Final Evaluation

My rationale has remained the same throughout this module; I have continued to focus on branding and promotion across print and motion. However, my statement of intent has changed, in particular the briefs I intended to do at the start. I had to drop the Fashion Branding due to the client being slow in getting back to me, which has been an issue across a lot of the live briefs I’ve worked on.

The Yearbook and St Martin’s brief have been the most stressful, which is down to the clients. For example, the St Martins brief was extremely slow due to the client not being able to pick who she wants to work on the branding, resulting in re-pitching several times. Even when she picked Maya and I, we still had to pitch one more time, in the end; we have had to produce some of the other deliverables outside of the FMP due to it holding up our schedule and individual deadlines we had. Thankfully, this did not affect the working relationship between Maya and I. This is a slightly different situation with the Yearbook brief as there were group tensions from the start, but we have ended on a positive note and can look back and learn from errors.

I have learnt a new program this module also, for Brief 04 – E4 and Brief 03 – ITV2, as the kind of visuals I had in my head were not possible to produce in After Effects so I started to learn Cinema 4D end of February, beginning of March. At first, I was wondering if this would mean my ideas would be inhibited slightly due to a lack of knowledge, but it actually set me free. I was able to produce whatever ideas I had written down, and I am really pleased with the colours and quality of the finished pieces. Especially the E4 deliverables, I think the music really refines it and makes it more final than my ITV2 idents where I would have liked to have had a narrator talking over the top, but finding somebody without a strong accent, who would be willing to record audio may be more hassle than its worth.

I am glad I did the E4 and ITV2 brief, as it was a chance for me to do what I wanted to do and enjoy, and it is something I would be proud to have in my portfolio, plus it gives me more content for a showreel. I am equally as glad I did the other briefs as they were a chance to work with clients, one on my own, one with Maya and one with Nick Morgan, Natalie Jackson and Kirsty Hair, so it gave me an all round experience.

As always, I think time management has been a weak point, writing this evaluation now, I can think of many things I should have done, which unfortunately at this time is tough, as I can’t have another go.

Relating to the issue of time is the motion graphics work itself, as much as I have a real passion and spark for creating this kind of work, especially in Cinema 4D where it has that high quality, glossy look, this is disadvantaged by the time taken to render and work with it. For example, to render my Discoball Ident for ITV2 with a duration of 10 seconds, it took 2 hours to render.

In terms of my boards, I am pleased with the way they are, they show what I have done for each brief, and I am actually surprised at how well the motion briefs turned out as the images came straight from Cinema 4D which is RGB, as when I changed them in Photoshop to CMYK, they became murky. An error with the printer and paper stocks has resulted in me having 3 different stocks for my boards.

With respect to my final products, some of my St Martins work was water damaged when I wasn’t in the studio, so reluctantly I have handed some in. This was the same for the Indiependent brief, a few deliverables were ruined but they have been photographed, although they all needed reshooting after advice from the Final Crit.

Without the chances to work on live briefs this module, I don’t feel I would have been ready to work with clients straight after university. The learning experience from these briefs have prepared me in a way I wouldn’t have achieved without the Final Major Project on this course.

Looking back over my work, from the past three years, I am shocked at how my work has developed, and how my pathway within Graphics has changed. I started the course interested in type and layout for campaigns and posters, and now I am more image based interested in motion graphics, for branding and promotion.

My blogging has really let me down this module, there is a lot of development work missing for Briefs 3 and 4, and I am worried this will have a huge effect on my marks.

I feel I have worked to the best of my ability, with the exception of poor time management, and I have learnt a lot about myself personally and professionally. I walked in to the course, naïve and unconfident, and now I feel my confidence has built up and I know what I want to do next. Touch wood, this is a positive end to the year, and the course.

