Today I didn't get a much done as I wanted to. Although I am starting to make progress with my main project and starting to get my third and possibly final re-designing of the deck of cards done. Below is a quick sketch I did for one of my characters of monsters, my ghost. I think it looks very Tim Burton like, So I thought it would be pretty interesting to make all of my character stick in with this theme Here is some characters from Tim Burton's movies for inspiration.
I have also been sorting out the information that is going into my video. It is a lot more categorized, which is good. Tomorrow I am planning on just working on my video. I also have to re-write my little blurb that will go beside my work at the end of year show. Things are getting really hectic, I am hoping to also purchase my new business card tomorrow..... hopefully, I have asked a good few more people their opinions on which business card designs I should get. I have had a bit of a unanimous decision on which design to go for. I am still waiting on people to get back to me, but I think I might just go for it. Means they will be here before the end of year show. That's all from me today,hopefully more things to show tomorrow
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May The Forth Be With You! Today I finished off writing up my sketch books, I also researched unique portraits from my ViewBug project which the deadline is for next week. So here are some inspiration images I have been looking at. I really like how I have total freedom with this, I have a maximum of two entries. Some of these are pretty mental, like the top image on the right with the spaghetti and meat just randomly on models faces..... its a creative? yep... a little weird. Totally entertaining though. I really like the powder paint and the paint on peoples faces. I have been thinking about the possibility of putting in some things to do with consumerism, not too sure how that's going to work out, but I will be experimenting with it anyways.
I have also been looking at some of the art supplies I have. I have a lot of ink, so I might also incorporate that into this portrait challenge. I have also been looking for music to go with my video for my main project and been planning out what I want to do. I have things a little bit more sorted, however I'm not going to lie. I have been more thinking and planning one what to do with all my projects today. I am in that panic mode when I think of all the things I have to do, and end up sort of doing nothing..... eeeeek I am hoping to have more to show in the next following days. The pressure is majorly on! Everyone is beginning to run round like headless chickens. I have been super productive today in the hope that my head won't explode. So I have been re-designing yet another story board and started to design all of the elements for that so here is a few small things I did today for the video: So the first image, I thought would be funny to have, as he was designed to look like he is struggling to hold up a title within my video, I did however draw him with no reference and was more or less just messing about. The second image I used a reference for. I am still not too sure I like him, I think it is probably the structure of him as himself, as well as me being very picky. The third image is just to be a background image, I am however very tempted to give the queen a Mohawk, and a pint and maybe a cigarette. Although I don't want to over complicate the image, I may do this anyway though for a bit of fun and also, just to see how it would actually look. I wanted to get more of this done, although I realized I sill hadn't fully finished my cupcake cards. So I went back and made a little design for the middle of all my cards, then went in and added the suit symbols and the letters for each card, now officially finished. I am hoping to get started on the next theme which is monsters for my deck of cards. Here are all 12 of the cards: Going back through my research on the monster theme of cupcakes I can't help but think about my tea towel portrait I did of myself and how that might look for this theme. I will hopefully have sketches up of it tomorrow. As well as more images to show within my main project. I also have a ViewBug competition I am still to take images for. It is all rather chaotic at the moment. I have also been talking to tutors about the development of my small video for my main project. As it have been well over a year since I last used the program, so a wee refresher on the program would be amazing. I mainly need help with how I will export the video and how I will render it so it is small enough to go on the likes of You Tube etc. aaahhhh so many things. I'm going to leave it here for tonight, more info and more colourful things hopefully to show tomorrow
Today has been a pretty productive day. I have bought this domain name! Yay! I have an actual real website. Very happy! I have also been working more my main project with creating the website, I haven't gone back to the video since I last worked on it as I thought it would be smarter to make all the scenes and elements before diving in, and then just add what I need when I need it. I have been adding more elements to my website, such as information and my survey info graphics: Not terribly impressive, It has been a rather slow job and if I am honest. I am hoping the video will look better than the website. However it is early days still. That is it from me today, I am currently trying to get new characters drawn for the video, my graphics tablet is however being funny with me, which is a bit of a worry. But i am hoping it will sort it self out.
