My First Finished Ident!

Using C.R.A.P!

We had to redesign a business card using C.R.A.P features.  Here is my version of the business card:

 

C- Contrast.  I have used contrast in colours by making the text stand out from the background.  I have used a larger font for the company name and smaller for the contact details.  I have used an even smaller font to say the owner is a proprietor as I felt this information is unnecessary.  I have used a different colour for the title and a different font which shows contrast but I feel that it works well. I have used equal gaps between the text pieces.  The size of the space at the top is larger than the space at the bottom but this is to make the company name stand out more.

R – Repetition.  I have used repetition by the use of the colour light blue, white and black.  I have used the faded out bar at the top and the bottom of the business card which also shows repetition.  Another aspect of repetition is the use of the lines on four parts of the business card.

A – Alignment.  I have used left alignment on the text throughout and made sure that it doesn’t touch the image.  This is better for the person to read.  The image is right aligned.  Everything is visually related due to the colours and the lines and faded boxes.

P – Proximity.  There are relations in the gaps between the text pieces.  They are all the same size and equal which makes them relate well.  The use of colour makes the proximity relate well too which makes the reader read the whole business card rather than just one part.

Interview Using Lighting!

For our second one shot film, we were concentrating on lighting using a specific scenario.  We had to do a day time interview next o one window and use lighting.  We decided we did not want any shadows therefore lighted Ajay so that there weren’t any visible.  If wasn’t easy in such a tight location.  We then had to decide what questions we were going to ask and first improvised.  We then took a few minutes out and practised before filming.  We had the interviewer out of the frame so that we could get a close enough shot.  The reflector was used too so too in order to gain an equal lighting on the other side of Ajay’s face away from the window. Before filming our final take, we had to wait for another group to finish as their lights were affecting our frame and casting an unwanted shadow.

First Shot Of One Shot!

We have been creating one shot films which means that we have to keep the camera on a tripod and can only move it once! In our group, we had to first film outside where we could use natural lighting.  We did not have long to think of something even though we went scouting on the locations.  We all decided that we should think of the idea first then decide which of the two outside locations we should use.  We decided to use a bench at the Arboretum.  The one we chose was on level ground and had a hill behind it so we did not have to worry about people walking behind on our set.  We set up our equipment, struggling to set the tripod to the right level as it wasn’t a good one on the day of shooting.  On the day we improvised lines of what we were going to say and decided who would play what role.  I played a posh person who had things on her mind and Alyssa played the drunken tramp.  This gave the basis of our story and we shot the film in just 3 takes until we were happy with it.

Once we viewed the video back, we had noticed that there was a lot of background noise from the wind therefore if we were to shoot outside again, we would use an overhead microphone or use something or someone to block out wind passing from the sides.  We also should have used a tighter frame as my face was not visible enough.

My Ident!

I am now creating my fourth animation with more knowledge of how to use the program.  My previous 2 files have been deleted so I thought I would use what I did with all of the animations that I have practiced with for my personal ident.  I first created my text name and used a rounder font as it looks better.  My ideas for this are that my character will swing on my name and the colours for it will be a sort of jungle theme. 

On my name, I have added a bend modifier with the bend angle of 150.  This means that you can still see the name on the front view.

I then started to create my character starting off from a cylinder and adding vector points to it.  The vector points were useful and allowed me to modify the shape of the character without added extra bits to the shape.  I added teeth and ears using this.  Having the vector points available also allowed me to modify certain parts at a time for example the colour or extrusion points.  This helped me to build my character.  The one thing I could not do was create round eyes from this but maybe if I had more vector points, this would be possible.  I had to create the eyes using extra sphere shapes.  At first, I had a white eyeball and black pupil for the eye but I found this hard for when I was animating the character therefore, I only kept the black pupil. 

When I got to the point of changing the colours of the character, it wouldn’t allow me to assign the colours in the way I was advised to by using ID numbers for the different parts therefore, I used my own choice of doing every colour selection part separately which I found a lot quicker, less confusing and easier to do.

To change my character’s expression, I had to go into the “edit polygon” menu and select vector to be able to move the different points of the character’s mouth.  To be able to do this accurately, I had to zoom in a lot and do every single vector point that it might affect.

For my ideas for my character to swing, I wanted to make the brown tree ropes bend and swing but as I could not apply the bend modifier to the ropes, I had to swing it from the top.  This still looked OK. 

 

For the first part of my animation after using the Auto Key tool, I made the character jump, bend and twist.  I found that I could not make it jump without applying the other modifiers first and separately therefore, I applied the bend and twist modifiers first.  I started the bend modifier at frame 3 and the twist modifier at frame 7.  The twist modifier was done in the centre so that only the head would twist and not the whole body.  These were applied accordingly to make it look like it was enough.  I started the jump using the move and select tool on frame 2.  At frame 7, I started to change the character’s face expression again. 

