Collaborative Type Mural / Stop Motion

Thursday 23rd March, 2017

Collaborative Type Mural / Stop Motion

To end the series of Nick Deakin's Wednesday process and production session, the group in which I work with, group 1, went out with a solid final piece of work. In this session, we were given the task of first coming up with concepts, designing, developing a final image and creating a stop motion animation. The activity was heavily team-based, and this can be seen in how they had to work with one another to come together with a final design.

Each team member created a design for consideration, they were then all laid out on the floor infront of the class and voted upon by all of the members of the group. After this process, we would move on with the chosen design and create something from that design. Using around 30 sheets of A3 paper, inks and a blank wall. We went at it to create, an as accurate as possible, rendition of the initial design that was chosen. With this initial design it was worked out where, who and what would be illustrated on each page to come out with a final result from the session. After this was created, we would then place the design up in a manner which was discussed and decided amongst the team to create what is shown below. The first figure shown is the piece that was created in the end of the design process and displayed, the second image is the team behind my individual group's work, and the last figure is a gif image to display all of the groups' work and how they have created their own responses to the brief.

Info-graphic Animation

Wednesday 8th March, 2017

Info-graphic Animation

With this session, we were tasked with creating an infographic animation based off of information gathered by ourselves. This information was brought together to create a series of information to bring together in a solid composition for the animation. For my particular pairing of the map and bar chart for the initial design I used the information that I brought was for the time I spent throughout the week at University and the route that I took to get there.

As this is something reliant on my own personal timetable, it wasn't too strenuous in terms of gathering the necessary information for use in this artwork. The colours of this animation are the same and are used throughout the animation piece. These being various shades of a soft blue colour and tones to match. The first example of this work can be seen below in the linked video. The animation techniques learnt in this session moved use further in the knowledge of transitions and lightly touched on working with z-space once more - which is something that provides interesting results whenever it is applied to the work.

The Stencil / Abstract Typography

Wednesday 15th February, 2017

The Stencil / Abstract Typography

The second and most recent process and production session from Deakin was carrying on with the stencil work style and media. Having moved from no image just text, to image and text, we're coming back full circle and having a just text based piece. During this session the task at hand was to go around the four different available typefaces and take attributes of each of them to create a pattern of shapes. You had to take the areas of each letter that you cut off and make a new letter, or pattern, or compose it in a different way so that it would no long be classed as the initial letter.

In total I ended up creating five different pieces for this session. I found myself going much faster during this session because of the fact that it was pattern based and as such made the session run much more quickly in terms of how much work I could get completed. This exercise, introduced in the session, is a good one if you want to create a series of patterns quickly within a small time frame. The patterns seem like they could be applicable to a variety of materials or different medias, which with further experimentation could prove to give interesting results.

C4D - Session 2

Wednesday 8th February, 2017

C4D - Session 2

The second session of Jay's workshop series packed a bit more of a punch in terms of what we completed. In the session we created a series of images from the different tools available, and used masks and similar colour palettes to colour each of the images. The patterns created were that of randomly generated squares for the last exercise, in which we used the 'Emitter' to create a point of origin for shapes to disperse across the screen in random directions - this also emitted lines as well as the shapes.

Going back to the start of the session, we created what seemed to be two illusion-esq images where the use of black and white repeat line was applied as you can see above. The first three images that are shown above are built by creating one open shape, i.e. a square, and then making the shape into a tube. After which it is contorted and the pattern is applied to give it the look that is shown. All of the work shown and created during this session was done as a sort of illusion or distortion of the initial image that was being created. An interesting exercise and I look to work more with C4D when I have my own copy of the program.

Z-Space / The Universe

Wednesday 1st February, 2017

Z-Space / The Universe

Of the three available choices for themes across the three different groups, group 1's (my group) was based on the universe. You could do anything in response to this so long as the animation used the proposed Z-Space features to create the work. The Z-Space makes it so that you can move freely around the composition. In the case of my animation, it moves around the centre object, which is the Earth. After that the clip pulls out from the view of the earth and shows a set of other planets around itself.

The attributes of this sessions animation were created prior to the session, so an illustrator based document to build up the layers of the animation. Later, in the session textures were applied to each of the features where it was deemed necessary by the designer, as was specified in the session. To keep it relatively coherent to actual planetary textures I used very open seemed fabrics and rough paper textures and made the colour overlays match the rest of the planet vector. The work done in this session is something I could see myself potentially looking into further, be it for any brief work or personal design practice.

