Week 9: A: Full Class Critique

Today was the full class critique for the Logo Opener. In my case, I had done my opener based around the SCP Foundation. As I had explained in my last post, it is a security unit designed to protect humanity from extra -terrestrial, -dimensional, and -universal threats. I got good feed back on the final product.

• The transitions and sound effects worked well
• I could have used a different typeface due to legibility issues
• The typeface also makes the image look a little left-heavy
• An extra second of rest would have worked in favor for the legibility of the opener

Something that I had forgot to mention in my posts that was questioned in the critique was about the background. I had intentionally left it black and white to imitate a government service alert or announcement. Usually government service announcements are displayed as stark with only two colors (including white as one color).
I am also surprised that no one pointed out any issues with the sound effects. To me, I thought the metal noise could come in later.

Spring Break: SCP Foundation Opener Final

The SCP Foundation is a unit designed to protect humanity from extra -dimensional, -terrestrial, and -universal threats. It is a highly classified Foundation, although it is entirely fictional. It has a large cult following, a.k.a. fandom, and has spawned its own website and independent game. Links to the two are listed below:

http://www.scp-wiki.net/

http://www.scpcbgame.com/


Designed above is an opener for the SCP Foundation. This would possibly appear before a national service alert distributed by the SCP Foundation, or it can appear for documentaries or informational segments relating to or sponsored by the SCP Foundation.

Week 8: Outside of Class: Spring Break

Technically this is spring break, but I have completed the video of the motions for the SCP Foundation logo. Of course, there is no audio yet, which I plan to have for the final product. The sliding and locking motion was simpler than I thought it would be, but at one point it was too active when blurred motion was added.

Week 8: B: In progress critique

Today, we had a quick in-progress critique on our videos so far. One of the most reoccurring comments was on the opening, asking either if I was still going to use what I had on my story board, or to do more than just have the logo appear. I do plan to follow my intentions. However, I did not know how to break up the shape further. So this class, I spent towards creating an alternative shape that I call "segments" that will allow for my object to do that.

Week 8: A: Work Day

I had a work day today after beginning work on my animation. I had gotten the later half of it down last time. Here, I had to make some adjustments to make it look more as I had intended it. There may be a small mark on the edge of the object. I was trying to break up the object into further shapes, but to no avail.

Week 5: Outside of Class

 The following is an overview of all the motion projects I have completed thus far.

The first project is giving a line an emotion. It's hard to describe what emotion it is. Pretty much, line A is running away from line B because line B is crazy about it.



The next motion is the sequential dreamscape. This is based around the second half of my dream where I am trying to go home and I choose the worse of the two paths, and then have to rescue my sister and best friend after I escape. This one only uses seven key words that appear in a similar location and textures.

This one motion reflects the concept of rhythm. The idea was to display rhythm through the word Rhythm by utilizing each letter.

The final one is "A Message in Motion". I chose one quote that really speaks to me that was once said by Justin Carmical, a video game critic on the internet who passed away earlier this year. I shortened down the quote to "You're not stupid. Don't ever tell yourself that you are. You're important. What you have in your head may not mean a lot to a lot of people, but its what makes you special. You are important. You mean something."

Week 7: B: In progress video

In class, I began working on my video. I have the second half down well, but the first half is tough to work on. I plan on putting sounds to it so that it sounds mechanical and systematic.

Week 7: B: Illustrator Update

 There were a few things I wanted to fix up with my file, so I was able to get rid of the extra frames of storyboard I didn't use, and frame 01 looks more symmetrical and cleaned up.

Week 7: Outside of Class: Refined Storyboard

The following is my refined storyboard for the SCP logo animation. It was challenging to split up the logo, but I managed. Never mind that last page of blank storyboard. That's just a little extra incase I were to go above two art boards.

Week 7: A: Logo Storyboard Refined progress

 Today in class, my sketched storyboard was approved. Only two frames were cut, so in this refinement, the logo will appear and the words "Secure, Contain, Protect" will appear at the bottom before everything fades to black. Some good feed back that I got was that if it would be timed right, the movement could look mechanical like a container, which is what I was going for. However, the last two slides don't entirely work symmetrically, so those will be omitted. This is the storyboard as it is so far that I have worked on in class.

