I've done stuff on many Hurricanes and other "major events" in my career (primarily when working for NASA), but working on Hurricane Isabel for TIME Magazine (a cover) was the most extraordinary experience. How often do you get to be developing means to visualize an event as it has arrived locally and knocks out all power to your home office?
(still text to be added.. btw: all sat images used here were originally grayscale...)
(I'll be posting details about producing/designing the cover of this DVD and the video & audio editing work for the DVD itself later)
[Front Cover (140k)] - [Back Cover - 140k]
Upon receiving a request for a visualization from an editor at Scientific American (the Fire Atlas website we'd done was getting well-known... more on this soon), I decided to share the opportunity in friendly competition with another visualizer on our team (me being the "senior" in our work at times).
This DVD wrap-around cover was a tough one. The imagery we had available was from the DVD I'd produced, which meant some tricks to be played in offsetting the lower resolution of the graphics. Then there was also the usual incredibly short timeframe to pull it all off. I used a combination of Canvas and Photoshop, primarily. I like Canvas as a great tool for vector and bitmap layouts, and then fine-tuning the results in Photoshop. Too many people are wedded to Illustrator or Photoshop as the ultimate tools. The trick is to identify the right tools for the task at hand, no presupposing a particular application is appropriate (or optimal)...
(Some of the Interactive Menus from the ET2003 DVD. These were done using very limited software (iDVD) in terms of layout flexibility (in luding font "effect"). More details about this project forthcoming....)
(This project was to develop a prototype interface and look'n'feel for a kiosk to be used originally in a Visitor's Center to help teach children about the dangers of UltraViolet Radiation. From my research, I coined the term "SunShield." More about this project later... you can see some of the Flash format text animations tests for this prototype project HERE)
This is an example of one of the many draft interfaces and layouts that were accomplished in the early development of NASA's award-winning "Earth Observatory" website. I was co-responsible for the design, conceptualization, and interactive presentations of this website concept to seek support and funding (both internally and externally to NASA). This example was still in progress as a draft at this stage.
(For the $2 billion yearly US Global Change Research Program: 14+ Federal Agencies studying Global Climate Change... this interactive prototype demonstrated a methodology and dynamic approach to meta-administering a cross-Federal Agency program over a decade or more in time... links below are to the "control panel" and a sample of the approach to "milestones".... not shown: buncha stuff, including, the Macromedia Director-based 3-D Timeline+ Charts.... details forthcoming)
[Milestones Chart (230k)] [Control Panel (300k)]
(My technical manager, the Project Scientist for NASA's TRMM Satellite Mission wanted a
"thought piece" - a single page visual concept for using
several "mini-TRMM" satellites in constellation to measure water
amounts in the Earth's environmental system, that could be used for
overhead presentations. I came up with three approaches (above), one of which was still
being used years later. It's ironic that this particular visualization
was the most scientifically incorrect... on purpose... more later)
(This scan of the original (and not near final quality) was developed for the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It was for the cover of the first major intergovernmental study on Global Climate Change; a document produced by around 2,000 scientists and experts. 'Twas one of the most difficult projects in my career, involving vetting by representatives of 14 Federal Agencies, several countries, many government officials, and scientists. The politics were considerable, and the technical issues (10 years ago), daunting. More to be written about the project soon.... hopefully including some of the various initial concepts submitted for selection)
