Researching brands...

My first ideas for which brand I would like to use...

Sailor Jerry's rum: Tattoos, pin ups, 1950s, fun, young people, music, the navy, sailors, boats, parties, bands, clothing and merchandise, dice, sparrows, American, nautical, knives, guns, snakes and 'bottles of booze' are words that come to mind whilst thinking about the Sailor Jerry brand.

Cherry B: A cherry red wine, not a very well known brand, not much advertising, could be a good one to use, not much to compare it too. Could be a new, kitsch brand.

Smirnoff: Vodka, clean, clear, Russain, Red, parties, ice, mixers, bubbles, lime, the 'sea' advert, diamonds.

Jack Daniels: Whisky, American, Tennesee, Male, Black, Blues, Cool, Music, bands, barrels.

Makers Mark: Whisky, Kentucky, up-market, Red wax, male, warm, winter, fireplaces, icecubes.

Kahlua: Coffee, chocolate, black russain, white russain, liquor, cocktail bar, Mexican, sweet, great packaging, wax, yellow, brown, red, different flavours, deserts, milk.

Babycham: Kitsch, tacky, glitter, fizzy, bubble, wine, champagne, cava, gold, blue, deer, bambi, christmas, bright, cheap, fun, parties.

Pimms: Summer, fruit, mint, cucumber, red and white, ice, cocktails, straws, jugs, outside, posh. OR WINTER PIMMS: Hot, winter, snow, fruit, mint, skiing, fireplaces, christmas.

HANDMADE.

FdA Digital Media Design Year Two

AF201: Animation

Assignment 2: 50% Weighting

AF202: Screen Based Design

Assignment 1: 25% Weighting

Assignment title: Handmade

In recent years there has been a growing trend towards introducing and incorporating hand drawn and handmade, rough elements to design and advertising.

Sometimes, as in the recent example of the Stella Artois campaign, a particular sense of the past and of a set of cultural associations has been evoked by this approach as a strategy to strengthen a brand identity and associate it with a set of values and with cultural identity. In the case of the Stella Artois advertising campaign, stippling effects arranged into 1930’s illustrations were used to strengthen the sense of tradition and long term quality held by the brand.

In this assignment you are going to be asked to create a piece of design which will form a new advertising campaign of a branded alcoholic drink of your choice.

You will take the idea of starting with traditional media and use the results of your experiments with those media to create the next developmental step of your designs from handmade elements through digital manipulation to a full blown moving image advert which will be rendered as a movie for presentation to a client on a DVD and made ready for use on a smart phone or portable device. You will also create a billboard poster and full page magazine ad design as part of your advertising campaign.

The six phases of development

Part One- Working with traditional media

This initial phase will introduce traditional media methods to develop the visual language and vocabulary of the project. This will involve:

- Visual experimentation;

- Creating authentic, handmade visual values i.e. textures, tonality, the ‘drippiness’ or ‘splashiness’ of liquid paint, the broken line of a handmade stroke over a rough surface etc.

In this part of the assignment you will create a series of at least five coloured and collaged pieces in class and at home which will form the basis of the work you do in part two.

The pieces will be compositions of abstract marks and shapes and you should consider the arrangement of colours, textures in combination, sets of colours and the creation of spatial effects through form and colour.

Part Two- Developing and transferring your handmade elements to a digital space

You will transfer your traditional media to digital files by scanning and working with digital cameras. You will use these files as prototypes and source material to create clone brushes and image or texture maps in Photoshop / Illustrator to produce rasterized or vector or combination tools which can then be made into new still images and short sequences of moving images in After Effects.

Part Three- The design process

You will design your advertising campaign by matching it to a cultural focus which suits your choice of a drink brand, and a set of values suitable to your company. You will use the imagery you devise to create interesting and imaginative visuals that bring the branded identity to life. You will choose a piece of music to work with which corresponds to the visual theme which you can animate your piece to.

Part Four- Pitching your ideas to the group

You will prepare a presentation in which you show your visual research (to help you justify your design idea), storyboards, animatics (using your choice of music) and mock-ups. This pitch will take place on Thursday 18^th November, long enough before the final deadline, to enable you to then work up your already planned ideas for submission.

Part Five- Producing the advertising campaign

The elements you need to make are:

- An image which can be used for a billboard hoarding;

- An image for a magazine full page advert;

- A 30 second moving image advert which can be used on TV, internet and smart phones. You may want to re-work the moving image piece for large and small screen.

- Each of these three outcomes will carry consistent branding information for your drinks brand and be presented as a coherent campaign

- A DVD with an on screen set of two visualisations of the brand image in a magazine and billboard or similar and agreed setting. The DVD should allow the user to navigate through the visualisations and play the movie with the option to repeat the sequence.

