managing Director of the firm, while the key functions are being managed by the part time workers in the following allocation:

Kavya Amal, Sales Manager

Adam Matchoss, Supply Chain Manager

Rajavel Sulake, Inventory Manager

Priyam Farrukh, Finance Manager

Assumption with regard to current business process: There is no Point of Sales system currently in place in the business. Transactions are processed manually with no electronic system being used.

Assumptions with regard to assets and resources of the company: The company has the following assets and resources at the time of the initial investigation and project planning phase:

Cash Deposits worth 0.5 million AUD

Antiques having estimated net worth of 2 million AUD

Bills receivables of 50,000 AUD

Rare collection of victorian era books (original copies)

Asssumptions with regard to suppliers and publishers:The company has a network of 34 suppliers which are categorized as:

2 are special vendors dealing in rare books

17 are B2B publishers who offer easy returns of unpurchased books

15 are text book publishers

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