Oh I am also getting my business cards designed. I just have to figure out the exact information I want to put on them, here is a little sneak peek into what I may be getting printed: So today I have started to edit my video, So happy with it so far, although I am still getting to grips with the whole program again, also slightly freaking out about rendering the video and such :/ As I am planning to do this all on my little laptop. I'm not too sure if that's being silly or not, but if I at least get everything done on here and it doesn't work out. Then hopefully it'll be just a point of adding the images I already have and then just getting the movements and so on and noises. Here's hoping eeeeeeeekkkkk Google is my best friend right now over this. Here's a screen shot of me in After Effects, I have just started to edit the first 40 seconds of my video. So far this has been alright, although I haven't started to add any movements to the graphics so far. But this is literally just how I have gotten on today. I am hoping to get a good bit done tomorrow, although this is going at a snails pace due to making the graphics, then adding the graphics to the video, as well as looking up millions of tutorials. I am still optimistic but this whole process so far I am actually terrified. I'm not too sure how this is going to work out. Although I haven't yet put up a time limit for this video, I can't imagine it being any longer than 3 minutes. So currently this video is set at 3 mins, So I am able to cut the time, make the time longer if I need to. This may seem silly, But I am still figuring this whole thing out and I don't want to pressure myself.
So yea scary stuff. Short blog today, hopefully more to show tomorrow or at least more development of the video. SO, I am very excited to FINALLY! have my logo above being an animated gif! It took me forever to figure out the code of the website, although I have to admit, this had made me more interested in wanting to learn how to code websites. Which brings me to my main project, I ended up going to the website generator, "WIX" and I have to admit there are a lot more themes that I can really see working a hell of a lot better rather than the ones here on weebly, I signed up with them, and began to test out their websites, here are just some little snippest from the website on their themes: I have to admit, I truly just find their themes a lot more inspiring, I have also noticed that they are easier to use to design the page, I did have a wix page years ago when I was first starting to make myself a website, I remember the editing of the website was highly difficult. Due to the fact that if you clicked anywhere on the page, suddenly you had activated 50 different components at once and your stuck and cant do anything. Also going over everything that is in my main project, I am really worrying as I am now in my last year of university, there is nothing that really pops and stands out, so I was thinking about perhaps doing a video as well as some of my photography Ideas I had previously had. I need to get my act together and get my portfolio looking amazing, oh and try and get a job. So for the nest few days I will be playing about with different looks for the photography, as well as drawing out stuff to make a video with, I have decided to do a simple video, mainly due to my experience within After Effects. I would like to use purely animation and not so much film. I have taken inspiration from some of the Buzzfeed videos that have done videos to exactly the same way I want mine: I just like how a lot of the illustrations are very clean cut and they float in and out of the space and a lot of the animation techniques they have used in making this video, I have done before. Its just going to be a case of getting the illustrations to be the way I want them to be.
I also have to apologize for not posting yesterday, all the above was my thoughts, feeling and what I did yesterday, I simply fell asleep early and didn't get a chance to post. So today, I simply have been writing up my project to make sure everything is up to date, due to having a lot of projects, i usually will take one day out a week to just go back and write everything out and have a good think about the directions I am going in and just keep myself up to date, so for today I dont have anything really to show, I have just been updating all my work to make sure it's all up to date. Today has been a pretty productive day, I managed to get a lot done despite being pretty ill today. I have finally started to design banners and layouts for my main project. The poorly photographed image on the left was my original concept idea. I then finally put this into illustrator and created the image on the right. This has even developed further, as I realized the pound sterling sign, the euro and the dollar sign didn't really go together. Especially as my project is aimed at universities within the UK. So I went back in and made them all sterling pound signs, I then began to play about a little with the design as, I felt everything was sort of floating in space. So I added shadows, banners and back ground colours to see how this would look Here are my mini experiments above, I do really like them a lot, although I have definitely decided against the green background. I was thinking a long the lines of the little piggy bank being free and running around. It doesn't look like that at all in my mind. I then began to look at the white and blue banners. I wasn't even too sure why I had three pound coins on display, so I went back in again and changed the display a little. So as you can see my piggy bank is trying to be a horse, ready to charge into battle. Well that's what I get from it's pose, which I really like to be honest. So as you can see I have made it look as though the coins are going into the piggy bank, or flying out of it, whichever way people see it. I'm pretty happy with it, although I do realize how cartoon like it does look. I'm worried it may look even too childish. So I started to finally get started on making a website. I used Weebly as my website generator. I have to admit, when trying to make a website for a specific thing, weebly sucks. I was on here for about 3 hours playing around with themes, trying to get things to work, change menus, messing around with the HTML codes (which I know very little about). I have to admit, for the amount of work I was trying to accomplish today with the website, it really didn't happen. So now I am currently struggling with the idea of wither, just creating what I want the website to look like on paper rather than actually make the website, or go to a different website developer and try again. I am going to have a break from it for now, here is the home page however: Currently it's very bland looking, there is a lot of restrictions within the themes which makes it difficult if you don't know HTML code. I have been trying, and I don't easy give up on things. I think I just need to shower my brain over it and think what else I can do. I also added my little protest character, he was a lot bigger but again on weebly, I found that once I got it to a way I liked it. As soon as I saved it, He was twice as big and took up all the space of the text. Here is all my sketch books where I also seem to brain dump all of my thoughts and feeling over my project: So these are just the pages I have done in my sketch books today. Tomorrow, as I said I am going to be just concentrating on my Cards project to try and get the entire suit finished tomorrow, and possibly even start another suit, I would love to say Ill have the whole set done by tomorrow, but there are a lot of design issues that do come up, like I've seen today with the website, so we will see how that goes.
