Promo | Music

For my 15 second promo. I want a piece of music that obviously suits with my visual style. My style is nightlife, neon, clubbing etc so I think a music that suits with like clubbing will be efficient. Nothing too over the top like fast pace drum and bass, I think I want a slow chilled dub-step tune. I will research and give my opinion whether I think they will fit the bill.

Anotsu - Man on the run

Whoschaos - intro

The two music pieces above are the sort of genre I want to chose, inspired by the 'This is our shot' sourz tv advert, I really liked the music they used in that advert, unfortunately there wasn't an official song, the producer just made it for the advert.

I looked at so many songs on youtube. It took me hours to decide on a song but to help me chose a song I actually started to build my promo before choosing music, I thought it would help to chose the effects I used in my promo then chose music what would fit the music.

Pitch | Feedback

Yesterday I pitched to the class and I think it was a successful pitch. The comments from what I can remember from Kate where:

- Very thorough
- Really good idea
- Very well though out
- Strong planning
- It would work

The improvement comments

- Not have the unique code so long. Plus where is it going to be on the bottle, the more recommended one was underneath the wrapper instead of underneath the bottlecap. one of my peers recommended having a qr code. But i was against it because of the security of it. People could just scan the code without buying the bottle in supermarkets and bars etc. So im going to have a shorter code.

- Prizes; it was recommended that the prize duration should be affected by how big the prize is. For example festival tickets would have a longer duration than say t-shirts. Because they are much more expensive so there should be a longer time period.

- Also I was told in advertising you are not allowed to use the word 'drunk' obviously as your not allowed to encourage drunkness. So I will just have to avoid the term 'drunk, pictures.

Yeah... there was other comments. But a lot of positivity about my pitch, I thought myself that I had pitched well and covered literally everything. The only thing I was missing was digital mock ups. But as a whole I think everyone got a really good understanding of my idea, the themes, target audience, mechanics and so on. Im proud and I am completely ready with what i'm doing, I have minor issues before starting to build my animation and promo which is great. I think this project could be one of my most successful projects yet so I am looking forward to making these. Well one thing I have to quickly do is find a piece of music for my promo which won't take long because I know exactly the type of music I want.

Visual style

As I have said a lot and have a strong knowledge of my proposal. Gathering some examples of similar and related to my visual style might help me get some more ideas.

I found some brushes on www.brusheezy.com which is where you can get preset brushes. I want to find some glow effect ones and found these:

 



































This is just a glimpse of the range of cool brushes that might be helpful if I want to add some glowing content in the background. I really highly doubt I will otherwise it will look too busy on the app. I want to keep it very simplistic and clean as possible. But for the promo these might help.

This is an example of what one of these brushes look like. A nice plasma glow beam.

I found just a really random image what has a glow effect on text which I will use. It wont be as intense as the glow on here, but the visual style I want is very similar. Glow text on the black background.

Font | Research & Chosen font

As my app is called '50urz' im going to have to re-create the logo. Making the 5 and 0 in the same style as the original font of the logo.

The o has a little gap in the top right which i will replicate when i make the '0'. Im going to have each letter in the logo a different colour from my fruit pallet.

For content text I want a simple font what will go with my neon/nightlife theme. So I will conduct some potentials and shortlist the ones I think will fit. Then have a bigger think to what one i want to use.

Bank Gothic

I think this would definitly fit neon theme as it looks techno and square. The problem is its not really feminine, it looks really boyish.

This font looks much more feminine. it looks slick and professional and would fit my theme well i think. The decorative curls on some elements give it that female edge. The fine weight gives it the professional and clean look

This font is a bit more formal than champagne, I don't like it as much but would still fit well.

I like this font. But it is a title font so I couldn't have it as body text as it would just look weird having caps everywhere. The style is very nice though.

This font I really like. very similar to champagne , the only noticeable difference is the dots on the 'i' is relatively higher, making it look more unique. But the decorative curl is still swaying me too chose champagne just for that extra feminine edge.

This font again I really like and would fit my theme. Its a really hard choice for me to chose out of these fonts. But still champagne is winning.

Similar to the rest. A nice clean font but champagne is the winner for my chosen font.

Chosen font

Colour pallet | My chosen colours

My colour pallet will be obvious. I intend to use the black background with white text on top on my app. And my effects I want to use will be in the colours of the sourz bottles which are:

I made this by taking the hex code from the bottles of sourz in photoshop and made here in kuler:

https://kuler.adobe.com/Sourz-color-theme-3235691/

Proposal | Keywords, Target Audience & themes

I have wrote up a big description in my sketchbook but here are key words in a bullet point list to describe my proposal.

