Evaulation that i wrote on Sascha and James work

Sascha's

I watched sascha’s work I really enjoyed her animation because of the fact that it was a very difficult piece to animate as the images started off joined together after she had hand drawn it on Photoshop this however didn’t hinder her final outcome. This piece runs very smoothly and it’s really good that sascha decided to hand draw her work because I feel that sascha enjoyed making the piece.

James

I watched James comic today and played through the many ways that his comic could end. Overall I feel James comic was really very put together and thought out and am very impressed by the final result as I haven’t seen any of his comic while he was making it. So how it all runs smoothly was very impressive. I really like the way that James was willing to go and do a photo shoot and make his comic from photography in contrast to mine which I drew. The flash file of James Comic was a very complicated piece of work and I can imagine the work he had to put into the work to succeed in making this final piece really work. The images we very clear and sharp which made me look and watch trying to pick out all the details in things and because it was somewhere that I have been I knew what the scenery should look like therefore felt part of the story because you rarely get to the see the character after he leave the train station giving James comic a sense of the audience being in the story. James project has kept to the brief of interactive comic very well and it is apparent in his final piece that he structured his work and was very focused throughout this project.

Story Boards

this was my story board that i did in the begining i nthe porject and i changed things around slightly and dropped soem scenes but thats what happens when tweaking ideas

Evaultion of my work by Sascha

Connors interactive comic was really well done as he took a lot of time and effort to make everything work I really enjoyed watching the light from above follow Connor’s character while he was doing all these free styling moves off of buildings top it could have been better if I heard some police sirens and a helicopter flying above, In overall Connor’s animation was spot on. Those are the only two things I would add but everything else was perfect I loved the lighting the contrast of red and grey and black very well put, but where was the glare of the light on the character from the search light. Well done Connor.

Evaultion of my piece from James

In this animation I especially liked the black foreground and the red and grey background. The jumping and back-flipping animation was good too. Improvements could be made to the way the character runs, but overall I enjoyed the piece.

Image minpulation

 we Took a trip down to a local park and took some picture's of various things i picked out the picture of billy actually falling off a bar but he landed safety and looked very interesting in ways he is postioned. I then used a filter to change the image into a very cool looking poster background and so i used the glowing edges filter because i thought it gave the image the best look. i then simply added a Pen Tool path and connected the text to it.

Evaluation

Topic of Project

The topic of my project was to create a product on flash that was interactive using the skills that I have acquired through tutorials with my tutors or even past experience. This meant that I could show the advantages to using digital means to create work for a specific topic and brief. I have concluded that using digital means to create my work has a lot of advantages because I can not only keep all my work in one place it is easier to transport to different areas to do work in other places or even import and export into different programs to give my work diversity and flexibility in creating the best piece of work I can. My work combines both traditional and digital means of production as I got my initial design from the story board I drew. I then took my story board and by hand painted into Photoshop using a graphics tablet. Then because I was using Photoshop it became very easy to move each image of my story board into flash because both Photoshop and flash are compatible. However at times flash did limit the ideas I had about my work It became simple after getting used to the rules of the software to adapt my design to run very smoothly in flash. I have come to realize that there is a lot of potential in working digitally although I feel that the traditional ways of doing things shouldn’t be forgotten or stopped being used because I feel with the right tools you could always make something better using your own hand and not having a computer calculating every click or movement on the graphics tablet.

Outcome

For my outcome I have created a flash video of my mutant running from a crime scene in which he has killed a human. After he jumps from the first roof top he has to run and jump over many different roof tops because he has a spot light following him. Eventually his escape fails and he is shot down and falls off screen to a gruesome demise.  I create my final piece I used Photoshop and illustrator to create the individual piece to my work. Character design was done in illustrator to give me more drawing movement and flexibility. I used Photoshop to create backdrops and rooftops and save them as Jpegs to fit to the pixel size of 550 by 400 this meant easy transitions between back drops in my final video.  Creating the movements in my flash video was done using classic tweens and key framing the path in which I wanted each object to take. Each character was saved into the library in flash to make easier position switching. I know that making this in a completely traditional medium would have been extremely difficult because I would have to have each frame on different pages therefore to use digital means in creating this specific product was the best way to create a visually interesting piece of work. To acquire the skills that I have used to create this product I have done many different styles of work and using many different programs to enhance my diversity in style of working. By having skills in many programs I have been able to get more than just a basic way of doing things because if I a program cannot do something I see in my design I can simply export into a program that will do the action I couldn’t take in the last program. Each piece of work leading up to my final outcome has been me learning new skills from scratch because I have not used many of the programs used in my work to create in my final video. Such as flash and illustrator I had not used before I started this project therefore being able to incorporate them into my work with such ease took a lot of concentration and patience. On a whole I feel that I have learnt to focus my work on the specific out come because in my last project I was very varied in ideas and didn’t quite focus on one specific outcome this in turn has helped me really drive my work on and work past all the problems I encountered to come out at the end with a flash video that I am very proud of as it was my first attempt at flash. After using digital means to create a lot of work over the course of this unit I think digital medium of working unlocks endless outcomes into the world of art and that it will truly enhance capabilities of future artist and that the level of work will just increase in difficulty and complexity as technology continues to advance.