- You will also include a data folder on the DVD or a separate DVD with a full quality QuickTime movie, the versions compressed for smart phones and the final PDFs of your print designs.

Part Six- Repurposing for other platforms

You will need to transcode and repurpose your final animation for the up-coming and emergent smart-phone market and related handheld market.

This market is currently populated by the iPhone, the iPod Touch and iPad, the various Android phones and latest Nokia and blackberry handsets.

All of these devices run versions of the WebKit browser which can be tested and modelled in Safari on the Mac and PC desktop. You will need to compress the finished, exported movie in the correct formats and embed it in an html page using html 5 ‘video for everyone’.

You should see what you have to do to make your video look good on these devices. Think about size, quality, format and any other issues of delivery. How would you get the video to the individual devices? What are the mechanisms involved?

How to manage this project

- Make a project folder;

- Keep all project files in named folders within this main folder;

- Keep a sensible file naming convention;

- Work progressively to build logical versioning of your files;

- Maintain non destructive (live and editable) versions of your files where possible;

- Ensure that you can work with Render files, Capture Scratch and the limitations of the network, as well as the need to keep moving files between college and home.

Outcomes:

Data DVD (or a data area on your playing DVD) with:

- AI (your original artwork and working files etc) - PSD (your original artwork and working files etc)

- Visualisations (three visualisations of print designs in place) - Movies (the finished .mov and compressed versions)

Playing DVD with:

Visualisations and movie playing full screen and basic navigation system to repeat play

- Full quality finished movie

- Display of visualisations -

Supporting evidence:

- You will undertake research for this project in the form of visual, content and technical research. You will show evidence of this research and commentary on how you are using it in your project in both your sketchbook and your blog.

- You will develop ideas through experimentation. This will be shown in the traditional media boards, brainstorms, sketches and experiments in the sketchbook and reviews of your design decisions on your blog

- The animated sequence needs to be fully storyboarded and an animatic created to test the motion design concepts. This will be pitched to the group for feedback.

- Your sketchbook and blog will show technical and creative problem solving

- You will produce a 750 word essay on an aspect of media for smart phones. Your essay will have a title which is phrased as a question and will be based on research which is fully Harvard referenced, both in the in-text referencing and the bibliography.

Pass criteria (To achieve a D grade)

Complete a sketchbook and a blog of research and development work

Produce a 750 word essay on design/media for smart phones

Submit at least five coloured and/or collaged abstract compositions mounted on board

Storyboards, animatics and mock-ups were pitched to the group on or before the pitch session on Thursday 18^th November

Submit a DVD data disc (or ROM area of the playing disc) with folders and files as listed above

Submit a playing DVD

DVDs have printed covers including the following information: Your name, your course group, the assignment title, the unit number, the year.

DVDs must have the same information clearly written in CD/DVD friendly pen in capital letters

Your finished motion graphics piece will feature only graphical artwork (not video material) and will play with 30 seconds of music

Use a sensible file naming convention which is immediately understandable

Enhanced Criteria (To score higher than a D grade)

Engage positively to explore the visual language and possibilities offered by traditional media

Research thoroughly the associated lines of advertising, design and fine art which are suggested by your traditional media work

Work independently to make progression with theses materials

Show flair and ambition in establishing a visual vocabulary which is inventive, cohesive and fully grounded in a suitable set of references

Respond well to peer and staff criticism and suggestions for improvement

Make effective use of the various still and moving image digital software and hardware available at the college

Research and develop the moving image sequence to accommodate the given music in an appropriate and sympathetic manner

Organise, name and manage all files in a professional manner to show versioning and progressive working

Create visual elements, compositions and sequences which demonstrate flair and imaginative responses to development and problem solving.

Deadline

Pitch – Thursday 18^th November 2010

Crit and submission - Monday 6^th December 2010

Evaluation

Overall, I am happy with my animations. I think if I hadn't chosen a narrative or a series I would have found it a lot easier and less time consuming. I think it was hard in some cases trying to make the characters move in particular ways so that it was obvious to the viewer what was going on. I added titles to all of my animations, I also faded them all out to black.

Episode one - I really like the music of episode one, I changed this a couple of times and had to cut it a few times to get right, now I really like it, I think the music sets the scene perfectly. I like the very simple movements of the dress and the background sliding along to make it seem like she is walking. I also like when she feels left out and sits down and scratches her head whilst deciding what to do next. The only problem I have with this episode is maybe its a little short, but I cut the music first and really wanted to use that piece of music, if I had more time I may have changed the music to a slightly longer piece. My final EPISODE ONE is below....




Episode two - Episode two is definitely my favourite animation. There is so much going on and it is so fast paced. I especially like the way this episode ends, I think it is perfect with the music. I also like the bit where she ties her balloon up to the post, her hands rotating to make it look like she is. My final EPISODE TWO is below...





