lunears wrote:Okay do you have any ideas for designs?
I'll make some sketches/Gimp renditions of some ideas over the weekend. I'll try to show you everything off-the-wall, so it'll be easier to narrow down certain aspects, eliminating things as we progress in the creation process.
So far, off of the top of my head, some ideas that I had for designs were:
1. Having a bar with all quick features rest just under the capture-window. (If this was a pop-up window, and was moveable, that would be stellar!) The icons would be ordered in most used-to-least used, and would be utilized for greatest ease in functionality; i.e. capture frame button be close to onion-skin feature, or playback option, as to decrease mouse movement between such icons.
2. Having a simple, yet interesting looking boarder to all windows (including capture view). Perhaps a blue wavy boarder, or something similarly calming, cool, and not distracting from the true functionality of the program. - If it looks cool for kids, yet also has a professional feel to the layout, we can please a majority of brickfilmers that'll use it.
3. Having several aspect-ratio changing features for the capture window, so brickfilmers wanting to shoot films in 4:3, 16:9, 2.35:1 could do so here, rather than later in an editing program. This would also make filming for a certain ratio much easier from the get-go, as, you could line up figures in frame with less worry if you're capturing in widescreen from the beginning! (This is more of a programer-initiated feature, but, I'd love such a thing nevertheless.)
4. Perhaps having some sort of editing functionality in Biscuit, as to eliminate the need for using several programs in sequence. (I know that the subject of Biscuit being an all-in-one capture and editing software was brought up on the previous thread, but, however realistic that truly is is still up for debate.)
5. I know that a lot of people dislike (ok, more like outright despise) clippy the office assistant, an animated side-kick from older versions of Microsoft Word, however, having a little sprite in the corner, available for help at any time, is a pretty cool feature. We are trying to make this program for everyone, aren't we. Why not have a little feature, (which can be disabled, if needed) to aide younger brickfilmers, computer-noob brickfilmers, and others first using Biscuit. This feature could sort of be like a "tutorial/help" guide, just in the form of some .gif animation. (i.e. similar to the Infomaniac in LEGO Island, or Steven Spielberg in the old LEGO Studios movie maker.
6. While I'm on the subject of the super-outdated LEGO Studios Movie Maker program - it could still help us in coding/designing the features and layout of our stop-motion program. (It was the go-to animation program before things like Monjeyjam and Stop-Motion pro came on the scene) If only someone had a copy that we could look at...
7. Another little suggestion I have is to change the name of our project. I'm not specifically against using the name Biscuit, but, I never really did like the name from the previous thread anyhow. And, since the original attempt at making an in-house stop-motion program failed, I think that now may just be the perfect time to revamp things with a new name. It could be a fun and fresh spin on the program, who knows!
Again, these are just some ideas off of the top of my head. I'm purposely trying to cover all angles, and every permutation to ideas, as so you, lunears, and the other programers can shoot down crazy ideas, and approve of the more applicable ones. 
) once things get more up and running. - And once this program is finished, I'll be sure to use it on my animations - knowing that I'll be using a very special program made just for people like me.
)
