Script changes to Maze

Welllllllllllllllllll the scripts pretty much been turned on its head. We've made our character a full on phsycho and it's going well. We've got a visual reference

One hour photo..

and.......................................zzz..bed.

What makes a good font

I bought computer arts magazine the other day, and it came with a disc with free fonts on so I thought "oh lets see what these are" then put them on, and open them up.. and I've never seen such a pile of pointless shit in my life. One of the fonts is each letter in a jumping sheep? When would you EVER use that in all seriousness? And then I thought "theres nothing on here that I like" and I wondered, what actually makes a font that's successful and gets used. So I think I might have a look into it. As a starting point
- readability
- ability to use foreign characters
- sans serif/serif
- er.. letters?

I dunno I just thought about it and this is for posting.. so you know..
Fonts I use most are arial/helvetica, century gothic, georgia, rns bobo dylan, rns baruta and calibri I think it's called? I dunno even why I use these. Wierd so some things take off and others don't.

Short film, Lift

Lift by Marc Isaacs

I loved this film, if you can watch it all the way through. I didn't expect to like it and I dunno what made me watch it but by the end I just sat there staring at the screen wanting it to carry on. It's such a funny way to show how people think, and it's strange how people are willing to tell their life stories to a camera man.

Colonel Blimp

A company which represents music directors.. who've got some impressive videos. And that's only from the ones I've seen. They've got them in pretty high quality on the website (you can also download them from what I can tell) I can't actually watch the videos on the site thanks to my crap internet :( so I'm settling for half waiting for youtube then getting bored and twidling my thumbs for a few minutes while vimeo gets its act together. Gonna head to the library at some point this week with a bag of popcorn and watch the lot ;) but yeah they seem to have alot of stuff which looks interesting. At the moment I'm trying to download JLS (I can't believe I'm admitting that) and watch We have band - you came out. David Wilson did Little Boots - Remedy, I like that video. And I just discovered he did the video I'm watching now. Argh I so need to watch every single one of these videos.

The Wilderness

"The Wilderness is a design collective specializing in motion graphics, animation, and live action to bring commercials, music videos, interactive content and art installations to a visceral beyond. The Wilderness incorporated under the belief that good design can alter life for the better, but we like to keep things in perspective"

Yep see I like the sound of these guys. They've done work for HP, Microsoft, MTV, blablablainsertbignamehere<<<< I had a look at their show reel and they have some nice work.  What pathway does that come under though!?

Music video's

Ellie Goulding - Starry Eyed
Directed by OneInThree

 

Ellie Goulding, "Starry Eyed" from Neon Gold Records on Vimeo.

I don't know what my opinion is on this video really. I'm gonna watch it a few more times then make a verdict. Cause I do like the song, and I don't mind her herself..... Ok.. so far pro's are -

• Bluey tint - always a plus in my books
• Possibly dodgy effects executed well and don't look cheaptastic
• She herself doesn't look overprocessed
• I want to live in that house
• Mix of old/new. Dated setting, with modern twists through out

Cons............

• Bit boring...
• Bit samey as other things
• Bit Lady Gaga-esque but not quite hitting the mark
• Bit "just look at the camera emotionally and tell the story through your face"-y
  

...Bit gutted cause I wanted to love the video but I can't make myself.
It is basically just looking at the camera though, and I think that they could have done something different with it.. Like starting out black like they have already.. then her possibly wearing some black, glittery contraption and her movements being caught in the light? A person symbolising who she's singing about there also? Maybe rather than her standing around like a pleb the video the story is told through the dancers? Who knows.. they could have done more, but they didn't.

Passion Pit - Sleepy head
Directed by The Wilderness 

Passion Pit, "Sleepyhead" from Neon Gold Records on Vimeo.

"Practically shot and painstakingly put together with photographs and real objects, the concept of this video was that "of creating a light space modulator — a mechanical, kinetic sculpture that demonstrates and harbors movement and light."

It looks like it was a total ball ache to make as well, but I think it pays off. You kind of just watch it and become engrossed cause the song itself is kind of hypnotizing/eerie and the fact that what you are shown keeps changing, you watch it thinking whats coming on next? I like also how the song starts with "and everything is going to the beat" it gives meaning to the rhythm of the video. I think a nice touch would have been to zoom out at the end and see the contraption as a whole, as if it was all made from one piece (even if it wasn't). Just for the visual.

LOVE IT.

Writing task..

I wasn't actually there to be set the task, but anyway.

