New assignment - Animation

Brief is yet to be approved but essentially our next project is building upon what we learned in Animation Principles.

We have to create a 30 sec animation, about anything we want, but need to make it realistic. This means demonstrating that we understand how things move, arcs, how speed changes upon acceleration and deceleration and how momentum affects an object when it is stopped.

We are able to use Flash, After Effects, flick books, paper cuts, hand drawn frames, stop motion, in fact any medium we want so long as our animation is realistic looking.

I saw this film of aeroplanes taking off from an airport, condensed into 25 secs. It got my thoughts sparking off about my animation.

Twitmas comes early!

Decorated my twitter already... coming soon to facebook, blog and house!

Portfolio Pitch

Here is the video that I produced for the proposal section of the Digital Communication brief

For the complete assignment I was awarded 73 points.

Digital Communication Brief

Here is the brief for this years' Digital Communication assignment.

Pitch Document - for my own portfolio...

OK, I know this sounds really daft, but I am having to pitch to design my own portfolio.  It's Uni, it's a situation that would never crop up... unless it was for your company, you had other designers on board and you had forgotten how to design.  I'm struggling to think of a relevant example but anyway.  

The theory is, we are learning the skills of pitching, which we are going to have to do for a while to get work until we get a huge name for ourselves and we take the decision to not to do them anymore!

So this is a bit backward, but here is the pitch document for the portfolio that I have already designed and created.

I couldn't use the new branding that I designed as I have 'not been commissioned to do it yet'.. so I started from scratch and used the old brand.

For the complete assignment I was awarded 73 points

Having a makeover....

My current uni assignment is Digital Communication so I have been taking the opportunity to do my much needed, well overdue rebrand.

I have tried to bring cohesion between the two areas of my work, design and photography by giving a main brand and seperate sub-brands with subtle differences.

Here is the brand design and the loose plan for the new website/ portfolio.

Thanks to Dan de Castro for the portrait of me!

For the complete assignment I was awarded 73 points

High Clarity - trial and error - Photoshop

I have been trying out tools to produce High Clarity effects in Photoshop.  I have used sharpen, shadows, black and white filters and blending modes, with varying degrees of success.

The first one using a photo of Rob wasn't very good. Not sure if the natural light hindered it, or if the image just wasn't good enough.  I wasn't very close to the subject and in terms of photoshop, would not use the hide mask for the background again for these kind of portraits.

My second attempt was a photo of Tudur Owen, taken with flash and I was closer to the subject.  I also added an additional black and white layer.

Bloomin' lovely - Philip Bloom - Web Broadcast

This current assignment is Web Broadcast.  We get a genuine excuse to watch You Tube for seven weeks.

We are tasked with producing three presentations about Web Broadcast, focusing on one or two particular broadcasters.  The three presentations cover Voice, Audience and Technology.

Rob reccommended I take a look at Philip Bloom, a Director and DP who reviews camera equipment on his website.  The videos are hosted on Vimeo, which are embeded into his site.  He also has a You Tube channel.

So I have taken to stalking the man for the last week and a half, in the name of research,  I have been watching his reviews and tutorials as well as his personal projects.  I've also subscribed to him on facebook and am following him on twitter.  I have spent more time with this man than I have my own husband (well he is galavanting around Europe filming slebs, millionaires and glamour models for the Cannonball 2000 rally).  I think I've fallen a bit in love with him.

For the first presentation, this tuesday, I have been analysing 'Voice'. This is the character of the broadcaster, the production quality and schedule.  I have used footage from Bloom's Vimeo channel and pictures from his blog, cutting a 4 minute film that will run silently in the background (as specified in brief) while I present my research.

I'll post the presentation with a voice over if/once I've got permission from Mr Bloom himself, as it's using all his work.

I will share this with you, 24 Hours of Neon, a very gorgeous piece of timelapse genius shot from his hotel room window in Las Vegas.

24 Hours of Neon from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

Philip Bloom and assistant Sarah Estela - please get married! Can you imagine how gorgeous their babies would be?

Film and images © Philip Bloom

I'll upload the completed work soon but I can say that I was awarded 70 points, just scraping a first ouch.

Motion Graphics - hand in!

I have got the piece to animate as close as possible to the idea I had... I am still learning so much of this assignment was learning about what I could do in After Effects, rather than how to do what I wanted it to do.

As ever we have limited time so this is far from complete, I just got it to the stage where I was happy to hand in i.e. I felt it met the criteria required and was produced at my highest ability.

Thanks again to models Rob Hallam and Kenny Baker.



Mark awarded = 68

My lowest mark at level 6

Storyboards for Soulshutter

I have been asked to share some of the storyboards that I have done.  Here are the ones I did for Soulshutter, a short film with Georgia Taylor, back in 2006.