The Stencil

Wednesday 25th January, 2017

The Stencil

The first session from Nick after the Christmas break was on the stencil. As part of the session, we were first given a word that we had to use to work with for the main image as this would be what you based the main stencil off of. After this, we would be given a line of lyrics to work with and apply to the page in any manor of style you liked, it was down to designer discretion. The word that I was given was transcendence, and the set of lyrics was "Come taste the end, you're mine" - which I thought was quite fitting as the two somewhat came together well, given that of which others were matching together.

For my stencil I created a silhouette of a man in a suit and then on another sheet created a set of different roses. In terms of cutting out the stencil, the figure was much simpler in comparison to the roses, as there were intricate details of the rose that I needed to include in the final design  and so had to cut it in a certain way. I applied them with a red mono-print colour and rolled it onto the page. Then when moving onto the lyrics it was advised that I used a contrasting colour, to what seemed the other side of the spectrum. The lyrics were place above the main image, if I could go back and change it I would change the composition of the text so that it is more centred, I feel it would have matched the image much better that why. Finally, the typeface used was a Gothic one that was adapted from several different type families and merged into my own.

C4D - Session 1

Wednesday 18th January, 2017

C4D - Session 1

The first session of the process and production 2 module from Jay was an introduction of sorts to some of the things that are capable when using the C4D program. In this session we created a logo that was comprised of shading effects, vibrant neon bright colours and the sample text 'LOGO' to match. This program seems to have a steep learning curve as there is just so much opportunity and information that needs to be taken in for the various things that can be accomplished in the applications use. Creating objects in a 3D space is something that has a high possibility of coming up in the future with clients.

Having the ability to use C4D to an extent, or to go ahead and further your knowledge of the application by practising with it will only further your chances when in industry of getting work based off of the knowledge of programs such as Cinema 4D. This is something I've set myself to do from sources such as lyanda.com whilst I am in this curricular year. The program, after such practice and testing, could play a part in future projects of this year. So it is an important tool within the designers case.

The Hand/Drawn Animation

Wednesday 7th December, 2016

The Hand/Drawn Animation

This animation session was my most favoured over the course of this year so far. Because it let us bring the media of drawings on paper into the animation space, it opened a few doors to creative inspirations. This animation was also one that I added sound files too as well. We were allowed to draw our own scene or objects, but had to draw them three different times. This was so that when the layers were lapping around a few times within a second, it would give the representation of movement where there is none.

The final outcome of this animation can be found below. Given that I illustrated a cloud raining, the audio that I found to match the animation seemed to be only fitting for the final render of it. This session was interesting because it goes to show that the illustrated, without the involvement of the computer may have created a challenge to some peoples creative processes. But this type of animation is definitely something that I would look into further as the proposed results of this animation go to show what comes with this style of working.

The Posterzine

Wednesday 30th November, 2016

The Posterzine

The Posterzine session was the second session from Deakin that was based off of zines. This one in particular was based off of ourselves, hence the portrait on the front page of it. Each of the pages were created with a different method as per the sessions task. The first was the portrait given at the start of the session (5), which was lovingly paraded over the workshop. The middle page spread of the zine included a photocopy scan of my own face (3), and had to be sliced down the middle to properly fit onto the page.

The zine then unfolded once and displayed the portrait of myself, this time comprised of purely emoji's (2). The darker images that were available during the session were used for the eyes and outlines of certain features of the face, whilst lighter ones made up what would be light on my own complexion. The zine then opens up one more time and shows the final cutout, which is a dotted paper cutout of my face (1) - this would be my least favourite of the bunch. And finally, when closing this all up, the back page displays the final design (4). This iteration is comprised of purely the bold outline and straight dashes across the face, with no actual fine details on the image.

 

Presentation Template

Wednesday 23rd November, 2016

Presentation Template

For the final session with Aidan, we were tasked with creating a template to use for all of our presentations. This template was to be created in InDesign with all of the relevant features needed to get the correct details entered into the template for any future works. This template that I have created is one that I hope to use in the brief work that is issued in the studio module. The design of it is something that has been consistent over previous templates that I have created, but this should now remain to be the same throughout.

