Week Nine: Animation Station!

Finally! The animation is done! I got my boyfriend to host it on his website so I could have a good quality version of it on the net. Click here to witness its awesomeness. And here's my Artist Statement:

"Ever since I learned what Kinetic Typography was, I wanted to try my hand at creating it. I chose a more simplistic cartoony style of presenting my animation because that style appeals to me and I thought it would be something I might actually be able to do (having no experience in Flash), versus very detailed work. The content came to me when I realized that there are things I both like and dislike about Toronto but still consider it home. My goal was to outline this in a kinetic typography animation so I might remember how I felt only a few months of living here and show other people my perspective.

My target audience is anyone interested in living in Toronto or who already lives here and wants a different perspective of the city. I tried to mention as many different aspects of the city as possible so the animation wouldn’t portray itself as a student perspective. Besides the mention of Ryerson, I think the different factors could apply to anyone. I made the script somewhat humorous so people wouldn’t take my words entirely seriously; reminding them that everyone has different opinions.

I had to really hone my Flash skills with this animation. I had at least made sure to write and record my script ahead of time, plus draw storyboards, so I could get straight to work on the animation. I ended up making a ton of movie clips inside movie clips because I wanted different elements to move and repeat while other things were going on on stage. Motion tweens and action script were used heavily throughout. I used masks as part of some of my movie clips to make words appear/disappear. I had to employ my Fireworks pen skills once more to trace the Toronto city hall logo, a maple leaf and ram horns. I even used a guide to move broken apart letters in a word to make it look like they were blown in the air. All this was done while using my typographic knowledge of fonts and my awareness of design concepts like repetition in certain movie clips, contrast between good and bad elements, alignment of my text and drawn images, and proximity, mostly in how many words I put on the stage at one time.

When I found out some of the things I wanted to put in my assignment weren’t as easy to animate as they were to storyboard, I really had to get to know Flash to accomplish my goals. I anticipated a lot of work, but I was still surprised with how much time I had to put into the assignment to achieve what I wanted. I actually made my button screens last so I had to make a new scene for my opening frames. I also realized to make an existing movie clip a button with different elements; you need to make a duplicate of said movie clip. I had a lot of problems with certain movie clips within movie clips looping which made me realize I had to put action script to make the movie clips stop after one run-through. I debated over having background music and background images, and decided to go with music but not images, because both would be too distracting, but the music would add a new layer of mood to the piece whereas I thought imagery would be too busy or confusing.

It was really application of knowledge from the tutorials and expanding on it that accomplished this project. Without the basic knowledge I never would have known where to start, but without the gall to move forward and experiment I wouldn’t have gotten the result I was looking for. In the end, I’m proud that I managed to turn out a product that is similar to and improves upon my storyboard models. I even ended up with animations where I hadn’t planned them originally! I worked really hard on this animation and I think it paid off."

I scanned in my storyboards so you can see what my initial ideas were. Here they are:

(Click to see them close up)

Week Eight: Please don't stop the music... videos.

We got to choose between one of three topics to discuss this week.

But since I didn't particularly feel like discussing and linking you to scopitone videos (reeeally cheesy early music videos, in case you're curious), and I'm not exactly a big... purchaser of CDs, therefore not knowing a lot of album covers (I know, I'm horrible), I thought this week I'd talk about music videos and why costs and styles have changed over time.

If you look at early music videos like Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody:

The production quality was nothing to write home about. In fact, in the early days, music videos were virtually unheard of, so when they started off of course things were a little rocky. Mostly just band members singing the songs and miming playing their instruments. Boring by today's standards, but probably why they were relatively inexpensive to produce. All you needed were the band members, their instruments and a few fancy light effects to get the early music video audience excited.

Let's look at the first video that played on MTV:

Video Killed the Radio Star. Here we're starting to see a lot more of visual effects (the lighting on the singer, the explosion of the radio), more elaborate costumes and settings, hiring actors other than the artist's themselves to be in the video. I don't know how much this cost to make, but I'm guessing it was the most expensive video ever at that time. Without even the actual production costs, hiring the people responsible for them probably cost more than a pretty penny, that's for sure. It's fitting with MTV's style of fast paced quick-editing energetic motion.

As music videos became more mainstream in the 90s we saw the beginning of music videos with actual plots in them and outrageous production quality. As an example, here's a classic from my pre-teenhood N Sync with Bye Bye Bye (embedding diabled by request on all of them, weird!). Right off the bat we can see how much money was spent on this just by looking at the marionette effect they used on the band. The video then proceeds into flashing through about five different sets with lots of different things going on like choreographed dance sequences, dangerous stunts, weird lighting effects, and driving fast cars. All while telling a story of a guy escaping a girl who plays games with him. Videos still continue in this strain of flashy expensive looking story-telling but with the advent of YouTube, home-made looking videos are getting more popular.

