original cellphone

[Ozylot]

Sweet!! Now if you model all the circuitry...

Looks great bro!


BTW FYI exporting to OBJ keeps all the hard/soft edges that you may have applied to the model.

[traq]

^ so does 3DS, at least I never had a problem exporting hard/soft edges.

anyway, a little key layout test:

[traq]

I have some progress to show: been working with the animation. this is a "walkthough" animation from kerky, combined with 2D animation and effects from Corel graphics suite 12. I would have posted it two days ago, but I couldn't get it to export correctly. Please let me know if you can't view it; I didn't know what codec would be the best choice so I just went with the default.

this is a very low-quality test, didn't want to waste too much time on something I've never done before. please let me know what you think! pic is just a thumbnail; don't click. download the .avi

!!! flash version !!! much higher quality and less download time. I'm deleting the .avi

[Apollo911]

The animation is fine, however I think the concept needs a lot of work.

Some constructive criticism:

I know you stated that it's not so much about the design, but if it's gong in your portfolio, everything about it is going to be evaluated. Firstly, phones have a common layout for a reason; because it is the best fit. I don't hold my phone with both hands when dialling, I hold it with one hand upright, and your keypad layout would mean that the number 7 is where the number one is on most other phones (and the numbers would be sideways). Also, when holding a phone with both hands you have the benefit of being able to type with both thumbs, however with this configuration even holding it with both hands only one thumb has access to the keypad.

I think if this project is more about the animation/presentation, then it would be better to use a more established phone layout, or even an existing model. When looking at this all my attention is on the design of the phone, rather than the presentation.

I don't mean to sound harsh, I'm just trying to help!

Cheers, Apollo.

[traq]

no prob, I appreciate it.

a feature of the phone that's not apparent in this animation is that it has a layout-switch function, where the keys can be re-assigned so the phone can be held upright, upside-down, left hand, right hand, etc.; with vertical being intended for phone use and horizontal for browsing use and quickkeys between the two. my next experiment will showcase that aspect. but you're absolutely right about the layout confusion. stuff for me to think about.

[Ozylot]

Perhaps there could be a sensor inside that would automatically orient the screen to the user. Just a thought.

Animation was alright. I noticed a strange black line across the view when the screen changed, possibly just due to compression though.

Good stuff.

[traq]

I thought about some kind of gyroswitch to automatically change the screen orientation, but then i realized that phones are often held faceup, so the gyro could often be wrong or change too often.

I think Apollo's right; it may be better to use a more conventional design for this particular project. If I go with this (and I'd like to, but...), I'd need to make it really obvious that the orientation is customizable. I thought about splitting the keypad, too, having a 4x3 pad on each side... oh well. complications.

about the horizontal line, it was an effect: the text flashes across the entire screen briefly before the new screen comes up. Really can't tell at this compression. I was a little disappointed that you can't really read the phone display, either. think it's too distracting?

I exported this as a flash animation and it looked a lot better, but I can't get it properly embedded in html to post it online. I'm checking on the Corel website forums, as I know Corel has the capability to do it. just not working for some reason.

[traq]

here's a link to the flash version. The end got cut off somehow, but all you're missing is my email address.

[Apollo911]

I think you could use an accelerometer to re-orient the screen.

[traq]

??