Below you can see the example of the template with the heading and one page to show what each individual page would look like. This session is and will be applied to my studio module in that it will be used during assessments to promote my works and present them with a clean, consistent and professional layout.

Rotoscoping

Wednesday 16th November, 2016

Rotoscoping

The rotoscoping workshop from Sara was a new and interesting change to the usual areas that are touched on during the animation and after effects sessions. It let us use and look at raw footage that we had taken and apply that to the effects used in the session. In the session, we had to adjust the line around one part of the footage and follow it throughout the composition. For my particular footage, I filmed the main ring road that leaves Huddersfield, which proved to be more of a challenge when it came to editing the footage because of the fact I'd be following a vehicle.

The footage I had eventually created was of the yellow bus from the raw footage. It repeats a few times over the course of around 10 seconds, which is the total duration of the footage. The sound was also a repeating feature of this and can be heard repeating as-well. I wouldn't see this animation exactly fitting into the other areas of my course, i.e. studio briefs, so further development on this workshops products won't be introduced.

 

The Poster

Wednesday 9th November, 2016

The Poster

For the second session from Nick Deakin's Process and Production series, we were tasked with creating posters with just a craft knife, paper and glue. Each of the different groups got a different set of texts or quotes to work with, of which I used two for two of the poster designs I had created. This idea of going off of the computer to make some interesting designs with the use of composition and the freedom that you can have with the craft knife makes for some nice results.

Although the process used in this session does take much longer, the time taken makes to feel that the work is much more deserved. And after this session I feel as though I may look into the craft knife as a medium of creation when working further on the Cybernetic Self brief, perhaps. As the day we had our session was the day Donald Trump became the president of the free world, most of the quotes were based on that topic.

The first poster that I had created for the brief set in the session was "Trump elected president". I thought it best to use a simple composition for this image. As after I had completed this design, I moved onto some more interesting ways of approaching the task at hand.

Applying this quote to Trump, as seemed to be the theme of the day, was not particularly difficult given that the man indeed does have what this quote tries to deny. Given the idea that his hairline could easily blow away the hair at any point during the upcoming inauguration I figured it best to play with the composition in the sense that the type could literally blow away, so I tried my best to signify some form of wind blowing across the piece. Also, the ugly typeface was mad as a choice to match the premise of that haircut.

After the session had finished, because the activity was so time consuming I had only managed to create the first two. When experimenting with the design outside of the session, I went ahead and tried experimenting with it back on the computer again. When using it, composing things is evidently faster, but doing it by hand lets you experiment in different ways. Going to the piece itself, it has 'WHAT' being the main render of the poster, given that it was my genuine response to the announcement of Trumps victory over the elections. Summarising the session, all of my work was very much derived from the inspiration given by the events of the day, i.e. Trump. And as such made for some rather political designs from myself. Below you can see some others work and the general process of the designs creation.

Aidan Nolan - Workshop 2

Wednesday 19th October. 2016

Aidan Nolan - Workshop 2

For the second workshop in Aidan's Process and Production sessions for the first term, we were told to create a series of poster designs for some miniature briefs within the given InDesign document. These briefs included; Acoustic night, Huddersfield craft beer expo and one based on a typographic designer of your choice. As you can see below I have completed all of the above in my own design styles. The challenge to keep the posters strictly on a type-only basis was a real challenge but were all attained with different styles. It made us think in a more focused area before creating something, which is what I liked most about the workshop.

The first brief, acoustic night, which had us create a poster to promote an event in Huddersfield posed an interesting place to look at for design inspiration. As I heard that it was an acoustic night out, I took the word acoustic and started to play on that the most out of the rest of the poster. The white lines dashing across the design whilst remaining in the projects colour scheme were there to form some resemblance to a guitars strings. Also, from what I had found when doing brief research into this topic, I saw that many posters akin to this had a similar skew on the typefaces used on the designs, which is where I got the inspiration for it. Within the letters themselves, I embossed them to get close to the effect found on guitars themselves - as many have lettering on them to name it, but the type is also raised off of the guitars surface. A couple of other experiments were done before coming to this outcome which can be found below;

Before being able to finish my design on the shown choice, I played around with the composition until it was balanced just enough on both the top and bottom of the page. Initially it was much higher than it is in the final outcome, but was moved down to compensate for the spacing at the bottom.

