EXTENDED - PORTFOLIO BUILDING - COLLABORATION WITH LCOM STUDENT

This piece of work was produced as part of a collaboration between myself and leeds college of music student. The premise was to create some form animation/visuals to be projected and have music played alongside in an installation type setting. Unfortunately due to other commitments work on this project has been put on hold for now.

EXTENDED - FINAL FILM PRODUCTION - INITIAL PHASES AND WORK STRATEGY

Due to having mapped out the and fleshed out how the film might look at each point using tumbnails, it was at this point that had decided that I needed a list of all the assets that needed to be created for each scene. Having this list enabled me to have a clear idea of what needed to be worked on each day.

Slowly progressing through the list I was able to piece together each scene in a static form.

Building up each scene with the finished assets in a static form and enabled me to concentrate on the composition of each scene also.

Once each scene had been built up, it was then time to record the poem for the film so that the assets could then be synced up and keyframed.

EXTENDED - FINAL FILM - MEDIUMS

To keep production time as sharp as possible and for a more streamlined work flow I have opted to use TV Paint for alot of the assets used in the animation. As my animation has within it alot of varied shots and scenery, it makes more sense to create most of the assets in one place - rather than creating all of the assets by hand and scanning, editing and manipulating using adobe suite.

I have also found that the variety of the brushes and the versatility of tv paint to be very useful in achieving a child like approach to image making, something that I have utilised to make reference to my own childhood which is a theme that runs through the poem in the animation.

Despite using TV Paint to create most of the assets in my film, I have used paper based mediums to create some of the backgrounds and assets, this has resulted in a multi media collage effect that in turn shows my versatility in working with a range of different mediums.

EXTENDED - FINAL FILM - MOOD BOARDS

These mood boards use images that describe the basis of the sense of nostalgia that I am trying to get across in my film. They also include garish colours which will be an aspect of the aesthetic that I will use in my film. Colour is a very important signifier in terms of the mood that is being put across through animation/film, careful consideration will be taken on this aspect in the production of the film.

EXTENDED - FINAL FILM - POEM

Here is the poem that I have written to animate to in my film. The poem follows a slight story and is reflection of how the times have changed since my youth, the truths that become aware to you as you get older and some comments on the futility of amassing great wealth within a finite lifespan of a human being.

EXTENDED - PROJECTION MAPPING BRIEF

For the christmas projection mapping brief,  myself and tom decided that we would work on a video game themed projection and use simple bold shapes to create these animations. We decided that we would choose 4 games to emulate; pac man, tetris, mario and space invaders. these games would then be rendered in christmas themed attributes such as; christmas puddings, baubles and christmas trees.

I created the space invaders animation, and created the background and all scenery for the 'mario claus' animation. Because of the simple visual design rules implemented in arcade games, the design of the visual elements and how they moved was relatively simple.

EXTENDED - PORTFOLIO BUILDING - POSTER DESIGN/ ILLUSTRATIONS 2

I found this brief fairly challenging yet fun, as I was able to produce work relative to music and the performers.

I also learnt some new skills in adobe illustrator, which will be to the benefit of other projects that i am working with.  The illustrations needed to be converted into vector graphics so that the quality was there for the posters that were going to be displayed online at lower resolutions.
The first step was to seperate each colour layer in photoshop using 'select, colour range', the two layers were filled and saved separately as .png's. These layers were then opened up in an illustrator document and image traced to convert the artwork into vector graphics.

All in all I am happy with the work that I have produced and I am confident that some of this work will feature in my portfolio.

EXTENDED - PORTFOLIO BUILDING - POSTER DESIGN/ ILLUSTRATIONS

Due to showing examples of my work to world though social media, I was approached by a young designer wanting me to produce a series of illustrations that would hold the likeness of a range of musicians performing at an exhibition in Manchester.  These illustrations would be used on posters illustrating the featured artists and they would be released on the days leading up to the event.





I decided that this would be a fantastic oppurtunity to produce work that would be suitable for portfolio. And as there were 7 performers to produce illustrations for, the chance that some of these pieces could be placed alongside some of my best work was high. Also this brief was well suited to one of my strengths, that being character design.










