Final Crit

At this stage I had reworked my 60 second ident to include 3d layers and cameras but had not yet started the 10 second idents however I had planned to get to this stage so was quite pleased.


 On seeing the others work in the group I was disappointed that had not worked on storyboards off screen more but I had just ran out of time - The group was Kirsty F, Emily, James, Eddie, Sarah and Liam.


I am actually really enjoying the crits as it is great to see how people are progressing and also how diverse the approaches to this brief have been.  The approach of actually leaving your own questions was a definite improvement as it meant the crit was more directed.  Its sometimes easy to focus on what a person has not achieved yet rather than helping them improved what is actually there. 

I have actioned most of the areas for improvement such as 

• improving readability of text on certain Graphic designers, 
• considering the amount of white space (by adding a Vignette),
• the black Sarah referred to is a supposed to represent the thunder and lightening on the PetShop Boys track.  I dont think they could hear the track properly in the studio.  
• One pair did not pick up the Graphic designers names and one pair did... I think it depends on the audience.  the pair that did not pick up the names did not know the albums/music whereas the others did.  My audience will be Music lovers/deign/art lovers so I dont think this is a major issue other than making some more readable.

The actions to the crit are documented in the After effects development blog

Final crit - 60 second ident

I am reasonably pleased with the flow and pace of the camera.  I still need to do some work on 'angles' and shadows.  Also the title sequence at the end was thrown together really quickly and needs some work.  

With the ten second idents I intend to use two album covers doing four different genres to appeal to a range of generations.  
I need to add the BBC4 logo to the top of the 60 second and I plan to include the closing sweeping circle that BBC4 currently use to close the ident.

First attempt with 3D

The AfterEffects workshop with Mike proved useful.  I had been looking at the Video copilot 3D tutorial Chris had put up on the Tech form.  I showed Mike the 2D compositions I ahd produced and explained I would like to create a 3d walk through effect.  He gave me a quick run though how to create camera layers and also how to parent a light to the camera to start creating shadows.


He recommended i switch off the Camera auto orientation.

As I had developed all my album animations as separate compositions this enabled me to use these to create a new compositions using 3d layers.  I had to adjust some of the animation and also learn how to use cameras, lights and shadows - All quite a lot trickier than it first appears!

Work in progress

This is the first attempt at almost sixty seconds.  I am reasonably please with the sequences and flow between however  want to try making the motion 3d so I can explore using a cameras and lights.

Creating dry ice or fog in After Effects

The Clash Black and white grainy London calling cover was before the Unkle album cover and this gave me an idea.  An effect which i would like to achieve was to get the Futura characters to appear through some dry ice or fog. 


I found this tutorial on line which did not use plug ins and basically followed it - it was actually relatively simple but really effective.

Some screen shots of how I did this are below.

When I added the Fog composition to the Unkle one I scaled the Fog one up and masked and feathered the edges so the Fog would not appear 'oblong shaped.

Tips with After Effects

Fortunately I had set each of my 'Album Cover' compositions as nested compositions.  I needed to copy three of these nested composition, reverse and speed up to get a rewind like effect.  I found these features:


TimeWarp Effect

I found you can also Time reverse a layer however when I tried to do both it would not work.  I tried Time recerse the layer then applying the effct and also the other way round but neitehr worked.  For now I am just going to speed effect up.  It is so fast you can hardly tell the difference.

Type workshop week 3

We discussed our Brand choices:


The best examples :

• Identified details
• Interesting to see the material in context (substrates)
• Interesting to understand the history/context -opportunity to explain
• Technical analysis - construction and terminology
• Use bullet points and arrows rather than paragraphs to describe
• Critical engagement - deconstruct the type - What are the characteristics of the product- Do they fit?  What does it really mean?
• Eg Serif - aithority, make connections

Ideas for Type journal

Look at Yellow pages ads

Record clever pieces of design

Exercise - 550 words

A5 flyer double sided

Preparation

Hierarchy  - What will grab their attention

Think purpose. who for, what is important in that context.

Promotional -event

Which info will go on which side

Initial 

Interim Evaluation

Plan - creating assets ready to import in AE

By the 12th Jan I had experimented with the Sticky fingers idea and animated it for the progress crit.  At the time I was not sure whether to take the moving image this way however once I had chosen all the Albums I now could visualise how to make each one move in a similar fashion.

With The Led Zep album cover I tried tracing it in Illustrator however the actual scanned album did work better.  I found the nearest font to the Physical graffiti was Lucida Bright Demibold.  I used this as  a strating point then manipulated each letter in Illustrator to recreate the desired effect so I could spell Peter Corriston.

In Photoshop I created colour fill adjustment layers to 'darken' the windows gradually.

The next step was to ensure I had created all the assets for each of the other Album Cover.  I scanned the albums in where I could as this provided a more authentic feel than photographs.  I used a variety of techniques in both Illustrator and Photoshop.


Pink Floyd

The inspiration for this was obviously the front cover but also the 'soundwave' on the inside of the cover. Initially I tried to create a screen wip effect to make the script handwriting 'appear'.

However Lorraine directed us to a  tutorial how to write text on i After effects so I followed this to produce the effect I eventually came up with.  I actually recreated the Darkside of the moon in Photoshop as it was easier to manage the transition to 'Hipgnosis', 

The other images were mainly manipulated in Photoshop.  Where I was replacing text with Designers names I tried to work out the closest match to the original Album cover so the effect was quite cryptic and would only be noticed by people in the 'know'.

I also labelled all the layers which proved essential when importing to Aftereffects.

I used the magic brush to cut various heads from other photos and album covers to create the PetShop boys sequence. 

Deciding on the music selection was crucial before I started moving images.  To keep the whole project authentic I only selected tracks off the albums used.  As I have between 4 and 6 seconds per album cover max I chose the most recognisable parts of songs and with as simple a rhythm as possible.

Storyboards - 60 seconds

I did start storyboarding however given there was less than ten days to the deadline went straight into After Effects at this point and never returned to the story boards. 

I am not going to pretend I did them as I can evaluate the project on this basis and whilst I may get extra marks for doing them this is not going to enhance my learning.  Quite simply I ran out of time...