Logo Project | Rough Draft Practice from Class 1

Today in class, we worked on using effects to create our logo in order to have something to show. Upon experimentation of using a tutorial listed in my inspiration, I have creatively come up with a new idea that I will be using. My logo will now not be symbols, but will start with:

CARTOONING

GAMING

CODING

DESIGNING

KRL

 (krl is my initals)

Each word will glitch to the next text effect. I think it would be neat to have all these texts positioned in different places, almost like a 3D effect where my logo is scrolling through all the things I can do. I think this will really broadcast who I am as a designer and have strength. KRL will have a symbol next to it, maybe a kiss or a lollipop. I feel this newly designed logo really illustrates who I am as myself and as a person.

Logo Project | Researching: Competition

In the process of creating my logo, I have been doing research on different logos that might be an influence. I have tried to find student work, professional logos, and etc.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpGbI6I9RXM559uC39S3HQd2rESUAyiXX is a playlist of tutorials and student work I found inspiring. Some of these, mainly the ones labeled Typography or About Me inspire me tremendously, and make me want to create something of the sort this week.

Here are some logos I found after researching. These are made by freelancers. Some are their actual logos, and some are logos they allow you to take and use. These are a huge inspiration in the type of logo I want to create.

I have found that each of these have a very specific style that caters to the look of their clientele, which is something I need to watch when creating my logo. While I want this logo to be a reference to myself, and who I am, I also want it to be something that will resonate with the public.

Logo Project | Logo Development

Original Sketches:

At the time, I was not sure if I wanted to use a former company (I created the name and planned on using it if I ever continued in the design / animation world) or if I wanted to use my social media presence that I network and post through. I have decided to use the kissxmekyla because I feel it will be the easiest to change if need be to match my own name, Kyla Railey-Lowery.

The final logo I will be working on is:

The logo will change from a lollipop, to a cat, to a kiss, very quickly, but long enough for the viewers eye to adjust. The kissxme will be a traced version of my own cursive, but KYLA will be written in a sans serif font. At the end, the final image will color glitch.

Logo Project | 3 Storyboards

Here are some storyboards I created that execute the idea that I want to create.

Cloud Effect

(original idea, included glitch effect. I removed this idea after discovering that the cloud effect was not a royalty free source. I also decided the clouds did not have a reference to the logo itself and were unnecessary... they did not serve a purpose.)

Triangle Effect

Colored Glitch Effect

(seen at the bottom in two frames)

I have decided to use a morph effect into the glitch effect demonstrated in two frames.

Logo Project | Brainstorming + Inspiration

Name: Logo Project | kissxmekyla

Define / Include Animation Purpose: The project is to create a logo for ourselves that includes two special effects and sounds. I want to create something for the animation / freelance company I plan to have at some point or something for one of my accounts. I want this logo to be unique to me and use things that really define my personality and myself. I define this project as something that will help me brand myself for future to come. I've chosen to use my social media name kissxmekyla, because it may be something I eventually create for myself.

Brainstorming & Collecting: 

Trying to remember the purpose of the animation, I tried to brainstorm some ideas.

I created a playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpGbI6I9RXM559uC39S3HQd2rESUAyiXX

The playlist consists of different tutorials and inspiration that are interesting to me and have influence on what my logo may be.

Three separate ideas I have are located within this playlist. These are:

Cloud Effect

Triangle Effect

Colored Glitch Effect

(For a frame of reference, I have decided only to use one of these in my project, and that would be the colored glitch effect. Along with colored glitch, I will use morph.)

While I want my background to be girly, I want it to have a professional look that also appeals to designers and gamers. My background is in game design, which is what I received my associates in, so I want my logo to reflect a gaming and/or anime look.

Here are some examples I found online:

I felt that combining these two styles might help me to create the look I want to achieve.

Character Environment CANDYLAND | Final

Here is the final Candyland scene using some updates taken from the feedback provided. The feedback can be seen in my previous blog post.