We go to OKGo as an example of one of the first big hits using this style of video with Here it Goes Again (they did one before this, but I like this song better):

While their dance sequence is choreographed, it was apparently done by one of the band member's sisters and they filmed it themselves. This cut all costs down to zero, still with an original (if not tongue-and-cheek) approach to music video production. Up and coming bands have a hard time footing the bill for outrageous costs of videos like N sync's we just saw, so YouTube is a great way to get themselves out there. This of course, brings up the issue of whether it's more important to have publicity or to make money, which has been a question since people started sharing files on the internet.

It's been largely because of advances in technology and interest in the medium that music videos have progressed the way that they have. Video may not have killed the radio star if things hadn't progressed the way they had.

On that cheesy note, check back in a few days when I post my animation assignment!

Week Seven: Feel the Motion of the Ocean!

Okay, so I stole my title from a Hairspray song, sue me... Please don't actually.. I just didn't know how to go about introducing Motion Graphics, the topic I decided to discuss further this week.

Motion Graphics is a bit tricky to discuss overall so I decided to focus in more on movie/TV show branding and title sequences, which is mostly what we talked about in class.

Movies and TV shows are very brand-oriented. You wouldn't think it to watch them on their own, but if you've anticipated the release of a new season or flick, you've probably taken in more movie brand marketing than you'd think! The idea behind a movie or TV show brand is to make the audience associate an identity with your show/movie through repeating imagery and sound related to it.

Why is branding important to a movie or TV show? Think about it, how many movies have you been to where you haven't had a pre-conceived notion of how it was going to be? I can't even remember, it's been so few. A number of factors affect how you think of a movie/TV show: who's acting in it, who's directing it, who wrote it, what genre it is (or is marketed as, because they're not always the same!) and what other people say about it. And this is before you've even seen it! A filmmaker can choose to market their film by showing you exactly what it's about to try to appeal to a specific target audience, or they can tease you (hence coining the term 'teaser' for initial movie trailers) into going to the movie/watching the show to find out more.

Title sequences are the the last influential factor on your perception of a movie/TV show before the show itself. It's usually the time the filmmaker either sets the record straight or leaves you wondering and wanting more. In the case of a series of films, it's the time when the filmmaker is trying to reiterate and emphasize the brand so you continue to associate with it. Just look at opening sequences from movie series like James Bond:

or any Guy Ritchie:

film where the design elements and music style (sometimes tune) are repeated to the point of being almost identical per movie, so that there's no possible way you *couldn't* associate them (do you think all the different Bonds had to practice that walk?). You'll know in the first minute of the movie if it's a James Bond or Guy Ritchie film if you'd ever seen one before. The repetitive elements (Hey! A CRAP theory!) are a big part of sustaining brand identity in series.

This works the same way in TV series, even moreso because you'll be seeing the same title sequence every week, waiting for your show to start. This has posed a particular problem for the people who make these shows, because they either have to come up with something entertaining and memorable, change it enough (but not too much!) to keep it entertaining each week or simply choose not to do it at all. Because attention spans are getting shorter these days, more and more shows are opting out of the title sequence so they can get straight to the action (Heroes for example). It almost seems like we're reverting back to the days before Saul Bass (one of the first title sequence creators, see: Psycho) to a time where we don't need title sequences.


Personally, I loved rocking out to the Third Watch credits

back when this show was on, and I'm sad to see so many titles going extinct. That's not to say that the "straight-to-the-action" openers are bad See: Dark Knight,

I know it's bad quality, but you should have seen it by now anyway), just different. Some TV shows like ER switched from having full-fledged credits

to Heroes-esque openings; making me feel like I lost something in the process. You don't realize how much the credits of a show affect your enjoyment of it until you have to go without.

What exactly do title credits do for a show/movie, besides reinforce a brand identity? They can set the tone of the flick, like this Dawn of the Dead one does. I love this title sequence because it takes a lot of existing stock footage mixed with fabricated footage adding a touch of typographic elements and putting it all to a Johnny Cash tune to create an eerie feel for the film. Horror/thriller movies usually have great title sequences to produce this exact effect; they want to give you a certain feeling (usually creepy-crawly) before the movie's even started. Title sequences can also provide a backstory or foreshadowing. In the case of Se7en it does both!

I don't want to give too much away, but the imagery you're seeing is of a person you don't meet until the last quarter of the film, and the backstory to some of his character. On that note, another thing title sequences can do is introduce you to the characters. In Guy Ritchie's films, this is essential since he always has at least 10 major characters you need to try to remember throughout the movie. They can also just confuse the hell out of you like Fight Club.


I've given you a lot to chew over in this blog post, so let me summarize. Branding in movies/TV shows is important to develop an audience relationship with a film. It can be achieved in many ways, but a large part is in opening title sequences. Title sequences can be repetative in terms of movie series and TV shows, or they can not exist at all, to better serve the attention deficit audience. Title sequences do more than just provide a brand for a type of film/show, they can also set the tone, provide backstory or foreshadowing, introduce characters, or just be mind-bendingly confusing.

