The brief

Rationale:

Action plan - I beleive that this action plan is a great little contract which we are both confident with and are sure that neither of us will have to get our suing books out.. well yet


Good brief - we chose this brief die to the Economics the final product/ products will not be as expensive to produce as say the merchendise for the Hovis brief.
There is a lot of space to take a wide approach with this, all though they want one thing they havent stated a certain way to do it, of course this can be a bad thing as it means they don't know what they want. We wouldn't have chosen it if we were working independently I would of happily chosen the monster munch brief. We believe that it has Most achievable outcome and that we have a good chance of winning as well as it feels great to have a hands on approach to something after the digital brief in the last module.

Bad brief , This was the cartoon network brief, the problems this brief had was they were asking for a hell of a lot, the reason we didnt choose it is due to the fact it was much more after effects related and looked to be a real digital approach to this module which neither of us wanted. We found out that cartoon network are very broad with what they want, and who they want it to relate to.

Overall I think Anna and I have chosen an interesting brief to get us back in the swing of things in the hand rendered world of design, as well as it being a brief we are both confident with, so confident that we can get on with other briefs around it without having a panic attack.

Evaluation

In this module I believe that knowing the audience was vital to developing my work appropriatly. I began this by looking at different Idents and different channels also looking on different sites such as ESPN and NBA. By looking at these things I discovered how I wanted to approach my subject, the tone and audience.


Throughout the project I have done quite a bit of development although I believe I could of done more, I think that experimentation has worked to my advantage on this project and helped me get the tone and approach I wanted. However if I had the chance to reproduce this, I think that I would try a lot more test pieces on my final video, and I would deffenitly be more ambitious with my DVD functions and contents, I wish I had documented some of my storyboards propperly but I hadn't and lost the work which is my fault and I should of learned from it prior. As regards to the introduction I think it hit the tone I wanted and I am happy with the outcome, Although I can see many lines of improvement that I could take due to learning how to actualy use after effects. In a way there is a lot I wouldn't change about the project because of the amount I learned on after effects and due to the stages I took I learned things that other people didn't actually know as others did. I struggled with this project but found it very rewarding as I learned so many new things.

I believe my final product met the brief although I do think I could of made it more interesting, I am happy that I learned about research for digital, storyboards are very vital to the production of any digital i dent or so. I believe that I could document my work so much better and in more order. I think if I design for digital again I could make it make a lot more sense as I actualy know what I am doing and where I would want to take it in future.

rationale

My project is about advertising a top ten introduction to a top ten basketball players. The audience is based around 21+ American sports fans and will be shown on ESPN sports channel, as it is an appropriate channel which is relevant to the target audience and the subject.

The scenes in my movie mean different things, the start is a basic introduction of the sponcers, channel and introduced the intro. From there the photography stop motion character resembles reality and when the ball is bounced off the screen it is linked into hyper reality where the model becomes vector and red to symbolize Air Jordan (M. Jordan brand) which is relevant to the top ten basketballers, this is done to show that anything could happen.

I chose the Travis Barker and Game remix of Dope Boys because of its relevance into the culture and inspiration most famous basketballers relied on in their youth when all they had was the hoops and a ghetto blaster. Hip hop has been voted the most relevant genre of music to fit with basketball. The travis barker remix of this is a lot more sharp and brings hip hop into urban hip hop rock which is much more relevant to 2010 and shows something new.

The video was around 32 seconds long for a reason (not that it is the easy way out of doing 50 seconds but) that the audience is more interested in things short and snappy, which is the kind of tone I wanted the film to have. The video is relevant to a lot of the old NBA commercials short snappy and in your face corny.

The video will be seen on April 15th 2010 at 7pm on ESPN as it is the day after the league finishes and the players can be truely assessed.

Technology is not reliable

Dvd setup finished, toast is loaded, the Dvd begins to burn. but wait? a pop up. oh. the mac has decided to reject the dvd mid way through burning, you have no money for another disc, it is 4:10pm no staff are available in the mac suite. you have 3.32 GB of folders you need to save in order to keep that 7 straight hours of work from losing files in the labyrinth that is your desktop. your memory stick is only 1gb. Oh no.

It's times like this that you should be happy that you are 5 working days ahead of yourself in order chaos like this happens. I think that this was as good an example of any about technology being a loser when you need it at the most. To my advantage I happened to save my work to the scratch disc and a member of my courses hard drive. just to be safe. But these times do give you a slight mental breakdown and have a little tantrum...

