Final Ident

Here is my final ident!! For a while I couldn't upload it onto here because blogger video is a pian in the bum, but I have finally got myself a youtube account and managed to get it loaded onto there :) heeeeeere it is!...

Ident Project

I have just realised I have not put any of my ident work up on here! Once again I have abandoned my poor ole blog, I must give it the love and attention it needs!
For the final project of our second term, we were given the task to create an ident for the new virgin music channel 'Red Room.' Virgin sent us a brief that speicified that we had to make an ident that incorporated their new and 'fresh' ideas in music (seeing as the music channel was focused on unsigned bands and new music.) Apart from a few small boundaries, the brief pretty much gave us the freedom and oppurtunity to pretty much do whatever we wanted!
I chose to do a pixallation animation for my ident, because I hadn't really experimented much with this technique, so this project gave me the chance to try out something different. For some reason (that I still don't really know why!) I chose to do a pixalation with a breakfast theme since I thought it was something everyone could relate to. In the end I decided to have slices of toast appear on screen, each with a different music note drawn onto it with breakfast related materials e.g jam, marmite, peanut butter, etc. The slices if toast would then gradually dissappear as chunks of the toast get bitten away, revealing the words 'Red Room.' To do this, I hired a tripod from the media centre and set everything up on my kitchen table. I was going to do the animation in the animation studio, but decided against it due to the fact that my ident was pretty messy with all the jam and everything!
The animation itself only took a couple of hours to do, and although it was quite fiddly it was actually easier than I thought. After I had all the images I loaded them into Photoshop and adjusted all the colour filters to make the images brighter. I tried putting the images into flash and premier to make the final animation but the images would not load into the programmes, so in the end I had to use the line testers to make the pixallation since I was running out of time. Bu this reduced the quality of the animation and made the colours look dull and bland. Although I like the idea behind my ident project, I am not happy with the final outcome since the colours do not stand out, and the music that I chose to accompany the clip doesn't suit the animation itself.
After all of our idents were complete, they were screened in the cinema for the entire group to view, and they all worked really well, but I kinda thought mine looked quite childish compared to everyone elses seeing as they all looked so proffessional! So next time I am going to spend longer on the animation and get to grips with the programmes I am using before the deadline creeps up! Here are my initial design ideas, and also my final ident.

Finished Storyboards

Wahay here are my finished storyboards! I actually enjoyed doing this project (although at times it did get exremely tedious drawing the same thing over and over again!) But I am interested in the background art and storyboarding storyboarding side to animation, and it is the area of work that I am considering going into hopefully if all goes well. I chose the pirate story as my storyboard script, and after planning and mapping out my drawings I used mainly fineliner to create each individual frame. Here are the finished storyboards... :)

Flash... aaahhhh!

Well, after many long hours of staring at my laptop in bemusement and torrents of foul language streaming from my mouthm I have FINALLY finished my flash lip sync video! I have made myself a cup of particularly sweet tea to celebrate wahaay!
About a month ago we were given the brief for this project, and it explaned that we had to produce a small animation involving lip syncing in the programme flash. We were given a couple of short clips of students talking about their trials and tribulations that they have experienced so far in university life, and we had to pick a particular part of these clips that had potential to be used in our animation.
The brief was pretty open, and pretty much gave us the oppurtunity to incorporate anything we wanted into our animations. I decided on making my characters a tea set that were all coversing on a kitchen table(I still don't really know why.. probably because it is linked to food!) so my main characters were a mug, a tea cup, a digestive biscuit and a carton of milk.. random, I admit!
I drew out the background in photoshop and imported it into flash, but all of the characters and their features were drawn out directly in flash (thank god for graphics tablets!) Then it was time to animate!!
I admit I really did struggle with the animating when I first started.. I have never used flash properly before this so the thought of actually lip syncing terrified me, and I couldn't get the mouths to look right because they were always slightly delayed. But after tediously going through every frame (and with the patience of my friend Laurence)I managed to find the frames that were causing the problems and corrected them as much as I could. I am pretty happy with the final outcome of my lip syncing. It is very jumpy in parts and kinda looks like a three year old has designed the characters! But considering I have never done anything like this before, I am kind of proud of it.. and have become rather fond of the little characters, bless their little teacup hearts :)

Maya Environment: the finished interior!!

Well I must admit this laat week has been bloomin' knackering! After a lot of stressing, foul language and hundreds of cups of tea, I finally managed to complete my own Maya interior for the CGI environment project that we were set. When I first heard about this project I once again went into panic mode as soon as I heard the word 'Maya' due to my previously stressful and less than perfect maya encounters.
But after practising the numerous techniques that we were taught through CGI tutorials, I managed to piece together a version of my halls room here in falmouth in maya, and I am kind of proud of it (seeing as I was struggling to make a curved line in maya a couple of weeks ago!) I know it's nothing special and the room looks ALOT like something of 'the sims,' but here it is.. see what you think :)

Backgrounds

Whoopsey I forgot to upload my 2D backgrounds on here! It's been a couple of weeks since our deadline and I recieved positive feedback which I was very happy with. Here are the 3 final drawings...

Brian Andreas= absolutely wonderful!!

I have recently stumbled across the work of an artist that I am not familiar with.. and I admit I have completely fallen in love woth his work! His name is Brian Andreas, and his illustrations are absolutely beautiful! I love the glowing colours that he uses in the design, and I especially like the way he mixes lovely sounding words with lovely looking drawings. The designs that he uses are quite basic, but the fluidity of the lines really caught my eye and made me stop to have a closer look. I am a definate fan as you may have guessed! Here are a few examples of his work...