Flash experiments

We have been experimenting with Flash and making videos or sort animations. we learnt how to go into frame on and postion a seaguls wings so that we could turn it into a video of the seagul flying.
we then had it tweening across the screen in a SWF video

we then flipped it and brought it back across the screen

Shattering Text

Shattering Text

We wrote simple text today to then add effects to it. We first used a FX that was bevel and emboss to make it look metal type face. We then merged the layers of effects down because if we didn’t the effects would mess up from splitting the text. Then using the polygonal lasso tool we selected triangles from the text to slightly move to give it a broken glass effect. I am sure this can be used in lots of ways and it has sparked ideas to use it in my other module for the ending of my comic book.

We then used the lasso tool on a new layer to create a circle around the middle or the whole text and then feathered the lasso using Shift F6 to create a blur around the outside of the selection. We then deselected the lasso and the use the effect Blur and Radial Blur. To create almost a black hole kind of space zoom feel we used the Cloud effect by going through the Render menu. After giving a space feel behind the text we needed to give the Text the same zoom to make it fit. Therefore we right click the thumbnail and select the pixels in the text layer and then we make a new layer to add a 50% grey fill therefore creating a grey version of our text below it. We then go back into Blur and Radial blur like before to give the explosion text inside it. We then merged the two explosions to make it easier to match the Hue and Saturation that we were about to change. Making sure we only selected the explosion layer we changed the explosion to a colour that we wanted. Then to give the Text and Shadow we used the Effect Stroke and Drop shadow to position a shadow in the place we wanted it.

we made a Snooker ball in Photoshop we did this by first making a gradient on a layer above the background. This gradient went from foreground to background. This created a black fading to white background on which we could create our snooker ball. We then used a selection tool called elliptical marquee tool. This tool creates circles but only if you hold Shift. We then positioned the circle in the centre of the page we then used the selection we already had to create a copy of the circle slightly below the circle we had and then filled that one in black. To create a shadow from the black circle we used Gaussian Blur on a scale of 25 to give it a very Soft edge that looked like a shadow then positioned it in the right place. Then to make the shadow look natural we used dodge tool to create a highlight on the original circle and then used the burn tool on the bottom to make the bottom of the circle blend with the shadow we did. We then made a selection with the elliptical marquee again and created three ovals that where all connected and then saved the selection. Using the circle selection and loading the new selection into the current it meant we could create a layer mask and then with reduced opacity to fade the colour in circle again but leaving a faint white outline to make it look like a glare coming off the ball this we the final touches to our snooker ball.

Animal Merging

we did a Demo in Class to merge a Hippo's Head onto a Lizards Body this was alot easier than I thought it would be These are the pictures I started the exercise with and the last picture is the end result that i created. I had to change the hue and saturation of the hippos head to match the lizards skin then i used the Rubber with lower opacity to make it blend easier. then i colourised the back ground.

Character Advanced Designing

Today I put my characters onto computer and edited it in Illustrator. This was a fun learning curve for me because to draw them properly I took out a graphics tablet. I have never used them before and therefore I had to do a lot of trial and error to get my characters the way I wanted them. Today I really got into the flow of things and got a lot of designing done that I thought would take me a few days.  During today’s design session I took a template of a man. And took it into illustrator I then took the image of my character from my story boards then using the graphics tablet and the black paint I started to change the template into the character I wanted.

However this template was stuck in the same position and I wasn’t able to get a different due to the fact its wouldn’t be the same body shape, therefore using the pen tool I drew round bits of the template that I wanted and copied then out of the picture that way I made sections of the man. I used these to then change the template using basic rubber and paste tools into the different positions that I needed some of the changing process took awhile but I feel that making the templates of each position I could now work faster to create different positions if needed.

Illustrator Experiments

Today we opened illustrator to get to grips with the interface and learnt what could be done on the program. This program has really stuck with me and I seem to pick it up very quickly and enjoy using it other than Photoshop. I can also design everything in illustrator then move it to Photoshop using export to then colour and tweak it slightly adding final touches.
I experimented on illustrator using the touch screen drawing straight onto the canvas using the brush set up of chalk scribble I didn’t have an idea what I wanted my end result to be but after messing it became clear that I could turn the shapes and fluid lines into something very interesting.