What has my creativity been for in the past few years?
In the past few years I've been in education. I came from a BTEC in art & design, which is very broad. It's been used to find my strong/weak points and what I enjoy and pretty much been to achieve grades. In those two years I did a bit of everything
- Fine art
- Photography
- Textiles
- Pottery (ARGH!!!!)
- Graphics
- Life drawing
I can't even remember what else I did in my course.. that's pretty bad isn't it? Ha. But still I enjoyed it and it made me realise there's more to art than painting. Most work I did outside of college was digital, and I kind of excelled in making nice pictures in photoshop haha, but that was what I did through choice, I taught myself how to use it then developed my own style (although I don't really have a style I just dabble - but I'll get there)

Who has it been for?
I've always done work which I enjoyed/found interesting. Why would I waste my own time doing something I hated? In a sense its been for myself to help me decide what I wanted to do with my creative side? And I've always enjoyed it. Then its been for other people when I've offered to do work for them (for free pffffft) then it's been for school/college/uni tutors ha.

Why have I done it this way? Has this been my decision or someone else’s?
Its been my decision in that I spent my own time growing up doing artsy things.. then when I finally could specialize in year 9 with options I took graphics and art.. then specialized again at college. I chose the courses I wanted to do. So it has been my decision. But parts were dictated by other people - set projects and working to fit briefs. I wish I realized sooner that you can take your own view of a brief rather than taking it word for word. I've done it this way because I loved art from a young age and have always been interested in it, my career's for me not anyone else.

What do I want the future of my creativity to be?
In the future I'm still kind of uncertain about what I want from my career. I love music, when i had tv (boo hoo I hate tv licensing) and fast internet (boo hoo I hate shit internet) I would constantly be watching music videos. I really miss doing that cause I found them interesting and would sometimes sit there and think what would I have done? But then I love the creativeness of the animation part of the course - that you can create your own little world. But at the moment I'm oblivious as to how to work the programs so I'm a bit put off by that. And I kind of like coming up with the ideas and doing sketches etc but I don't think I would be pleased with my end result?? I dunno really. I'm leaning more towards film but I'm not really sure what it involves right now.

More boredom took over..

The bottom two were just messing about cause I got my tablet back so felt like doodling ;) u know the scorrrre (they ARE supposed to have a childlike quality to them, its experimentation ;) )

Boredom took over

and this was the result.

I absolutely hate how blogger completely ruins every picture that goes on it. Need to sort that out sharp.

Some more stuff thats not even relevant to my current project :)

ESCHER..

Really admire his work and the surrealism in each piece. I chose to include this one cause of the general mind bogglingness and also to link with the (next?) project the visual environment one for the hero/villain lair.

Mood board

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Well, this film. Was wierd. As we all know so I wont go into details. I actually looked up what it was about online and I completely missed the point, although it was brought up in the lecture. I had no idea the guy at the start who was cutting his leg was the same guy who chased the other one? I did like some parts of it though, like the use of stop motion. I thought it was cleverly used in some parts. Also, the soundtrack - mad stuff altogether. It really adds atmosphere to the film. I don't know if I liked it. Part of me did. But I was too sickened ha.. I did think it was interesting though. I liked the use of shots in some parts, like when he was being chased at the start, they shot the ceiling where there were piped so you knew what was going on and also got a sense that he was running away with no care for where he ended up as long as he escaped. As well in researching this, someone wrote that the film took metaphors literally which created a nightmarish feeling through out.. I agree with this.

Inspiring/random stuff I wish I'd done first..

1 - Julien Valleé ♥

I LOVE THIS PIECE! It was done for MTV, and I think it sums up the brand perfectly. Love the style of paper making, photography, and graphic design. He's also done an advertising campaign for a Canadian arts channel which I like because of the colours, use of stop motion, and the general effect of the clip. It's also quite clear its advertising an arts channel, not only cause of the title but the fact that you kind of get to see how it was made because of the use of stop motion.

ARTV - ID from Julien Vallée on Vimeo.

"I used around 15 pieces of plywood with a mirror on the backside to create the shape of the Artv logo, a Canadian television channel.

The shot was made on the roof of a building downtown Montreal. We used a smoke machine and a projector to create the reflections of lights and colours during the shoot."

 

Visit his website if you like his work, theres some really nice stuff on there, I really like the "We love fantasy" piece, and it also shows how it was made.

2. Lotie

An illustrator, I like the style of the illustrations, and the mix between themes, but the constant style in all the work. The website is heavily flash based, and really nice to use, you kind of want to spend more time on it to find out everything it does, which I think is really strong for a website cause obviously its there to provide information and drum up interest. It was created by Rezo-Zero who's website is just like woah. In fact, they can be point three.

