Overall, I feel very satisfied with the course. What I enjoyed most about it was the fact that everything we learned was just so darn applicable. I mean, even when we moved onto learning how to use a new program, I continued to use my skills in the other programs to produce other stuff. The fact that I was able to do this and even learn more about the program kinda shows that the course was successful, in my opinion.
I felt that ample time was given to complete the projects; however, there was a point in time where everything from every other course was due during the same day/week, and that cut down the work time we had for some of the projects. It wasn't too much of an issue though.
I thought that while the tutorials were all very detailed and helpful, there were some things that could have been even more detailed. For example, I felt that there could have been a little more training in flash, explaining the most basic of basics. It took me a very long time to figure out about breaking apart and combining graphics which proved to be a very frustrating experience. Simple things like, I believe, should be touched on. Again, overall, I thought everything was taught quite well.
Although I was initially not even considering Digital Media in the future, I have completely re-vamped my thinking. Playing around with flash has become very fun for me, and I can't wait to get my hands on after-effects. I think that I may very well go further into this specialization, and more info on this can be found on my previous blog.
The greatest thing I learned from this course was just how simple it is to use all of these problems. Honestly, anybody could learn how to do it. In fact, for the most part, it's not using the program that's the most difficult; it's finding out what you want to do and how you're going to achieve it that's difficult. The programs themselves are just the tools used to let your ideas come to life.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Future in Digital Media?
Last lecture, we had an introduction to the intermediate Digital Media class, and I mus say, I'm fairly interested. While I am a writer at heart, I feel that I won't exactly be racking in the cash with just this skill. As a result, I think that having an outlet for my writing would be advantageous so I have a secondary skill as well as a backup to do my own independent work. Digital Media seems like a good course for this, as I'd be able tell my stories through a visual medium rather than through just words on a page. Two things that I'm looking forward to (assuming I get in the class) is using after effects as well the MTV station ID project. The style of the MTV station IDs are in my "style", and so I feel like I would have a ton of fun making it. With after effects, I think I will finally be able to create some of the stories that have been sitting around in my brain doing nothing. Learning how to use stop motion would also be fun; in fact, I'm notorious for keeping everything that I get and so I have a large box of childhood toys in my room. I think I can finally put them to some good use...
Overall, I'm just really excited to get started in my second year. I'm very eager to finally produce things of my own. While this year did allow us to produce a lot of things, I felt very restricted by what we could do in terms of copyright infringement.
Overall, I'm just really excited to get started in my second year. I'm very eager to finally produce things of my own. While this year did allow us to produce a lot of things, I felt very restricted by what we could do in terms of copyright infringement.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Web 2.0 Characteristics
1) Dynamic Content: A good example of this would be any forum website. The content that you get from these sites are all generated by the user, and they can be easily changed, edited and replied to within seconds. These forums show how information on the web is no longer just static information, but rather, a gathering of information that can be added to by millions of other people.
2) User Contribution: On the website Newgrounds, people can upload their work and have it rated + critiqued. By allowing people to rate these things, people can begin to find out what works and what doesn't work in their piece.
3)Social Media: As of now, Facebook is one of the best examples for Social media. Through it, people can connect with each other all over the world. Your personal information can be sent to anybody with your permission, and links from other websites can be posted on Facebook, allowing even more connection.
4) Online Applications: Software like the Zoho Writer word processor is an application that downloads itself upon visiting the website. This allows the user to view the content of the page without having to download something beforehand, increasing it's availability to users.
5) Harnessing Collective intelligence: tagging is an extremely useful thing, as it allows websites such as youtube and newgrounds to use it's "recommended videos" feature. Not only does tagging allow people to find things they're interested in easily, it also allows the computer to "learn" what you like and dislike. If you tend to search "cheese" a lot, then in the recommended videos section, clips with the tag "cheese" in it will be provided.
2) User Contribution: On the website Newgrounds, people can upload their work and have it rated + critiqued. By allowing people to rate these things, people can begin to find out what works and what doesn't work in their piece.