Out of Class Event: Letter Press

 For my outside event, I had decided to attend a letter press session with GID (the Graphic and Interactive Design Club) in the location of Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology. The letter press includes setting up type by hand and then printing it. First, I had to come up with my design through a quick thumbnail sketch. I was originally going to use the term "I am that is. My sword will wield for me." However, we were pressed for time (no pun intended) so I shortened my phrase to "I am that is." We then had to find what typeface we wanted to use and what point size. The largest letter consisted of a wooden type block while the others were made of metal. The typeface I initially used was called "Thorn", which consisted of All-Caps. The next step was to assemble the type, including spacing and leading on a contraption known as the stick. It helps set up the type, spacing, and leading so that when it is ready to print the components won't move. I arrived slightly late to the workshop due to inadequate directions, therefore I did not know entirely how to set up my type in the stick. I asked around and watched those who did know what they were doing. Needless to say, when I proofed my type, the words came out in reverse. I was slightly distressed by this error, but I had to do it again. By the third proof I had it right. Proofing in this case would include removing the type from the stick, carefully, into a tray that I think was called a gutter, and then they would be inked for a relief print. Pretty much, the process is relief printing. If the proof comes out well, the type is placed in this frame-like contraption with more leading and spacing, and springers to compress the area in the frame further. The printing devices are different from the proofing area. It consists of a round pad where the ink is placed, and a lever which pulls up the roller to ink the type and to print. I had to choose red for my prints. Printing was the easiest task. And my prints came out something like this:

I printed out 10 total of these. Only one came out grainy, but that is because I didn't pull the lever all the way. They asked us to leave one of our prints for the next group to see.

 

Week 6: Outside of Class

The following is my sketched out story board of my logo animation. I plan on making it more of an opener than an end tag since it's more likely to see it at the beginning of a report rather than appearing as a sort of reminder of a sponsor.

Week 6: B: Logo Animation Idea

For this new project, we are to animate a logo so that it can be a show opener or an end tag. We are to select a logo that belongs to a company or group that is real or fictional. For my logo, I chose to use the SCP Foundation logo. The SCP foundation is a fictional foundation that has its goals set on protecting man-kind from extra-terrestrial, extra-dimensional, or extra-universal entities, by securing and containing them, as their title stands for. While there is a web-page that exists for the SCP Foundation that describes its purposes and its subjects, the SCP Foundation is entirely fictional. If the SCP Foundation were real, it would perhaps be categorized as a security unit or a form of top secret protection, similar to the CIA. Should there be any reason the symbol of the SCP Foundation were to be televised, it would either be informative, implying that the SCP Foundation has a stronger standing in the Federal system. Or it would be televised as an alert, incase there was an outbreak of any of the subjects.

Week 6: A: Event 1: Day of Design

      For this course, we were required to attend two Day of Design speaker events. The two I attended consisted of Aaris Sherin and Josh Bryant. Since I had seen Aaris Sherin first, let's discuss her presentation.
      Aaris Sherin is the author Sustainable Thinking: Ethical Approaches to Design and Design Management. I will be honest, I haven't read the book myself, however her presentation summed up most of what it was about. In her talk, she described how designers are finding new and different approaches to create things that are friendly to the eco-system. She listed numerous examples of different designers, including Chris Haughton who designs characters for books and has them produced in Nepal, Metalli Lindberg who designs products that are bio-dynamic and eco-friendly products, and Element 21 who work more locally but design things that encourage the community to use waste as bio-fuel. One design that interested me (that I forgot to record the name of the designer) was a radio made out of wood that would be used for charcoal. Normally we think of using metals to craft radios, but this designer found that he could use inexpensive wood that in producing charcoal would be harmful to the environment, and used it to create something that would last. All in all, Aaris Sherin stressed the idea that Designers are problem solvers, and that sustainable design equals a better world for us.

    The next speaker I attended to was Josh Bryant. He is the head web-designer of Journey Group. His company work with creative services such as writing, photography, web and print production, editing, heritage publication, and design, of course. The first idea he had explained to use was the idea of "T-shaped" designers. The horizontal part of the "T" represents expanding your ideas to other groups, communities, etc. while the vertical part of the "T" represents digging deeper into the way you yourself work and how others work. He then explain the different areas of web-design, including System Administration, Back End Development, Front End Development, UX Designing, and Graphic Designing. For each area, he explained what all was involved and what to do for the best quality. For System Administration, he described it as being the deep ends of the websites and what holds the websites such as the servers. Back End Development was application development, and the server-side of programming. The Front End Development is what he described as what is seen on the monitor of the computer. UX Designing was the site architecture, the interactive design, and the content strategy. Then, the Graphic Designing was the brand application and messaging in the website, which also includes typography and images. For each area he described what would be considered the best form of quality in each section. For the System Administration, he had described it as running 100% of the time. For most sites, it's up 99.9% of the time which gives it 45 minutes of down time. He had also said that good quality security is also a quality that they aim for. For Back End Development, it has to be Secure, Fast, and Tested, and meet functional specifications. Front End Development would include matching or improving on the designer's intentions, fast and tested, and accessible everywhere.The Quality of UX Designing includes it being research driven, delightful, and intuitive. The best Quality for Graphic designing would be that it is consistent, and suited to it's purpose, audience, and medium.

