Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Kinetic Text

Kinetic text refers to moving text which is something I have been asked to use in this current project so I looked deeper into kinetic text and some examples of it's uses. Typing Kinetic text into youtube gave me loads of examples of different speeches or film scenes that have been made into kinetic text it also showed me that it is hard to be original with kinetic text because they were all very similar just there colour schemes and occasionally an image in the text made them different.  


Looking at a few examples I found a couple of different styles or techniques that I would like to try.  Here for example is Community - Kinetic speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aHCCDki1y4)

It uses a technique I think would look good by continuing the text moving on the background. So here the text "you are" stays on screen at all times as it finishes and starts the next sentence. I think this looks good and it a good visual way to move the text on without breaking it up, this is a good visual way to move the text along to the next part. It is a method I think would be effective if I had the right text to use.  


Another technique I would like to use is the literal use of the word for example in many of the examples I looked at word like fire were flaming or smoke had smoke coming out of it. It is again a nice visual part of kinetic text and help make it more eye catching and unique. 

For example here the ...............









It is something I think is worth trying with my text for example I have the word shrink in part of my speech which I plan to use kinetic text on so having this word shrinking my be a nice visual element to my text. 

AF105 The Brief

For this project I have been asked too create a TV trailer for a new series of radio programmes called "Moments in Time" on radio 4. The show is about great speeches of the 20th century and I have a choice of 9 different speeches to base my trailer on. The trailer is meant to act as a teaser for the programme and should be 1 or 2 minutes long. 

The trailer must feature some kinetic text that is used to emphasise and show the importance of certain parts of my chosen speech. As well as this I have been given the option to shoot my own footage for the trailer or use existing footage which I am currently undecided on.  I also have the option to use music or sound effects for the trailer. Other things I have been asked to produce along with the trailer is 
  • a number of sotryboards showing my progress
  • A blog and Sketchbook to show my work 


Overall I think this is an interesting brief that is different to the work I am used too so I am looking forward to starting although I have no initial thoughts about which speech I will cover in my trailer. 

Friday, 11 January 2013

Evaluation

So I have now finished the book cover project and looking back I am happy with how most things turned out in particular the cover its self I think it really achieves what I wnated a fits the idea I had in my head. The art style is really close to what I had imagined it looking like, I feel this is down too my improvement on illustraotr as I now know my way around the program and can draw some things confidently with the pen tool which was not the case before, so this was a real positive for me in this project. 

Other than this I have learnt and understood what branding guidelines as well as creating my own which is something that will be useful going forward. I have also gotton more used to research at this level and I think that my research from this project really helped me form my ideas this project and gave me direction with my art style. I also learnt the basics on inDesign which I hope to use more in future.  There were sections I could've of improved on though for example the sketchbook didn't get that filled out because once I had my ideas and design it focused all on the digital work and producing my cover, poster guidelines etc. So updating this with some idea chnages or thoughts on my work would've been good in hindsight.

My poster would be an area for improvement as I feel like I spent so much time on the book cover I neglected the poster therefore I think it could have been better and my final product is not my best work. I would of liked to spent more time on it and really developed the idea I had for the poster because I thought it was a strong idea that had a lot of room to play around with. So spending more time here to design a poster that would look really good. Another area for  would be my sketchbook where I feel like I should of updated it but after I had my final idea solid in my head I could develop it digitally and stopped working on the sketchbook   so I really want to improve in this area. 

Overall though I think there are a lot of positives to take forward form this project like the illustrator work which involved more advanced methods as well as stronger drawing skills which I think showed. Also learnt about branding guidelines, inDesign and working to a very strict brief was a refreshing chnage a different sort of challenge than and open brief as it involved refining my idea more and think about how the work would look as a book cover and not just a piece of digital design work. So in conclusion I am happy with the progress I made on this project and feel there was a lto too take forward from it.  

Making my poster

For my poster I wanted something with a different feel so I created a dark moody street inspired from film noir, I drew a different looking man in illustrator in the same style using him in a leaning stance and dragged this into photoshop. I used the same Street light as I had on the book cover and added a lighting effect to this in photoshop I used the lens flair effect on 105mm and played around with the options a little to get to a brightness and size that suited the poster. 

I added a gravestone with the knight drawn onto it, I made this in illustrator and again dragged it into photoshop because the stroke was the key part of the drawing and they are better in illustrator. The hat on top links to the book and the time frame of the story, also taking the hat off the man then suggests it is his hat as gets the viewer wondering why  it is on a gravestone. 

Finally I added in the text in my primary font betty noir so it links back to the book cover and positioned this text in the space that I had then I changed the colour of the font to make it stand out and be easy to read.  

Changes Made After Crit

After the crit I made a few chnages to my book cover based on the feeedback I got the first one being recucing the carpet size on the front cover so there is some space between it and the table. Another chnage I made was tidying up the table design as some of the edges were uneven and over-run on the previous cover so making sure it was evenly cut off andsized correctly was important. 

A couple of other chnages I made relate to the spine where it was suggested the spacing was off and looking at it, it was with title being too low and the authors name not fitting correctly. So I moved the title up so there was even space between the gravestone at the top and the authors name at the bottom. I also slightly resized the authors name so it fitted on the spine nicely.

I also experimented with the colours trying out turning the light bulb whit but it just didn't look right so I reverted back to the yellow colour. I also added a very slight drop shadow on the title on the froont cover just too give it a bit more depth.


Here is the poster after the crit process as you can see I made a good amount of changes first of I took off the mans hat to even this out on the page . I also changed the colour of the font to make this stand out more and be readable, it really changes the look of the poster and balances out the light and dark elements well overall I like the poster now as it keeps with the art style and has a hint of mystery to it.

Making The Back Cover

My idea for the back cover changed a little after experimenting with a few differetn drawings of the Woman in the end I decided it was best to use an image in the style where she's walking away and place the street light behind her. I also added a distorded shadow on to the woman using a couple of different effects available to fit in with the background, as well as this I wanted here to be the main part of the back cover so turning her dress back added a lot of contrast to here and really made her stand out on the background. 

Fitting in the text was something I was not sure about but I tried to space it out so everything was readable and was not too close together so that it did not over power the back cover with text. I changed the fonts around making the quotes of the reviews really stand out from the hand written font of the blurb and the title font of the book quote.

Finally again the layout was worrying but I tried to space out the review quotes evently next to the woman so there was not to much empty space in one section or another. Also the street light slighty tails off the page as I wanted too keep the size the same as it fits next to the blurb which I really liked.

Making The Front Cover

On the front of my book cover I wanted to make the main character form the book Philip Marlowe appear to be moving a chess piece as it shows a key part of the book. I didn't want the whole of Marlowes character to be visible, this way he could be big but also add a sense of mystery too the cover as you don't know where he his, also putting the gun in his hand adds to this. I also wanted to create the effect that it is in some sort of room adding in a carpet like texture and a light, I experimented with having a light effect on the cover coming from the light but it looked a bit much and the cover looks fine without one.

Also the chess piece and the table it's on needed to be a big enough size so people could recognise the knight chess piece and understand what is happening. Another bonus of having Marlowe and the teble continue off the cover is that this was possible making it a big as possible.

With the layout on the cover I waated the above mentioned aspects to be the focal point and main imagery but I wanted to layout the etxt nicely as well having the authors name right at the top so it was recognisable on a book shelf etc. I also wnated the title to be in or aorund the center of the cover which can be seen in my initial sketches, the spacing worked out well in my opinion and the text has a good amount of space around it so it does not look cluttered and is readable. Overall I think the layout works well as everything has is own space with it all fitting on nicely.