Introduction

The brief gives us 8 famous speeches to chose from. They are:

• Franklin D Roosevelt: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself
• Winston Churchill: We shall fight them on the beaches
• Harold Macmillan: The wind of change
• Nelson Mandela: An ideal for which I'm prepared to die
• Jawahharal Nahru: A tryst with destiny
• John F Kenndy: ask not what your contry can do for you
• Martin Luther King: I have a dream
• Margaret Thatcher: The ladys not for turning
• Earl Spencer: the most haunted person of the modern age

At first look of them none of them stood out for me for any inspiration. I am very unfamiliar with all these speeches. 

Kate asked the class to pair up and create a presentation on research of one of these speeches, so we could all learn about the speeches from the class mates presentations to save us researching them all individually which would be a timely process.

I paired up with Liam and we researched John F Kennedy, and in doing this I learnt a lot about him and his speech. After all the presentations I knew what speech I wanted to do. John F Kennedy's. I didnt chose him just because it was the one I had to research, I found his speech very interesting and inspiring and it has motivated me to use it for the trailer. I knew nothing about him before researching it, now after knowing it I get visualisations in my head what my trailer can potential be. 

AF105 Time Based Media

The Brief

Our next project we have been introduced to is Moments in Time - speeches. Which is creating a tv trailer for a new radio 4 programme called 'Moments in time - Speeches'. Which is about a selection of famous speeches from the 20th century.

We have been told that the trailer should be just over a minute, shorter the better. (5 Second leeway in each direction)

The trailer will be a short film about the speech I have chosen, combining the speech with film footage, images, text and graphics.

Things not to do

• avoid using original footage
• film literal interpretations of what is being said in the speech

Things to do

• use footage what demonstrate a flavour of what the political/social circumstances of the period in time when the speech was made
• feature text elements to emphasise words spoken in the speech (kinetic)
• use music and can use sound effects

What I need to produce in this project:

• Storybaords illustrating the trailer in images, with a timeline aswell.
• Sketchbook with research to visualisation of concepts

Deadlines

28th January - Pitch idea

11th February - Crit final trailer

15th February - Final submission

Evaluation

To conclude this whole project, I enjoyed it. It was definitely more of a challenge than the af102 propaganda poster assignment due to more work had to be produced and my design was more detailed than the propaganda poster.

I am happy with what I have produced, I feel my designs have matched the brief well and look nice as a design in their own right. Since pitching my proposed idea I always had a good feel of what tone of voice I wanted my design to communicate. I matched my proposal in that my design gave a good spooky atmosphere, the characters look worried and the design itself tells a story due to key element of the footprints. I like the style of drawing I used, I never have used that style before, as i'm getting more use to illustrator my drawing skills are adapting well from it which I am glad I have learned.

My book cover went well, I spent a lot of time getting the gradients right and and playing around with different textures but decided I wanted to keep the trees as they were. I had a good think in what contrast I wanted the spine to be, my first draft was black text on the snow grain but in my feedback the majority suggested having a dark background with white text. After doing the change, the white text stands out so much more, and strongly compliments the brief in which I have said in my statement about how my design matches the brief.

Things I would do next time, If I were to re approach this project is probably try use the sketchbook more and complex my design even further. My idea generation just comes to my head and isnt that much influenced by other existing pieces of work, same goes for my art style, I don't really find trying to copy someone else art style helps me, I like to picture what style I want to use in my head. The image I used as a example of what my art style is going to be like didn't really match my design. I used the gradients and colour inspiration from it as the trees got darker, like mine.

My poster I really like, I feel it would work well as a poster, it would draw peoples eye, and is very clear when you look at it that it is promoting The wind in the willows due to how dominant the text is emphasized by the positioning and dark tree surrounding it. The falling snow and snowflakes give that charm which is good to have when designing for an audience which is children, it can attract their attention. Things i would do next time to the poster is probably add more animals and detail to do with the trees, like squirrels etc.

Branding guidelines, I had never heard before I approached this. My branding guidelines I think were okay, but I think they could be improved by making the layout more proffesional and have more in depth detail of content and strictness on elements. Im not too keen on my branding guidelines to be honest, there simple. Maybe more research into more different ones could of given more more inspiration to produce better ones.

Final designs

I have made the minor changes from the feedback, and is ready for submissions which is 11/01/2013 by 4:00pm

Feedback

The feedback from the class from what I can remember was very good, here were some of the quotes:

'I really like the footprints'
'The drawing styles of the trees are really nice, I really like them'
'The balance in the poster from the two trees is perfect'
'The designs has a real nice charm to it'

The feedback from which I could use to improve my designs was
'Move the blurb more to the right to make it more central'
'Make the authors name bigger on the front cover'
'Put white text on the spine on a darker background instead of vice versa'
'Make the top line in the poster, staggered to give it more balance and fill up negative space.

After getting this feedback I then made the changes to the designs...

Crit

After finishing my first draft I critted it to the class, as well as the poster and this is the two designs I made.

Crit went well, I got a lot of positive feedback from the class and only a few tweaking negative feedback which was very minor.

Making the illustrations

I started off by creating the characters, using the pen tool i constructed the outlines of Ratty and Mole.

I made an art stroke, to give the lines a pointy effect then applied these to the paths I drew up with the pen tool.

After drawing them I filled the paths with colour gradients, and added patterned textures from the swatch menu.

After finalising the characters I imported them into the template file for the book cover.

I drew up the front cover first, then spine, then back cover.

I used the pen tool throughout, constructing the trees and backgrounds.

After I done the trees, I done the snow on the ground by creating a gradient and adding importing a photoshop effect by creating a 'grain' effect to make it look more detailed and look like snow.

Then I simply added the other details such as holes in the tree which are blured into the tree, the evil yellow eyes which I copied and resized and re position them arouned the trees.

I added snow onto the branches and created falling snow by making a white circle and copying and re positioning it around the top, I created the snow flake by using the pen tool and copying and re positioning.

I done the footsteps using the pen tool again and decreasing the opacity on the ones closer to the back of the book by 4% each footprint.

Poster

I first of all drew up the trees, and all other illustrations in illustrator to use as template which I then imported into photoshop for further editing.

I drew it up using the pen tool, using the same techniques as for the book cover filling it with brown/black gradients. I used the same characters from the book cover onto here. I done the text in illustrator because it comes out better than text in photoshop. After I finished this in illustrator I then opened it up in photoshop...

I made the snow grained using one of the filters. I then downloaded a snow plug in, which creates a falling snow effect, I made one for the whole size of the page. I then made a another layer of snow for just the top half to make it look more realistic as more snow will be higher up. The snow flakes were a brush I downloaded which i simply applied using different shapes and sizes.