  Those were the two speakers I had seen on Day of Design, and I feel that I was able to take away some useful information on their talks, about how to apply different ideas to my designing and what to expect with certain ways of designing.

"You're Not Stupid"

This is the final product of the quote in motion. So for this I chose the quote said by Justin Carmical after one of his live-streams. The quote is shortened in order to keep things simple. "You're not stupid. Don't ever tell yourself that you are. You're important. What you have to say may not mean a lot to a lot of people. But it's what makes you special. You're important. You mean something."



The following below is how I arrived to my final product:

The first two are the original storyboard I had tried with the full quote. I did not realize until it was too late that I had forgot the part of the quote that did appear in the video. Also, the quote was too long and would probably be more difficult considering the length. So I shortened it to what appears in the video.

The images above are the illustrator files that consist of the old storyboard.

Above is the sketch of the new storyboard that was used for the completion of the final product. The quote is shortened and the scaling (if it's called that) is used more correctly.

All in all, the final illustrator story board came out as such. The typeface changed slightly from the last storyboard, but background style and sans serifs stayed remotely similar.

Week 5: B: Revised Storyboard Illustrator File

As I had said before, my storyboard needed a few revisions. A few things that I wanted to keep the same was the black background and the sans serifed typeface. I wanted this video to capture the sort of heart to heart feeling that Justin Carmical was emanating when he actually said this in his live-stream.

Week 5: A: Revised storyboard

The following is a revised version of my storyboard. First I had to shorten the quote, and I also noticed that I had skipped an entire part of the larger quote while I was creating the storyboard. So I shortened my quote to: "You're not stupid. Don't ever tell yourself the you are. You're important. What you have to say may not mean a lot to a lot of people. But it's what makes you special. You're important. You mean something." This version of the revised story board is the draft I had created on Monday.

Week 4: Outside of Class: Illustrator Storyboard

The following is part one and two of my Quote Storyboard. Since the quote is quite serious and somber, I went for a black background and a sans serif typeface (Franklin Gothic Book). I wanted to give it the feel of a sort of memorial or Justin Carmical.

Week 4: B: Storyboard sketches

As I said in my last post, I chose to use the quote said by Justin Carmical for this project. So far, I have the hand drawn versions of the storyboard. The Illustrator file of the story board is on the way.

Week 4: A: Quotes

For this next project, we are to select a quote or saying an incorporate foreshadowing and recalling. To start off, I selected several quotes. One from the song "Hey Brother" by Avicii. Another from the song known as "The Proof of Your Love" by For King and Country. Three quotes were from two different movies, including "Wreck-It Ralph" and "9". Another quote was from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And the final quote, which I made my final choice on for this project was said by Justin Carmical, a web-critic who unfortunately passed away in January of this year. I'm going to go with his quote because it sort of touches me at a personal level compared to the other quotes. While the other quotes are either fun to say, or make me think, this one really means more than the others. Below, I will post all the quotes I selected. Justin Carmical's will be the conclusion.

"Hey brother, do you still believe in one another? Hey sister, do you still believe in love I wonder? Oh if the sky comes falling down for you, There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do."
-Avicii/True: "Hey Brother"

"I'm bad and that's good. I will never be good and that's not bad. There's no one I would rather be than me."
-"Wreck-It Ralph"

"If I sing but don't have love I waste my breath with every song, I bring an empty voice, a hollow noise. If I speak with a silver tongue convince a crowd but don't have love, I leave a bitter taste with every word I say."
-For King and Country: "The Proof of Your Love"

"We had such potential. Such promise. But we squandered our gifts, our intelligence. Our blind pursuit of technology only sped us quicker to our doom. Our world is ending. But life must go on."
-"9"

"They left us nothing. Nothing. Why do we have to right their wrongs? Sometimes one must be sacrificed."
-"9"

"The music is not in the notes, but the silence in between."
-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

*"You're not stupid. Don't ever tell yourself that you are. You're important. What you have in your head may not mean a lot to a lot of people, but its what makes you special. You are important. You mean something. And you're going to go out there and you're gonna do some wonderful things. But first and foremost, you're not stupid. You're not an idiot. Don't ever tell yourself that you are. And if nobody else ever tells you this, I will tell you this: I care about you."
-Justin Carmical

Week 3: Out of Classroom: Rhythm

The intent of this assignment was to use the word rhythm and give it meaning through animation. (I think I finally got it right.) Enjoy.