This was my image.

I then got told to add shapes and basic text to the image to show my understanding of shapes and tools in illustrator and I came up with this even though I prefer just the phoenix. I understand that I had to add to it to cover the shapes and show that I took everything in while the demo was being taught.

Snooker Ball

Snooker Ball Stuff

Today we made a Snooker ball in Photoshop we did this by first making a gradient on a layer above the background. This gradient went from foreground to background. This created a black fading to white background on which we could create our snooker ball. We then used a selection tool called elliptical marquee tool. This tool creates circles but only if you hold Shift. We then positioned the circle in the centre of the page we then used the selection we already had to create a copy of the circle slightly below the circle we had and then filled that one in black. To create a shadow from the black circle we used Gaussian Blur on a scale of 25 to give it a very Soft edge that looked like a shadow then positioned it in the right place. Then to make the shadow look natural we used dodge tool to create a highlight on the original circle and then used the burn tool on the bottom to make the bottom of the circle blend with the shadow we did. We then made a selection with the elliptical marquee again and created three ovals that where all connected and then saved the selection. Using the circle selection and loading the new selection into the current it meant we could create a layer mask and then with reduced opacity to fade the colour in circle again but leaving a faint white outline to make it look like a glare coming off the ball this we the final touches to our snooker ball.

Text Effects

Shattering Text

We wrote simple text today to then add effects to it. We first used a FX that was bevel and emboss to make it look metal type face. We then merged the layers of effects down because if we didn’t the effects would mess up from splitting the text. Then using the polygonal lasso tool we selected triangles from the text to slightly move to give it a broken glass effect. I am sure this can be used in lots of ways and it has sparked ideas to use it in my other module for the ending of my comic book.

We then used the lasso tool on a new layer to create a circle around the middle or the whole text and then feathered the lasso using Shift F6 to create a blur around the outside of the selection. We then deselected the lasso and the use the effect Blur and Radial Blur. To create almost a black hole kind of space zoom feel we used the Cloud effect by going through the Render menu. After giving a space feel behind the text we needed to give the Text the same zoom to make it fit. Therefore we right click the thumbnail and select the pixels in the text layer and then we make a new layer to add a 50% grey fill therefore creating a grey version of our text below it. We then go back into Blur and Radial blur like before to give the explosion text inside it. We then merged the two explosions to make it easier to match the Hue and Saturation that we were about to change. Making sure we only selected the explosion layer we changed the explosion to a colour that we wanted. Then to give the Text and Shadow we used the Effect Stroke and Drop shadow to position a shadow in the place we wanted it.

Panning and Tweening on Flash

Today we focuses on doin simple pan's and tween's on flash this was very useful due to the fact that it will be vital to my project that we will be doin soon.
Tweening an image was a very simple task you just select a frame in front the the frame you are on for example we picked 50 because we where on frame 1 you then hit F6. we then Right Clicked a frame in between them and clicked Classic Tween and then moved the picture in frame 50. We then played our video and it slowly moved the picture from the start position to the end in frame 50. We then increased our frame to 100 then repeated the last process and moved the picture side ways instead of zooming in therefore creating a pan instead of a tween.

Sound Recorder introduction

Today we had a introduction  into using the sound recording equipment and learning how to use a Gun Mic with a Marantz. which meant that we learnt how to set it up into a preset for indoor and outdoor recording. we also learnt how to formatt the memory cards before and after use to make sure that no other students can use my work. we learnt how to set up the recorder to record MP3 formatt because its the smallest and simplest setting to record.
we also learnt the names for different types of mic.
Directional Mic = a mic that only picks up sound in the direction you are pointing the recieving end
Omnidirectional Mic= a mic that picks up all sound around it in an arc therefore picking up background noise that you could other wise not want.

Research

I have been researching interactive comics on the internet and found a few such as
http://www.dead-on-arrival.co.uk/
http://www.hoteloscartangoecholima.com/
http://www.zark.com/pages2/argon_book2.html 
These are all nicely made and must have taken a very long time to put together.
Hotel is a very interactive story and is able to keep you busy for a long time due to having something to click at all times. it also has a unique way of building each scene because the scene is actually built as you load into it. you can watch everything fly in from floor tiles to the people in the scene.
 Dead on arrival is basically a book online that you can turn the pages to advance with elements of interactive scenes where you have to find things to advance in the chapters of the book. however that is all it is and therefore isnt really that impressive.
Zark is a comic that when you hover over the pictures the pictures have elements that move and when you click the picture it goes to a funny picture. however this again isnt that good.

This interactive book and Comic craze really doesnt impress me I i dont like the idea of interactive books and things like that because i prefer to just read a book. I do however see the advantages of  the interactive things to maybe pitch ideas for films and maybe things along that idea