Show Package Project | Project Concept

This week, we have been asked two questions by my professor in which will define our project and introduce the concept we, as students, have been working on. We have been asked to include these two questions on our blog as our "project concept" as a way to continue to update our progress.

What is your show? I have decided that my show will be called "A Dog's Life." It is a narrative documentary, inspired by the dog kennel that my mom runs for a living. "A Dog's Life", if it was a real show, will follow the life a dog kennel and tell cute / sad stories that will appeal to the viewer. I see this being a show that would air on a non-fiction type network, such as national geographic, animal planet, tlc, etc.


What are the characteristics that you will aim to visualize and communicate to your audience? I believe that I want to convey characteristics of professionalism/seriousness, while also keeping a cute playful feel. The fonts that I chose will hopefully demonstrate the clear, focused, point of the documentary while the illustrations / color palette appeal to teens/young adults and keep the cute feelings in the documentary. I also hope that the graphics will appear as they are supposed too, aka, the scrolling banner looks professional and like an actual banner, not student work. 

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 | 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 | 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:

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.

Character Animation | Personality

(Edited this post on March 5th, 2018 to include definition of project, and character name)

This project can be described as designing a character and communicating her personality through the movement created with her. The latter of this project will include adding her to an environment to demonstrate a certain feeling.

I have given my character the name of Poppy! I chose this name because many japanese fashion statements can be described as pop, and that is very much what she is based off of. She is also given the name because her color is supposed to "pop". Finally, I gave her this name due to the poppy flower. I hope I am able to characterize her based not only off her names, but the movement given to her.

--

In class we were asked to think about the characters we had started designing. We were to think about the aspects of the character, how the personality is seen through the interactions of the character, and how the perspective of the character may change. What emotions describe your character? Who is your character?

I wrote a quick description during class:
My character is a sweet, poppy, happy type. She may be similar to the Japanese pop singers. She is happy, perky, young, innocent, and very very positive. I picture her falling in love easily. Very cute - kawaii - and she likes to have fun and enjoy those around her. I really picture her being a popstar or a cheerleader. She is supposed to be young and dream like. For a defining reaction, she would say "you should try out for the team," or "totally" and flash her peace sign.

We were then asked to think about the clothing, how her clothing might help define her personality. For example, someone shy might have a scarf.

I wrote a quick description:

Her clothing is cute, perky, and movable. I want her arms and legs to move to show her happy, open, and agile. Her shoulders would be open to the audience, and her long arms allow for reactions that talk with the hands. Large eyes with glitter and sparkles that show her interest. I chose the color pink for the feminist qualities, and the lighter shade to achieve the innocent look. 

I have to really focus on how the design of the character will insist the movement. I have begun pulling apart the character on to separate layers.

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Two Possible Narrative Solutions

Our mind map had four ideas that we fell in love with - profanity, hysteria, happiness, and constant validation. We then spoke of each of these ideas to develop something that could turn into a better narrative or an interesting piece. We agreed we liked the idea of Social Media affecting our happiness. I took his to mean: "the notion that social media is affecting our lives and we use it to validate ourselves."

My first narrative is a derrivation of the real myth, Pandoras Box. Pandora's Box revolves around the idea that by unleashing the box, you are allowing bad things to escape into the world. In my version, the box is the phone in the video. Crumpled up images would begin flowing out of the phone. They would continue to "un" crumple. Each one could be a thin model, an image of somebody wanting something else, and etc. We would than have to demonstrate the change in emotion - a frowning face, maybe made of another material. Anxiety is uncrumpling from the phone. Validation and Anxiety explained.

Another way to approach the situation would be to focus less on the validation of ourselves, and instead focus on the changing world and our desperation to keep up in social media. Our desperation takes away from our happiness. There's a presence of rebellion. We'd start with a large image of a  younger innocent model/celebrity. It would fall onto the word happiness - spelled with some type of particle. As it falls, all these drawings / collage images begin following on top, representing new changing pieces of her. She's no longer seen as herself, and the word happiness is destroyed.

Visual / Technical approach. I'm interested in having happiness spelled out in parts and physically ruining it by dropping objects on top. I am considering sound effects for the falling of this object that make it slightly humorous. I also like the idea that the pieces are from a collage and are placed on a thicker colored paper around them.

Awesome Inspiring Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJh4nzf-0hI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MBUgz5mJ2M

Define Cultural Myth -- with your partner come up with 4 possible narrative solutions. To arrive at this, go through a brainstorming processes, together create a mind-map that you will photograph and include on your blog as part of your process.

From this mindmap -- each partner come up with 2 possible narrative solutions for your chosen Cultural Myth. Describe the narrative though a short two paragraph essay. Paragraph 1 introduces the narrative. Paragraph 2 describes visuals and technical approaches. Research & note example artists and their work.

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Mindmap + Word List

This post is in regard to project one in my Intermediate Motion Graphics class.
Here is a picture of the mind map created, and below you can see how I categorized my words and my thought process.

WORD LIST:

Myth
Pandora's Box
Zeus
Athena
Native American Stories
Story of spider stealing the sunlight

Cultural
American Dream
Environment
Politics
Religion
Killing the American Dream
Freedom
Generational Divide

Cultural Myth
'Fake News' x Politics
Fame & feelings involved
Buying a house
Finding a job
Celebrities
'Space is fake!'
Smell
Skin color and how we treat people based on race
Educational System creating bullying