New features to the final include:
Gray Scale Girl which changes once retrieval of Candy
Candy Wrapper Sound
Slight Change in girls movement, including the way she walks in, and the jumping motions.

Character Animation | Project 2 Girl in the Candyland Scene

I have attempted to create a rough draft of the original girl within the Candyland scene. She does not fit at all along the pathway, so I removed it, but I did attempt to get her to pick up candy. Because her anchor points are wonky, there was not a lot I could do.

The girl in the scene also has had a little bit fixed. I fixed the speed of her left arm, and I fixed the way her right hand waved.

Character Environment CANDYLAND | Storyboard + Development + Feedback

Development

The following is rough sketches done in a pen that was running out of ink and mechanical pencil. I attempted to use arrows to symbolize the motion that the girl would be creating. These arrows can be found in frames such as three and four to show basic motion.

• For frame three, I describe the rocking movement, which is something I want to create when she lands too hard and cannot catch her balance.
• For frame four, I use arrows and pencil lines to describe the bending of her torso when retrieving the candy. The arrow can also be seen duplicated in pencil in the close up.

Feedback

The feedback I received touched base on many different things. I broke them down into categories in order to provide myself with a better framework for the final.

Character The girl’s color blends in with the candy (as does the candy with background). She also blends into the background. When she pops up at the end, you do not notice the candy in her mouth. Also, she seemed very pixelated when shown large scale on the projector.
Solutions I am considering changing her to a gray scale and once she retrieves the candy to have her change to a full colored character. I will also work on finding a way to remove the pixilation in her. I am hoping that I will be able to do this since she was created in Photoshop, something different than what I usually do. The candy will change to be more saturated also, instead of the cotton candy color scheme as the rest of the document.

Movement The girl jumps fast but falls slow, which is the opposite of real time movement. The girl does not accurately follow the path and may need to be scaled down in order to fit the path. Finally, the girl DOES NOT walk at the beginning but slides in.

Solutions I need to add the key frames for the walk motion at the beginning of the animation. Also, I need to work on her sizing and timing of separate things.

Sound While sound was not added, it was discussed. Possible addition of background noise, candy wrapper sound. The noise will demonstrate what is happening.

Questions Some questions I received were: “What’s the purpose of the outline?” “Should the girl be black and white till she picks up the candy?” “Why is the most animated part currently when she picks up the candy?”

Character Environment CANDYLAND | Rough Draft

Watch here:

Character Environment CANDYLAND | Styleframes

The following are style frames for what I suspect the scene will look like. Read below each frame to learn more.

Candyland environment, illustrated in Adobe Illustrator based off a sketch. The idea is to have a beginning, middle, and foreground. (Orange grass, sign, candy canes / path, bushes, grass / mountains, sky, ground, tree / retrospectively)

Thick strokes to keep cartoon vibe.

The three girls scene in the video. They went through many stages. Sketches, to photoshop, to illustrator image trace, back to photoshop to be split for movement. The detail in the sketches was a little too heavy to trace with the simple pen tool, so this was my solution. Unfortunately, it does not translate as well in after effects as a monochromatic girl, so there will have to be another solution.

Character Environment CANDYLAND | Collect

Inspiration

The following is a few scenes that gave me ideas for the type of scene I wanted to create. As mentioned in the previous blog post, I was inspired by the candy land board game design and the cartoon network style that my girl followed. Her colors of pink were also a huge inspiration to what I wanted to do with her, figuring pink reminded me of cotton candy.

Inspirations include:
Candied Island from Misadventures of Flapjack, Candy Land board game, and Chowder (show).

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9hzxt8VKn4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--oTQCysVTs

Character Environment | Beginning Solutions

Project Name: Candyland

Project Description: This is a combination of the new project and the last project, character animation. I am given the task to take my character from the last project, and create her environment. In this environment, she needs to interact with an object, which is something I left out last time. I also plan to give her a different movement, and her perfect some of the problems from last time.

