Week 5 Blog Applications Exercise

I chose a page from a Spiderman Comic Book. In this page Spiderman is trying to free himself before the crack in the ceiling gets bigger. The image shows this by showing the crack with dripping water in the first frame. It identifies the problem right away. The next frames show Spiderman struggling with water pouring ontop of him, displaying how he needs to quickly escape so he doesn't drown. He has heavy, probably metal, debris ontop of him, which is delaying his escape. Spiderman has both hands on a piece of debris and lifts his head up to gain the strength to lift the heavy debris off of him. The last and biggest frame shows Spiderman lifting the heavy debris and water is still pouring ontop of him. Without reading the comic I could tell that Spiderman was in trouble and would drown if he didn't. In each frame it shows the water falling from the ceiling.

Usually in comic books they display images in sequential order. " Devices such as speech ballons and boxes are used to indicate dialogue and impart establishing information, while panels, layout, gutters and zip ribbons can help indicate the flow of the story"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics).

Visual Puzzles

The first puzzle I chose was to draw 3 squares without lifting my pencil. I had my boyfriend try out the puzzle with me.
The first thing I did was to start from the top left and move to the right. I followed the outline of the squares until I reached the bottom part. When I got to the interior I had to look and plan my path. My first attempt wasn't successful because I realized that I would cross a line. My second attempt would be successful, by accident. I went to the right, then up, left and then mirrored what I had done. I eventually made it back to the upper left hand corner without going over any other lines.
My boyfriend made several attempts to solve this puzzle. First thing he tried was to start at the upper left hand corner, but instead of moving to the left, he went down. When attempting the interior he drew to the right, up, left, then down. He mirrored what he had done, but went up.

The second game we played was the "Next Square" game. We both got the same answer by noticing that the boxes with the lines really formed numbers 1-5.

Role of Feature Hierarchy in Visual Queries and Search

When I looked for an image that deals with graphic design and typography, this one stood out. The first thing that "pops out" is the "designgeist.org" which is in orange. It's the first thing my eye goes to. It seems that my eye is drawn to all the words that are in orange or black, then yellow and gray. There are different levels you could say to this image. Each word is a different size and color and my eye is drawn, obviously, to the largest and brightly colored word. Of course the brightest and largest word is what this image is advertising, "designgeist.org". This image relates to the topic of visual search and feature channels. It has something that "pops out" and has different variations in each channel.






http://netzwellen.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ff24811883400e553b73ba98834-popup

Top-down visual processing

My area of study is Visual Communications. I'm interested in designing logos or posters. I chose this picture because it reminded me of some logos I've seen before (minus some text in the center), but it also relates to the topic of Top-Down Visual Processing. The image appears to have a white square on top of 4 black circles. What we really are seeing is 4 black circles with 1/4 of it cut out. Our brain make us think we are seeing a square. As it was stated in the Ware Reading, "Top-down processes are driven by the need to accomplish some goal." Our brains are biased and "what we see is the result of information about the world strongly biased according to what we are attempting to accomplish."

image from:
http://www.dana.org/uploadedImages/Images/Content_Images/art_0607hood_3.jpg