• Target audience - 18 - 25 woman (But it is unisex too, as I think men would like to use it too)
• Professional
• Simple
• Neon
• Dark
• Clean
• Slick
• Tiled
• Easy
• Nightlife 

Technical/visual Research | Instagram Promo

I was trying to look for short promos for apps and i came across a fan made promo for instagram which is main inspiration of my app. I thought this video was good to give me ideas. It is a nice calm and peaceful visual style which suits to instragram as it is aimed at photography of all sorts. Cause instagram is so versatile so many visual themes would suit it. But the slow revealing of the brand name with the moving grain effect background looks nice and the music makes everything suited. The simplicity is the main theme of this promo.

For my promo I want to keep my simplistic proposal too. Have as less content and animation as i can. I just want a short catchy motto which summarises my app. Have the app name and nice little effect or something going on. Just something easy.

Research | Competitors & Tv advertising

As I have already researched Sourz, and I want to use their visual style I think it can be useful to research tv advertising and competitors of my brand just to learn the approach they use for their target audience, similar to mine or not. As I have to create a promo. Researching into advertising of video can help give some inspiration and techniques. I can also learn visual language of the brands and who they are targeting. As I have to make a 15 second promo it would be beneficial to see the kind of styles my competitors use as well as my existing brand.

Sourz tv commerical

This is another commercial for sourz, you can see the use of a dark theme with bright lights as their visual style. And they use a club to promote the drink again.

Archers Schnapps

schnapps is easily a competitor for Sourz. It has a little bit more alcohol percentage and is classed as a 'womens' drink. This advert from 11 years ago is trying to suggest archers is this golden quality drink portrayed by the dramatic entrance of this gold property what lands and this glamourus women comes out and invites young women to come drink it which symbolises the target audience. It is a more fun and social drink compared to the sourz style in my view. This ad is jokey and funny. With a fun theme. The sourz style is much more professional and serious. It mainly focus' on a high class looked bar with a upper class women audience to show that sourz is good quality drink and will not be cheap.

Technical research | Main inspiration | Instagram

The most popular photo editing app is undoubtably instagram. It is hugely popular, and especially for a young adult audience like I have.

Technical - Its so simplistic and clean and just really easy to navigate and use. The home page is so simple its just the name of the uploader you follow on top with their icon picture next to them then the photo, the likers underneath which turns to a number when there is not enough room to fit everyones username on it, the description of the photo with hash tags underneath it. Then a button to like and a button to comment.

Visual - Instagram uses just a simple white and black colour scheme like other editors. Everything is clean, Blue would be its main primary colour. its very squared and uses glow effects on the selected tabs which is nice. It uses a fine font too to keep the clean and professional look.

The Explore function is what you use to find users and hashtags on photos. A very easy way of searching for things.

The camera function which is the middle blue button to make it stand out from the rest so people know how to upload is made very simple to add pictures or videos. There is a button for a grid which is illustrated by the grid button, a switch camera view and flash button. Then theres a library icon, take picture icon and video icon. Very easy to understand just by using small icons which again keeps it clean.

The likes/comments tab illustrated by the heart icon in the speech bubble which represents likes/comments shows you what the users your following are liking or new users they have followed. The switch at the top enables you to toggle between following and news; the news page is your notification centre, it tells you when you get a like on a picture or if someone new has followed you.

   

The furthest to the right tab is finally your profile. You can see how many posts, followers and following you have. You can view all your photos here, you can see photos you've been tagged in and a photomap of where your photos were taken on a illustrated map of the world. 

When you have taken or selected a photo the editing of the photo is very easy, again like other photos you simply slide through the filter you want and just select it. When I make my app I will have the same simply because its the best and easiest way to navigate through. The icons simply show rotate, frame, focus and change the light of the photo. My app won't have the same features obviously or as many because i am focusing on one type of editing, Ill obviously have rotate, crop and scale but i am only having colour hue filters.

After looking at instagram in depth, this will definitely be my main source of inspiration technically. My visual style is reflecting the ethos of the brand but i can be similar in some ways to most of these apps as  most of them have the black background which is what I want.

Technical & Visual Research | Photo editing apps

1. Cam WowPro

Technical - It is a really simple and effortless app. The app opens up with a 4 tile camera effect filter on your front camera and you can slide across to see the other effects. Theres no navigation or buttons at this point but when you click on one it just gives you a really simple and basic photo editor. I wanted to try find hue effects but this app doesn't do them.

