THE STORY

SO FAR

TOMAS KATTER

GDNM YEAR 1

Brief 1 For the first brief we looked at the some of the rudiments of design, we began to look at colour, ty-pography and layout.

Using the pen tool in Photoshop, I cut out the Argos sign to use as my typography. Using a complementary colour scheme, I then designed a illustration using the rule of odds.

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The idea of this design was to use an ‘object’ of such and create an abstract letter, I used the wheel chair to create the letter ‘F’. Golden Ratio Composition

Using the green colour from the “Wheel chair refuge point’ sign, I designed a illustration using a monochromatic colour scheme.

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Using my own typography, I looked to create a symmetry design. Instead of using a simple reflecting symmetry style, I instead used a mirroring style of symmetry. This style meant that the typography could not simply reflect each other; it had to also be reversed, as though it was the reflection in a mirror.

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The colours used are from a triad colour scheme.

Brief 2 This brief was an introduction into 3D typography and how to incorporate it into the real world, to create a design that con-nects the typography with the background, giving it a sense of meaning.

This piece was designed to work in two ways; the first way is that typography is meant to resemble balloons floating higher and higher in the sky. To create this affect I had to adjust the amount curve on all of the edges to make the letters smooth, I then added a shine to the sur-face to give the illusion that the sun was reflecting off them. Secondly the deeper meaning behind it is one of happiness, I wanted the word ‘higher’ to represent the emotional up lift that is associated with nice weather, summer, childhood etc.

1

This piece was all about the idea of fashions and new trends. The picture shows a 80s style graffiti radio, I used the word retro to in a way that contradicts its it self by saying that if retro is now accept-ed into today’s society, is it still retro?

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Breif 3 This brief was all about creating a kinetic typography animation based around a self-recording of a song by eminem.

The first thing I did was gather the times of key words in the recording which were then go-ing to become key frames in the kinetic typography video, the times had to be correct other-wise the video and the audio track would not be in time with each other. The next step was to create a story board of how the words would move and how they would link together fluidly, keeping in mind that certain words had to be visible and certain times.

Although I did check my video with the sound I recorded, I came across some problems trying to add the sound to the animation and therefore my video does not have sound.

Although I enjoyed mak-ing the typography anima-tion, I wasn’t too pleased with the final outcome. I believe that now my knowl-edge of After Effects has greatly improved, if I was to re do this brief I could design an animation I would be proud of.

Brief 4 This Brief was about creating a stop motion using the phrase ‘hooping mad’.

For this brief I choose the saying ‘ hooping mad’ and looked at the physi-cal movement of hooping and the physiological meaning to the word mad. My concept was based around the idea of the word ‘hooping’ being my main character, the character was in some way going to be trapped by something or someone and the only way for it to become free was to be-come ‘hooping mad’. Once I had my storyboard in place I used the sim-ple technique of stop motion to create the final outcome.

3D Images Using After Effects, I created a 3D image of the batman character Bane.

Using After Effects I was able to creating a 3D image with a moving camera. One I had dissected my original image in to multiple layers; I then rebuilt the image in After Affects to create the 3D illusion. Once I had done this I then focused on the camera movement, using key frames and editing the position of the photo, I was able to create an effect that looked like the camera was panning round the image. I then went into pixel world and created falling snow.

I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project as it helped me to improve my knowledge of After Effects.

Brief 6 For this brief we had to bring to life a painting from the 17th century using After Effects.

I chose to use a painting by Frans Snyders for my animation. I used the skills I had learnt whilst working on my 3D image of Bane and went into Photoshop and began to divide the painting in to single layers, all containing one aspect of the painting. I then began to look at how I would bring the painting to life and decided on trying to make the arm move in a realistic way, as if she was actually painting. I achieved this by placing anchor point pins and by controlling the points of move-ment, I was able to create a realistic arm movement that brought the painting to life.

The original painting.

I also placed my own piece of work into the animation; I placed an illustration of the artist ‘Drake’ I had created to make it look as though she had painted it.

Brief 7 For the brief we had to design two desktop ‘wallpaper’ graphics/illus-trations for a mobile phone and one desktop ‘wallpaper’ graphic/illustration for a computer desktop.

Original photo I used.