Episode three - My episode 3 is probably my least favourite animation. I really like the ending but I think it ends too suddenly, if I was to have more time I would probably start this one from scratch. I like the balloons starting from small to large to make it seem like they are coming to her from miles away, I like the 'magical' strings appearing and carrying her away. I do like this episode, but I think it could've been a little better to end the 'series' off. My final EPISODE THREE is below...

Episode 3

For episode 3 I needed some new artwork, I made this in Illustrator. I wanted the group of balloons to be like a colour wheel, sort of representing the rainbow and happiness...



I then imported all the artwork to After Effects and again, I started animating again!


My final episode three is below...

Episode 2

For my second animation I am using pretty much the same artwork as the first, except I have changed the background slightly... Making the skyline larger and adding some bumps and walls on the ground...

I then started on my animation as before, using position, opacity, rotation and scale to create movement.




The only added objects in this episode are the few bits in the background (wall, hills) also the catapult and rocks. I could've made the catapult more detailed with some elastic but I prefer it looking simpler to fit in with the rest of the scene, you can tell its a catapult by the boys hand moving and 'springing' forward to release the rocks. This animation took ages! There are A LOT of keyframes in this episode but I am really pleased with it. My final episode two is below...

Episode one.

To start with I made sketches and storyboards by hand in my sketchbook. I then drew out my shapes in Illustrator...

This was my original girl... Just basic shapes that together make the impression of a little girl in a dress. I was going to have arms, hands and legs too but decided against as I wanted to keep it simpler shapes as the brief says...

Below is one of the boys playing ball, again, just simple shapes and this is where I decided to just use hands, I think the characters will need hands to make the viewer understand whats going on...
Below is my final little girl and boys, I can use the same hands and head for the group of boys, but I will be using slightly different bodies so the viewer can see the difference. Also below is the Red balloon, I wanted just a classic red balloon, the string will be drawn separately...

Below is the balloon seller, again, the same sort of shapes but this character is taller and larger (to show he is an adult)...
I drew a group of balloons for the seller (below). I drew them in groups of 2 and placed in separate layers so I would be able to move them round individually rather than the whole group when animating...
For the background I wanted a very simple skyline made up of shapes on Illustrator...


I then added a gradient...

When I added all the artwork to After effects I decided I really didn't like the gradient with all the simple shades of colour and shapes, I changed it to a plain Blue...

I then started the animation process in after effects. I imported all my Illustrator artwork, making sure I selected the settings to allow me to adjust the separate layers...

Firstly I imported the sound to the timeline. I cut my sound up using Soundtrack Pro and Adobe Soundbooth, I cut all of my sound before beginning the animation's to make sure I had the correct length of music with it sounding/ending ok.

I then started to animate and slowly but surely things started to come together....

I mainly used 'Position' and 'Rotation' in this animations with a few times using 'Scale' and 'Opacity'




Having a narrative in my animation made the process extremely time consuming, there is A LOT of keyframes and movement! Below is my first version of the piece...



I talked to my tutor about my animation and she suggested a few changes, such as, the boys having a little more movement playing with the ball, the girl pulling away the balloon from the seller needs to make more sense to the viewer and she shouldn't walk off so quickly at the end...

I tweeked my animation to what she said and it does look a lot better. I also had to re edit the music as it seemed to short for the animation....

THE RED BALLOON!

The Red Balloon is a short french film made in 1956. It is half an hour long and has little dialogue, it is exactly the type of thing I want to create in my animations. The story is about a red balloon which has a life of its own and follows a little boy around the streets of Paris.

The main plot:

"The film, which has a music score but almost no dialogue, tells of Pascal (Pascal Lamorisse), who, on his way to school one morning, discovers a large helium-filled red balloon.

As Pascal plays with his new found toy, he realizes the balloon has a mind and will of its own, and it begins to follow Pascal wherever he goes, at times floating outside his bedroom window as Pascal's grandmother won't allow it in the apartment.

The red balloon follows Pascal through the streets of Paris, and the pair draw inquisitive looks from adults and the envy of other children as they wander the streets. At one point the balloon enters Pascal's schoolroom, causing an uproar from the other students. The noise alerts the principal, who becomes angry with Pascal and locks him up until school is over. At another, Pascal and his balloon encounter a little girl (Sabine Lamorisse) with a blue balloon that also seems to have a mind of its own.

In their wanderings around the neighborhood, Pascal and the balloon encounter a gang of bullies, who are envious of Pascal's balloon, and they soon destroy his new friend.

The film ends as the other balloons in Paris come to Pascal's aid and take him on a cluster balloon ride over the city."

The New York Times review of the film...

Some more clips from the film...

The film is beautifully shot, some stills from the film are below, I won't be drawing detailed characters but I think it helps my research and my ideas looking into the film in detail...