3. Rezo-Zero = ♥ even more.

It's all in french and I only understand about 10% of the words but the flash content and the style of the website is soooo nice. If I could make a website, it would look and feel like this, but in English. :) I've decided to follow their blog as well, and learn french. ha

there is more but I can't think :) I'll come back to this later.
Ughhhh I really want to do some design work now. But I don't have photoshop on my computer :( drawing will do for now though :)

(yer as soon as I posted this I noticed a link to switch it all to english..duh)

Project 2.1 :)

I really didn’t expect to like this brief, in fact, I was kind of dreading it cause it just sounded dull. I assumed we were doing a recreation of a Shakespeare play and I thought...BORING! But, been given the script we’re working with and I’m really excited, :). Our group has the script “Maze” which I won’t post on here but if you’re interested it is on NOW. It has a vague plot, but basically we can do what we want with it. Which I really like, and I’ve had loads of ideas so far. The script is a dialogue between our character and an interrogator, which we never see on screen, but hear the voice of. I am going to do a breakdown of the script, pretty much for my own benefit so I have ideas down.
Scene 1 - the primary character talks about his sister. It is a monologue, and gives some things to explore in the script…
- Where is his sister now, could we explore her in an extra scene.
- Talks about them being opposites, was she good or bad?
- Is our character a good person turned bad, or bad person turned good? A dimension is added, giving a personality without the character telling the story, but discovering their back story through visuals. It was discussed in our group that this could be compared to the programme CSI, which the story is told yet as they discover more flashbacks occur which allow the audience to follow the train of thought of the characters without simply being told what’s going on.
- Is he helping his sister?
- Is he helping his family as a whole?
- Is he getting himself out of, or in to trouble?
The script then cuts off to scene 2 showing piles of electrical goods. With a voice over by the character stating he didn’t do it for the money. The interrogator then mocks the character by asking if they think this is the first time that’s been said.
- What did he do?
- Did he steal the goods?
- Did he trade them?
- Is he associated directly with them?
- Where are they?
- Did he become rich?
- Did he give money to someone else?
Scene 3 begins. The character talks about how his bank accounts have been investigated and that his house has been accessed and boxes have been seized and looked through.
- Who has the power to look through that kind of stuff?
- The police?
- Someone else with power?
- We discussed the Adulthood, in the film a key point of the plot is the gangs which deal drugs, loan guns and run an underground pawn shop. Could the character being interviewed be the leader of one of these kinds of gangs and another, more powerful gang has taken him and/or his sister and wants something from them? E.g to close his business so they can make more of a profit
Scene 4 cuts to boxes being marked up by a gloved hand. Which just throws back to the idea of police investigations? Or possibly of someone stealing the goods for their own use, and don’t want to get their prints on them?
Scene 5 is again a dialogue, back to the interview room. The interviewee states that if he had done it for money he hopes he would be more efficient, and is again asked why he did it, to which he answers “for the laugh”. Which throws off all the ideas we came up with, and gives a lighter note. Or it could be seen that he slipped into the situation (whatever the situation may be) and doesn’t realise the seriousness of it as he had alterior motives when he initially made the decision to do whatever he did to get in the situation. I suppose that this gives us freedom to explore what we want. We can make it a bit lighter or explore a darker side.
Scene 6 is set in a pub, we don’t see anyone, yet we know there are people present as we can hear laughing and celebration off screen. We see empty pint glasses placed on a table, with one still full and the character voices over “I'm not saying I was the innocent”
- What did he get caught up in?
- Did he steal the goods?
- Did he see the goods being stolen and keep quiet?
- Was he buying the goods in order to sell on for profit?
- Was he exchanging the drugs for money?
- Why are there people “celebrating”?
- What are they celebrating?
- Who is the absent person?
- What could be the significance of this empty glass?
- Did these people get away with what the character is being inquisited about?
- Are these people who were affected and now they are free?
- Are these friends of the character, did he finally get accepted only to lose it all?
Then the final scene, scene 7, the character seems to come to some sort of realisation, within himself and his inquisitor, he talks about trying to fit in, and this seems to be an accepted reason for his actions.
- Did he take someone under his wing and get them involved in the wrong things, telling them they would fit in that way?
- Did he get involved in the wrong things himself to fit in?
- Did he try and fit in to help his sister/family?
- Did he want revenge for his sister/family and pretend to fit in to do so?]
- Did he finally get accepted and doesn’t even know as he is now being kept hostage?
He is then asked for names
- What/who does he know?
- How does it relate back to what has been explored previously?
THAT WAS LIKE THE LONGEST THING I'VE EVER DONE, EVER! But it helped to get everything typed up, I might come back to this cause I don’t know if I’ve covered all the aspects I’m thinking of. This would be a lot simpler of a script if the sister wasn’t mentioned previously, but it adds a motive for whatever he has done.

1st week back!

Eeeeeee I never realised that I haven't updated my blog in like two weeks, so this one may drag on..
Well 1st thing, the lecture we had the other day, which we had with design for TV and theatre. I really liked this lecture, it made me realize I actually know only a tiny bit about the subject I'm learning about, yet the TV students I was speaking to could reel off names, they knew a lot about their subject and it made me think, uh oh need to pull my socks up, so I've started to try and be more aware about whats around me, and I'm sat here at the moment scanning Computer Arts, which I've just fallen in love with cause it's just got everything I love in it, and the tutorials look really good, although not tried any of them yet. I'm gonna carry on scanning, then upload loads of pics and write about some artists I've just found :)