Top ten final submission

The 10 second idents would be best ran as a set with the 'complete' run though of albums/designers  preceding the ones with just two albums/designers on.  With the Andy Warhol and Peter Corriston one this is a distinct period ie the 70's and would be aimed at people 40 plus in the first instance so would be shown before say a music culture programme about the sixties aor seventies.  The other with Pennie Smith and Futura 2000 is coming more 80's to 90's.  This has the 'cool' factor as Futura is an iconic figure now endorsing 'cool' labels but back in the day was a Graffiti artists and worked at Mo Wax with Ben Drury.  This would appeal to  a 25-50 year old audience.

Final evaluation of After effects and the outcome

Overall I have learned lots of new skills both through the Mac tutorials and Lorraine but also from online tutorials.  I feel comfortable with After Effects which was assisted by having a methodical filing system for all my files and assets.  This proved really important when I decided to start nesting compositions and reusing compositions to create 3 d layers and use cameras.

The final outcome could have been improved if I had storyboarded the whole sequence.  Although I was clear about the each individual album composition and even how they would link I had not thought through how it would end in terms of titles nor what typeface to use.  I think this is evident in the final piece.  

The ten second sequences were strengthened by the fact I had managed to reproduce a similar BBC4 End board.  This provides a clear brand identity for the Channel.

Initially I had considered producing quite a 'vectored' piece however when Fred briefed us early on he said to consider using found materials to add texture.  This was one reason I decided to scan actual album covers , where I had them.  I now think this adds to the general tone of voice rather than looking 'twee'.

Although I am disappointed I had neither the time nor the inclination to produce some storyboards I do think it would have been extremely time consuming to produce them for my piece.  The reason being once I had chosen the music it was important to ensure the moving image flowed and was timed to fit with the music.  To storyboard this I would have had to markout each beat frame by frame.  As it was I was able to mark the beats in after Effects and 'animate' accordingly.

  

The DVD package

For a while now I have been conscious I wanted to produce a cover which did the subject justice.... i wanted too ideally create something quite clever maybe die cut like the Physical Graffiti album .  I like the effect achieved on this Jazzanova In between CD cover:

This is actually really heavy cardboard and bound in a book - a bridge to far on the Sunday night before hand in!


I found these CD templates on line which include bleed print marks etc so this allowed me to concentrate on the design rather than the template. cd-dvd-artwork-templates

Pleased with the layout and colours (The Design module is making me think harder about this) .  I had to compromise on paper weight as printing at Rossingon Street was limited on stock.  I used a 230gsm matt stock which works but think a satin slightly heavier stock would have produced brighter colours and would have been stronger.  Could have been lined up and crafted better but overall think it does the digital work justice,

After effects development

Following the Final crit I worked on making the Mark farrow and Barney Bubbles  text more readable.

I also experimented with different background colours but in the end because of the vast number of colours in the Album covers stuck with white.  I also looked at adding a Vignette intially going with an elipse then settling on a rectangle. I think it suits the size of the screen better.

I also experimented further with the lights

File organisation in After Effects

I have screen shot some the AFter Effects project file.  It still looks really messy but I wanted o demonstrate I used a clear naming convention for all footage, layers and compositions.  In the end I had created over 35 compositions within one project all which were used to craete the 60 second sequence and the four ten second sequence. I am pleased to say I never lost a link or file!

Almost there with 60 seconds

Still a few timing issues especially with the end sequence. Need to define a difference between 'ten graphic designers of album art' and 'who inspired who'   Also may add BBC4 white logo in top left as all their programmes have it.

Also changed the background to white with a black vignette rather than cream

 with orange one. Added shadow effects to the layers.

Last ten seconds development

I like the effect Vinyl Love achieved which was to move the original piece to the side of the screen and overwrite using the titles. One part of the feedback from the Crit from those that had not heard of the bands/music just thought it was a top ten about music.  They had not picked up on the Designers names I had added to the album covers.  Also I knew the current ending needed work as it was just a last minute idea to get the moving image finished for the Crit.

I started the Top Ten development process envisioning I could plot and animate the links and between the designers on a 'underground' style map.  After I had transferred the album covers into 3d I felt I was starting to achieve a 'walk' through the album covers.  By reversing this segment it reinforced this 'journey' through Ten Graphic designers and albums and also presented an opportunity to add the titles.


Feeling more confident with Cameras and nested compositions.  I nested the original sequence into a new composition then copied this again.  I tried to reverse the motion using time/time reverse layer but After effects would not then speed this layer up.

I looked into how to use the enable time remapping.  As we had looked at graphs with Mike I felt this was possible.  After some experiments I did work out how to reverse and speed 47 seconds and into ten seconds.

This is an image of the time remapping graph.

I found a free download of a record scratch on line on http://www.freesound.org.

I also added motion bur to this segment to enhance the 'speed'

In my crit group I had asked their advice about the titles and the verdict was that they needed to be kept really simple.

I had not realised until I had rendered this because I had the screen set up as two view I was not seeing the full screen when I set up the title sequence!

BBC4 end boards

BBC4-2005

Need to work out how to recreate this - Very quickly!  Sure there must be a tool in After Effects.

I started off by trying to create a segment in Illustrator and applying a gradient to the segment imagining it may be able to be animated however this was not working.

 After I found out this visual was called a wipe I then investigated 'wipe' in the After Effects menu and found them under Effects, transition.  There is a 'Radial wipe'.  This created the wipe however it looked quite flat so I started experimenting with other effects such CC light rays,CC Spot light, CC light sweep and Radial Shadow until I created the effect I wanted.

However I still had not created all the 'rays' so I experimented with laying over the effect from a Photoshop image as follows:

This did not work as it was too static.

Then I had a brain wave by copying and placing the first effects layer at six degree angles until I had made 90 degrees almost created the effect I was after:

From research I found the BBC used Gill Sans and the length of the End Board was about 4 seconds.  I also found a copy of the BBC four logo.  

I added the text and Jpg and applied the same radial wipe effect to these