Wow… what a frickin amazing project this turned out to be!!! Thank you Talal Nasr (NewElite sales and marketing manager) for giving me the opportunity to be involved in something so special.

I took a bout 15 days work to fully complete this website from scratch, knowing that the experience of working on this kinda of projects was something I just couldn’t miss.

When I start working in this website, I put a creative ideas in parallel with the international standards and (avensis) worldwide website. Most of the work was being done in flash with a little bit of HTML, so my role was to bring something creative, interesting, usable and  internationally developed.

A final amazing part, this website took a Gold Egypt Web Award (Automotive) + Award for Best usage of Adobe Technologies + Get a CS5 Web Premium Suite ( 1800$ Value = 10,000LE ). The circle is successfully completed

And thanks again Talal and Abdelwahab! we hit everything and counting. Crazy.

Website features

• Full Flash8 site
• 3 image galleys (Home – Interior – Exterior)
• 3d turnable exterior
• Driving Video
• Color chooser
• Semantic, valid XHTML and CSS
• Gracefully degrading code (for older browsers)
• Based on TESTO Free CSS Foundation Template. http://petermikhael.com/testo-free-css-foundation-template.html
• Cross-browser compatible, Tested and working in all major browsers
• Design is created using the 960PX Grid System (wide design)
• SEO friendly HTML code
• Favicon

Was established institution Dare Bakhtiari Interiors Holy Capital , and after studying the fine art of the needs of high taste in interiors and what has been touched.

The scarcity of interior designers and those implementing the interior and foreign affairs in Mecca, a group of Saudi Council of Engineers and was under the management of:

Engineer / Adel Bin Ahmed Alhinaoi
(Director General of the Group of Dare, a professional civil engineer)
Eng / Iyad bin Ahmed Rhpini
(Deputy Director General, Power Mechanical Engineer)
Eng / bin Omar Suleiman Alhinaoi
(Architect)
Eng / Omar Bin Abd Al-Rahim Turkistani
(Interior designer)

Inaugurated the Foundation in cooperation with a group of professional engineers from sister States with expertise and good taste, and who have worked in this area by their expertise and talents of multiple supplementing the aesthetic touches in the interiors and Mzjoha decorations Saudi Arabia, which attracted many distinguished client who had expressed admiration for handling different and unique in the formulation of opinion and providing technical consultancy and quality and accuracy of the implementation of the business and service and knowledge of the future costs of implementing projects through direct contact or through our humble.

Website features

• Full site
• JQuery Image Slide Show with Semi-Transparent Caption
• Semantic, valid XHTML and CSS
• Gracefully degrading code (for older browsers)
• Based on TESTO Free CSS Foundation Template. http://petermikhael.com/testo-free-css-foundation-template.html
• Cross-browser compatible, Tested and working in all major browsers
• Design is created using the 960PX Grid System (wide design)
• SEO friendly HTML code
• Powered by jQuery
• jQuery Shadobox
• Favicon
• jQuery Hover effect

3d logo design – Video Tutorial – Part 1

3d logo design – Video Tutorial – Part 2

3d logo design – final result

I walks through the fundamental decisions, such as what information to include, what size and orientation the logo should have, and whether to use in corporate identity, TV production, Web publishing. I demonstrate how to set up a template and work with type alignment and color. Also discusses animation techniques and preparing the file for printing, TV production, Web Publishing. How to integrate and fill the gap between 6 software is my goal in this tutorial. I’ll use Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Maya, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe after Effects, Adobe Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver.

Topics covered:

Quick Sketching
Logo Exploration
Logo Modeling
Producing Logo to several illustrators formats
Animation approach
Animation Composition
Web Animation and production

3d logo design – Logo Design behind the Scenes – Part 1

01: Intro Goals.
02: 1st stage Sketching ideas.
03: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering and Detail Design.
04: Put the logo into Layout.
05: Illustration stage.
06: 2nd stage animation.

3d logo design – Logo Design behind the Scenes – Part 2

07: animation composition and finalize exporting HD.
08: 3rd stage Web Production.
09: Final Design, animation inside HTML page.

Details:

01: Intro Goals

In the first stage we have a look to our goals before we start working to know who exactly we should do. We will prepare our logo to be ready for printing, TV production and Web Publishing. As a designing apprentice I have always asked myself what is the best method for designing something or that particular logo. It is evident that you can apply different methods for doing the same logo, but the quality of the output might vary according to the method you use.

02: 1st stage Sketching ideas

Then the process of swirling out your ideas begins. It doesn’t matter if the sketch looks like monotone; you are just throwing ideas down onto a white blank page at the moment. I used tablet here. Just try to find ideas and concepts using balance. What I mean with balance is our logo should be physically balanced inside our design. Just imagine if you create that logo in real life with clay or wood and try to put it on a flat surface it should be stable balanced. Once I had placed some ideas down on paper you can scan them in and dive into your image editor of choice if you would like. I’m using Adobe Photoshop for this one. The method I use to create logo could be wildly different from someone else so go with whatever method feels comfortable. The end result will be a series of scaled resources that the OS will use in different views.

