Character Design For Mobile Devices

This work looks at the creative challenges of designing sprites and icons for mobile phones, portable games platforms and computers. It also explores how the limits of designing for small screens are the inspiration for vibrant and colourful art.

With hundreds of thousands of mobile applications available today, your app has to capture users immediately. This book provides practical techniques to help you catch—and keep—their attention. You’ll learn core principles for designing effective user interfaces, along with a set of common patterns for interaction design on all types of mobile devices. Mobile design specialists Steven Hoober and Eric Berkman have collected and researched 76 best practices for everything from composing pages and displaying information to the use of screens, lights, and sensors. Each pattern includes a discussion of the design problem and solution, along with variations, interaction and presentation details, and antipatterns. Compose pages so that information is easy to locate and manipulate Provide labels and visual cues appropriate for your app’s users Use information control widgets to help users quickly access details Take advantage of gestures and other sensors Apply specialized methods to prevent errors and the loss of user-entered data Enable users to easily make selections, enter text, and manipulate controls Use screens, lights, haptics, and sounds to communicate your message and increase user satisfaction "Designing Mobile Interfaces is another stellar addition to O’Reilly’s essential interface books. Every mobile designer will want to have this thorough book on their shelf for reference." —Dan Saffer, Author of Designing Gestural Interfaces

Long-standing book on media production brings media production into the digital age!

Modern devices, from phones and cars to houses and the appliances within them, are being designed with formidable computational power and expanded functionality. To be truly effective, these smart devices must effectively process data from their environment and experiences and make decisions based on that information. Recent Advances in Ambient Intelligence and Context-Aware Computing investigates the functionality of ubiquitous computational systems and how they may adapt to their environment to improve the quality of interaction for the end-user. This reference book will be of value to under- and post-graduate students, professionals, and researchers in networking, computer science, communications, and other information technology disciplines.

While the earliest character representations in video games were rudimentary in terms of their presentation and performance, the virtual characters that appear in games today can be extremely complex and lifelike. These are characters that have the potential to make a powerful and emotional connection with gamers. As virtual characters become more intricate and varied, there is a growing need to examine the theory and practice of virtual character design. This book seeks to develop a series of critical frameworks to support the analysis and design of virtual characters. Virtual Character Design for Games and Interactive Media covers a breadth of topics to establish a relationship between pertinent artistic and scientific theories and good character design practice. Targeted at students, researchers, and professionals, the book aims to show how both character presentation and character performance can be enhanced through careful consideration of underlying theory. The book begins with a focus on virtual character presentation, underpinned by a discussion of biological, artistic, and sociological principles. Next it looks at the performance of virtual characters, encompassing the psychology of emotion and personality, narrative and game design theories, animation, and acting. The book concludes with a series of applied virtual character design examples. These examples examine the aesthetics of player characters, the design and performance of the wider cast of game characters, and the performance of characters within complex, hyperreal worlds.

Art directors need to balance both the creative and business-oriented aspects of their role to be truly successful. This book provides an inspirational and creative 'skill set' path for designers who wish to take their careers to a more ambitious level.

This book focuses on mobile learning design from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It introduces and discusses how mobile learning can be effectively integrated into curricula, highlighting the design of four key components of learning-centric pedagogy: Resource, Activity, Support and Evaluation in the context of mobile learning. It also investigates the learning theories underpinning mobile learning design, and includes case studies in different contexts. It provides practical insights that allow teachers to change and transform teaching practices using mobile technology. Anyone involved in mobile-technology enhanced learning and teaching will find this book both informative and useful.