My Character

I now need my character, my mascot, this character will need to have personality , be cute and the children must love him/her. The character needs to help sell my cereal, I have thought of doing many different animals, to include Giraffes, Elephants, Lions, Hedgehogs etc, I also thought about doing a person as my character. After sketching out all these different ideas, which are in my sketch book, I decided upon the Hedgehog as I thought he had most personality and the most lovable character. I did several drafts of him, and brainstormed a few possible names, a name will make him more personable. The possible names that I came up with were: Mario, Leonardo, Duke, Henry, Lulu, Prince, Hank, Hector, Hercules, Horton, Howard, Hugo, Hettie and Hilda. There were several names that I thought might work which were, Hercules, Hector and Horton

However I wasn't sure whether I needed to have the character's name linked to the name of the cereal? For example the monkey on the Coco Pops is called Coco because of the chocolate of the cereal and snap, crackle and pop for rice Krispies as this is the sound that the cereal makes. This is not always the case with the cereal characters as Toni the tiger. I needed to rethink and see if I could come up with a name that links to the cereal.

Below is my final character, his name is Hector the Hedgehog.

Naming and designing a logo for my cereal box

It now came time to name my cereal box and start to think of a concept. My name must be easy to say, easy to read, easy to spell, colourful and most importantly memorable. I had a few ideas, however the one in particular that stuck me the most was the idea of having the alphabet as the main point of interest. I thought that the idea of the the alphabet is a suitable subject for my age range, as the alphabet and spelling is the main part of their education. I am aiming to have the actual cereal in the shape of the alphabet, probably in capital letters. I needed a name first and foremost so I am then able to create a whole concept around that for example create a character and my colour scheme etc.

I had a selection of names after having a brainstorming session, they were the following:

Speller Bites, Alpha Crunch, Alpha Munch, Spellers, Spells, Jumble, Alpha Oat Crunchies, A2Z, Letterbox, Alpha Nibbles, A,B,Crunch, ABC's and Speller Oaties.

After taking them all into consideration I thought that the most appropriate and the one that will work the best is Speller Oaties. From this name there are various different concepts that could come out of it, for example I could base the cereal on witch and wizard's to play on the name 'Speller' and have a character of a wizard casting a spell on the cereal bowl which then produces the name of the cereal coming out the cereal bowl. So the character is casting a spell, in order to produce the spelling of the cereal name, so the character is also spelling the word, which is the whole idea of the cereal, spelling.

Now that I had decided on a name next was to decide on a font, I tried many different ones and have put a few of the examples in my sketch book. The ones that I would have initially gone for, for example the ones that are fun, chunky and like bubble writing were not as suitable as first thought. I found that these fonts made the name the letters converge to much as one, therefore not making it as clear and legible as I would have liked. I need the font almost to be as simple as possible as I am designing a spelling cereal, the text needs to be clear and easy to read otherwise I am kind of defeating the whole object. I decided to go for Helvetica Bold in the end as this is clear and has well shaped letters that will be easy for the child to recognize.

Next I needed a logo, this would be my brand name. As part of the brief we needed to have our name as either the name of the product or the product brand name. I chose to have my name as the brand name, however I did not want to use my first name as this did not really have a ring or flow to it, so I decided to have my middle name 'Florence' as the brand name. I now needed a font, after looking at various different other companies brands names and their fonts I decided that similar to Kelloggs, I wanted a scripted font. I have some examples that I have included in my sketch book, the font that I decided upon was Brush script MC italic, I liked this font as it was classy and exuded a very business like impression.

Deciding on my target audience

After looking at various different types of box packaging I decided that I would like to delve deeper into the cereal industry. There are many different areas of this industry, all are catered to different audiences, I now need to decide which audience will be my target audience, so I am able to begin the design process.

Within a target group there are lots of different sub categories, there is the Demographic variables; for example age group, gender, family, education, income, occupation, nationality etc, these all contribute to the selling of the product and this customer research into the our target audience is very important, because with out knowing our target group we are not able to create a product that will sell as it will most likely to be too general and not for the specific ideal target customer. Secondly there are psychographic variables, these consist of more personal attributes, such as personality, lifestyle and attitude.