Visual - There wasn't one really. It was just plain.

2. Pic Collage

Technical - This app was a nice app technically and visually. The technical style was an easy to navigate and function app. It tells you to tap to add photo or take one from camera then you can click again on the photo to either edit photo, edit border, clip it, set as background or copy it. You can arrange layouts of photos you have added to make a collage which is the point of the app. When editing the photo their is a toolbar on the bottom which you can slide across to chose tools to edit the photo whilst seeing the live effects.

Visual - The style looks bold and fun. It has a plain white colour scheme with grey colour elements on top of it to look clean, simplistic and emphasise colour elements of content on top of it. They use a turquoise green as their main primary colour.

After you have edited you can share the photo. By giving it a caption then either posting it to other social feeds like twitter, facebook, instagram etc. It has a nice button switch look to click what social feed to share. It looks nice and clean.

3. Photo Editor-

Technical - This app has a lot of tools to edit photos you can do so much to it. One of the tools that i really liked the idea of was the stickers tool. You can add in objects, scale and rotate them to put them on the photo. This is a fun and playful interaction of the app and its something Im going to consider in my app.

Visual - The app uses a black carbon look background with white elements on top. I really prefer this to a white background with black on top. I would use black anyway to carry on the Sourz ethos. As it is night club related it is dark with bright lights so it would be black with vibrant colours on.

This is the stickers function which is funny and playful interaction.

This is called a meme tool. You can add text on top or bottom of the picture to describe or demonstrate text reflecting the image to give a funny and entertaining effect. Im not sure if I would use this in my app, all though its funny and playful I think the visual style looks a bit tatty and cheesy, maybe too childish for a 18+ App.

4. BeFunky

Technical - I found this app really good to use. It has lots of positive things about it. Firstly the navigation and functionality is strong. Pretty much every similar app has the same layout. A left to right scroll bar down the bottom  and maybe buttons at the top. There is a lot more tools to edit photos with than most apps

Visual - it has a black colour scheme like most of them with the white content on top of it, my preferred style.

 One feature that I found and is really, really helpful for my idea is the hue function.You can change the colour of the skin levels in photos to a primary colour. As my idea is editing photos with colours of the Sourz flavours. This has inspired me to have my editing to photos by using hue. For example blue summer berries flavour would give a code to have the hue effect of blue like shown in the picture above. I think its different, playful and fun. Im really keen on this idea.

Also on be-funky is this homepage of icons which represent a certain type of photo. Which is nice. So each photo can have like a tag and you can find random photos of the tag you want to look at, it is irrelevant to my idea as all the photos taken on my app will be clubbing mug shots but the use of tagging is appealing, i could even have locations instead of like type of photo.

First development stage of idea

My first stage of an idea I want to develop is an app which is a photo editing app. As my target audience is young women and can be young men as well I want to base to target the audience that go clubbing and go out drinking. So my app will be for taking pictures of friends in clubs, bars etc then you edit the photo by unlocking colour effects through a unique code what comes with a bottle of Sourz. For example on a bottle of cherry Sourz will have a code on the bottle which you type into the app then that unlocks cherry colour effects which you can edit the photo with. That picture then is sent to a social feed which can achieve a prize through a weekly prize draw. The prize will be festival tickets, t-shirts, gift vouchers, iPads etc pretty much the cliche prizes for a young adult prize draw. This picture can then be shared on Facebook or Twitter. Can be tagged, can be found by anyone else. There will be a like/favourite function to have on the picture to get its popularity up. The idea is to get a funny drunk picture. The more likes/favourites (Havant named a unique description yet) the more popular it will get and something like the top 10 every week is legible for the weekly prize.

For what effects I want to have on each unique bottle is yet to be decided I initially had the idea of the app turns the photo in a sketch and you have to colour it in and unlock colour pallets from each bottle but I think that is too complicated for my audience, I wouldn't see many bothering with the effort. So I want an easy to do effect.

I need to conduct research into camera editing apps, visual style of apps and technical approach of apps similar to mine.

This Is Our Shot | Sourz tv ad

This advert is an urban night life style ad promoting sourz in bars and clubs. Lots of neon lights on black is the colour scheme. I think it would be essential to keep the same visual style of neon and night life theme.