The second brief within the workshop package was the craft beer expo that required a promotional poster for the design. Being critical, I didn't like this design as the type wasn't working in my favour, even after further attempts I couldn't get the bend to look right. This is something that I plan on going back to re-try before the summative assessment. However, the premise of the design as a whole was to follow either a bottle cap or the design of a beer mat to establish a connection between the craft beverages and the poster design itself. This is evidence when looking at the main render of the design, as it should be apparent that it resembles the round shape of a bottle cap, and is very similar to many different beer bottle packaging designs.

And the final poster design of the session was to create something based around a favoured typographic designer of ours. So, I chose Craig Ward because he's the only name that came to mind within a few seconds of discussing the topic of the poster. As I state in the poster, his work and who he has worked for specifically is what drew me into the typographic designer in the first place. Ward is a very practical typographer who mixes physical objects with different typefaces to accomplish different means. There were other designers that came to mind when thinking of this later on, but I felt that his work is what stood out to me the most from my own selection of designers.

Exploring Geometry

Wednesday 12th October, 2016

Exploring Geometry

Exploring geometry, this session was interesting because we got to both familiarise ourselves with the adobe after effects platform whilst doing some interesting experiments. The transitions and animation effects that were shown to us can be quite useful because of its reference to future work. If we need to change between scenes with an interesting effect then I can cast my reference back to this workshop.

There will be more work created for this session as I do have an interest in the animation workshops provided in these sessions. Due to a need of commitment for the studio brief and the paper sculptures being created I there was a focus required. But, this could even be considered as a notion to go towards a stop-motion type animation including paper shapes, and using similar effects to those provided in after effects. Or even experimenting with things only achievable with a physical object.

After further considerations for other examples that I could explore, I sought to experiment with the shapes themselves, so rather than just focusing on the transitions for this example I worked with a shape. The sphere here is something that was distorted with some coding properties within After Effects. It is something that I have made that is similar to something that was taught in the first year of study, but that was using Cinema 4D so this made a new challenge for myself. Using the 3D software made available within the after effects suite I created this, moving along and reacting to the music that has been added into the background.


The third and final clip that I had made for this session was using the transitions again. Rather than just working with one of the shapes and not experimenting too much with it, I opted for a different example. This animation features a series of vectors that were created in Illustrator and added to After Effects. The vectors were then animated so that they would merge together after being on the screen for a few moments. It was all meant to be very fast paced and does not work in response with the music. That is something that I would look into at a later date probably. This was the most exciting version to create and formed some good results at the end of it.

'ZINES'

Wednesday 5th October, 2016

'ZINES' with Nick Deakin

This session brought an interesting type of design to my attention that I had not heard of before. Using 'zines' looks like an extremely good method of creating a publication for your content, all be it small. During the session we were first tasked to created a zine using just the words provided by Nick, and then for any further examples we'd have to create our own words. The exercise effectively pulled out my creative thinking processes by putting the words to the paper.

Something that I have managed to keep consisted through the examples shown is to keep the initial intention of a 'zine' true. The initial intention being that the pages need to be contrasting, at least in either detail or the amount of black in the image for instance. Here are the examples accompanied by their descriptive words;

Minimalist, update, like, share, switch, emoji, power, live.

Search, message, news, movement, communication, mail,

trending and mute.

After completing the first zine, which is the first image of those shown above, I decided to keep the images related to things you'd find on your computer or any devices; being sort of influenced by the cybernetic self brief. Because it was such an interesting context, creating a small publication that holds a sort of burst of information, or could do so, made it useful for the brief. This is the method that will be applied to my brief response in the studio module, making some interesting concepts.

Some further ZINES created in response this session can be found below;

Basics of Typography

Wednesday 28th September, 2016

Basics of Typography

The first session of the year for process and production was held by Aiden Nolan. In this first session we explored the InDesign software and where it's strengths lie in terms of typesetting and typography based pieces of work. With these areas being discussed, we went into the session in which would we do a few tasks throughout to test ones creativity with just a word itself or as a show of ingenuity towards how we designers can look at and change a typeface to portray a certain meaning.

This idea is taken quite literally into one of the tasks as it has you developing a response to the ways in which you can make a word form by using its base meaning. For instance the example shows "run" as "runnnnn" instead. Below you will find all of the designs created in response to this task that was set out, with other tasks being labelled and mentioned as per it is expected;