Evaluation!

First things first, I am proud of my outcomes I had loads of fun with the FMP. Though things started off a bit hairy, with loads of ideas floating through my head, I had trouble choosing just one.
Things started off with the use of geometric shaped illustrations to create an alphabet each with a mature illustration and narrative from the typical children alphabet. It was a good plan and it had loads of potential, I still have a little regret not pulling through with the idea but I guess I can still do it in my free time. More abnormal ideas came into the thinking bucket with the creation of a Mosaic sing photography which was well out of my jurisdiction if you will...I don't know what I was thinking there, and then I wanted to create a large family tree painting that would use different materials and processes but I knew that was to fine artsy. I then went back to my geometric illustrations but I wasn't too sure on what to do with the things, so since I am going into an animation course I thought I should create an animation. I wanted to do something professional looking so I had to avoid using flash and just use the big dog 'After Effects' I think it was the best thing to use anyway because I was only going to be moving around shapes.
The animation started really slow because the process is very tedious and I just had to push through, I slapped on my headphones and zoned out. Creating the baby scene was simple since there was only a few shapes to move about, thought the other scenes took awhile because they had a bit more going on. Longest scene to create was most probably the adulthood scene since it got a bit too crowded when the three characters came on screen.
It took me awhile to get everything done and dusted but I pulled through...Last but not least...music...I need music or some sort of sound, I had loads of candidates each relatively relevant to my animation and went really smooth.
While using my old computer that held my old music play list, I found a song that had almost everything would go very well with the animation, beat, some scratch, and one hell of a catchy tune.
This was it...all my hard work coming to a close, and I seriously enjoyed everything about it, I just had a lot of fun so I must of went down the right path.
Now one last thing to talk about, all that was left to do was create a DVD case that held my hard work. I could of used an actual DVD case and stylised it a little but it didn't seem fun, I wanted to present my animation with more hard work. So I went ahead and began cutting out pieces of cardboard, I knew straight away that the design would look like a cog that has relevance to my animation.
It took me awhile because I am not that skilled in cutting shapes out with scalpels and scissors.
The outcome was really surprising...everything just went really smooth with not many hiccups.
In the end I really enjoyed working on my FMP, and choosing the subject matter that I was almost comfortable with most probably helped with that.
Last note, Using blogs I think was really successful just because it really is easy to post imagery, videos and just upload text.

DVD case complete!

Well after a long time of fiddling around, I finally finished off my DVD case and I have to say that it is looking nice, to be honest I was sure that something terrible was going to go wrong and the whole thing would blow in my face but surprisingly things actually went my way.
The case holds together well which was always the part of my design which would fail, guess I was wrong.
If I had time I would wrap it up with the typical wrapping material to make it look a smidgen more presentable.

MiniturePoster

I decided to create a miniture postcard poster thing that consisted of the character of my animation, I wanted to follow a similar style to Jon Bugerman but all of a sudden my scanner pooped up so that was at a stand still.
Anyway heres what I do best and I think it look really neat, so huray to me!

The Dvd case

So I finished my animation with some time to spare, so I might as well begin a design for my DVD case, to be honest, from the very beginning I knew how the design would go. So I began some quick plans for my little DVD case, which consisted of a few sketches in my sketch book.
One thing for certain...it was going to look like a cog from my animation.

Step 1: Cardboard...I needed to cut out the shapes using cardboard which was not that easy to do, but after countless moans I finally got the shapes cutout and they looked promising.

Step 2: Plan an open and close mechanism...This actually puzzled me for awhile, I wasn't too sure how I would go about opening and closing the DVD case, should it have a hinge so it opens like a traditional CD case or should I go for a different route, well it seems going for a lid kind of CD case was ideal, it took some time for the actual lid plan to be made...but I somehow managed.

Step 3: More layers! I decided to *ahem* add some protection to the case so I decided to use the protective material you get with fragile items, it didn't exactly cut right but I managed to cover it up.

Step 4: Make it look interesting... Well I originally wanted to cover the DVD case with aluminium foil to make it look all shiny and slick, I realised that playing with foil like that is so hard to control and with my Patience span...I quickly ditched that plan and decided to paint the thing black and end it there...for now...

Step 5: Stencil front cover, so just the black paint on its own really didn't do much to makes things interesting so I decided to stencil out the title of the animation and maybe make some shapes too, looks good so far...

Henri Matisse

Our tutor had us watch a documentary on an artist named Henri Matisse, now I have to say it was a interesting documentary just because most of Matisses art was ludacris, I mean it was different because at first glance none would accept it as art. Though Matisse had a tough time trying to get into the whole art scene with his interesting take on using light as a tool to create imagery that almost had no form no proportions but his work did have one thing and that was indeed colour.
Matisse was a daredevil when it came to the colour, he would just use the typical complementary colours on the colour wheel, he would go ahead and use colours that noone would ever of thought of trying to use together, does it work? Honestly in some cases...still there was a level of creativity about most of his paintings.
Also when coming to the end of his days, he decided to still continue and try to create something different...by using cuttouts, this is where I started getting abit more interested because he began creating these really abstract images that had some really interesting shpes to them, one of my favorite being the 'snail' that almost had this sense of geometry about it, I also like how he incoorperated these rough ripped edges mixed with sharply cut edges.
In the end Matisses work went ahead and inspired many modern day art/graphics/fashion, I'm sure that Matisses use of colour will remain to be an inspiration to most design to come.

Jon Burgerman at FEED!