I had many questions that I needed to ask myself:-

Who is my Target audience? then within this question come others

What age range will my Target audience be within?

What Gender will they be?

Also what will be their family income? will I aim for lower end market, middle or high? This will then determine my pricing. As well as the consumer I also need to take into account other competition from other booming cereal companies, and see which ones are most popular and why? How much they charge? What marketing techniques they use? for example free toys inside the packaging, images, advertising either on TV, billboards or magazines e tc. All these questions and more I needed to take into account to create my ideal consumer.

After much deliberation I chose my target audience, I decided that I would like to create a cereal product aimed at children between the ages of 6 and 10 and female. I decided to do this age range as I feel this age in particular is when children can be influenced and influential on their parents in buying what they want 'pester power'. I thought that doing my cereal aimed at the female market would be best as I knew what I liked when I was that age and being female is an advantage. Now I am going to look at cereals aimed at female children that are already on the market. To research this I am going to go into the supermarket to see visually and physically what the packaging is like and look on line.

After looking at a selection of different children's cereals, I came to a conclusion that children's cereal is very unisex, there does not appear to be many cereals that are just aimed at one gender, they all seemed to be aimed at both. This however is unlike adults cereals, that can sometimes have a gender split and are aimed with a particular gender in mind. In order for the manufacturers to make the children's cereal boxes unisex, they use colours that would appeal to both sexes, for example yellow, red and blue. I have now changed my mind from doing a cereal aimed at a female audience to designing one aimed at both female and male. After thinking about why manufacturers aim at both, it made sense, it would be too complex having to design for both and also their sales may not be as much as parents would not want to keep buying different cereals for each child.

Also whist reaching I noticed that almost every single child's cereal has a character, for example Frosties have Toni the Tiger, Rice Krispies have Snap, Crackle and Pop and Sugar Puffs have the Honey Monster. All these characters are there for a reason, they are what attracts the children to the cereal box, a child will most probably not read what the cereal contains, it will be just their character choice that makes the decision to which particular cereal will be theirs. Below are a selection of all the famous, lovable characters.

I thought it would be worth while doing some market research, I asked several children from my target audience and of mixed genders about their cereals and what they would have if they could make their own. My first question was "What cereal do you eat at home?" and "Why?" " What character would you have on you own cereal" and "What colour would your cereal box be?".The results were very interesting however not really that surprising. The results for my first question, "What cereal do you eat at home?", it was not to my surprise the sugary, chocolaty ones, like Coco Pops and Frosties were most popular. My second question "Why?" well it is obvious, they taste the best, the sweetness is what is most desired compared to the healthy options not that I have found one yet. My third question "What character would you have on you own cereal" There were various different choices differing from gender, the boys wanted to see animals such as Rhino's, Lions and Snakes, and the girls wanted Kittens and horses, both genders liked the idea of monkey's, tiger's, giffafe's and elephant's, however some of theses animals are already used by big brand companies. My forth question "What colour would your cereal box be?" Obvious choices boys wanted blue and red and girls pink and purple also yellow. Yellow came up with both boys and girls, when looking at the cereals on the market this seems to be the colour of choice that the companies pick as it is a very unisex colour.

I am sure I could have visited this area in much more detail and perhaps asked their parents as well, however I feel that I asked the most important questions and these gave me great insight into the child's thinking methods when picking a cereal.

Project 2 - Packaging Yourself

On upon receiving our assignment which was to use vectors to create an illustration of an original product box with graphically designed packaging, such as soap boxes, cornflake boxes, washing powder boxes etc, substituting your name for the product name. I needed to review and research all types of box packaging. I began by listing all the box packaging that I knew of; cat and dog biscuits, DVD/games, children toys, tissue boxes, shoes boxes, board games, perfume, pizza boxes, electrical products, ice cream and frozen food etc. I now needed to look at individual products more closely, I am going to begin with cat and dog biscuits as this comes first on my list.

Above are two examples of boxed packaging aimed at the pet market. We have one aimed at cats and one at dogs. However both look rather similar, both are of similar tones and colours; yellow seems to be the most prominent colour used, yellow could reflect happiness, excitement, but I think that in this case it is very universal and appealing to a pet owner. Images of the product are placed on the front so; in this case, 'Go Cat' and 'Pedigree' both well known. Also the image of the animal that the product is aimed at is very important.

