As I gather all of my work together to form a final product or piece, I thought it wise to have another quick shufty over the brief. I think what I have ended up working towards fits much better than my original intention which was more fragmented. The hub system, building on the simple and appropriate navigation I have been developing with my beloved pamphlets, should make the several varied parts of the project feel like one contained piece.
My recent actual work has been refining the PRELOADER! While it did the job of buffering the swf files, the placeholder preloader was a little empty. I also felt like it really needed to be nice if it might be loading large content, especially with the monster file sizes I am ending up with as I’m dealing with so many large images. I would rather make the user wait and enjoy waiting, than compromise on detail and image quality. In reality it isn’t a long wait and my intention to use code to open and close new tabs so as not to navigate away from the largest file, should make the user experience more positive.
After a lot of refinement and additions, I have created a main screen which could work as a front page to the whole thing as well as the background to the preloader. I looked at the more recent games and how they handled the loading screens and felt recurring themes were the thick black bars at the top and bottom and a loading icon or percentage. Actual loading bars seem to be less popular, while I personally find the minimalist approach of fading glowy things to be pretty useless; just annoying me as I don’t know what the hells going on :p. This is typified in the Harry Potter Wii games and even the loading content in Windows Vista and especially Windows 7. Gone are the handy bars which filled across with a percentage of completion; in are the weird glowing Windows icons and perpetually moving green fellers. AS SUCH, I am adamant in including useful information – even if I do take on board many of the other modernisations in graphic design ideas and content.
I have also brought back in the title and other imagery I found skulking at the back of a dark and dusty file, which I had kind of forgotten about. I had spent quite a while refining this title and wanted to include it as I think the typeface is more important than logo with most games. All of the other imagery is my own photographs, taken on location at several churches and castles, with a few of my own drawings too. Overall I like it – while it may almost feel cluttered, I think the main title or loading screen will have a longer lasting appeal if the user keeps on finding new things within it.
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