The design I created for my desktop wallpa-per uses a polyrhythmic style, regular rhythm and a colour palette that con-sist of bright fluorescent colours.

Using the image of the elephant and after editing it in Photoshop, I was able to create this brush prefect to use for my design.

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Here is my finial design for my desktop wallpaper, the whole idea about this design is all about standing out and being different, going against the norm, and this is all shown by the pink elephant.

This is my first design for a mobile phone; this design is flowing rhythm that use’s a dark colour palette, focusing on the blacks and greys. It was designed for a blackberry. To create this design I used two images, one to create the brush preset and one for the main focus point.

This is the image I used to create my brush preset. The design is from a lamp, which I then put into Photoshop and cut on the inter-nal design, this was then used as my brush.

I used this image for the main focal point. The image is from a necklace I own and I thought that detail in the face would work really well in this design.

Here is my final design for the blackberry wallpaper; using the two images I was able to create this flowing design. I was very pleased with design as believe it fulfills all of the above.

My second wallpaper uses a mono rhythmic, Progressive Rhythm and a black and white colour scheme.

I came up with the idea of using a TV to create a progressive rhythm styled design, I wanted to use the idea of watching TV on a TV, this lead me to create this design for a blackberry. Although I liked the idea, I don’t think this design worked to well as wallpaper because it did strain my eyes when looking at it for to long.

Here are the final outcomes.

For this brief we had to design a placard for a issue that we felt strongly about, we had to not only think about an issue but also how were going to portray it on the placard.

Brief 8 Deciding on a issue that I felt strongly about wasn’t the easiest thing iv ever done, I thought on many issues but couldn’t really choose one that I really appealed to me. After a while I started to think about the issue of the London riots and the way young people were treated not just by the police but by the government as well. However this still didn’t appeal to me, so I began to focus more on how the government affect my life personally, this then brought me to the issue of rise in tuition fees. The rise in tuition fees in something I feel very strongly about so I decided to choose this as my topic

With my issue in mind, I knew I wanted to design a placard that could be used in a protest so I did some research and began to look at placards and banners from other protests.

From my research I knew that my placard would have to be simple yet effective, not too many words and a simple message.

Here is my first idea for a placard that I designed.

I designed this placard by using Photoshop, I cut the hands and the scissors from a cartoon illustration and added them to pound sign. I thought about adding a face to the pound sign however I decided not to as it made the placard look less serious. The idea behind this design was to create a simple yet affective plac-ard that would get my message across, however I wasn’t happy with it. I felt that even though the design was quite unique, it just didn’t stand out and was to predictable and therefore not powerful enough so I be-gan to look at other ways of portraying my message.

I thought of the idea of using a school crest to somehow portray my message.

I chose to use the oxford university crest as my focus point of my design; I then looked at how I could change it so that it would portray my issue.

Using Photoshop I changed the crest form the university of oxford to the university of cuts and also added ‘no cuts’ in the middle just to em-pathise my point. I was pleased with this design because I thought it was more powerful than my last design because it’s more eye catching and unique.

Now that I had my design I had to think about how I was going to transfer my design to a real life plac-ard. I decided on turning the placard into a stencil and spray painting it on to a piece of card, this was a very tedious and time consuming job due to the fact the I had to draw the design out by hand and then cut out the relevant parts.

While I was drawing out the stencil I realised that the middle part of the design would have to be changed. The ‘no to cuts’ was just to small and would not be read-able from 20 meters, also the three crowns in the design would be to com-plicated to cut out and spray.

Brief 9 The idea behind this brief was to think of a question that relates to design and ask a selection of people and record the findings.

Question: Can an image say more about a character’s personality than a film clip does?

For brief 9 I decided to investigate into the idea that can a still image be as powerful as a piece of film, this then lead me to the question that can an image say more about a character’s personality than a film clip does? What I did next was that I found two still images and two short movie extracts of two different comic book heroes and asked a selection of people all around the age of 19 a couple of question relating to the idea I was researching. To make it even I used still images of the ‘real life’ characters and not the comic/ hand drawn ones.

Here are the two still images and the two movies extracts I showed them.

Image 1: a low angle shot of bat-man in the dark knight rises.

Image 2: mid shot of iron man.

