Kristen Ward dot net - the blog

Double-sided Burner Card for Mitch and Egypt

My good friends Mitch and Egypt are hanging out at Transformus this weekend and wanted to have something to give out. Not really a business card, it’s more of a burner card. I finished these cards on a Megabus to New York with Egypt (gotta love outlets and free wi-fi) and we sent them to get printed just in time. They were apparently printed successfully - I’ll post a picture of the finished product if they have any left.

WEEKEND!

-kw

Seeing this blast from the past .AI file was pretty neat, and I thought it would be interesting to post. Here are a few various iterations of the Boo the Elephant logo before it’s eventual completion, seen in the bottom right. I didn’t save all steps of the design process as separate iterations, unfortunately, but this is a pretty good example of what designing an electronic music logo is like.

Gros Bisous, mes petits choux!

-kw

Toy Detectives slide 1

Instructions slide

Gave my senior project presentation today in Japanese to a Japanese-speaking audience. Thought I’d share a couple slides to give you an idea of what that was like.

また後で

ｋｗ

I haven’t been posting much about my senior project on this blog, because I’ve had to keep up a project journal for that purpose (feel free to wade through it, but a more concise website highlighting more salient points is sure to come).

For now, here are some highlights of Eye-venturers’ Toy Detectives, an educational video game and flash-based learning intervention for children with autism, created by myself, Christopher Alex, Yan Zhao, and Bridgette Smith, all students at Drexel University in Philadelphia (which incidentally was just ranked 3rd in the nation for video game design).

1. The game is made for use with a tobii eye tracker. Children use their eyes to navigate instead of a mouse. A large, colorful button is provided for a few instances where clicking is required.
2. Through interaction with in-game characters, the game teaches gestures (such as pointing) and use of eye-gaze to attract and direct attention.
3. The premise of the game is that your friend has lost her favorite toy in the park, and you the player must ask people in the park for clues.
   

   Level 1 Screenshot

4. Children play first person alongside a 2D friend character, who provides hints. Child users can create their own friend character.


Character Creation interface

5. The game is an innovative, yet-untested autism intervention which we hope to present to the community in the near future.

How’s everyone doing? just a quick upload of a commission piece, a new logo for UK-based Tony Wilkinson aka Boo the Elephant. Tony is an astrophysicist-slash-classically trained composer- slash electonic music artist extraordinaire (read: genius).

A lot of his music is instrumental and points directly to his classical training. Any of his songs would make some pretty killer samples imo (philadjs here’s lookin’ at you), but he occasionally mixes in his own sampled vocal tracks, such as those cut from hilarious 80s dating-on-demand-style videos, as in the link below. check him out!

Boo the Elephant - Fred the Viking (via CarbonLogic)

Edit 7/1: The logo is featured on the album cover of  The Adventures of Boo! nice.

For an Audio Production class project this year I redid the ADR to a snippet of Pixar’s Jack Jack Attack. So, here’s me doing the voices of Kari and Jack Jack, with Brian Gadomski guest-starring as Rick Dicker. Haha.

[kw does Kari and Jack-Jack]

Bamboo Shoots / Erroneous Krunk / Deluka flier - Khyber 12/16/09

Some really amazing bands! Flier I made which was posted around Philly promoting this show, which rocked.

~17 miles

So I ride my bike a lot. This is where I rode today, courtesy of Map My Run. Neither of the start and end points are my apartment, but I did, as you can maybe see if you know where I live, stop there in between. I woke up in fishtown thanks to a late night study party gone into the morning and ended up in fairbridge where I got a ride home with my bike cause it was cold and my friends are awesome.

Those purple dots aren’t stops. I don’t really know how this site works yet. Stops include school, Satellite Cafe, school again, my apartment, Ritz East, Fairbridge, Skye’s house, 7th and Girard, etc.

And now I’m 17 miles cooler.

Pictures of my apartment!

It’s clean right now, but clearly it’s implied that these are never before seen.

my first homemade hula hoop and forced sexy lighting

a window

a second corner

The kitchen-like structure and channel to the bathroom.

The bathroom is basically a bathroom. The toilet is crammed into a corner because, as Dan pointed out, the signature of A Signature Community is awful, awful toilet placement.

Don’t forget to check the alt/mouseover text on the images. I don’t know if I’ll keep doing that, but probably. I always enjoy a good Complicated & Indirect™

Have a lovely day, dear readers at work!

-KRISTEN.

[LINK]

And they are awesome. Seriously.

Me, i’ve been on a Murder By Death / Dr. Dog kick lately. I listened to Balmorhea again today while reading Everything Is Illuminated in a coffee shop. That was weird. Pretty music though.

Moving into 2308 Locust #1F come July… Anyone want to come visit? it’s tiny, but I know I’ll make good of it.

Real update later, I’m tiiiired. -k.