Process and Production 2 , After Effects 1

After Effects 1 , Year 2

After not using after effects all summer i felt like i needed to have my memory re-jogged. When we first got back to using the software i felt very lost however once i started creating my compositions i started recognising the tools and layout of the software making my work speed flow faster.

This After effects session started to introduce us to a more complex way of working. We looked at adding more detailed effects. We started off with a background that we wanted to animate , i chose a striped background that had a blind transition to change the background colour from striped to purple. The transitions worked by using key points just like the transformation options that we have previously used over the last year.

We focused on creating separate compositions that were of 1 seconds in length , using individual compositions allowed us to focus on specific points in the animation instead of having one long 10 second clip and constantly having to zoom on specific parts. At the end of the composition we would stitch all the individual parts together to create our final image.

i found this way of working much more effective as it allowed me to concentrate in getting detail into small elements of my work. I used various transitions throughout my work to create an animation that flowed smoothly into each individual scene.

The next step was to animate a shape in the foreground of the video, having two animations running constantly throughout the duration of the video added depth to the piece and made it more interesting to watch. The first effect i added to my shape was the wiggle effect which caused the shape to ripple around the edge the return to its original shape we did this by using the wiggle window. I then used the wiggle window to add a magnitude to the shape. this option made the shape shake in its original form but have the centre anchored to the background creating an earthquake kind of motion.

I then used the pen tool to distort the shape out of its original form and return to the starting position, this was accomplished by using the pen tool on the position option. i started by placing a key point at the end of the timeline and working backwards to make sure the shape retained its original shape.

I also used the Hue tool to make the shape change colour , this of which was done through plotting key points, the colour could be cycled through using a radial wheel making the simple for the colours to flow into each other instead of picking out the colours individually.

My final part of the animation included a 3d effect that i created using the simulation drop down in the effects menu. I struggled to do this at first because i was unfamiliar with 3D effects. after adjusting the settings i finally found how to create an effective looking 3d animation for the end of my video. i used settings that allowed the explosion to retain the shapes original form. Although i struggled with this i would like to explore these effects more as they are more complex and interesting , i feel these will develop my skills further.

Exploring Animation 1, Year 2 from Ben Moulson on Vimeo.

Studio Project 1 - Cybernetic Self

Studio Project 1 / Week 1

This studio session opened up by us writing two words on a post it note. The words had to relate to What you think you are and What other people think you are. The words i chose to use were Charismatic to describe myself and Moody as what other people see my as. The idea behind this was to see how we perceive ourselves. this exercise showed that although we were all different we had similar ways of describing ourselves . people suggested that society pushes us to be modest about ourselves as people didn't want to say what they thought they were due to it seeming embarrassing or big headed.

After the exercise i started to research into the topic of Cybernetic Self. I wanted to focus on how identity can be forged through the internet. Such as Identity Fraud or Catfishing. My main focus was to look at advertising campaigns. 

Designers that stood out to me were:

Global Mobile Internet safety - Designed by Oglivy & Mather Sofia

This advertisement stood out to me as the internet is an unmonitored place and could lead to children being exposed to explicit content. this advertisement uses photography to show you a place you wouldn't let your children play , making out its just as dangerous for your child to play on the internet.

Innocence en Danger - Designed by Rosa Park

 This campaign focuses on false identities and stating that you dont know who is behind the emojis. The designer has used photo manipulation to create a fairly disturbing image of a person who's face is now in the shape of a well known emoji. I feel that this advert stands out by using scare tactics as the character looks awfully creepy.




Whats behind the smile - Designed by JWT

This design takes well known emojis and manipulates them in disturbing ways. this campaign focussed specifically on sexual abuse over the internet , similar to the last one getting across the point that people on the internet could be anybody , using the internet to create an alternative image of themselves.

First Briefing

Brief 1

Our first brief is titled Cybernetic Self , it is a 4 week short brief that focuses on how personalities are built over the internet. Throughout this project we should explore themes such as:

Autopoiesis- Meaning creating or production , a system capable of maintaining and reproducing itself.

sociomaterial- Is the way that technology and sociology interact, especially how peoples activities are helped or shaped by technology in every day life.

Network Self- How someone constructs a personality and acts over the internet e.g an extension of yourself.

As the project is only 4 weeks the output will be very quick moving. 

Week 1 - Research/Idea Generation

Week 2 - Formalise and develop

Week 3 - Begin final output 

Week 4 - Finalise Ideas

Week 5 - Workshop Week 

Week 6 Assessment Week

Personally i feel that i may struggle with this topic as its not something i have explored previously , however it will be challenging which will test my abilities. I am producing a supplement for a magazine such as Vice , ID , Dazed or something similar. This could be a document or print that would be suited to the readers of these types of magazines.

Welcome to Second Year

Welcome to Second Year

This lecture focused on warming us pinto what we were going to be studying in the second year of the degree. Peter explained to us about Placements and different ways of securing placements for your third year of study. He recommended that we should write letters to companies we would like to work for , this is because letters are very hard to ignore as they are directly addressed , where as emails can be handed down for someone else to open. Writing letters would secure a more friendly approach to the company instead of having a standardised email that is forwarded to multiple choices. 