I am also hoping to get some of my ViewBug projects started on Thursday, mainly if the weather is nice so I can get some underwater photography.... in fact even just to have the water to be calm, that might help me out more. That's all from me today. So I have just being doing research and writing up my books today really. Today was a bank holiday in Scotland, so with uni being closed I have been working from home. I have been asking a whole bunch of different people which of my logo's they prefer. I have previously put up the different colours of my logo, a lot of people have more than one colour that they liked my logo in. I have finally managed to make it into a GIF. It looks soooo pretty. However, I have a feeling that the above image is not actually animated to show the different array of colours. (I'm currently viewing it as black) I have been having this problem with weebly for a while. I thought I had been just doing something silly, there is no reason for it not to work.... yet here I am, I have to admit it is really starting to bother me. I even tried to make it my banner to see if it just turned out I couldn't have it as a logo, and nothing. So yea, its annoying me, I keep getting on with other projects and working away. Although it is still in the back of my mind so every so often I suddenly find myself searching how to fix it on Google, looking through all of the Weebly help pages, trying to even re-save the logo in a different way...... notta.
So, I am now trying to discover or even just think is there a different way I could show this on my website, I am even planning to get business cards printed soon with all the different colours, so people who pick up my business card can get a colour they prefer. Ok, so besides my logo being a problem the rest of my projects are getting on pretty well, I have just had to kick everything up a gear. Especially with my main project and trying to get my side projects all up to the same sort of standard. Within my main project I am started to really gather all of the information I have and get it organized, I am actually planning on designing some info graphics once I post this blog and even a logo if this is to become a website. My ViewBug stuff has sort of been on a hold while I really get back to writing up all of my projects. Although I have already noted down some challenges I would really like to do before the deadlines, One of them involves getting to play with my face, with makeup and what not. So that's going to be pretty fun, I also have seen a few opportunities to again brush up on my underwater photography skills, so hopefully more things to show in the upcoming weeks. Card project, I am planning to take Wednesday out and just have that one day to design the Diamond cupcake suit, and who knows maybe even start getting on with the clubbs or spades suits. I am hoping to have all of the designs done by the end of the week, So i can get started on my Monster suit. I'm not too sure If I have mentioned it or not, I am planning to do this cupcake suit, then toying with the idea of merging cupcakes and monsters together. Not too sure if it'll even work but hopefully I'll have cute little twisted cupcakes. And of course, I have already ranted about my logo project. So, yea, that's all from me today, hopefully have more visual things to show you guys tomorrow. So I have been pretty productive, so productive I didn't even notice I missed another day of blogging. So firstly. My survey is done, so if your a student or a past student. Please, please, PPPPPPLLLLLLEEEEEEAAAASSSSSEEEEE do my survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/S2C6VY3 I have also finally completed my first set of cars in the traditional style. I have also been playing around with the idea of having little characters around the answers and advise I get from my surveys, here are some illustrations I have been looking up, for inspiration and ideas in general I have been trying to identify stereotypes that everyone sees at university. Like everyone knows a few of them and can even identify to these stereotype characters. I thought this would be interesting, although it's all still very early days. The character idea could end up being a total flop and not work at all. Hopefully I will have sketches to show tomorrow. That's all from me today.
So, today I have to admit I didn't get as much as I wanted to get done today, done. As it was my flat mates birthday, my self and another flatmate procrastinating away fro work. Decided to bake all day. Vanilla cupcakes, Jaffa cake cup cakes and heart shaped brownies. The heart shaped molds found at the back of the cupboard, thought it was hilarious and tacky, so we thought why not. I also made chocolate chip pancakes with bacon in between. We also decorated the the flat, and even had a little sing song. So yea, Happy Birthday Matt. I went back and decided to go back into the designs of my logo again, this time I just drew directly into illustrator and played around a bit, I didn't get these finished due to being taken away to bake goodies. Although, I do feel that I am getting closer to my final idea of my logo design. Just a little bit more work. I am going into uni tomorrow to hopefully get talking to a tutor about my main project and see their thoughts and opinions on the direction I want to continue on with. That's all from me today, Hopefully more to tell tomorrow.
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