03: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering and Detail Design

Then the process of swirling out your ideas begins. It doesn’t matter if the sketch looks like monotone; you are just throwing ideas down onto a white blank page at the moment. I used tablet here. Just try to find ideas and concepts using balance. What I mean with balance is our logo should be physically balanced inside our design. Just imagine if you create that logo in real life with clay or wood and try to put it on a flat surface it should be stable balanced. Once I had placed some ideas down on paper you can scan them in and dive into your image editor of choice if you would like. I’m using Adobe Photoshop for this one. The method I use to create logo could be wildly different from someone else so go with whatever method feels comfortable. The end result will be a series of scaled resources that the OS will use in different views.
Modeling

For a non-organic bending object such as the subject of this tutorial it is wise to use polygonal modeling unless you care about the quality. Polygon modeling has always fascinated me especially with the accuracy it provides for making industrial models and its flexibility. The good thing about Autodesk Maya is that it provides both a strong NURBS system and a multi-optional NURBS to polygon conversion dialog, where by we can convert our detailed NURBS model to a polygonal object with the desired number of faces.

The aim of this tutorial is to provide a practical guide for the novice Polygon modeler, whereby he/she can practice the basic methods through designing a somewhat complex object. Of course, this tutorial does not cover all Polygon commands but rather most of them.

Now observe and contemplate the above sketching image for a moment; try to visualize it from front, the front view: that’s the key point in making the logo.

First we will begin with a set of primitives for different logo parts. I make a sphere (polygon sphere) then 4 twisted cubes. To make twisted cubes in Maya it’s just easy. Make a cube then go to deformers panel and use the twisting toll. After made a 1 twisted cube, duplicate it 3 times with 90 degrees. Then put them together to fitting in the sphere.

That’s exactly my idea represented. I have a point in this logo which I can say the sphere represent the red word and the 4 twisted cubes represent how mush it’s secured.

The next step is to create mental ray subdivision from approximation editor panel. I like to make the N subdivision as a 2.000 points for sure that’s give me a good smoothed mesh and also at any time I can go back and make any changes in low poly mode.
Texturing

The texturing stage is the most important part. Everyone who’s worked before with 3D texturing knows that every texture have an advantage and disadvantage. We can see that the Lambert shading absorb lights. Also we knows about the phonge shade it’s reflect lights with angels and have a different characterizes instead of blinn shade. So I render the logo 3 times 1 with blinn shade, 2 with mia_material and phong shades. By this way we mention that we have the logo in 3 different characteristic so we can use this 3 together in later steps.
Lighting and Rendering

Let’s talk about lights. I use in this scene 9 lights. Our goal in lights is how to use a minimal number of area and point lights to recreate all direct and indirect light sources for a logo. They are 8 area lights and 1 point light. The 8 area lights have a very small intensity. Also I used the white light color. In This technique we use Global Illumination and Final Gather.

Final step in lighting and rendering is to render the logo in 3 different images every image with a different shade.

04: Put the logo into Layout

lets go to Adobe Photoshop and open the 3 images we exported from Maya. Actually I like to export images as a .TIF images. Taking the 3 images and put it together in Adobe Photoshop blind them together. I used overlay blinding mode. Then finish by company name and the caption.

Also I simulate a deep shadow behind the logo. Its give me a nice look.

In this stage if u would like to represent that logo to the client u have or to your boss. That’s will fair enough.

05: Illustration stage

For the first time I present this tutorial someone ask me… hay the logo u created now is fine but do u think is it ready for print in big scale like billboards?..

Actually it’s a very good question because for sure we need the logo to be ready in everything from print to TV production to web production as we agreed in statge1. So I’ll start now to give u my approach for how to export our logo as a vector (scalable) shape. We will go back to Maya and use logo model and exporting into a different illustrator types. I used here Maya vector render and I use some options like curve tolerance and detail level to end up with different logo versions. 1 with dark colors, bright colors, and wire frame, etc… everything is vector we can export it as an AI file and import it to adobe illustrator. Easily u will find that our logo is now ready to use it in printing elements safely if we need to print it in higher printing elements or huge billboard.

We finished now the stage 1 which is creating a 3d logo ready for print production.

06: 2nd stage animation

Okay… Let’s animate. We will go back to Maya and starts animate our logo. I start by prepare my timeline with 72 frame. This will give me 3 seconds (24X3=72). Animate the sphere shrink in then shrink out until its stop. Then about the 4 twisted cubes I animate it in 360 digress reversed. So it’s give me a very nice effect. So what we have now is shrink sphere and 4 rotated cubes. I think it’s Looks good for me now. For sure I’ll go to the timeline and play the frames fast, slow, reversed, etc… Check if anything looks weird or out of scene.

