Motion graphic research | Opening title sequence

Even though researching existing things isn't as helpful when you get such a direct and limited brief I thought its still a good idea to look at some to look at any techniques I would like to use in the future.

Madmen

I really, really like this opening scene. The change of tempo from beginning to end is perfect, with the guy falling fast down a slow camera is a nice technique. I like the art style of having a blocky suited man within a detailed world. The use of camera and 3D space is something Ive never done before, so i look forward to using it, in this it looks so cool. The subtleness of the guy falling works so well with the violin music in the background, it has a nice mood. Not something you would expect of a guy falling down a skyscraper.

Hustle

A bit old and out dated but I remember watching Hustle years ago and thinking how cool the opening sequence was and I still really like it even though its old. I like the use of objects as a transition for the next scene for instance the guys sunglasses acts as a window to the next scene. The smoke from the guys cigar turns into a pound sign. I think this is so good, the effect for that is particular and is something I will be using in my project with steam coming from a train, hopefully I can make something nice with the smoke, to act as some sort of revealer or turn it into something like in this sequence.The way 'Hustle' is presented is cool, with the falling money on top of the text then the camera goes to the front so you can see it.

300

I really like the opening scene to the film 300. The art style of pure block colours and the main of red and black portrays the blood, anger, fierceness and power the film is. The slow motion pauses throughout in 3D space is cool with the blood in full dimension, playing around with the camera looks fun, it makes everything so fluent which is key for a sequence.

As I know what I'm doing, conducting a lot of research isn't necessary in my opinion. I know I have to use camera and 3D space so these three give a lot of different angles and ways you can transition scenes within the sequence.

New brief | Finally got sent my brief

So for this new project I will be making a title sequence/animation intro to a programme called food exchange which is a live brief. For the first time I will be making content to a real brief from a real client. It is scary but exciting for the first time working in the real world. I need to e-mail my client to receive details of my brief.

I have sent a few emails and phone calls to people but I have not been getting response.

About a week later Andrew replies.

After a few naggy but polite emails, my client (Andrew) final has responded with some guidelines of what he wants me to make. He originally asked me to make an animation of objects orbiting a graphic of the logo which is an Egg what has text on it saying 'International chef exchange'. The objects he wanted were a plane, egg and a car. He then wanted me for them to finish up coming out of orbit together and shooting at the screen towards the viewer.

I wasn't really convinced by the the objects flying out towards the viewer so I suggested a different idea. I had a careful examination of the Egg graphic Andrew sent me and I thought I could play with the two lines in the graphic. I suggested an idea of revealing the two lines as tracks from the car and train on their path of orbit around the egg. Then have the plane go round after with smoke coming out of it which then reveals the text of international food exchange. I proposed this idea instead to Andrew and seemed happy about it saying the idea was good.

I asked a few more questions to get a bit more details of what I was doing, asking about the graphics of the plane, train and car and Andrew wants them to look vintage. So I am thinking of drawing up in illustrator some old pictures off vintage tin toys of these objects. Andrew sent a sound track and I asked if he wanted me to edit to the whole piece and he said yes but he may drop in some food shots. So I now have a good idea of what I am doing. I will now draw up some mock ups of the storyboard of what it could look like. Then create some photoshop mock ups and send them to Andrew to see if he likes the idea before I go into after effects and start creating the animation.

Evaluation | Summary of this project

I thought the Oasis brief was pretty open as there wasn't much restriction in the way we could make a poster of any art style and in any direction but sticking to suiting it for a high end females clothing store. There is a nice amount of different potential approaches that could of been used for this brief. I am happy that I chose this brief. I haven't done much design work focusing on typography so I am glad I challenged something new, I could of picked something like the Bear brief which is basic graphic design of children's imagery which isn't anything new to me.

I very much enjoyed this project, it was fun creating the posters in photoshop as it a programme I enjoy designing in. I am pleased with what I have produced. I feel my designs answer the Oasis brief. Oasis wanted stated that:

'Stay true to our brand and appeal to the Oasis girl. You are free to bring your messages to life as you see fit. You may just wish to write them down in words, or to go to greater lengths to bring them to life visually using design and illustration. First and foremost we are looking for strong written messaging, but if you have ideas for how your messages can look visually, then we'd love to see them too.'

I focused my designs mainly on the phrase 'bring your messages to life' as I took the phrase literal and actually created typography to life metaphorically with real animals fur. I carefully analysed the brief and picked out keywords which I can focus on and design to match the keywords. The keywords I gathered from the brief were: Stylish, Unique, Feminine, Engaging, Surprising and Delighting. I feel my designs match every single one of these keywords. They are stylish in the way each fur text has its own unique attributes of texture, pattern and colour. The lighting around the background creates style. They are unique as Ive never seen a fur textured typography poster anywhere, each poster has its own animal theme. The animal theme is feminine; a lot of Oasis' clothes print is animal print. They are engaging as the alliteration technique of messaging gives a nice reading effect to the reader. The posters I think are nice to look at. I think they are very mud surprising due to the fact its developing static typography into alive textured typography in a related background environment. Delighting is portrayed by how visually rich the posters are, they are very much readable as well as being image based.

I also think the consistency in the posters makes the posters very much more strong and effective. Everything is very much positioned in the same places throughout. I have displayed Oasis' branding logo big, readable and bold which expresses the importance and dominance of labelling what the posters belong to. 

Personally I think the most effective part of the posters is how eye catching they are and how I have portrayed the focal point in being the animal text, the careful dark shading and glow lighting around the text makes them stand out and emphasise the main importance. 