3)Social Media: As of now, Facebook is one of the best examples for Social media. Through it, people can connect with each other all over the world. Your personal information can be sent to anybody with your permission, and links from other websites can be posted on Facebook, allowing even more connection.
4) Online Applications: Software like the Zoho Writer word processor is an application that downloads itself upon visiting the website. This allows the user to view the content of the page without having to download something beforehand, increasing it's availability to users.
5) Harnessing Collective intelligence: tagging is an extremely useful thing, as it allows websites such as youtube and newgrounds to use it's "recommended videos" feature. Not only does tagging allow people to find things they're interested in easily, it also allows the computer to "learn" what you like and dislike. If you tend to search "cheese" a lot, then in the recommended videos section, clips with the tag "cheese" in it will be provided.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Flash Animation + feedback
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/518171
Overall, I was pretty happy with my animation. I learned a lot in terms of what works and what doesn't work in a cartoon. Movement and sound are major components to any cartoon, and after watching some of the other projects, I feel like I could have put a little more motion into my characters. I though the facial expressions and sound were perfect however. There are two clicks that can heard in the audio and I was unable to find the source and delete them. In the original sound file, these clicks are not heard so there was nothing I could do. Although re-recording was an option, because the script was improvised, I felt that by doing so I would not come out with the same result.
Overall, I was pretty happy with my animation. I learned a lot in terms of what works and what doesn't work in a cartoon. Movement and sound are major components to any cartoon, and after watching some of the other projects, I feel like I could have put a little more motion into my characters. I though the facial expressions and sound were perfect however. There are two clicks that can heard in the audio and I was unable to find the source and delete them. In the original sound file, these clicks are not heard so there was nothing I could do. Although re-recording was an option, because the script was improvised, I felt that by doing so I would not come out with the same result.
Animation Idea
So as the weeks went by, I actually decided to completely overhaul my idea for my animation. I scrapped the whole parody thing and instead went for a original concept. It's still going to be a comedic animation, except the whole concept is different. I plan on making a short with no solid plot or main idea. It's just going to be a random, loosely organized sketch. The reason behind this is because I plan on the script being improvised. I'm going make the voice-overs first, and then I'm going to base the animation on the audio.
My project is really just going to be an experimentation. I'm going to tinker with lip-syncing (which will be a painstaking but satisfying task) and facial expressions. My main goal, however, is to figure out what works and doesn't work in terms of comedy in animations. Obviously, because it's a cartoon I can get away with a lot of things. However, my sense of humour tends to be subtle and disjointed so I'll be looking forward to seeing how that plays out in the cartoon.
Overall, I think I'll be content with how things turn out even if it is an utter failure. After all, I'm really just experimenting with this project.
My project is really just going to be an experimentation. I'm going to tinker with lip-syncing (which will be a painstaking but satisfying task) and facial expressions. My main goal, however, is to figure out what works and doesn't work in terms of comedy in animations. Obviously, because it's a cartoon I can get away with a lot of things. However, my sense of humour tends to be subtle and disjointed so I'll be looking forward to seeing how that plays out in the cartoon.
Overall, I think I'll be content with how things turn out even if it is an utter failure. After all, I'm really just experimenting with this project.
Digital Media and Music
Digital media has had a profound impact on the music industry. All popular music today must be accompanied by some kind of music video, it's a standard now. Generally, these music videos help to set the tone of the song and they can make or break the artist. This is both a positive and a negative. It's good because it allows music to become an even more complex art form, combining two different elements together. Personally, I think the negative aspects far outweigh the positives.
While it's great that music has become such a great art-form, what has happened is that music is now judged more heavily based on the performer rather than the actual song. For example, a great looking artist with terrible skills could become much more successful than a talented artist who does not look as great on camera. Because of this, it's not difficult to find horrible artist that top the charts in this day and age. In a sense, because of digital media's influence, the music industry is now heavily based upon superficial aspects; in other words, looks are, for the most part, more important than actual talent. It's unfortunate that this is the reality of things in the music industry.
While digital media has allowed music to evolve, at the same time, it has allowed the standard of the music itself to fall. It's unlikely that anything will change in the future, as technology grows and digital media becomes much more influential. But who knows, things can change in a heartbeat and maybe music will yet again evolve into something even more complex; not just involving visual and audio components, but other factors as well.
