Shooting stop motion.... Part one.

I have decided to shoot my stop motions in two parts, part one will be shooting the actual people and then I will shoot the stop motion backgrounds separately. This will make shooting the people a lot easier! It won't take such a long time which means the shoot will run smoother. To do this I will need to shoot the people with plain backgrounds which will be deleted, to make this work I need to make a make-shift green-screen.

I bought some very bright orange fabric which can be hung behind the people, I was originally going to shoot on plain white backgrounds but decided I would get white highlights on faces etc which would cause a problem...

The first shoot I did was with 3 guys sitting on a sofa...

I lit the backdrop with lamps...

I then got the guys to keep swapping hats whilst I was taking photographs...

I then introduced sunglasses and kept swapping them...
and then gradually flowers until they built up all over them...
The whole idea of the film is to start gloomy and rainy with glum faces, then as the birds and flowers start to appear its all about how fun Meadowlands is!

The shoot took quite a long time, it actually took longer setting it all up than actually taking the photos, I made sure everything was ready to for when I started so the boys didn't move around a lot.

I had the same appraoch with my other 2 shoots.... I did one with Lolly and another with Jay.

I wanted to have a variety of people shown in the films. I am so glad I have finished the filming of the people for stop motions! I am sick of carrying round a shopping trolley full of fake flowers, birds, hats and sunglasses!

I then had to start on deleting all the orange backgrounds in the photographs. I did this using colour range in photoshop and using actions....

I did each set separately until I had transparent backgrounds.

I started with the normal photo...
Started to record an action. I then opened colour range and selected a part of the orange...
I had to turn the 'fuzziness' right down so it wouldn't pick up anything I didn't want it to, like oranges in the flowers or birds.Then hit delete! I did this a few times and then stopped recording.


I then ran a batch on the folder full of the images with orange backgrounds so I didn't have to repeat the process hundreds of times!
I had to run several actions as it still didn't pick up of all of the orange...

I then had to go through the pictures individually and erase smaller blemishes, for example in the photo below, the tape that was holding the fabric up was in shot!

This was probably the most time consuming bit of work I have ever done! Especially for 3 separate films! It took such a long time, even though colour range tool is good, I had to run so many actions to make it work with so many bright coloured flowers in shot too. EVENTUALLY i ended up with all shots of all sets with transparent backgrounds!

After a VERY long time on Photoshop and hundreds of folders of thousands of pictures, they are done!

Graduation Show Poster ideas

For our final exhibition show we were asked to come up with ideas for the name and poster. I wanted a very simple minimalist style poster. I have come up with 2 concepts. The first I have called 'Fresh Produce', the idea of our work suggested as fresh meat. I have used a very simple style which is easy to read and to the point. I have used Helvetica and 4 colour blocks using CMYK with the words: Web, Motion, Graphics and design....

The second poster I have left unnamed, just stating what the show is and where. I have designed the poster as an eyetest. I think the poster works well, its very different and obviously not easy to read like regular posters! BUT it gets people looking at it and wondering what the hell its for!

Pitch to Mark - Meadowlands

We each made pitches to show to Mark from Meadowlands our ideas and what he thought of them... Below is the layout of my whole pitch. I kept it very simple, with a few flowers top and bottom of each screen, with the text in Meadowlands colours...

Mark seemed pleased with my ideas, especially the design of my site, which he says he wants the actual website to look like now!

Mobile Website Mock ups...

Meadowlands want us to make a mobile optimised site for the public who attend the festival to use whilst on site. I thought it would be a good idea to have a schedule page, with only what bands are playing where 'now and next'. This page will also have a twitter feed with updates of what people are thinking of the bands. It will also have a featured artist section which will change on a loop every 10 minutes or so...

I made a couple of mock ups to show Mark to see what he thought...

I want the website to be VERY simple, with the logo edited to a simpler one and as little images as possible...

I made a simple gradient using existing colours from the Meadowlands website...

I removed the flowers from the Meadowlands logo...

I created simple grey blocks which are easy to read and extremely clear. White text on grey makes it very clean and bold....

The bands on the schedule will be links that will take the viewer to a separate biography page on that particular band. This page will have a main image, a small gallery, a preview track, a brief bio and a link to YouTube...

Again, usoing simple blocks to create an easy to read, simple page....

With one large image at the top and a brief bio block underneath....

A small gallery, preview track and a live tour section...

Here are the mock ups shown what they will actually look like on an iphone....

I am really pleased with the designs. Although very simple, they are very effective, very easy to navigate and very clear and easy to read.

TESTING. TESTING.

I have made several practice stop motion tests, to practice my idea and show Mark so he can understand the idea clearer....

The first test is with a person in it, it tests the idea of building up flowers, changing sunglasses, using text in stop motion...

Test one.

I like the build up of flowers, I think that can work really well. I also like the change of sunglasses and I really like the opening of hands to reveal text, although it doesn't work! I will need to think about how I can use that idea but the text being a lot clearer as you can hardly read it ion the test! The post it notes also could work well, maybe with nice decorated text on each one.

Test two.

I really like the idea of using a blackboard with chalk. The words are effective and bold with the fast , punk music. I would like to have one film just focusing on text, maybe even using this blackboard.

Test three.

In this test I was practicing using text in stop motion again, also the build up flowers and birds, I could possibly incorporate this with the blackboard?

Test four.

This test is playing with the idea of using stop motion on a wall. I want to use different fabrics/objects to create weather such as rain, lightening, sunshine, clouds etc. I really like the spinning sun, its really fun and will work really well in the background of a stop motion behing a person.

Test five.

Lastly I was playing around with making a stop motion of me with my webcam, this could work really well if I put a table in front of me and things were happening on the table. But I don't like the way I have made this quick one.