When I got to frame 32, I used the squeeze modifier to show the impact of the character’s bounce and when this finished, I started the swinging motion using the rotation tool from frame 56.

I found that when I was using the rotation tool when selecting the whole character, the point of rotation wasn’t right so I had to move the eyes separately from the rest of the character.  I found it hard to keep this accurate.

Jelly Character!

I have decided to start a completely new animation to gain more practice.  I have decided to experiment with different modifiers.  From today’s lecture, we drew a storyboard full of completely random things that did not fit in a sequence.  There was a lot of focus on the jelly but with different emotions so I am going to make a start with one of those.  Here is a storyboard of the different emotions of the character.

{Image of storyboard}

Here I have created the character and animated it by using the simple “select and move” tool to make it jump up and then the “squash modifier” to create the impact of the next jump.  During the process, I could not find how to group objects so that I could move them together but by experimenting with different tools, I found it to be on the main tool bar.  A problem that I had with the outcome is that the eyebrows and mouth did not show.  I now know this is because I have to use the extrude modifier on the objects to be able to make them visible in the render. If I did this task next time, I would do this.

 

My Multimedia

A multimedia that I have recently used, that piques my interest is my graphics tablet.  It comes with a pen and a drawing tablet and I find it very useful to use. I find that I can use Photoshop and Illustrator a lot easier with this when designing.  It helps me to draw things better like illustrations and animations as I have a lot more self-control over what you select and move around using the graphics tablet.  A mouse on the other hand, can be messy and not allow you to be straight and smooth when drawing out.  I can easily make mistakes using a mouse.  I find it interesting because it is quite a recent technology which has helped a lot.  If this did not exist then there would be a lot of inaccuracies and I feel that there are more who take an interest in media aspects because of this tool as they find things easier to do.  After drawing on a piece of paper, you can go to the complexities of making something look so life-like on the computer using the graphics tablet and this too interests me.

My Design Process!

By creating websites, I used the design process: reverse engineering which meant that I looked at existing websites and chose to improve them to create a whole new one which I thought was suitable.  I went in a backwards process.  I first decided that I needed a website for my company therefore looked at three existing websites that were similar to what I wanted.  I evaluated and analysed them by writing about what I liked and disliked about each one of them.  I looked at the aesthetics and all the user requirements that I could think of and broke the website up into sections to look at along with the basic concepts of a website.  I wrote everything down.  From this, I created a design brief which allowed me to see what I wanted to have in my own website from what I researched.  I then went on to creating storyboards of what my website will look like. I decided the initial ideas of fonts and sizes and positions of everything however these got changed in the process.  I went onto my first designs of my website using the software Adobe Dreamweaver with aspects of Adobe Flash and Adobe Photoshop.  These were my prototypes as they were my first ideas I used Flash to create an animated start up page which I found hard as I wasn’t used to the programs.  I also created the gallery pages using this program as you can apply

functions to make buttons which was useful to use.  I then put everything together in a layout using Dreamweaver with the use of tables and masterpage layouts with editing regions; this made

 it consistent throughout.  I tested the website then wrote down anything I personally thought was wrong with it or what needed improving.  I gained feedback from other users which I then took into consideration and evaluated what was said.  I then improved on what I could.  I then repeated this process by seeing what I thought wasn’t right and gaining feedback with an evaluation then improved my website once again.

Jelly Name!

On Tuesday, we started some computer animation using the program 3ds Max which is a new program for me to use.  We had instructions to follow which made it a lot easier as I could not keep up with the explanation. 

I made my first attempt using the word Jelly but my computer crashed so started again in a whole new perspective but using the same values to make it look like Jelly. 

I used my name as the text and used the Font Edwardian Script ICT as this is one of my favourite fonts to use and used my name Anita which made the use of the font even more of a reason to use it.  I chose the colours red, black and white making it more of a personal aspect.  I started to create a room around my name as I found the tools useful to be able to align things put things in a perspective view.  I did not create the whole room because of time restrictions and the fact that you would not be able to see the whole word jumping if I did.

Here is what the finished product looked like but unrendered:

 

Here are some of the rendered clips while it is “jumping like a jelly”:

I have now decided that the font itself does not suit the action that I have prescribed to it so I know for next time to experiment with more fonts to make it look better.  As it goes upwards, you cannot see the wobbling movement. 

Starting Up!

Well I've been through my first week of Nottingham Trent since my interview and so far it is full of talks and all of the introductory stuff but when we got to the second day... that's more of what I was looking for! Whiteboard animation and pinhole photography: more interactive activities to enjoy.  I especially enjoyed the pinhole photography as I was fascinated by the process of it. 

I had my first real lecture today and I was expecting an introduction to it but just took notes of everything that I needed to that would help me for what is to come.  From what I have read and listened about today, I feel I will love this course and it is everything I am looking for and glad that I did not get put into Graphics Design instead =).

Test

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