Andrews lesson

In preparation for us to start our own project, we had a play with paints, inks and other arty instruments, to get out creative juices flowing. We produced two a3 pieces of just prue experimentation, with colours, textures and layout etc. Below is my two.

I used ink, charcoal, chalk and crayons in the one above.

I used paint, ink, crayons and tissue paper for texture in the one above and below.

Existing brand ideas

I have done some internet research into already existing brands, that I may like to do as my chosen alcoholic drink. I first began with ones I like as I would have a connection/interest already in those brands and then thought of expensive or more unusual brands as I wanted to look at drinks with interesting, exculsive, and different bottles as well as the more common ones.

• Malibu
• Baileys
• Lucky Buddha
• Lemon Cello
• Champagne (Veuve Clicquot, DomPerignon.)
• Tequila normal and Platinum and white gold Tequila.
• Pims
• Cider (pear)
• Wines (White or Rose)
• Sminoff
• Bacardi
• Squirrel Beer

Squirrel beer, I saw a article about it in the newspaper and it intrigued me, it is so out there and unusual, really one of a kind. It is said to be the strongest beer and most expensive beer in the world, costing around £5oo per bottle and bizarrely enough served in a dead animal. Only 12 bottles have ever ben made, seven offered inside a stuffed stoat, four in a grey squirrel and one in a hare!

Platinum and white gold Tequila was another one with a unusual bottle, costing a whopping £225,000! It is created out of 100% Agave liquid and aged for six years. Also for those who can't afford the rather extravagant price tag the organisation also sells Gold and Platinum bottles for £15o,00 and the Silver and Gold for £25,000.

These two brads are very interesting to look and learn about however, for me and this project they just come with to much of a pricey price tag! I need to think of my target audience, and these two really only aim at one in particular, the rich! I would like a product with a more diverse price range to make it more affordable to a wider target group. Never the less they are both very flamboyant and lavish products that have been very weel thought out.

Below are some of the bottles of the the drink I listed.

Handmade

I am going to create a piece of design which will form a new advertising campaign of a branded alcoholic drink of my choice. In order to create this design work, I will start with traditional media and use my results from that to create the next stage in the development, bringing in handmade elements through digital manipulation, in order to create a full blown moving image advert which will be rendered as a movie for presentation to a client on a DVD and made ready for use on a smart phone or portable device. I will also need to create a bill board poster and a full page magazine advert as design as part of your advertising campaign.

Work in progress

I came up with several ideas that would allows me to incorporate shapes into my design. The idea I chose to go with was dance. I decided on three dances, Ballet, Street/breakdance and Tango. I thought that by choosingthis, the music would be fairly straight forward to pick for each one and it would be a challengetrying to portray these dances using shapes. I looked on youtube for ideas on the types of actions that I could do with my shapes, and it was handy that Strictly come dancing had started as that would give lots of inspiration. Next I needed to pick my music, I picked the Nutcracker for my Ballet animation, La Composite for the Tango and Acapella by Kelis for my street/break dancing one as it had a good beat to it. I onlyneed 15 to 20 seconds on each track so I put them into Adobe Soundbooth to cut them down to a shorter time, which I could then inport into After effects. Below is a screen shot of Nutcracker in Soundbooth. Once I had my tracks ready I was then able to do my story boards so that it would match the beat etc.

I did most of my artwork in Illustrator, just drawing circles etc, I found it easier to do it in there then import it into After Effects. I began with my Ballet animation. I wanted to create a light airy effect, as ballerinas are very floaty and light on their feet. I used Squash and stretch in this animation to try a create the effect of jumping. Below are some screen shots of squash and stretch.

Below is a couple of screen shots from my Ballet animation, I wanted to create a mirrored effect, as if a ballet dancer was in the studio dancers in the mirror, so I wanted to create a refection image. To do this I made a composition half the size of the one I was working with which was 1280 x 720 so I created a new composition which was 1280 x 360. I then made my shapes do thier movements in this composition, once I had done that I copied the half size one across onto the normal sized composition and duplicated it and reflected one so that would produce a mirror image of them selves, and all the keyframe movements etc would match.

I found that creating these animations was hard, the things I had originally come up with I found that were a little out of my league to do in the time we had, I needed more detailed knowledge of the programme in order to fore fill these ideas I had. Perhaps now I know the basics I would be able to have a go at them. Here are my finished animations.

I think that my three animations are good, seeing as a I had no prior knowledge of the programme, I feel that the ballet one is perhaps a little bare and could have done with more going on. The Street one I was fairly pleased with, I like the spinning of the shapes as the music builds up. The Tango one I feel I have portrayed that it is two dancers and the moves that they are doing relate to the type of music and dance it is, but again maybe I could have had more going on with in the composition.

Animation

In this assignment I will be exploring the key principles of motion design. The motion design principles can be broken up into the following areas. Timing, speed of change, arcs, motion blur, squash and stretch, motivation/anticipation, follow through, overlapping action and staging/exaggeration. Using these principles I will aim to produce three pieces of animation which will illustrate or demonstrate a range of these animation principles.

In order to produce these animations I will be using shapes rather than complex drawings or recognizable objects. Within the animations my choice of colour pallet is very important as this could make or brake the piece, the colour is key. Each of the animations will be between 15 and 20 seconds in length and will contain a soundtrack of my choice.

