OUAN603 - Extended Practice: Rough Animatics

OUAN603 - Extended Practice:

Rough Animatics

OUAN603 - Extended Practice: Title Card & Logo Updates

OUAN603 - Extended Practice:

Title Card & Logo Updates

Seeing as we had to completely change the idea to "Art in 60 Seconds-ish", I thought it was appropriate to go back and sort out the title cards and logo and make sure this time that the logo was actually legible as last time the text was so small even an ant would struggle to see it without a magnifying glass.

This time I think the logo is a little better and actually has the correct title of the project on it. I chose a funky and modern font of sans serif type to make sure it was just that little bit easier to read and see. White stood out among the backgrounds better whereas dark colours were much harder to see, so I went with white as it was striking and obvious and complemented the brightness and business of the palette clock better.

OUAN603 - Extended Practice: Voice Acting Update

OUAN603 - Extended Practice:

Voice Acting Update

After sending out all of the scripts to each of the three voice actors that offered to help me with the project, I have so far only had consistent communication with Elisa, my female actor. Due to my trying to contact both males and hearing nothing back as of yet, Elisa has very, very kindly offered to take on the role of Narrator voluntarily. I am thrilled to hear that she's willing to help out both the female roles and now the narration as I understand she's very popular and travels all over the world, having a very tight time schedule.

We have been keeping in touch and she has confirmed that she will complete the voice overs tomorrow and send them to me in the afternoon. She asked if I would kindly return a favour by writing up a testimony for her website so that it would aid towards her getting a possible job offer tomorrow with a big company. I was more than happy to put in a kind word for her and give an honest and professional representation of the work she has done for my project and just how great her voice is.

- The Next Day -

Elisa sent me her voice recordings this morning and I have just had a chance to listen to them, edit them into the respective three files for each movement, and evaluate the work she has done for me. We have hit a few snags in the project plan as I was aiming to keep my animations under 60 seconds each, however, after Elisa had sent me the recordings of her voice overs (she did many takes and we decided that the one with the subtle accents was best as young teens need to be able to easily understand the voicing so we went with the least amount of accent emphasis), we found out that each animation with all three characters and the first part of narration would go well over a minute...

CONTINGENCY PLAN:

I have now decided, also for added humour and to make a good thing out of a project hiccup, to name my franchise "Art in 60 Seconds-ish". This will still keep the audience aware that it won't be massively long, whilst being funny about a problem and turning it into something good. I will redo my logos because of this and make the logo more obvious. Each animation will now hit around one minute thirty, but all are going to make it under two minutes easily I should think.

I have learned from this that voice acting, despite asking the actors (as talented as they are) to kindly keep it as fast as possible and to hit a specific time, it isn't always possible as accents especially take time to pronounce and work towards making them sound authentic. Otherwise, if she had rushed them, they wouldn't be understandable, and would make the sound awkward to listen to. I think the decision to extend the timing is okay, as I'm sure with a little bit of help and support from others, I will be able to make something I can be proud of. Besides, "Art in 60 Seconds-ish" sounds hilarious to me, and highlights that yes, problems do occur, but you know what? It's not the end of the world and life really is just one big game. Have fun. Go crazy. Exceed time limits. Hardcore. 

Impressionism by Elisa Berkeley
Dadaism by Elisa Berkeley
Surrealism by Elisa Berkeley

OUAN603 - Extended Practice: Art in 60 Seconds Logo

OUAN603 - Extended Practice:

Art in 60 Seconds Logo

I had a go at quickly putting together a logo for my title cards, however I really, really dislike this as it looks shoddy and badly done, even though it's obvious that it is Dali's melting clock. I might aim for a more minimalist and graphic-designy logo with blocky colour and shapes. I may even try a hand at graphical-textual cohesion by merging text in with the logo somehow.

After much playing about with logo creation in Illustrator, I eventually came up with something simple and obvious. I wanted to incorporate art into the logo somehow, and make sure it was bright and reflected a learning environment well. I didn't want to aim for anything too "professional" or "office"-looking as the audience is young teens and not businessmen or big media companies after something innovative and unique.

 

The logo now features an art palette as a clock, which pretty much sums up the animations easily. It is recognisable and simple, and features some text underneath in a modern and easy-to-read font. This was later changed as the black font wasn't very distinguishable from the dark and busy backgrounds of the title cards, so the logo with the white and simpler text on the title card blog post is the final design simply for practicality.  