Week 2: Outside of Class: Dreamscape

This is based off of the second half of my dream I had selected and shared last week. Here, I describe the part of my dream where I had to choose between two paths, and I unknowingly chose the more terrifying. Thus I had to escape from it.
The keywords have been reselected from my past post, thus they include: Path, Corpse, Darkness, Fear, Escape, Rescue, and Release.

Week 1A: Hand drawn exercizes

On the first day of the semester, we were given these two devices to help introduce us to the class. The name of the first object happens to slip my mind at the moment, but I remember the name of the second object, and I might misspell it. It was a zoetrope I believe. The objective of the first item was to have two items happening simultaneously, while the other was to capture movement. Here are the two items.

Week 1B: Name

This is a stop motion video including my name and having the letters reflect my personality. I kind of did this wrong and only described myself as liking World of Warcraft. So get ready to see some letters battle out.

Week 1: B Part 1

This is quite delayed, however on Monday, yesterday, I had completed what I consider to be my first animation. I was to give a line an emotion, however I feel that I was more focused on telling a story than portraying an emotion. So, here is the video. I call it crazy love.

Week 1: Outside of Class

For this first post, I am to describe a dream I had. I have had many vivid dreams. Many of which consist of the river by my house, or my mother's home country, or myself taking flight. I have gone as far as to give titles to certain dreams that have really stood out over the rest. However, one dream has influenced me to write drafts to a fictional story based around it and a two others that followed within the following year. I had this dream a week after my senior week, after I graduated from high school. This dream is rather detailed, so this may be a rather long post.
The dream began with one of my classes or groups and myself taking a field trip to a lake to go swimming for the day. However, the lake had dried up to the point where the ground was red and cracking. These creatures that looked like very masculine barbaloots (the bear-like creatures from "The Lorax"), came out of the woods and ushered as many of our group into hiding/safety, which we found was in a run-down dining hall kitchen. They then told us that there was a beast that had caused the lake to dry up, and it had gotten half of our group. It was one of their own that had contracted an infection of some sort which caused it to be rabid. Eventually, one of the young creatures went out to sacrifice itself to the beast because it was once her father. We were able to escape then, and get back to the bus.
That was part one. Part two was where things got interesting.
Instead of going back to the school, we decided to drop everyone off at home. The rest of the dream would have been like another of those classified re-occurring dreams, had our bus not broken down by the wheat field. We had to walk home from there. And there were two paths to choose from, crossing two different lands that lay behind two different fences/gates. The first and closer path led through a place known as Vampire World. There were bloody carcasses hanging from the trees by twine, while crows pecked at their rotting flesh. The entire sky was a dark red, as was the dirt. The other option, was to take the path that led through another land known as Hell World. From what I saw on the outside, there were simply gnarly trees and barren wasteland with a dark grey sky clouding it. I chose to travel through Hell World. Wrong choice. As soon as I entered, everything became pitch black. The only source of light was a far off strobe light flashing constantly. I could see a few things as though a black light were cast upon it. What I thought were ravens, were actually flying rats, and they bit. I hurried along the path until I came upon a lighter section. And it looked like fancy indoor ramp that one would see in a fancy buffet or hotel for wheel chair access. Only, there were horrifying clown animatronics and balloons. Making it to the bottom of the ramp without setting any of them off was difficult. But when I got to the bottom, I was practically in Las Vegas, only everything was dedicated to the Devil. At one point a nun next to a black tarp asked me if I wanted to see Him. I immediately found the emergency exit, and I found that I was in an amusement park instead of a wheat field, and Vampire World and Hell World were the main attractions. I was bewildered, but I would soon become all the more bewildered when I found out that my older sister and my best friend had gone down into Hell World. So, I had to go back through there and rescue my sister and best friend, which was unbelievably quick. When we were finally out of there, we wondered why such a horrible place would be a main attraction. My friend pointed behind me with a look of awe, and we turned around to see a gargantuan Notre Dame beneath a stained glass sky.
Then I woke up to my sister coming home from work. That was a long description of one of the craziest dream I had.
So, Keywords to describe this extensive dream goes as follows:

• Monsters
• Peers
• Hell
• Religion
• Sky
• Unease
• Danger
• Fear

Those are the words I can identify as keywords about my dream.

Week 0.5: Introduction

Hello. My name is Emily Ward, and the purpose of this blog is to record the progress and ideas formulated in course projects, assignments, and so-forth. Here, I will be posting blog posts relating to the course, Introduction to Sequence, Motion and Visual Communication.