Brainstorming:

I had many ideas for this project, and I am still brainstorming exactly what I want to do. I was originally inspired by the idea of her being a Korean pop singer, a K-Pop Star. I once took a sexy k-pop dance class while I was on a vacation, and it was definitely an inspiration behind how I originally built my character.

Unfortunately, I was unable to completely mimic many k-pop dance moves when creating my character. 

Because of this, my original idea for her environment was this sketch:

It was supposed to be her concert stage.

In a previous environment I had created for another class, I was taught to heavily rely on background, middle ground, and foreground, and I felt the concert stage did not have a lot of this, and was kind of flat.

I believe I will use photoshop and mesh some images together for this project.

I also believe I will have my character pick up a piece of candy.

Here's some image inspiration:

Character Animation | More Work

Here is some more work on my character animation based on some feedback I got. I worked on giving her a second expression, and I also gave her actual legs and feet. I slightly corrected some of her movement.

I will be using this same character for our next project, but I will be changing her animation to bend down, and possibly her facial expression.

I also got some feedback on this character. Some said her eyes seemed a little wonky. I will be working on this before the final environment scene is due.

Character Animation | [ROUGH] Storyboard + Notes

Here is an image that has my very rough storyboard, sketched horribly with notes all around of the ideas I want to create. I never created a storyboard directly of what I wanted the character to do. This storyboard was created long before the character was created, and I feel like it did not have the best direction. Notice their are mutliple ideas noted.

Character Animation | Collection of Inspiration

As I began designing my character, I looked at a lot of different inspiration, which can be seen below in this post. My character was very much based on a "lolita anime girl" even though she looks very cartoonized in an american style.

Here are some really basic sketches of girls that she was developed from. I feel like my drawings were not very clear and did not convey a lot of emotion.

Girl, Upper Body and Legs:

The legs for the girl were developed after the rough draft of my animation, and I plan on going back and adding them before turning in what I consider a final animation:

Original sketch of girl used mainly for some inspiration, pencil and water color pencil:

The following are some images of cartoon girls that heavily influenced her look.

INSPIRATION

(Style wise, not including legs): 

(Style wise, legs):

(Hair, limited to my drawing skills):

(Personality type):

Her animation was mainly based on my skills, and what I understood how to do. I did not base her on much other than a previous work of mine, which can be seen here:

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Update + Feedback

I wanted to add a quick update to the posts added earlier on about my Stop motion. I realized I had never added any of my inspiration, ideation, or definition, besides the mindmap posted early. I wanted to include extra processes to really explain where I was coming from.

Defining the assignment in my own words: 
I had felt that this assignment was to make a stop motion out of something we all believe in but don't really always address as something incorrect. My biggest step in understanding the assignment was relating it to celebrities, where we believe they have all these things they really do not. I used that as my biggest definition of the project.

Ideate:  I feel most of our ideation is done in one of my earlier blog posts. Our mind map was a huge inspiration behind where are idea for the project came from.

Collect: Michaela, my partner for this assignment, showed me some great examples of stopmotion unlike anything I had ever seen. This was similar to one of the things she showed me:

https://www.yelldesign.com/our-work/papermeal/

We really liked how they used paper ingredients and still created a food like dish. It was a big inspiration behind the idea of a stop motion that used food.

This is one of the specific examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBjLW5_dGAM

We almost considered copying the aestetic completely we enjoyed the stopmotion so much. This stopmotion by PES is very well made and also very aestethically pleasing to watch, which was also something we were going for.

Styleframes: I thought these had been added in a post, but it looks like the post never got published and got deleted. During the process, Michaela and I spent a lot of time on call and messaging to discuss things. These are two images heavily discussed about whether or not we liked the project. Both are included here as styleframes, and really show the true idea behind our stop motion. (seen above)

Feedback: I never talked about the feedback that had been shared about our project. We did not receive a lot of what I consider "hearty" feedback, real feedback to help us. We did hear a little bit about timing from classmates, critique on our cookies. I think the biggest problem was something I had really outlined before, and that is the inconsistent lighting and not choosing a good time to film. We could also work a bit harder on clarity of the message.