Brief 03 - Final Boards

Open publication - Free publishing

Evaluation:

Another fantastic brief I thoroughly enjoyed working on, in terms of evaluative points, this will be similar to E4 evaluation. I enjoyed learning Cinema 4D and pushing myself to learn a new piece of software in order to get the effect I was looking for. I know there would have been no way I could have achieved this refined, three dimensional look in After Effects. It was great to see the ideas going from my terrible storyboards, to some bright and colourful motion graphics, how I imagined them in my had is exactly how my final products looked, this has never happened in a motion brief before, normally I say, ‘Well I would have liked it to look like this but…’ What is shown in my final graphics is exactly the look and pace I was going for. I am not sure I pushed the brief in terms of deliverables but then I thought to myself, ‘Why am I wanting to do prints? This work is for screen and that’s where it should stay.’ However, I would say it’s still a substantial brief due to the time that went into the project. Its great the amount of control one can have in Cinema 4D, my first board, my Brief/Concept page has the high impact grass image with the ITV2 logo. There are 24,900 pieces of grass in that area. You can control length, width, their gravity, which way they lean, how they behave in different conditions, lighting. With Cinema 4D it is so much more than creating a single image, you are crafting a world. There are lighting conditions, camera angles etc. to consider. It is a beautiful yet technical world. When I look at the motion work I did last year, I cannot believe this work belongs to me. Last years work is the equivalent of one of the paintings you did at nursery which you did when you were 3.

ITV - The Office Motion Graphic

One of my ideas was a person or the ITV logo sat in an office waiting for 'home time' - when the big hand of the clock reaches 12 - the person or logo (whichever works best) rushes out of their office chair leaving it spinning, and flys out of the office - with motion blur. The clock isn't featured in this idea, but  I may propose it.
This is how I set up the office:

Due to running out of time, this will be a proposal, as I haven't the time to build everything from scratch, as the majority of the items used in this idea are primitive objects. Also, to animate it properly, and not a rushed job like above, it would take a lot more careful time and consideration.

Crit Feedback

I will definitely take the comment about the doctors front in to account for my boards, it would be good to see the signage in context.

As for combining E4 and ITV2 brief, I feel its too late in the game now and they are completely different. I definitely think the E4 brief will be substantial enough when I am finished with it.

Sofa Environment

I decided, to make the sofa idea look more realistic, it needed some kind of environment, therefore I have included a wooden floor, with lighting:

ITV - Red Carpet Motion Graphic

With my red carpet set up, I can now begin animating it...

New Dancefloor Idea

After scrapping the previous dancefloor idea for not looking as effective as I wanted to - with a bit more knowledge I felt I could make a better more realistic looking dancefloor:









I am really pleased with the way this looks, this is exactly the visual I had in my head at the beginning, but I just didn't know how to execute it. This was created using an existing disco environment and taking some of the settings to use in a primitive cube object at the exact dimensions of the dance floor.

Disco Ball Idea

More development on the disco ball:

Sofa Ident

The idents I have worked on today have focussed on the sofa idea I came up with - the concept is to relate to the target audience coming into a room and flopping on the sofa - exactly what the logo does.

I modelled the sofa myself using different shape tools and materials to create a realistic looking sofa.

More to be added when Vimeo works...



































Updated: 08/05/2012

Still No Vimeo

Having major technical issues still with Vimeo!!

Have about 80+ animations waiting to upload. HELP!!!

*To be discussed at tomorrows tutorial...

3D ITV Logo Idents

I decided to make the 3D logo look a bit more like the ITV 2 one:

3D ITV Logo

I created a three dimensional ITV logo today, although its giving myself more work, it will keep the whole 3D look going rather than using a JPEG.

To make this, In Cinema 4D I made 2 shapes to match the green bars using cube tool, which I then filleted to give the rounded edge. The larger of the two shapes then needed to be made editable and I applied a green car paint to both to give them a sheen, then I had to recreate the 2D logo in vector form in Illustrator, and using this as a texture in Cinema, applying it to the front facing polygon of the larger cube. The 2 was created using the MoText tool and a brushed stainless steel material was applied.



Here are some rendered images of my logo (Back, Front, Side) - I have applied a light to the front on 80% intensity - and there are no floors/sky or other backgrounds in this.

I absolutely love this - it looks real! If only I could have the ITV font...

This looks much more professional than using the 2D version - at least I can rotate around the entire space with this. Thanks to Matt from the AV suite for suggesting to make my own version - there really is no such word as can't.

Will upload the animations when Vimeo starts working - I pay for it so I should get some sort of reply soon...