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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I got a hell of a lot done today, very happy. I have started to make my video, I have even cut a few scenes from it, as when looking back at my story board I actually noticed I would have two title frames and then my information, which doesn't make any sense. So far it is going very well. I expect I should have the whole thing done in roughly a week. Hopefully less, just currently trying to balance all my projects. I have also started to plan for my ViewBug Challenge and have decided to make awareness of consumerism, in my portraits. I have pretty much one really good idea at the moment, So hopefully I will get around to doing that either tomorrow or even Thursday. I have started to sketch out new characters for my monsters deck of card series, not too sure how they are going to work out, I can see me just going full blown in your face colours. But I still really want to experiment with this style first. I have also been looking more into how to design my business cards I now have four different options. 3 of the options are to go for the square business card. Here are the scene shots of them below. I'm not too sure about adding the landscape image. although I have to admit I really like the bottom two scene shots. I asked my boyfriend and my flat mate which they preferred. Which I do with most of my work, and they are usually pretty spot on and say the same thing. I got two completely different answers.... feeling a little stuck however I do plan on asking others, so this isn't the end of the world. I will let you know what I decide in the end. Or please leave a comment below on which you think I should go for. That's all from me today.
So today, I have been very productive, I have created backgrounds for my video., trying to create different ways to show my information from what I have learnt from my surveys. I have been doing different back grounds for different topics within my video. Such as how to eat right, how to drink on the cheap and how to budget money. I have been trying to create a specific look for each topic, I am actually very impressed with myself, not to blow my own trumpet. Although so far I think this is looking good. I am going to take tomorrow sort of off from doing my main project and start doing sketches for card project. I also really need to concentrate on my ViewBug projects, as I am hoping to experiment with some portrait photography. I am also going to look up music for my video and get my info exact. SO that meaning on Tuesday I will be able to get really stuck into working on the video :)
That's all from me today. 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 did a bit more work to my sketch books, I am now on my 3rd sketch book for my main project which is crazy, especially because with my first sketch book I actually added more pages to it before just buying a new sketch book. It has taken me only two weeks to fill one sketch book for my main project, and to be honest I feel like I am just getting started with my project and really getting down to business of what I want to do, so it's pretty crazy and I can now say I definitely feeling the pressure starting to mount. This is the last week of April, I have pretty much only have a month to get my work together and 6 weeks to actually hand in my work to find out if I am graduating with honors or not. So the above our my sketch books for just my main project. Besides my main project, a mini project was emailed to me. There are some students in my class taking part in New Blood, I have spoken about New Blood previously, it must have been just before Christmas. They have an idea for the end of year show to sell some tea towels with Communication Designs portraits on them, just like the ones you would have done in school. I originally just took a photo of myself and started to trace it in Illustrator. But the more and more I started to draw it, I got bored of it. I mean this is a graphic design course, I can be very serious about things, but myself taking a photo, I have actually been told off by friends mothers for not taking a photo properly... These are sort of a small range of photos of me not being very serious and so on.... So here are the images I originally created from for the tea towel task: These pretty much are Illustrating my "Resting Bitch Face". I have to admit I look kind of scary, and I do like to think of myself as a nice person, obviously I'm a little mental, but a good mental. So below is the face I pretty much pull in most of my "Selfies" on Instagram. You can follow me on Instagram: https://instagram.com/craicin_designs/ I have to admit as well, because this is going on a tea towel. There is no point in doing shading, this needs to be all block colours and lines and they have to be black and sharp, so that they can pick up on all of the lines here to print on the tea towel. I asked my boyfriend and my best friend which they preferred out of all three. Both chose the 3rd saying it looks very like me.... not too sure if I should be insulted or Yay!. I think I am going to go with the image above.
With this exercise however, I actually thought it was really good and I actually really enjoyed it. It cut out a lot of the usual things I would do and just went straight in with the basics. I actually really like this, it's simple yet really effective. I'm very happy, this is something I think I will be doing a lot more of, it have been a while since I have done this kind of line drawing. That's all from me today, tomorrow I will hopefully have a lot more Illustrations for you with doing my info graphics 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. Well it has been forever since I last blogged. I have been a busy bee as well as going home for the Easter holidays. I have been designing a logo for this website so I can get my business cards printed and what not. There will be even more work added to the website. I am now into my final 2 months of university, which is a very scary thought. Here is some of my characters for my student help guide, these are not finished yet, but they are a work in progress: from the top left, we have the hungover student, Hipster student, Sport student, Geeky student, Protester student, and Ghost student. I have also been researching the most expensive cities to be a student, in within the UK. I have already gotten 125 responses to my survey. Which is fantastic! I have a lot of information from current and past students. A lot of students have found to have the same problems and have solved them in the same ways. I have a lot more research to do, but I don't want to get so caught up with research that I am not really doing a lot of work. Which to be honest, is pretty much why I haven't blogged in a really long time, no pretty pictures to show and what not. On another notes with my logo project I have been experimenting with different colours for my logo. See below logos: I also really like the idea of having my logo be a gif that goes through all of these different colours. I am not too sure if I should continue with that idea, but I think Ill do it anyways and see how it looks. I have also been thinking about how to have this website. As I do love the amount of colours within it, I may keep this, but I would like to change the layout a little more, so the plan is to hopefully do Code Academy. I will also be able to create a website for my main project also.
I haven't managed to get much of my playing card project done, however I plan to get really stuck into all of my projects and knuckle down in my last few weeks of being a student. That's all from me today |