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
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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: I have done so much work today and I am actually still working away after I write this post. So I have designed a few new bits and pieces for my surveys: So the 2nd image is simple, but I actually really liked how I gave the answers a facial expression. I also tried my hardest to have a the scales of all the heads to the correct proportion of the percentage I got from my surveys. The rest of my surveys I kinda felt because I want to make a small video of my findings and give people the results of my surveys. I think sticking with pie charts and graphs will go a long way, although they are traditional I think this will make more of an impact. So here are just some of my pie charts that I made. very simple, all the info is there though, now down to real buisness. and start designing what I want to do for my video, so here are a few images from my sketch book on how I have been designing so far: So one thing I am noticing about this is half way through drawing everything up, suddenly I get a new idea and I want to move things about and change my layout. This is where I have gotten so far with designing my video, I am getting nervous and excited about continuing on and actually getting this made. I hope I get everything I want done on time for hand in, as I have said before I have used After Effects, however it has been over a year since I have used the program. So yea, thats all from me today hopefully Ill have a bit more colour and things to show tomorrow.
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. I have missed another day of blogging due to illness, I was so determined to go to uni yesterday, despite feeling unwell. I got ready, got the bus and began to feel worse. I got three stops away from my flat, got off and walked back home. I have to admit, I am so happy I got off and went home when I did, as I got so much worse. I did however manage to get a few illustrations of my cupcake done yesterday for the diamond suit. Although I have to admit, these aren't brilliant and my heart really wasn't in it. I just felt so ill but I wanted to do what I said I was going to get done yesterday, done. There is a lot of different variations of the same sort of design, there are at least two designs here that I really like and I want to use in my final designs, such as the 1st cup cake on the 2nd row and the very pink cupcake also on the 2nd row. I also really like the elements of the very first cupcake. This cupcake was actually the last cupcake I made of this set before I really started to take a turn for the worse. These cupcakes are in no particular order, just the order that they have been uploaded on here in. Today I still feel very much under the weather, so I have decided to continue with my cupcake design suit. finishing off the diamond suit and continuing on to the spades and clubs suit. So, I have finished the whole set of cupcake cards. It took me a little while, I started on the spades and clubs and got a little confused on what I was doing, so I looked up chocolate and coffee cupcakes for inspiration, warning this may make you hungry: So here are all of my designs from today with the club and spades suits: So with the coffee and chocolate cupcakes as my inspiration, I created all of the above, there are of course some that I prefer to others. But I am just so happy t now have two different themes of cards pretty much done. Here are the finals, the following orders and in threes, So they will be in the order of King, Queen and Jack: So yea, these are my cupcakes, of course a few need wee tweaks, here and there. Over all very pleased with my results. I am hoping to continue on with my cards, my next theme will be monsters. I have previously spoken about maybe merging cupcakes and monsters together.
Tomorrow I am going to continue on with my main project. I am going to go back to the drawing board with the website and really draw out how I want everything to look. Then I am going to experiment other website builders to see if I can really recreate the look and feel of what I want my website to look like. I am also hoping to go out and do some photography, depending on weather and hopefully feeling a lot better tomorrow also. 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. OK, So I again forgot to blog yesterday, I have to admit I had done a lot of work yesterday I just completely forgot. Today was no different, although I have gone back to my cards project making cupcakes and researching cupcake designs. So below is some of my research, I hope it makes you as hungry as I am! So first of all what I really like is that, most of these cupcakes are unbelievable looking, I don't have to worry too much about the design being believable looking or not, as the things people can create with cakes and cupcakes is pretty brilliant to be honest. Here is one cupcake I made last night, I have to admit I'm very happy with this: There is still a lot of things I would like to add and change about this, I also have a slight problem with making cupcakes looking masculine and feminine. So I have saved this image as my Queen of Hearts, but I may end up changing this to possibly being the Jack of Hearts.
On a separate note, I have been doing more research into my main project. I have previously looked into the most expensive cities in the UK. However, I was concerned that I didn't see my own university city showing up, as it is incredibly expensive to live here in Aberdeen. So I looked up one of the main private student accommodation companies prices. I went through every city writing down the new prices for 2015-2016. I have previous lived with this company, looking at the price that I paid per week when I was there in 2012, to the prices for next years students. The price has gone up a clear £30 a week, that's pretty much an extra tenner per year that the rent goes up. This was also at the time the cheapest student accommodation available, what is scarier, is that this still seems to be the case, even though the prices are going up. Within the list of cities the student accommodation has housing. I looked at the prices of the cheapest accommodation within ever city, out of the 20 cities I looked into Aberdeen was #14 in the cheapest, Sheffield was the top for cheapest student accommodation offered with this company. What my research is showing me is that, although the government says that higher education isn't just for the rich. The reality is that it truly is going back to those old ways, this may not be due to just tuition fees. But companies like private student accommodation, are exploiting students. This makes it harder for students who are not as well off as others to study away from home. My project is to help students, by giving advise on how to save the pennies and still have a full university experience. The advise I am giving is all from my surveys from past students and current students from all over the UK. I am still looking into my own research and have even looked at cheapest cities to live in judging by the price of pints. Not an exact science, but still good to know. That's all from me today. 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 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 finally got talking to a tutor. I am starting to get my survey questions drafted, which I will not deny, took me a good while to do. After speaking with my tutor, I realized that I was still being too broad with what I wanted to ask, and have to bring the whole project back to what I have been doing, mainly all about money. So, I am at the moment, toying with the idea of creating a book, website , leaflet or what not. On finance and money issues with students. Possibly creating a themed looking book, leaflet, website or what not. So, once my tutors check over my survey questions, it will then go out and I will get real experiences from other students, as tips and advice for new/future students. I also went on a hike today, I attempted to take more underwater images. This time at the beach, rather than rock pools. Most images weren't successful, however I did manage to get a few good images. I plan to continue on with this theme, just as experiments. I am hoping to do get more and more successful images. As at the beach, I did find it very difficult to get many images to work. I also feel I need to invest in wellies.
That's all from me today |