Last Wednesday our college held a FEED night staring an Illustrator named Jon Burgerman and I have to admit I was really intrigued with his presentation or talk.
I respect the guy alot for he's been through so much and his illustrations were really inspiring, alot different from my geometric shapes that I use for illustrations but I still draw crazy characters when I doodle so I really liked his characters.
I like his style of contor lines and the colour fills, it really gives off a sense of street art but there is a sense of maturity about his style too.
All in all I think it was a great FEED night and Jon Burgerman has inspired me to do a little collaboration piece for my animation with starring the characrters in my animation and not involve geometric shapes.

The Finale!

Alright I found a much more elaborate way of getting my animation on the web and that was by listening to my tutors advice and looking up Vimeo and uploading my animation there, so without further ado http://www.vimeo.com/11810444
Sit Back and Enjoy!

By the way...It's COMPLETE!

Yes! Just as the title implies my animation is done. Took me awhile but I managed to pull through.
Again I really want to post the damn thing to prove my worth but at the moment I can't.
The whole experience was really interesting, I'm no master of Adobe AfterEffects but I decided that if I'm going onto an animation degree I better get used to AfterEffects. I am really impressed with the outcome, it really does scream my style, the use of geometric shapes and just being very minimal. I always wanted to animate something like this and I did. I did...

No more animation uploads

So it's coming to a point where my animation is coming to it's end and I would love to upload the rest of my animation on to my blog but the damn thing won't budge, my animation file size is over the upload limit now making it hard to upload the rest.
Well I guess it leaves things for the finale where I would have produced a fancy looking CD case (more on that very soon) and a cd holding the full animation.
Unless someone teaches me a way to compress the video files.
For now I want to give thanks to my amazing work space...I was very comfortable while making this animation.

Baby, Child, Adolescence, Adult

Weeee four parts complete! Two more to go, I'm getting excited now, comeon lets go animate some more!

Baby, Child, Adolescence

Huray! Three parts of my animation are complete, just another three to go, things are looking good.

Baby and Child Animation

My second part of my animation, going on for 21 seconds, I have finally animated my child scene.

10 sec clip

My first scene of my animation, could do with some polishing.

End

End = Death, in this animation anyway...

Middle

I wonder what part of the animation is this....uhhh could it be the 'middle'? You know like what the title implies...

Begining

The beginging of my animation, I think I stated that like a million times now...

Cog animation trial

Just something I created very quickly, just testing things out.

Death Concept!

Sad I know, but it happens...

Oldage Concept!

I'm sure you all have questions now...but I leave it to you to decide, if the character is imagining things or did he have a family to love.

Adulthood Concept!

Jobs are not fun...but we need to get money from somewhere.

Adolescence Concept!

You know he's cool...takes after me!

Child Concept!

Let the cuteness begin! Again being simple, you know just like the minds of children.

Baby Concept....Again!

The final design, and I guess it could act as a part of my story board too, simple, baby crawls, baby plays with blocks, baby crawls some more till it grows.
The cog will be the first thing to fade in on screen and begin rotating then the baby follows.

Error?...

I am getting some errors when I try to upload some of my development work? Keeps telling me there's an internal error...whatever that bloody means.

Olympic Pictograms Through the Ages (Animation)

Not the most Amazing animation out there, but it uses almost everything that I was inspired for my illustration characters, also a good history on the Olympic pictograms and how they evolved.
Take note and watch it here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/24/sports/olympics/pictograms-interactive.html.
I will let someone else do the reserch this time :)

Steffen Bygebjerg: End Scene

End scene, is a musicale animation, I guess I should call it 'Motion Graphics' since that is what it is, I loved how everything was in sync with the music, and I love the use of the very simple shapes, this is a grand example of what can be done with just using squares and circles.
Also all the shapes were printed out first, then rescanned to give the shapes the rough effect they have in the piece.
Really loved this piece, I would love to experiment with music like this.
Anyway watch this musicale adventure here http://vimeo.com/6857186
Enjoy.

oh no! It's the Bauhaus!

It's funny how the first time I ever heard of the Bauhaus, was through the most boring documentery of my life, and my class mates too.
The documentery left a bad taste about the Bauhaus in me for a while, but soon I began realising it for the geometric awsomeness it was.
The Bauhaus seems to bring together all sorts of different manners of the creative industry like, Art, Archtiecture, Graphic Design, Interior design, Industrial design and Typography.
It follows the ways of its major influence 'Modernism', and it shows.

Bruno Monguzzi

Monguzzi tries to recapture the spirit of the early Russian Constructivist, using siple shapes and geometry. I really do like the shapes he uses and the placement of the shapes in the composition, and how he blends shapes and typography together to create something new.
Colours go really well with his designs, offereing some nice colour contrasts.

Tom Purvis

A little bit different to simple shapes but I might aswell mention Tom Purvis. I have to admit that his poster work for different holiday locations hold some of the most impressive colours I have seen in designs, not say it's the 'best' but its worth commenting on. The block out colours of the different illustrations work so well with the colour schemes, they contrast well with the surrounding colours to give off a simple shape, or form.
The illustrations are on border between realism and, well, 'stylised'... I don't want to use the word 'cartoony' sounds too childish.
I think the colours and illustrations really capture each loctions feel, obviously I haven't been to any of the areas, but I can just imagine and feel the mood by just looking at these really old posters.
Tom Purvis (1888- 1959)

Adolphe Mouron Cassandre

A.M. cassandre is one of the few designers I found in my book on geometrical designs, he has done some really interesting pieces of designs, illustration and typography. Most of his designs have a very cubic feel to them, which for the time gave off a very modern look about them.
Again it amazes me how traditional designs give off their own feel about them, also gaining off geometrical designs for that time is a feat in itself.
A.M. Cassandre (1901- 1968)