Bitta help and feedback

If you've been lucky enough to get that fateful facebook message from me, can u send us a bit of feedback for my presentation so I've got somethin th chat on about.

Ignore all the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in my blog, and don't be worried, no point in reading it all. Jus maybe have a quick look at the the three projects :

The 3d animation, which is right at the bottom, and very small but click on it to go to youtube to see a bigger version, or follow this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecHpusXEMp8

The 1shot film, group edit and individual edit.

And the Interactive space thing, which u can find on www.makingnewmaps.com by clickin on a fucked up version of my face, haha.

Any comments would be ace, something i can repeat to my tutors even better tho.

kinda things like:

What you liked about it and 

What you hated about it, and please be right honest about this, cos I know I could've made it better, and I'm not best pleased on having to show it all  to you people yet. So as many harsh comments WITH REASON, haha and criticisms as possible please.

Maybe what you would do to improve it, whether it seems amateur, whether it flows, makes sense, is interesting.

Cheers 

Interactive space jargon

Interactive space was amazing ! Thanks to years spent on myspace the html part came naturally; nothing to moan about at all.

I think if I was to redo it id defeintely change the aesthetics, as soon as you’ve had a nose around it becomes obvious which scenes were made first and which were a 6 in the morning jobby, on the technical side of it, I’d wanna investigate sounds on the mouseover, and perhaps a more developed story, more characters and interaction. I think the reason I loved this so much was cos im about dedicated to getting in to kids. Haha

As in Cbeebies CBBC, originally fancied myself as an illustrator, but maybe multimedia will sort me out with a new pathway thatll get me buzzin. Had a chat with the course leader and I think I’m sorted in the way I’m going to orienteer my portfolio, perhaps land an internship at Cbeebies or something, been done before. I know this is gonna be a right effort when it comes to group work in moving image, but it’ll still be worthwhile having a mess around at different, more adult genres.

I think I bit off a serious amount more than I could chew, I wanted to make it a kinda story book, but ive let myself down timewise, probs due to numerous s trips galavantin home to see everyone; something I’m gonna be sad about changing.

Before I started I had a quick look on www.makingnewmaps.com, before setting out to do something arty, back to the old school back to my roots haha.

This is some work by  mate of mine at a different uni doing graphic design, I think its ace, and it enthused me more to do a mix of 2d and 3d elements, with a few hand drawn bits incorporated.

I used a kind of spidery diagram to make the story up, id decided on the setting first, not sure if that’s a bit of a reverse order, but heres my thinking.

I wanted to start over again during the Christmas holidays, but cos I didn’t have anywhere permanently to stay after leaving the flat I was at before uni, I didn’t really have anywhere to sit down and attack it, so its going to have to be something I think about later on, maybe over summer when ive all the time in the world to laze around. Hopefully ill be a bit more clued up technically n all by then, ive downloaded every tiny chunk of html info I can find on the now.

I’ve had a quick peek at some of the others blogs, and it turns out we were supposed to upload a short sequence of a few images, in preparation for the final html project, I didn’t but here’s the first link from my actual piece.

sposed to be chillin in a park, having a gander at the weird question mark, leading to feeding the ducks

If you want t see the final thing, check out the making new

maps site ive put somewhere up there, if u can find it in my ramblings, find my picture, it’s the one of the child catcher. You’ll be sorted.

One Shot; Final Edit

The lighing was nasty.

In the end, we re-filmed it, the composition was too bad; we had plug sockets and smoke alarms creeping into the shot and to crop the image just felt shoddy.

The second film we produced is probably too exaggerated and more of a joke. The thoughts of the bloke are no longer the main focus when you’re watching it, he’s dancing haha, badly, it was more fun filming it but final outcome isn’t something I’m massively keen on. Think our group even added a mugging at the end, I showed it my friend from a different course and university and her feelings matched mine. I think we had problems when it came to allocating jobs and roles, some of us literally just spoke whilst others wanted to tackle the whole project single handedly.