The motion design principles explained in more depth:

Timing: Spacing actions to define weight and size

Speed of change: Spacing of thein - between keyframes to achieve natural movement.

Arcs: The visual path of action for natural movement.

Motion Blur: To enhance appearance of motion.

Squash and Stretch: Defining the rigidity and weight of an object by distorting its shape during an action. It is one of the most important rules of animation, this is because in order for an object to look convincing it must 'give' when external forces are applied to it. For example when a ball hits the ground it will squash, also when it falls and rises it will stretch. The only time in which the ball is perfectly round is when it is at the top of each arc, where the resistance is at its least.

Obviously a softer ball, for example and beach ball will squash and stretch a lot whereas a cannonball will hardly squash and stretch at all. The Squash and Stretch techniques are a good when trying to convey an objects density and mass.

Motivation/ Anticipation: Preparation for an action. This can be used to direct the viewers attention to part of the screen. Some anticipation occurs naturally, for example a mouse is about to hit a cat over the head with a mallet. So the pulling back of the mallet is the moment of anticipation. It lets the viewer know what is going to happen next.

Motivation is when the action clearly shows that another action is about to take place. When a car motor starts, the engine makes the car judder as it revs, ready to explode into action.

Follow Through: Termination of an action. A good example of this is in golf, the golfer once taken his swing at the ball, the golf club must follow through.

Overlapping Action: Establishing its relationship to the next action. It is when one action over laps another, for example, imagine whilst having breakfast you take a bite of your toast and then having a sip of tea, those movements might overlap, of you were'nt to overlap those movements it could result in a unnatural look.

Staging / Exaggeration: Presenting an idea so that it is unmistakably clear. In animation terms Exaggeration is used to emphasize whatever key idea or feeling you wish to portray. Depending on what part of the animation is most relevant to the scene, that is the part that you would want to emphasize the most.

Staging, we must have in mind that the viewer does not have the luxury of knowing what is about to happen in your animation, this is why we must make a conscious effort to set the scene for them. This involves attracting the viewers attention and focusing it on a particular subject of area of the screen. It can also set a mood or certain feeling that you wish the viewer to understand.

Finished Movie

Here is my finished movie, I really enjoyed this project, I did not come across to many problems. I found Final Cut good to use, and as I now know the basics I cant wait to learn further and be able to do more detailed things.

My finished movie is 15 seconds and has 21 cuts in total. I did find it tricky to cut my material down, but by having to do this it made me look at the material in more detail, and forced me to decide on the really important parts of each clip. I feel that overall I have produced a good first attempt and am happy with my result. Perhaps I could have experimented with more unreal/downloaded sound, but I felt that my material had enough of its own recored sound to carry it.

Final cut and compressor

I next needed to compress all my clips by using a programme called compressor, this took rather a long time, I tried to do all 60 of my clip together but I found that this was to much for the programme to handle so I did them in batches. I used a setting to compress my files with called Apple Pro Res 422 for Progressive material, I dragged this option onto my clips and it began to convert them.

My next job was to put all my Pro Res files into a separate folder and drag that folder into Final cut to start the editing process.

Once I filmed my movie, using various different shots types etc. I had to decide as I was putting them together in Final Cut, what kind of edit/cut effects I wanted to use between each clip. I knew of a film, that I studied at Alevel called "A Bout De Souffle", it is a 1960's film, that a famous French director called Jean - Luc Godard created. This film is best known for its visual style and unusual editing, in particular for it constant use of jump cuts and hand held camera work. The way in which it uses the jump cuts in particular is what interests me, I thought that with the kind of material that I have shot, the jump cut technique would work really well, as it is a short, snappy sequence. Below is a sequence from the film that uses thejump cutediting technique.

I have also picked out this film called 'City of God" it is a Brazilian crime drama directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund. It is about the growth of organised crime in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, between the end of the 60's and the beginning of the 80's. I have selected the opening sequence of the movie to look at. The movie begins with chickens being prepared for a meal. Al chicken escapes and an armed ganga chases after it. The chicken comes to a stop between the gang and a young man, who believes the gang want to kill him. The timeline then flashes back to ten years earlier, the young man tells the story of how he got himself into that position.

I studied this movie also at A level so I know it well, it uses a brilliant use of jump cuts and cutting between two different sets of action. I find this use of jump cuts particularly spectacular because it is at the very start of the film, as it has to introduce the main characters.

Putting all my clips in order in Final Cut was a challenge, I had over 60 clips, ranging in all sorts of lengths. I put the good clips, with clear quality and that I thought I could use into my timeline, so I had a clear understanding of what clips I was going to use. Below is how my timeline looked with the clips in order, I made sure I had spacing in between each clip so I could rearrange the order with ease.

Next I began to go though each clip in my timeline, and shorten it down. My first cut with all the roar clips that I had not touched came to nearly 5mins! I picked the best bits from each clip and kept shortening it down until I hit my target time. Below is my timeline much shortened at 16 secs with 20 edits.

Below is my nearly finished movie, it has some issues though. First being it is a second over the allocated time at 16secs instead of 15secs. I feel that the first two clips go by to fast and the last two I dont really need both clips of the horses grooming each other. I will play around with it some more and see what I can change to make it better.