Chosen Brand | Sourz

From choosing Sourz I can set myself a brief which I can list my themes I want to bring. I done some brief research on Sourz such as the target audience and their website to get some more knowledge of it. As I am 19 I already know that Sourz is aimed at young adults, more specifically a women's drink. It is a 15% mixer drink and is more preferably mixed with lemonade so it is a sweet tasting cocktail. I would say the age range for this products would be 18 - 24. And more aimed at young girls going out clubbing. I have bought and drunk this drink before so have some of my mates so its definitely not a complete woman's drink so I wouldn't have to focus specifically on women when designing what I want my app to be.

Here is what the bottles look like. I really like the like floral look pattern on the bottom half of the bottle, it almost looks feminine. The visual style just reminds me of clubbing from how vibrant the colours are. 

The logo for Sourz, its very bold and fun looking which again reflects the target audience, putting this brand onto a brand map which I will be doing quite a bit later on in the blog I can tell from the bottles visual style and the logo that the product isn't very classy and relatively cheap but it does look professional and decent quality.

The website

The website for Sourz already shows you what the target audience is, young clubbers. Portrayed by this image of people dancing in a club. Also on the website there is a page where you can win festival tickets, so Sourz sponsors festivals which are for young music loving audiences. There is an image of all the bottles of sourz with a floral pattern with butterflys and women in which gives the impression of a more female audience too.

From this research I already know my audience which is already a guideline of what theme I want my app to be as the brief says it can either be useful, informative or entertaining. For a young audience choosing entertaining is ideal. I want my app to be fun as that is what a young audience would be more suited to.

Also on the Sourz website Sourz have just released a new tv advert video. Check next post.

First thoughts.

A new project begins and I'm excited for this one. I think designing an app and making a promo for it sounds fun and can be percepted in many different ways. Its the first time I have had to design an app after 4 years of being in designing education so im looking forward to this new challenge even though i am not actually making the app I think making the animated walkthrough sounds really fun.

So the brief says I have to design an app which promotes any alcoholic drink of my choice which has to be interactive. Plus a 15 second promo for the APP!

As this is a short project again I think its pointless to research into alcoholic drinks and choosing a brand as quick as possible would be much more beneficial as it gives more time for the idea process and developing. I know enough from the top of my head, I have brainstormed already different alcoholic drinks and their potential technical style they can bring. After drawing up all the different brands the one brand I felt the strongest visual connection in my head was Sourz. It is a cocktail mixer which comes in lots of different fruity flavours and colours. The different aspect of colours inspired me to play with it and try use that as a guideline to creating an idea for an app.

New brief Af201 (Animation) + Af202 (Screen Based Design)

Our new brief summarised is that I have to design an app for iPad & iPhone which promotes an alcoholic drink brand.

- The interactive app needs to be either something useful, entertaining or informative.

- I also need to create a 15 second animation/motion graphics sequence which is a teaser or a promo for the app.

- I need to look into alcohol brands and advertising, visual research which enables me to design a graphic style for use in the animation/motion graphics and app with a cultural focus and set of values suitable to my brand.

- I will create interesting and imaginative visuals that bring the branded identity to life.

- I will use music in my animation/motion graphics

- Produce storyboards

- Research apps for iPhone & iPad (interface/interactive design)

- Produce a planning document of the content of my app

- Technical research (resolution/pixel dimension issues)

Key dates

Pitch - Monday 9th December

Crit - 9th December

Final submission - 11th December 12:00

Evaluation

At the start of this project I panicked. I thought wow there is not a lot of time at all, and I would need to pick an idea very quickly and work on it. I looked quite forward for doing animation because video in general is my favourite media form. I look back now and I would change so many things. First of all I would pick a song before sketching any form of idea. I found it very time consuming picking music after I had got my idea, for it to fit. Choosing music first can let you build the animation to the music, considering art styles as well to go with it. So that was one I could say mistake I will learn from.

Cause of the short time we got, I knew I had to make an idea solid and doable in the time given. So simplicity in the art style was influenced a bit from the time given. Building my animation in after effects I found was very stressful and time consuming. I had to learn how to use the program whilst building the animation in a short amount of time which was very hard. I feel looking at my animation it looks easy to make, but it was actually hard for me. My pleased levels with my animation are average to be honest. Im happy with how it looks and i'm pleased with the art style, and my outcome compared to my proposal. But I would be happier making more secondary actions in the whole animation. Like i said earlier in one of the working progress' i could add more animatics such as for example someone mowing the lawn in one of the houses. Just things like that would make it less boring, more realistic etc. But cause of the time I didn't  have enough to do these improvements. If I knew after effects better I would definitely of done it. I don't like the program due to this project. I had a lot of frustrating moments such as making the waves look like waves in the polar bear scene, I had to watch so many youtube videos to help me. Other things as well like the text at the end it took me a while to get a cloudy dissolve effect. And just in general making things move was a long process, I had to edit so many things in illustrator, add them in again and re-edit. Till I knew now you could add the illustrator file straight to after effects and live edit them.