Next I thought I would look at probably the most popular box packaging, cereals; there are many types of cereals all aimed at different audiences, there is the age separation for example, children, teens, adults and then there is the different health options, diet ones e.g Special K, and muesli. Below are a few examples.

All these packaging are very different, and it is very clear what audience they are trying to attract. If I decide to go with the cereal box idea, I will further look at the different qualities of them and look at different audiences to see which one would be my personal choice.

Next I looked at perfumes; below are few. I found that the majority of the packaging did not have images and mainly focused on the product name/designer name, as this is what sell the perfume. Customers tend to go for their desired designer.



Board games,there are loads and loads of varied and different types, below are just a very thin selection of the vast market.

methods, processes and problem solving Panorama 3

My third and final panorama is the most simplistic to look at compared to my other two, but by no means was it the easiest to do. I had fewer problems with it compared to my others however I still used all the techniques that I used in my other panoramas. Below is my final sequence before I swapped ends and put it into a QTVR.

I feel that my end QTVRs were overall good. As I produced each of my panoramas, I feel that with every one I gained a better understanding of how each aspect of photoshop worked and therefore was able to carry that across to the next one and therefore able to use it to greater effect. However if I had more experience on using photoshop, I feel that perhaps my final out come would have been to a better standard. I now however want to continue to further my knowledge so that in the future I can improve.

If I had a longer time frame in which to produce these panoramas, I think that I would have reshot and probably done a few more so that I had a greater selection to choose from, and could discard the ones that did not work so well. For example my barn panorama was much darker on one side compared to the others, this did cause me a few problems however, these problems if they had not been there I would not have learnt how to solve them. All in all I pleased with what I have achieved and cant wait to learn more.

Methods, processes and problem solving Panorama 2

My second panorama is of the inside of the barn, there were lots of things going on, therefore meaning lots and lots to match up, never the less it made it that more interesting. I went through the same steps as the previous panorama. However I came across different problems, I had a major light issue, because it was an indoor shoot and the barn had opens sides as I panned round the bright light blackened out one side. In order to fix this problem I used colour adjustments, and brightness and contrast, these helped massively. Below are the before with out being blended or colour changed and after lightened, blended and with an extra image added because it would have not joined up when to came to putting it into a QTVR.

Methods, processes and problem solving Panorama 1

My First Panorama that I decide create as the yard. I began by getting all my images in order first, I found that it helped instead of opening all my images at once, to open one at a time in the right order saved a massive amount of time. I had taken so many images because I did such an large overlap about 70% I found that lots of the images I did not need to use. However there was an advantage of doing this because it gave me a greater selection to pick from and therefore easy to match up. Below is a screen shot of all my images lined up and ready to be manipulated and blended.

Next I began to blend and manipulate my images, I did this by using the brush tool and the the warp tool the most. To be able to brush and blend the edges of my photos, you had to add a layer mask to the layer. This would only work if you had the layer mask selected, otherwise if you had the image selected you would paint on the image, this would case lots of problems. You had to be careful with the blend tool as you can over brush the image and make it look messy, you can increase and decrease the hardness and size of the brush. I did this quite frequently when I only needed it used very lightly and in small or large areas. The colour and contrast tool I found to be very useful as many of of images differed in colour.

Next Once I was happy with the way it looked and had flattened my image, it was time to match the ends up. Firstly I need to find an area of little detail on my image and with the rectangular marquet tool select my first half, next I held down the apple key and pushed J, this recreated that half in a new layer. I now need to inverse my selection, so holding down apple and clicking on the thumbnail, going to 'select' 'inverse' this would then recreate the other half in a new layer. Now I needed to swap the half round and join them. When I did this I had a slight problem as they did not match as I would have liked. I needed to warp and merge the two images like I had done previously in order to connect them. However I could not move the image up or down because if I did it would not match up when it came time to put it into a QTVR, so I could only warp and transform them.

Just left to do after this was to put it into a programme called Stitcher, this would carry through to my final product the QTVR, this programme was very easy to use.