I decided to use just two colours and bold qualities of line and shape so that when it came to digitally altering the designs the colours would be easily selectable and traced digitally.

EXTENDED - PORTFOLIO BUILDING - YCN KFC BUCKET DESIGN 2

For my second design i decided to opt for design that was a little more further away from the notion of 'family'.  However what the brief also asked for was the design to be 'modern' and 'raise the kfc bucket to true iconic status'. So i felt what better way to make this design 'iconic' and 'modern' than to reflect the events that are happening within society today.

I chose to use this notion of space travel and discovery to reflect the developments surrounding the successful flight and return of the SpaceX shuttles.

EXTENDED - PORTFOLIO BUILDING - YCN KFC BUCKET DESIGN

For my YCN brief, I chose the KFC bucket design brief for the opportunity to create some character based designs.

The initial idea was to create a series of different themes for the bucket design and other applications such as facebook banners using animated GIFs etc.

The Brief wanted the design to be celebratory of some sort of 'family' hence the design being for the 'family bucket'. The word 'family' was open for interpretation and this could mean the people who you call your family - such as a musical family or a sports family or the people whom you work with.



I decided to opt for some designs that were musically themed to begin with and kept the designs simple yet making sure that there was a lot of action in each of the character's poses.

The idea behind this particular design is that there is a BBQ of some kind, which are associated with the gathering of family and neighbors, and the musicians are playing whilst waiting for the colonel's chicken. 

EXTENDED - PORTFOLIO BUILDING - LOOPDELOOP - 'LOVE IS LOVE'

This was my submission for Loopdeloop in October, it was created relatively quickly using TV paint. It was also my first interaction with the software. I really liked the simplicity of the software and the textures that can be achieved through the various brushes that can be fully customised and appropriated to whatever project it is that you are working on. This animation would have been better if i had spent more time and care on each frame and perhaps the application of some sound would give it a little more life.

EXTENDED - VISUAL JOURNAL - COVER DESIGN

This is the front cover design of my visual journal/artbook. I opted for a design that would be eye catching and would reflect the aesthetic of the animation that is being produced. The off kilter design application of the text and the playful use of colour and illustration is meant to be a reflection of; the title (kids with kids), the literary content of the poem used within the animation and the deeper meanings attached to the content within the animation. I shall employ these off kilter design applications throughout the art book, to give the reader an impression of my professional voice/ approach to projects.

EXTENDED - FINAL FILM - EXAMPLES OF CONCEPT ART

The concept artwork that I have produced is a reflection of the aesthetic that I aim to strive for in my animation.

These are character conceptual iterations that I felt I needed to include in my concept art and as a part of my visual journal. There may be variations in the way characters are designed, but this piece serves as a basis for the aesthetic considerations of characters. Line focused, simple and angular designs may be a prolific feature in character designs for this animation.

 These pieces of artwork were at times created without any guidance so far as any narrative is concerned but going back to the project rationale, the work that is being produced in this project is very much observational of things in my day to day surroundings and my own interpretations of situations that go beyond surface level.





This piece of conceptual artwork is an example of work that has been better realized once the narrative of the animation has been produced.
There are elements in this piece - such as the speckled background - that will act as a 'puzzle piece' to the overall aesthetic of the animation.

EXTENDED - FINAL FILM - THUMBNAILING

  

Here I have been going through some thumbnailing, visualising what would happen in each scene of the animation according to each stanza in the poem.

There will be some adjustments to be made as try out the different iterations and see how they might fit together more smoothly.

EXTENDED - FINAL FILM - IDEA GENERATION/visual research 1

In my poem I conjure up images of penny sweets and fake sweet cigarettes that don't seem to be in shops any longer. This is where the nostalgia element of my film will come from, using the elements of the design aspects that can be found in old penny sweets and children's toys. Concept artwork in further posts will make reference to the aesthetics that can be found in these packaging designs.

There is a stanza in the poem that goes as follows and is meant to paint a picture of a car boot sale, a memory/ atmosphere that within me brings up a lot of nostalgia:

It were burger vans in car parks
It were crackin't flags
It were bouncy balls n lego bricks placcy bags.

I have collected imagery from the internet that I feel, when put together, gives a sense of the atmosphere and the scale of the bric-a-brac that was available at car boot sales.