My father had by chance sent some money in my account for my reading week trip... which I had to break into to get a new dvd. I successfully uploaded the documents onto the dvd and tested it on a few different macs. This time it worked. I have learned that I need to have a back up plan no matter what is to happen just to fall back on in case a disaster like this happens.

Final storyboard

These are my final screen shots of my final movie. my movie was around 46 seconds long, but I believed that it was far to long for the kind of effect I wanted, which was fast and snappy! I don't think that I wanted a long video due to the fact most NBA introductions are around about a similar timeline to what I cut it to - 32 seconds. Which answers the brief.

In a crit it was mentioned about the change between photography to vector, which is what I expected would come up. However the reason I made it like this, is because I have been reading a lot of Baudrillard lately and thought about making a skip from one reality to another. Now it starts with a player in stop motion and from thumbnail 26 (the star) is where it skips from (one reality) to Fantasy, hence the player turning into a solid shape. This resembles the way that people look at that player and think. That could be anyone? Which gives the introduction a form of secrecy, which is exactly what I wanted in order to keep the top ten a secret to secure the videos.

TO DO

WRITE ON YOUR DESIGN CONTEXT, COMMENT POSTS IN MORE DETAIL.

WRITE ABOUT THE TIME LINE

WRITE ABOUT FRAMES

Layout

I tried to do my DVD on illustrator (the layout) which was just a bit of a bug as I had been staring at after effects all day and night, It seemed I forgot exactly what a pen was. However now I decided to get a sheet of A2 and just go crazy. Which was the best thing I could of done at that point in time. I believe doing this gave me enough confidence and an idea in what I want the design to look like. It was then time to develop my work. and play around with different ideas.

I need to get these videos for content of development:

here are the videos I am considering having on my interface. However I am not entirely sure about putting all of them on, perhaps three? Just because They are already included on my blog and have a statement explaining why I have chosen/ filmed them.

Working out

So I've been attempting to workout how my dvd is going to work but well its getting a bit annoying as when I seem to be getting somewhere with it it goes wrong?! But I have been working out what exactly I need to have and where:

Evaluation Focus Development part 2

So now my problem is creating the DVD setup. I have been focusing on an NBA All-star styled approach and plan to be using shades of red, white and blue as my colour palette to stick with the whole theme of my project. I have been looking at different dvd menus on my dvd's at home in order to get some kind of idea of how to approach this with my movie.

I basically have all the research I need form my last project as it is relevant and works as a set with my top ten. I think that I have worked out that I have worked out with my remaining time on the module I still have enough time remaining to produce a successful dvd interaction screen and still have plenty of time to sort out any glitches that it may have. I have roughly a week on this maximum all though I would like to of finished this by tuesday. I plan to evaluate this by asking other students their opinion on what they think of it and if anything could be changed/ be made better.

I need to make sure that my work is presented in a clear fashion where it can be assessed in a way that the tutors understand why it is in there and what I am trying to communicate/ how I got to the conclusion. I just had a thought that maybe I should change the background of the title menu after the 5 click idents are clicked as they have nothing in particular relevant with my final product. In other words they are basically like another dvd. I have identified a few problems already with lay out but I think as long as I draw it out and work out what is going to do what and what is going to go where it should be a lot easier. Then I have to work out what I think about the whole dvd designs. I really want them to match with the design on the case/ cover of the Dvd its self.

Visual

So I started to get a bit confused with all the lines shooting out everywhere and going places so I thought it may be easier to try a more visual approach. This is when I included a few boxes which showed what would be on screen, and when a certain button is clicked a line taking you to a new thumbnail (of what the next page would look like) and so on and so forth. Still a lot more needs to be developed and I need to analize my previous work in order to work out what will be going on the interface and what will just remain on my blog account.

Dvd case

For some reason I tried to be complex and smart and make the navigational layout on a disk.. This was just silly but yet again this is a more detailed concept of the layout from the dvd menu

Title

This is my first attempt at working out what is exactly going to be happening on the DVD now I know there is a lot that needs to be done/ thought about although. This basically is going to be the navigations.

with sound

I am very pleased with the final outcome of this video and believe it works very successfully in regards to being relevant to basketball and Espn/ the channel. I think that the sound and music choice was a great decision and compliments the footage that I produced very well. In all I think that anyone can watch that introduction and understand what the program is about and who has sponsered or been promoted in it.

almost there

As regards to designs I think that I have got to a point where I am happy to hand in this video introduction as my final although I still have enough time to change any glitches etc if need to be. All I need to do is add sound at the moment.