I bet you won't be able to watch a movie/show without noticing its title sequences (or lack thereof) now!

Till next time!

Week Six: To Put It In My Own Words...

My next assignment in this class is an animation/interactivity project using Adobe Flash (you know, the one that makes all the fun cartoons and games you play on the internet). I ended up changing my idea a lot, but the basic style remained the same.

I'm planning to do Kinetic Typography. Remember the Superbad animation from Week Four? That's the type of thing I'm going to do. I have some more examples if you want to check out what I mean: (Disclaimer: some contain profane language)

A lot of those are probably done by full-time animation students who are super pro at Flash, so don't expect the same level of skill out of me in a few weeks. I'll do my best though.

There was an example of kinetic typography shown in class when we talked about the animation assignment. This kind of bothered me because I wanted to do kinetic typography before I was even in RTA. My inspiration was my boyfriend's kinetic typography he did to a song by Slipknot (you can find it here). He showed me everything I know about typography until this class so I owe a lot of influential credit to him.

I've done lots of research on it, mainly through YouTube videos and watching my boyfriend make them. He uses After Effects mostly, but he says it's relatively straight forward (once you have the know-how) to do it in Flash. I'm going to have to master the shape and motion tweens to make it as effective as I want. There's no question that I'm going to be asking a lot of questions to make sure I do everything properly.

Since the content has to be my own, I decided to write a monologue about moving to Toronto and my impressions of the city. I wrote out a script and drew some storyboards of my keyframes over the long weekend, and while I think it'll take a lot of work, I have faith that I can get this done.

Check back in a few weeks to see how I did!

Week Five: I'm a Poster Girl for DM!

You miiight be getting tired of my pun-tacular blog titles, but I'm not going to stop. I'm silly like that.

This week our first assignment is due! We had to make either a poster or CD cover, all imagery had to be our own and it had to be done on Adobe Fireworks. I decided to do a poster, which I suggest you view the full size of when I post this image, since there's a fair bit of detail. (ETA: So Blogger killed the quality a little bit, so imagine this looking a lot sharper than it is in full size.) I worked really hard on it, so let me know what you think! I also have to post my Artist Statement, so if my language sounds a little formal, that's why.


Artist Statement
"My concept was to combine two real organizations – Pride Week and Casino Rama – and tie them together using a fictitious event. My goal was to make the poster look like a legitimate advertisement for both real organizations and represent both groups respectively. I researched both organizations on their websites and used concepts from their identities to model my poster. The fictitious event was a week of pride themed gambling events; therefore I found it to be the most realistic way to tie the two together.

My target audience is people 18 and over with an open mind who would be interested in gambling games with a Pride Week theme. Due to the nature of a casino, which legally states that people under 18 cannot partake in gambling, I eliminated a younger age group. Also due to the nature of Pride Week, a week celebrating diversity in sex and sexuality, people of a more conservative nature would probably not take a liking to the types of events surrounding the celebration, eliminating the close-minded individual.

My use of the symbol of the rainbow for Pride tied into my use of typography and repetition because I repeated the rainbow colour several times, in both imagery and text colour. I employed typography through using fonts that resembled those used on the organizations’ websites respectively. Repetition was also used to bring emphasis to the dates both at the top and near the bottom of the poster. I used alignment and proximity to emphasize the important text at the top as well as to contrast the writing in the bottom with the image of the dice. I also used contrast by using white text versus the rainbow coloured text and the pink background. I used the pen, rectangle, text and subselection tools as well as strokes and fill to edit my vectors in Fireworks. I used the lasso tool and feathering tools to edit my JPEG images in Fireworks.

Initially I had the poster split in half with a black background on top and pink on the bottom, with the dice top centre and text and rainbows near the bottom. I did not think this was an effective way to get my message across because there was no text at the top, where the eye is drawn. I removed the black background and decided to use the one colour (pink) for the background and arrange text at the top. I wanted to have minimal text opposite the dice but also wanted to communicate more than URLs, therefore I decided to surround the dice image with text. I had to use the pen tool to surround the image and convert text to a path to achieve this, allowing me to use a larger font size for the URLs.

In creating this poster I learned a lot of software techniques and put my knowledge of design concepts to use. I thought objectively about my piece and assessed it from a viewer’s perspective to give me incentive to try new things and change parts of my design. I believe the piece met my original objective because I was influenced by the design of the organizations’ websites, and made the event look realistic. I think my poster successfully addresses my target audience with my use of bright colours, interesting imagery and unique text. Overall I surprised myself with how much I learned and how I used that knowledge to improve my design."

I'm also supposed to write about what I learned from the critique I got in class, but I my class isn't until tomorrow, so I'll post about that after I have it.

Yay!