Answers I got;

Paris Downes, Portsmouth uni studying sports science;“I would say that they can both be quite misleading because like with the videos you are only seeing a small bit of what they are actually like, although the those two clips do show what there both like cause batman is always trying to save the city and everyone else where iron man kinder shows off more and is more cocky. The photos do show what the characters are like because the batman one shows him as a power figure, however batman does kinder look like a bad guy cause he’s dressed in all black but by the way he’s standing it almost makes him look like he is standing up against what ever made the explosion. The iron man one makes you think that he’s strong and serious cause he’s punching the floor and his other arm is raised like he’s about to hit someone, also he looks more like a superhero than batman cause the colour gold is more of a superhero colour.”

Olly Hinkley, Real-estate agent; “I think that the film clips definitely say more about what the characters are like because in the batman one you see that he gives cat woman his motor bike thing so she can escape and he then risk his own life to save everyone, also the way he talks makes him seem kinder like a superhero villain if that makes sense? The iron man clip definitely gives you more on his per-sonality because the way he fly’s in and shows off and has those girls dancing shows that he’s quite up him self and confident but you can also tell that everyone loves him so he’s a bit like a rock star superhero. But the images cant tell you all of this, they do tell you a little bit what their personalities are like but you don’t get the full picture.”

Luke Kyriakides, Personal Trainer;“I think you could argue for both because looking from the photos you can tell what kind of superhero’s the two are because it obvious batman is more of this dark serious guy cause he dressed just I black and he’s got kinder devil horns on his head and he just looks meaner. With the iron man one he looks more like a normal superhero to an extent because even though its more about the suit than him, he does look like a super hero cause of the bright colours and the light coming from his chest. I would say the photos can give you a good understanding of what they are like and the video clips just help you get more of an in depth idea.”

My own opinion is that you can tell what a characters personality is like from an image and especially when it comes to superheroes, although I don’t think my opinion is worth much in this case due to the fact that I am a huge fan of su-perheroes and epically batman. This means that as much as I try to forget it, I already know what the characters are like and this will affect my opinion on the matter.So after looking back over the answers I got, I could start to see that maybe an image cant say more about a characters personality and that with out seeing a character in some sort of situation, you cant really tell what their like. However I do believe that an image can begin to give you a ruff idea of what a characters personality is like and the answers I got back up this idea.

Brief 10 For this brief I wanted to show how easy it was to create an after-shave advert by using a comical scene from a movie and using the audio from a real after-shave advert.

To create my advert I used the scene from the film Anchorman, in this scene Bryan is trying to chat up the new anchor woman by trying out his new after shave which back fires horribly. By editing the video and using short quick cuts, I was able to recreate an after-shave advert that could all most be passed off as a real advert. This goes to show just how easy it is to create an advert for an after-shave product because in the advert you are not really sell-ing the product, instead you are selling the situation, the idea that if you buy this product this is what your life will be like.

Credits Brief 3:Original song; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJO5HU_7_1wExample of kinetic typography; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-2iP9h13Ww

3D Image;Original Bane photo; http://hdwallpaperpc.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/bane-dark-knight-rises-hd-wallpapers.html

Brief 6;Original source couldn’t be found

Brief 8;Photo 1; http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/gallery/2010/nov/25/student-protest-placard-slogansPhoto 2; http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/iraq-war-protest-placard-commons/Memory/b7902e62-9dea-4bbe-9a4b-a00901474036Photo 3;http://eduardobarraza.photoshelter.com/image/I0000lsmjdItiyi4Photo 4;http://www.demotix.com/news/918636/mass-student-protest-against-cuts-education-londonPhoto 5; http://www.demotix.com/news/1620311/student-protest-against-rise-tuition-fees-londonCrest 1; http://armstrong.chem.ox.ac.uk/Crest 2; http://robertcargill.com/2010/04/30/harvard-courses-now-on-itunes-u/

Brief 9;Photo 1; http://ipadfiends.com/wallpaper/264/the-dark-knight-rises-batmanPhoto 2; http://www.comingsoon.net/imageGallery/imageGallery.php?large_image=hr_Iron_Man_4.jpg&id=7415

Brief 10; Anchorman scene; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ucs-EQOVmQDiesel advert; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NUoR9pexJQ

A fridge.