Not to directly ask for a placement in you're first letter is a good strategy of securing a placement as it allows the company or agency to get to know you as a designer and as a person , it allows them to see if you will fit into their team and have the right attributes for the job. Asking for feedback on your work from an industry point of view can also be helpful.

We then proceeded to look at more of a business side of Graphic Design, i enjoyed this because it was very different from what we learnt in first year , we were shown how to apply our designs to the working world. We started by looking at Different types of Graphic Designers:

Freelance - Someone who works for themselves 

Agency - Team of Graphic designers that work on projects together

Company - There will be a creative team in a large company , e.g. Porsche , Creative Director.

We looked into basic forms of marketing Price , Product , Promotion and Place. These were the key points to look at when creating a product or design. We then broke each P into sub headings giving us a much more detailed insight into each point of marketing , For example:

Price:

- Cost +

Cost to: 

Manufacture

Deliver

Package

Admin & Management

-Profit element

Mark-up can be very high

100%+ in some instances

-Loss Leaders

Losing money on one product to excel sales in another

We then looked at different channels of thought. We looked at Convergent and Divergent thought processes. Convergent thinkers will focus all attention on the problem and chip away at it ever so slightly until they get the right answer. Divergent thinkers will approach the problem from all different sides using different methods to try tackle it , eventually ending in a fast or slow answer.

After effects 6 - Finale

For our final After effects project was a collaborative piece between all the students in the group. We wanted to create something similar to the video Lantern Fish by Adam Gault. The lanternfish video is a video that displayed illustrations of different deep sea lantern fish , each one with different actions, each one of these actions leads into each other . for example one of the lantern fish would be killed by another and from the fishes remains another fish would appear leading onto the next transition with flow.

 

For our own videos we had to create a 10 second animation of a fish that just swam across the screen. For my animation i created a pack of Mantarays. I had one Mantaray that was my centre of attention , this is the vector which i added all the key animations to. Although simplistic i felt that adding a pack of Mantarays added to the detail. I added motion paths that made the fish look as if they're swimming.
Once the main path was created i added a sinking boat to the background , this was to add further detail to the animation and make it more identifiable as my own. I created the simplistic boat vector in illustrator so i could easily animate it. In my own animation i had to leave the background blank as it had to be exported to the public drive to be added to the main animation.

One thing about this animation was that i didn't particularly learn any new skills , the animation was fairly simple and didn't require any new skills to create the piece , i would have enjoyed it if i could have learnt a new skill to push my animation further.

 

The finale for the after effects sessions included all of our 10 second pieces stitched together. This created a piece similar to the lantern fish video. The background retained a constant colour while all the students fishes swam across the screen. I feel that the piece showed how far peoples after effects and illustrator skills had developed massively over the year.

Drawing 6 - Final alphabet

In this session we had to finalise one of our typefaces. i chose my 'Muddy' styled typefaces to be finalised , this involved drawing it up on a bigger scale , making sure all the letters were the same dimensions to retain the style. i felt that this font was detailed enough to take forward as my final design as there was a lot of potential for the font to be adapted. My past designs all inspired this typeface , using a variation of sketches allowed me to have a large amount of choice when picking a final idea.

Once i had finalised my design i proceeded to adapt it to a phrase. this proved to be more difficult as i had to recreate the typeface with no guidance. However overall i feel that each letter worked well together and provided flow through the words. non of the letters looked wrong and out of place therefore creating a successful type style. 

The typography workshops have helped me massively and allowed me to start looking into designing my own type , although early stages of this skill i feel that there is lots of potential , and eventually , with time i will be able to create my own typefaces for future projects. 

Cinema 4D 1 - Basics

Cinema 4D is one of the more Untouched softwares , purely because nobody has a clue how to use it and its insanely complicated without tutoring. I myself had looked into cinema 4D for my project 'visualising Sound' therefore had some basic idea as of what was happening on screen and what certain tools did what.

This tutorial was mainly about listening insanely carefully as there were that many items to edit one step wrong and everything fell apart. Our task was Generate a 3D Logo or name in Cinema4D, by extruding a vector created and imported from Adobe Illustrator. I began by typing my name in a font. Once the typeface was selected you could edit the thickness and spacing of the text to get a 3D effect. I played around in the settings for a while before setting on the right size for my task. I wanted to keep it simple so i only used the word Ben. i then added a ground to the text and edited the text settings so there was gravity on the individual letters making them sit heavily on the ground. After establishing some sturdy text i added texture to the ground (matte metallic) and a purple colour to the text. Originally this looked rather dull so i took it bit further and added light. I experimented with different styles of lighting but eventually settled for a spotlight as it provided the best effect on the textures. I found the realtime light interesting though as it acted like the sun and would position itself with whatever time it was on the clock , for example 12:00Pm and the light would be above the subject.

I repeated these steps for another step of text , this time using a stroke instead of block colour making the text hollow. The texture i used was like glass allowing the red light to be absorbed by and emitted by the glass lettering. Examples are shown below.

Overall i feel that Cinema 4D is a difficult piece of software to use and will definitely need some practise if i am to use it any further. One thing i would like to explore with it is product design and how you can make mock products such as bottles in the software. This is something i hope to explore in second year.