OUAN603 - Extended Practice: Title Cards

OUAN603 - Extended Practice:

Title Cards

By using some of the textures I scanned in last week, I am attempting to put together some appealing little title cards for each of my animations. I don't have the expertise of a graphic designer, but may be able to ask Rosy for advice on how they look and how to make them look neater and more professional. I aim to use part of an image/painting/art piece from one of the artists in each movement.

Firstly, I am using a section of "San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk", 1908 by Claude Monet. Copyright-wise, I am able to use a piece for the title card so long as I credit the original source and intend to keep my animation profit-free. The original source for this piece is from "rdjess": https://rdjess.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/love-it-or-hate-it-impressionism/

I will overlay this onto one of my textures and then create the text and graphics to complete the card. I want to keep the colours of the image but make sure that isn't too recognisable. The texture will be the main thing that you see. I aim not to put too much worrying into the title cards as they'll only be on screen for a few seconds.

For the Surrealism title card, an image from Dali has been used but has had the colours inverted to create a sense of weird and wacky. The painting is 'Les Elephants' (1948), and the original source is http://www.dalipaintings.net/elephants.jsp. I used this image as not only does it depict a very surreal environment and is by one of the major artists in the animations, but the layout is clean, showing two creatures either side of the painting with a nice blank space in the middle which makes room for text. I didn't want to overclutter the title cards so this seemed a nice image to use.

My logo was originally going to be based on Salvador Dali's melting clock mixed with a bit of a colourful twist, but after a few attempts at a logo, I decided that I wanted something a bit more clean and punchy. I eventually decided on a logo that I put together, a clock palette. Inspired by the clocks I had seen across the web, I thought it would be more teen-friendly and more suitable for an educational classroom look.  

I spent a couple of hours playing around with title cards and layouts. I thought logically about how the stopwatch would appear from the right-hand side of the screen, so any text on the titles would need to be clear and not obscured by the animation. However, I didn't like the idea of the text being left aligned and realised that if by keeping everything central, it would allow the audience to focus on the titles completely as the titles are only on screen for a matter of seconds so any unusual layouts should be avoided. I created them in a way which allows the stopwatch to be seen whilst keeping the text clear. 

 By amalgamating my own textures, logo, and text together along with a couple of background images taken from sources listed above, I was able to make a fairly appealing looking set of title cards that were straight to the point, reflected each movement in some way, and set the scene and atmosphere for each animation. I used a fairly floaty and pretty font full of pattern for the Impressionism card, a font that was striking, modern, and straight (but non conforming of the German blackletter fonts, which signaled war and were used by Hitler) for the Dada card, and a simple straight type with an 'arrowed' I for an accent (symbolising going 'up into the mind' where dreams and psychoanalysis comes from) for Surrealism. The colours are also reflective of the movements - bright and contrasting for Impressionism, brown and collage-like for the war-repulsed Dada, and blue, striking and inverted for the weirdness of Surrealism.

OUAN603 - Extended Practice: Progress Report

OUAN603 - Extended Practice:

Progress Report

The date is the 7th of March and despite me thinking I was two weeks' worth of work behind due to a  horrendously long and contagious throat infection (meaning I had to be quarantined and kept indoors for the best part of two weeks), I'm actually massively on track! I've been using an app on my phone called Trello that allows you to create boards filled with tasks and transfer them from "to do" and "finished" sections, keeping you on track. It was shown to me by one of the fellow first years and I've loved using it for personal and college projects. Here is a rough list of tasks I have to have done by the 17th:

Grace's Extended Practice Organisation Board

You can keep up to date with all my progress easily by taking a gander now and then to see what I've been up to. I have a board for all my projects so I can keep myself well organised. I wish I had this app in first and second year as its actually really enjoyable to use.

So far, I am waiting on my three voice actors to get back in touch with me with their finished sound files. I gave them the deadline of the 20th of March at the latest (17th ideally for the presentation but 20th in case they had any hiccups with equipment or the scripts etc.) and will get back in touch with them in a week to check on how they're doing and to make sure everyone is happy with the project.

Until then, I will work on putting together my nine character puppets, the title cards, DUIK tests, and if I have time, possibly having a bash at the initial stopwatch clicking animation as this will be done frame by frame, digitally drawn, and would be nice just to get out of the way before starting the full three animations.