So we have now 72 frames let’s render it in .PNG sequence of images. And have a look for the animation when it’s finish render.

07: animation composition and finalize exporting HD

So we end now with 72 PNG sequences of images. If u thinks about composition for sure we will think about Adobe after Effects. You can import the 72 images directly to Adobe after Effects but in this tutorial I convert this sequence to 1 MOV file using quick time. So I open quick time then open the sequence of image and save as a MOV file.

So let’s import the MOV file to Adobe after Effects and start composition. First effect I have used is the auto level effect. It’s just makes the logo looks fine and has a deep look. Also I just check some other effects like rippling and bouncing and I end up with the 3D rippling animation. I make a radial gradient for the background to give me nice look when the logo animate. So I’m happy for what I end up with now

Let’s render our MOV file from Adobe after Effects and finally the logo now composite fine and ready for TV production.

08: 3rd stage Web Production

After we have our composite MOV file let we think about web animation. Actually Adobe Flash is the solution. First I prepare my stage in Adobe Flash 640X480 as we rendered our files and also prepare my timeline and frame rate 24 FPS. Now we are ready to import our animation file. But the MOV file has a huge size and we shouldn’t use it for web. That does will take a lot of time in loading. So I think about converting this file to FLV file using Adobe Flash CS3 Video Encoder. Start encoding and we have now a small FLV file. So import the FLV file and check it in Adobe Flash. After everything is looks fine and small size the only one problem is the frames looping. So I add one Action Script behavior to stop the animation when it’s finished (played for 1 time). So our file now ready for publishing from Adobe Flash we will end up with HTML file contained the flash SWF file.
09: Final Design, animation inside HTML page.

The last step in our entire tutorial is to open the HTML into Adobe Dreamweaver and center the flash object (SWF file) and we can easily type welcome to red secure website and it’s now ready for Web Production.

So that’s the end of the tutorial. I hope u like it… See u

http://tareknour.com

Advertising and Production – Silver

TNC Wins First Website Award - TNC Official Article

Egypt Web Awards aims to serve as an inspiration, archive and at the same time reward creators for their skills so that they continue to improve it. It is also to promote the innovative spirit of web designers to meet professional and international standards, to promote intellectual and production opportunities, as well as to develop an interactive proactive and reactive community that aims at providing recognition to this e\sector in the most superlative way.

Furthermore, Egypt Web Awards is an encouragement for all sectors to showcase their websites and be more involved in the IT. Through Egypt Web Awards, participants have the opportunity to widen contacts and networks, foster co-operation, enhance knowledge, build capabilities and exchange information, Egypt Web Awards is a platform for creative people to showcase their works and attain market recognition. and website owners in Egypt.

The EWA was created by Mr. Pierre Mcurls in Lebanon as a local event in 2004. After its significant success, the idea was adopted by other neighboring countries now including 11 Arab countries. The EWA begun in Egypt a year ago. The EWA is a member of the Pan Arab Web Awards which recognizes the best websites in all 11 countries.

There were 138 competing websites in 38 different categories. Tarek Nour Communications’ website www.tareknour.com was one of the participating websites in the Advertising and Production category and was awarded the silver trophy. While announcing the award, the host said “we cannot mention advertising without mentioning Mr. Tarek Nour.” This award is the first website award for TNC.

TNC’s website tareknour.com is based on an original design. Its concept was created by TN’s creative IT Services, developed by IT Development and optimized. There are two different versions of the website; Flash and html. The original concept of the design started in pencil and paper, after that it was converted into a (2D) art design, then a (3D) art design and finally a flash animated design. The website has various layers with four distinct designs, three static ones and a dynamic one.

The Website combines all the different Ad Agencies, Communications and Media Services under TNC and each one has its own page. It provides news, insights, work and information of the whole group. Moreover, it contains the recent ads done by the group as well as some old ads. The strongest two points of the website are TNC news and the videos.

Organized by; Egypt Web Academy.

Sponsored by; TOYOTA, YellowPages, Tegara Net, KEMET.

In Association With; Microsoft, ITIDA, Toyota IT Division, CIT.

Supported With; Toyota IT Division, CIT.

Media Sponsored; CIT2Day, Raye7 Gaay, Alam Rakamy, Sok El Asr Magazine.

Official Contact Cented; Teleconnect.

Type: PSD Template

Sources Available: .PSD

Software Required:For uncompressing a template ZIP package, WinZip 9+ (Windows), Stuffit Expander 10+ (Mac), Adobe Photoshop CS+

To buy this template please contact me: peter@petermikhael.com