Dvd case

Nw with a bit of work I made my case seem a bit more interesting. I incorporated the ESPN logo at the top left and also added the basic information on the side such as the Module and year of brief. Also with the title of what the dvd is about.

On the back I added a star just to make it seem more american (stars and stripes) which I think looks really good, But could appear as though it is based upon Orlando Magic. I may have to get rid of it due to that.

I added dvd content in there and other standard dvd information I added logos of brands which the dvd is formed around and also a barcode with the module code added at the bottom.

I think that I am close to the final draft of this. and I believe it works really well.

I think I want to make a leaflet on the inside with information about my work on it if I have the time. I think that would be pretty cool and help out.

DVD case

So I thought as I am a Graphic Designer it may be a good idea to produce a case and Dvd photo. I have chosen to stick with the basic Allstar top ten legends title as it states what the dvd is about. and the colour scheme does also.

Now the fist dvd I made looks like this:

And I think it looks really cool but when it is linked in with my case it doesn't look exactly right. That was when I decided on testing what It would look like with my cover colour and I honestly think it looks really good and will look a lot better when printed.

I have chosen to do a title sequence on Basketball legends I believe that my subject is very clear with the strengths being basketball related material i.e. ball bouncing and animation also the colour tone being red white and blue, NBA.
I wanted the mood to be quite in your face and extreme, as I am advertising it for late night ESPN (American sports channel) but I did not want to cause any offence by being to extreme and corny. I believe the starting sequence work very well in telling you that it is about sports and most likely basketball. It then goes into more detail about what is being shown. I have decided to save the programs title for the end, In order to keep the viewer interested.

I wanted to advertise this to male sports fans, over 21’s, American audience which according to a lot of my I-dent and introduction footage to basketball games it covers. I believe the colour scheme is very American and pays compliments to the stars and stripes, Which they are very proud of.

I do think my video needs a bit more work such as audio and it also needs to be cropped as some of the footage is far too long and does drag on a little. I plan to shorten this video down and make it short and snappy at certain sequences to keep the audience entertained. Sports fans like excitement, thrill and surprise like in a match. Not like when watching bowls. Which is exactly what my video has to be.

222 layers of illustrations later

It was at this point that I had to take screen grabs from the 'short' film at certain frames per second. I then took them into photoshop and edited them there 'fairly fast' although the quality was awful. It was then when I decided that I would use illustrator and vector draw them all, and so I ended up hand drawing with the pen tool the out line of each individual frame and then uploading it on a new layer. I ended up with 222 layers which was then divided down into two illustrator files.
I believe they look quite interesting when all together and coloured in. speaking of colour, i used the colour red rather than blue or white because it resembled a visual link to basketball all fans have which is the famous Air Jordan black and red colour scheme.

Storyboard scannings (late)

I should of uploaded all these storyboards a long time ago, but I have been lazy and used my slow scanner at home as an excuse . Some of these thumbnails went as I wanted them to although I wasn't so sure about areas in some of them. I thought the colour scheme tied in very much with what I wanted to say and who i wanted to say it to although basketball player part seemed very long drifted in animating. Which now I look back on in association with my video it is. I just need to cut it down.

Up to date

So when I made the previous video I had forgotten about using movie and that we it was not allowed in our brief. In all honesty I couldn't of used it anyway due to the backing not being on Green screen. It was at this point I had to do something else.

The pre filter

So, in this video I plan to add a filter to my video in which it is two colour like the ipod breakdancing videos, hence why I am wearing an afro haha, I believe this went well although I believe it would of been a lot easier if I had someone to help pass me the ball and even record the video, but I didn't, I need to add some more features in after effects just to make it flow a lot better.

Documentation update ( should of done this sooner.)

My feedback stated that I had a great idea and concept but I should think about what I want to do a lot more and in a lot more detail, Which I agreed with, Some of the weaknesses were not relevant due to the fact the movie scenes were not yet created. However I believe certain areas of feedback were very useful and directed me in the right way. I decided at this point to ditch key elements in the movie and find an identity for who I was producing this Introduction for.

For some reason people enjoyed my storyboard illustrations, which was above my head as they didn't take exactly long, some suggestions were made that I should do the movement part in my film as these characters, which I strongly disagreed with. Due to the fact I thought the quality compared t the photography was far to much of a drastic change in quality, than to a vector change.

With taking my new idea of the faces

I incorporated it in such a way that it became very American and worked out very well and relative to the whole videos deliverables:

In essence I think that this at the end would make an awesome introducing title sequence in responce to what the programs top ten is.