Group weren’t half bad though.

For my individual edit I think I’m goin t try and adopt a kinda pop art approach. All I can do is make the best with what we’ve got now, if I get enough time towards the end of November I might try and have a go with the cameras and that myself.

I want to make the video evidently more light hearted, and maybe have a mess around with some of the effects, which means a load more trips t waverly in this amazing weather. I’ll post my individual edit when its done, think Dan or Jordans got the group one up if you wanna see it.







Think an all round failed attempt, its jerky where I've sped it up and not sorted it properly, the pop art bit doesn't really coincide with the music, haha lets just hope the tutors are easy going since its first assessment.
pretty certain film isn't gonna be a pathway of mine.

I Love This !

Rookie One Shot; practice

FILM !


Haha if I was moaning about animation, im well and truly out the comfort zone with this stuff.

I think im supposed to write about genre, influences, and technical devices weve used in this video, but to be fair we jus pushed a boy in a bush through lack of other ideas. I didn’t even contribute massively.


The composition of the film isn't too bad, thanks to dan; not too much light messing up the aperture of the camera, I like how much of a joke this is, so easy to do; we didn't need to mess about with lighting or anything, which is greaaaat cos I'm a complete joke to filming and cameras and lighting and everything. Utterly virgin to it all.



Tomorrow we start the filming of the final One shot which must last three minutes, our teams pathetic, we have no idea. Ive been really trying but I have never had anything to do with film before ! im normally sound for ideas, the one thing I do have, so when ive finished this, im going to look at some existing short one shot films for abit of inspiration, if youre lucky ill post them.hold your breath.

Storyboard

This part of the course is by far my favorite, I love illustration, and it is primarily my background.

We were set to do a quick storyboard detailing our morning, for tomorrows lesson. Not got a clue who the teacher is, 'guest lecturer' fella, but I’m into the lesson, and I think he is partially to blame, haha.

I like how no words are necessary, I know its not the best drawing in the world, but it only took 20 minutes to knock up, so do one.

3DS MAX Animation

First time on 3ds max, and i found it silly difficult.
I'm not the best at computers.


It’s the one thing I really struggle with, I can have the weirdest, coolest ideas but its delivery never matches up, I always let myself down, do I found this to be about as challenging as I thought it would be. I left the lesson about ready to cry a few times, haha.

The idea of sitting at a screen clicking buttons, allowing the program to do all the making just didn’t appeal; I’m more into getting messy and drawing by hand. After thinking about it I realized perhaps this gives me an advantage, the fact i hate the outcome means I’m going to have to try harder, and really struggle with myself to create something I’m proud of, so I look forward to that, and maybe incorporating illustration and hand made elements into the 3d animation somehow.

After the first 2 lessons, I started to get my own ideas, and drew up some very rough thumbnail sketches, but soon realized I was getting waay too far ahead of myself. I simplified it, and with the help of a lot of youtube tutorials and the life and death of about 13 3ds max fish, and guidance of anyone sitting within 10 metres of me, I created something I’m actually quite proud of for a first play with the program.

It’s not the best use of the 30 seconds, but its definitely a good representation of my channel, and me. haha

I think the characters are quite close to the sort of illustrations I use in my sketchbooks, I think I posted a fish character in the last blog. I wanted them to look simple and a bit fucked up, standard colours. I like the sort of ‘odd ball’ ‘fail’ thing it has going to it, like there’s so many different ways to create amazing 3d figures and things, but I’ve gone for a simple fish, sort of like I’m taking the piss.

I really struggle with mixing technical elements into freedom and creativity and I think throughout this year this lesson is going to be the one I draw the most from.

My Multimedia

I’m gonna churn out 200 words complaining about the ipod touch.