Reviewing my animation I think my favourite part is the slow down scene when the Co2 characters get red and hot. I just like the emphasis and the synced music. When you first see the co2 characters in the scene I really like how music has an evil bass sound to go with it. I think my text at the end is really effective too, people have also told me the font and effect looks really good so im very happy with that. I think its easy to understand too whilst the animation being fun that driving cars causes consequences (global warming).

My proposal I think is very accurate to my final outcome. The moods I wanted to come across I think have been successful which was playful, fun, childish but strong and serious too. My target audience would be children but it can still appeal to adults in my opinion. The serious ironic looking message at the end is strong for anyone to consider. But younger age is targeted, and for something like this I think is really good to for children to be targeted as they will be the upcoming generation, it will be something they can learn and realise before they start driving themselves.

Overall it wasn't one of my favourite projects but its definitely learnt a lot in my designing education. If i could go back to the start of the project I know I could do a lot better.

Reflecting my animation to the principles

Squash and stretch

- I have used this principle in my opinion. One example where i used it was when the little co2 cloud from the car shot up into the sky, one of the co2 characters ate it up but whilst it shot up the co2 character speeds up to eat it up and gets a bit bigger to demonstrate the eating it up. Also my driver blinks in the car which portrays this,

Anticipation 

- The scene where the characters are introduce in the sky, just before the polar bear scene. The fading to black whilst keeping the two evil clouds red, then they enlarge and fly off the screen anticipates that its building up to a scene, in my case its building up to an evil scene for the co2 clouds which is shown by the clouds being last on screen and having an evil enlarge.

Staging

- Staging is directing the audience's eye to a certain importance in the scene. In my animation theres not so much an obvious part where i used staging but I could say an example of staging is where the co2 comes out the car, and goes up into the sky. The camera tracks it and its the only animated element so it draws the audience eye to look at it.

Slow in and out

- Again in the scene of the characters in the sky, the scene is fast pace till the co2 character eats the little co2 cloud the scene slows down in sync with the music. This emphasises that something bad is happening.

Arcs

- For Arcs I could say the wheels spinning on the car are spun from the central point of the alloy wheel to look realistic.

Secondary action 

- My secondary action can be blinking and the movement of eyes of the driver in the car. The little exhaust smoke coming out, the flames spinning round the sun. The exclamation mark that appears when the female polar bear is woken up, her eyes open and her mouth looks more shocked too.

Timing

- When the car leaves the scene at the start the street stops panning and the car is drives off screen whilst the scene is fading out to black in the background. The reactions of the characters when the polar bear is separated is timed well too, each character don't react at the exact same time but at very very similar times which is more realistic.

Exaggeration

-  The co2 characters colour tints to red to show that they are hot is an example of exaggeration. Also the reactions of the characters in the sky can be classed as exaggeration.

Solid drawing

- My whole art style is consistent, 2D unnatural, childish cartoon look.

Appeal

- As my animation is based on characters and personalities, appeal is portrayed a lot. You could describe the characters as cute, playful and fun. Each character has a personality which is conveyed by the facial features e.g. the Co2 cloud looks evil which appeals. The sun looks nervous and anxious. The clouds look peaceful. The human driving the car looks unaware, casual and just plain.

Final piece

This is my final version I have changed the scene where the co2 clouds are introduce, I scaled them bigger so they look like they fly out at the screen. This brings the animation principle staging into effect, it shows the clouds are the most important element in the scene, I think it shows they are more evil too.

Working progress #2 - (Shown for Crit)

For crit I didnt manage to complete a full 30 second animation but I manage to crit 23 odd seconds of it. This was the video what was shown.

The feedback given was:

-  Dont use the red lines to spit the polar bears
-  Zoom into the Co2 clouds before the polar bears
- Music synced well to different parts of the story (Evil sounding bass when co2 clouds are introduced)
- Move the umbrella

There wasn't much feedback to be honest, probably cause the last one was shown... But ill take what was said and use it to improve. I know what I can do to improve it anyway in some ways and what to do for the end parts. I want to change the polar bears, i think their too big.