Animation - Professional Project Review

Chris Jones "Ed" online video. YouTube. Google. 24 September 2014. Web. 6 May 2016.

This project's goal was to achieve a truly life-like head. They demonstrated a few different facial expressions, and even managed to tell a story. What makes this model best is the great use of texturing. They were able to get all the correct colors and the reflectivity gives an amazing illusion of skin. I would assume at the beginning where it shows the eye, the skin under it is bump mapped to look that way. In that case, the texture as far as smoothness and contrast in depth is also spot on. The story that this project told was emphasizing the man made theme behind it by saying that this real looking head was actually designed an manipulated by man, which is shown through the puppet. Something to take away from this project is that everything has an impact. What I mean by that is that if there is a blue box sitting off to the side of the camera, regardless of how minimal the apparent effect is, it reflects blue light on the subject. That is only an example, in this project, if they would have left out a few shadows or glares that seemed insignificant when isolated, it would have greatly taken away from the whole project. considering this project is focused on detail, I have included the basics of it on most all of my projects. The creator clearly did well with modeling and texturing their head, and then giving it lifelike and incredibly real movements from his neck joint to the dilation in his eye. I think the only way to improve this project is to add more. It cut off at the base of the neck. I cant find any glaring errors or room for improvement. I cant wait to see stuff like this where it is no longer just a video devoted to showing it off, but it becomes accessible to use in games or movies
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjHiC0mt4Ts

movie poster

I am very pleased with the final result of this. I had trouble trying to make his head proportional in illustrator, like it was in my sketch. as I got deeper into this idea, I feel like I began to stray more from the saul bass feel. There are still some traces of it; however, it is nowhere near as minimalistic as saul bass's were.

I wasn't actively trying to create my own for throughout the duration of the project. As I began to copy the same letter to use other places i began to develop this blocky, imperfect font that really matches the style of my poster.

My idea with this poster was to introduce the character Captain Kirk. The story line of the show/movie is they're searching the galaxy for knowledge so I used the star in the top left corner as the sort of goal or motivation of their mission. I also included a famous phrase from the intro to the shows, which is "The Final Frontier."

In the end, even if it didn't follow the expectations exactly, I was very pleased with the final product.

basic carton

The packaging was not my favorite project, and by that I mean I didn't really enjoy it too much. It does give insight to how much thinking and work goes into a package, and it helps me to appreciate package designers. For this design, I tried to follow more of a natural herb feel. To accomplish this, I used tea boxes as inspiration. I also looked at other hair products and tried to match their level of sophistication and lusciousness.

Phone

In this project, we spent a lot of time planning the idea and working on the functionality of it; therefore, less time was put into the actual package. So it isn't our best work but we still had inspiration for it. usually phone packaging is very simple and minimal and often times white. We tried to make our package fit this new trend.

 Our package is a phone case that doubles as a speaker. Now yes, you may be thinking "wouldn't that be very expensive and complicated?" and that would be because you're thinking of electric speakers. Our phone case has no electricity involved. It uses natural amplification by focusing the sound much like yelling through a cone. we found examples of this technology being used and translated it to fit our package and design. Our prototype has minimal to no effect but with further tweaking, the concept would work wonderfully.

individual project

For my individual project, I made a record cover for one of my favorite bands: The Beatles. My goal was to use the andy warhol and pop art style to create some sort of image. To customize this project more towards me, I decided to make a Beatles album cover. I had already done a movie poster and making just a picture didn't seem satisfying or applicable enough. I initially was just planning on making the front of it but then I got to making it and decided I would do the whole thing.

I feel like I did especially well on Ringo's face (far right), unfortunately the picture was at an angle so it didn't split evenly but it still looks nice. On the front, in order to give it the feel of variety of color, I checker boarded it with warm and cool colors. I tried to make the middle and back follow the same style but there is a clear lack of planning shown. I do still like the back though. My idea came from the fact that the front the top half is their heads, knowing the quirkiness of the Beatles, why not make the back bottom half their legs? This could have been done a bit nicer but in the end it works quite well.

Now, as far as the top right hand corner goes I could not think of any ideas that hadn't already been used on other records, I am nowhere near pleased with it but due to time constraints and a change in plans theres not much I can do about it. for clarification, the black part would not be printed, it is only meant as a place holder for where the record would sit.

Animation professional article review

The article I read was about how the planet Kamino was designed for Starwars episode II. Seeing as this paper was more about how Kamino was created there was not really an argument, however, there were some ideas that this paper was trying to show. The first being that a good idea never goes to waste. An example of this are Aiwahs, these are flying manatee like creatures that were originally designed for The Empire Strikes Back but were cut for technical reasons but then were attempted to be resurrected before that planet was cut, then finally they made their appearance in episode II. Another theme is that the ideas are not created but gathered. for the main city they based it off of oil derricks and alien space ships. A strength of this article is it has actual pictures and concept sketches and goes through the whole process. A weakness, if it had any, would be that it goes through everything too fast. a general conclusion the author reaches is that there is a lot behind the scenes and that a lot of effort goes into simple things. A critique i have on this article is that it sometimes focused on irrelevant aspects of the process like how the crew wore protective shoes while walking on the set. The authors argument on how ideas  are created could be used to support that a lot of effort goes into the production. An application as an animator is that I am able to see how professionals create their ideas and work up to the final product. I am pretty sure I didn't miss anything or not understand anything. I enjoyed this article because I'm a Starwars nerd and I love seeing how the initial sketches compare to the final product and I thought this was a very well done article.

Final

I've always been kind of a nerd especially for things like lord of the rings and hobbit, so I figured why not make my postcard a picture from the shire. After all the scenery is amazing. What quote would go better with it then a lord of the rings quote. And on top of all that it is a postcard and for a postcard the quote fits beautifully. my thinking through the text was I wanted to emphasize the important words  (Home and World) which I used colors from the picture to contrast where it was and make them pop.

I had initially had a nature scene on this card but I changed it to a city because I feel that describes me better. Its not that I don't like nature, but my personality doesn't revolve around nature. I've always been more intrigued by the intricate designs of cities. some other characteristics that fit mean are I like things in order organized. This is represented through the sharp lines and simple text.

My final design features my repeating pattern. what I took from other moo business cards was that the pattern needs to have lots of repetition, and what I mean by that is it needs to be very clear and not only repeat once or twice. my own touch I incorporated was putting the pattern inside of my logo