The ipod touch, ipad and iphone in my opinion, eliminate the need for the other to exist. Apple have raised the products to render the other pretty much pointless, its frivolous to own all 3 pieces, simply wouldn’t be able to make use of them all in the most appreciative way.

The iphone 4 has apps, games, face to face video calling, internet, music, google maps, HD, touch screen, retina display, the ipod touch has too, just lacking the ability to make a phone call.
Technology can be beautiful, creating something that solves a problem within society that hasn’t yet been realised, but I think here they’ve just mixed together the winning aspects for the iphone into the ipod touch sloppily, and given it an unworthy title of its own.

All their products seem to be being sculpted into the same thing, just different sizes and names; the personality they once had slipping away, bringing out all the negative feelings I have towards technology. People just seem to be getting rinsed.

I don’t hate apple products, my macbook is the best thing I own, or even the original ipod, just seems there’s no passion to further the individuality of  each product.

Home !

Decided to do a runner back to stinkers Thursday night, about amazing being home.

Got to the seedy looking coach station silly early, but got to chatting to this lady, who turned out to be heading back to Leicester the same as I was, she seemed sound. The conversation lead to what I was doing at Uni, turns out she works at a Local Leicestershire paper, and was interested in getting me to knock out some illustrations for some of the articles they are planning to print. Loved it.

Not sure it will definitely lead to something, but can’t hurt to send her an e-mail and see what I can get from it. 

'ere are a few things from my sketch book.

Whiteboard Animation

Everyones blogs are looking embarrassingly similar.


Not sure I won the battle against Youtube to show this video, but have a go.





4th animation in, the one that goes against the help sheet and starts with an egg, proceeds to a dinosaur sucking the head off a worm and finishes with toast setting on fire , that's the animation I helped create.

Pin 'ole Photography

Final photograph; Trees within nearby cemetery  

Uni buzz started up again, here is one of the short introductory projects we did during the first class using a 500 ml can.

Piercing a can with a pin, and placing light sensitive photo paper inside, the small amount of light allowed inside the ‘camera’ hits the paper leaving a reversed image, to the left is the one my relentless produced.

It’s a pretty straight forward and easily explained process, how you can make images using pinhole photography, yet an utterly new concept to me. Some of my class mates had experimented with this kinda stuff before, and explained how you can use a variety of other things, such as shoe boxes which wouldn’t leave the kind of curvature I got on the images taken using my can.

Wikipedia pretty much explains how it work

“A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperature — effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box.

Pretty rough image, but a cool way of doing things. Theres an opportunity to create in the weirdest places.

My Design Process

One of the more recent project briefs I completed was to create a paper form information source detailing a decade of our choosing, I decided to pick the 90’s, the decade of my birth and an era I really like the buzz of.

To begin my design process I set upon gathering as much information about the 90’s as I could, but soon realised an organised approach would be more beneficial than diving head first into to Google’s depths, so I sectioned the era off into 6 chapters I thought would give a real feel for the time and appeal to my target audience, based on what gets them now, and began to pile up images, videos, music and text to illustrate it.

(Introduction, music, T.V, film, crazes and fashion)

My target audience was primarily people about my age, my purpose to inform.

To inform my ideas, and help create a graphically engaging design I looked at existing informative leaflets, booklets and brochures. Slugging through about 15 or so I was bored as, and was set upon not churning out another crap, unenthusiastic booklet; I wanted my audience to be sharing my passion for the decade.

All my research was mainly image based, and documented within a sketch book,, very raw and informative without too many words, so when it came to design concepts for the final piece I set out to keep it this way, so as to let the reader or consumer of my design get their own interpretation of the 90’s. I wanted a very open ‘in yer face’ piece.

When my idea was set, I moved to layout, messing around with the most successful way of arranging my images, according to colour, relationship etc. and created a few rough prototypes or print outs to show my friends and see which they thought most successful.

Below are a few pictures of my piece, in ashamedly bad quality photos !

This project lasted about 6 weeks.