The problems I encountered were making the posters readable, I had to play around with lighting and brushing around the text to make them stand out, considering colour and contrast. I manage to get through the obstacles by changing sharpness of lighting, opacity of glows, shadows and intensity of parts.

Overall I am happy with my work, also happy with how my PDF looks. We have been told how important it is that the PDF is designed well so it is carefully looked at.  I feel my PDF has a nice layout, big pictures to clearly see and that I have conveyed my concept well. I am content with everything in this project.

Development | Creating my Artwork

Creating the fur textured typography was easily the most time consuming process of making the posters. I used Photoshop to make the posters. To create the fur effect I had to make my own brush and brush around each individual letter. Precisely and delicately.

First off I had to type the text out in a big size (72pt) so it was zoomed in a lot.

I changed the properties of a default photoshop brush of a single grass shape into a scattered series of them so it looked like fur. I then had to go round each letter manually rotating the shape one every curve making sure the whole straight edge of each letter was covered up with the brush

After finishing brushing round the letters I had to add the selection inside the letters to the main selection. Using the lasso tool with the 'add to selection' button selected. I had to do this so when the image of the fur is pasted in it only goes in the selection inside the letters.

Next and final step is very simple. You get you picture of the animal fur, simply copy it then go back into photoshop and go to Edit>Paste Special>Paste into.

When thats done that's it. It will be successful if I brushed round every straight edge.

The poster is then made in a new Photoshop document. It is made up of a sourced image I had to find off google.

I dragged in my fur textured text, the Oasis logo and created the rest of the text. When all these main elements were in I just edited around them using brushes and gradients to edit the lighting, create shadows. Playing with opacities of the colours black and white to do this.

PDF | Planning

In my PDF I propose to talk about my idea and concept. Why I chose to do it (research and idea development), what it brings as a design (as a sucess), how it answers the brief and how Oasis can benefit from it. I will include how I made my posters with screenshots of in -development; demonstrating how I created the fur texture on the typography. The PDF has to be 8 pages long(A3) and I will be using either illustrator or inDesign to make it.

More Development | Changing the Zebra poster

I had look at all my posters and thought the Zebra text was quite hard to read with the blurry backlight. So made the light a bit more sharp to give a more outline around the text so it is easier to read. I didn't want it too sharp obviously cause the text still needs to look textured with fur around it so I made the change. Here is the before and after.

I think it is much easier to read with the sharper light glow.  

Final artwork | (For now)

I have spent good time after crit finessing my artwork. I have 4 finished posters here they are in order of production.

I made most of the changes asked at crit. Changing all text to white, which I think does work better, it keeps that a consistent theme. I removed the '!' from the word 'Woo' in the wolf texture poster. I made sure that the Oasis logo is presented in the same position and size in every poster. I made sure the text in the bottom left is in the same position and size too. 

The first two posters (tiger and leopard) are a smaller size than the other two. I done two small posters and two big posters because Oasis said they would want designs for web as well as in store. So I gave the variation of two different sized posters.

I have played a lot on the dark shading around the text to bring it out as much as possible. Also each fur text has a different shadow to it depending on the background environment and lighting angle in the photo to give a more unique dynamic element in each poster.  Ive made the posters more darker so the focal points are more emphasised (fur text and brand logo).

Now to begin with making the PDF...

Crit | feedback

Crit went well. I was satisfied with the feedback, a lot of people liked my posters. Comments were they are nicely designed. The improvements I could make were very little which I was very happy with. This is a short list of feedback I could make to improve my designs.

• Lose the '!' in Woo!
• Spacing between the letters in wifi
• Change the colour of the text in the bottom to white?
• Pull the Oasis logo more away from the edge
• Darker light glow behind 'wifi'

So not too much to do, just these small changes, create another poster and create the PDF is all whats left.

In development feedback (Kate)

I had created two posters so far. One for the Paypal message and another for the delivery message. I asked Kate, my lecturer to have a look at them to get some feedback midway through development which was really useful. The two posters I showed looked like this.

We had a long discussion of how things can be changed etc and this is a list of things we came up with.

Leopard text
- Oasis logo, text isn't readable > Make bigger, reposition
- Sentence > Get rid of 'will' put a full stop after want so 'For free' is its own line. Makes is snappier and more important. Reposition underneath the leopard text to keep consistent theme of positioning.
- I felt personally the leopard text needs to be brought out more, stand out so it is the main focus. So I wanted to add dark gradients around it and have a subtle glow to light the text up a little.
- Change the colour of the type to a more of a match to the leopard text

Tiger text
- Same as the leopard text. Re position the logo, make it bigger, readable, consistent.
- I personally again wanted to put dark lighting around the text to make it stand out more.
- Add the worse 'in store' after 'Pay' to make the sentence longer and more easier to understand what the meaning is.

After finessing the little edits these are what the two posters look like now.

For me they look so much better just from simple changes. The logo of Oasis stands out so much and is easily readable which is majorly important in a poster. Its bossing the brand so people will clearly recognise the brand. I made it white so it contrasts a lot better on the dark background. Originally it was black with a subtle light glow around it but I played around and made it white and thought this is the solution. The two fur textured text stand out much more. The dark lighting around it enables the human eye not to focus on any background context, just purely the typography which is my aim. I have kept a consistency in the positioning and sizing of the logo, colour and size. Oasis stated they wanted their posters to have a consistent style, I think I have achieved this.

After making these two Kate said I wouldn't have to make all 8 messages as proposed. As the point of the yen brief is to design your concept, it would be better for me to make 4 more finessed posters rather than make all 8. You can clearly see my concept in just a few of the posters. This is good news anyway cause I would of had really struggled for time to make all 8, plus the PDF. So only two more to go.