While it's great that music has become such a great art-form, what has happened is that music is now judged more heavily based on the performer rather than the actual song. For example, a great looking artist with terrible skills could become much more successful than a talented artist who does not look as great on camera. Because of this, it's not difficult to find horrible artist that top the charts in this day and age. In a sense, because of digital media's influence, the music industry is now heavily based upon superficial aspects; in other words, looks are, for the most part, more important than actual talent. It's unfortunate that this is the reality of things in the music industry.
While digital media has allowed music to evolve, at the same time, it has allowed the standard of the music itself to fall. It's unlikely that anything will change in the future, as technology grows and digital media becomes much more influential. But who knows, things can change in a heartbeat and maybe music will yet again evolve into something even more complex; not just involving visual and audio components, but other factors as well.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Ideas for My Animation Assignment
For my assignment, I would like to make an animation which parodies "The Price is Right" using celebrities and such. It would essentially be a very quirky and nonsensical piece, akin to my sense of humour. There wasn't any significant thing that inspired me to do this. It just came into mind. I would be importing many images onto flash to create a very "zany" effect to my animation. I plan on using magazine cut-outs of celebrity heads on top of figures drawn in flash. I think this alone would create the effect I want.
My style of animation would be similar to either South Park or Angela Anaconda. They both use cut-out animation. Angela Anaconda would be the most similar to the animations style I plan on using, whereas South Park would follow the same script and content that I plan on using.
I realize that this will be a very tedious task, having to animate the characters mouths and cropping out the heads. Also, just finding the heads I want will be a difficult task. I will also probably most of the techniques learned during the Flash turorials, most notably tweening and creating motion graphics.
If I am unable to find these cut-outs, I can simply opt to just draw the heads as caricatures of the celebrities or just create my own characters all together.
My style of animation would be similar to either South Park or Angela Anaconda. They both use cut-out animation. Angela Anaconda would be the most similar to the animations style I plan on using, whereas South Park would follow the same script and content that I plan on using.
I realize that this will be a very tedious task, having to animate the characters mouths and cropping out the heads. Also, just finding the heads I want will be a difficult task. I will also probably most of the techniques learned during the Flash turorials, most notably tweening and creating motion graphics.
If I am unable to find these cut-outs, I can simply opt to just draw the heads as caricatures of the celebrities or just create my own characters all together.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Movie Poster
Artist Statement
The movie I decided to base my poster on is “The Grudge”. Long black hair is iconic to the movie, and so I thought that the hair would be the base for my poster. Through trial and error, I came to the conclusion that a white skinned hand clawing through the hair would prove to be the most eerie and effective way of promoting the movie. Using different shots of my hand and a long black wig, I was able to bring my poster together. I didn’t want to bring in too many elements into my poster, as I wanted it to stay simple. I personally believe that the simplicity also helps to make it much creepier. Despite its simplicity, I encountered many large obstacles along the way. The first difficulty was the background of hair. I had to crop this hair from a much larger picture, and that was a real pain. Because of the lighting in the room that I took the picture in, some parts of the wig were much brighter than other parts making the cropping process very stressful. Increasing the tolerance didn’t help either as it made the hair look very splotchy, losing the eerie effect. I got through this problem by making it a layer over a black background, the blur tool and various filters. The next issue was my hands. I initially wanted the hand to blue, so I inverted the colours of my fingers. While I did get the colour I wanted, the shadows on the fingers also reversed, making the whole hand look very awkward. As a result, I had to take new photos and fiddle around with the lighting to get it to look right. After doing this, I got the colour and the shadows right, but overall it seemed to clash with the rest of the poster. The red font with the blue fingers seemed kind of cheesy, so I changed the fingers to white. The final problem I had was blending. Making the fingers fit in naturally was an extremely difficult task. In fact, I had to cut out new pieces of hair to cover the top portions of the fingers so it would look right. Furthermore, I couldn’t just slap on these pieces of hair, I had to make them flow with the hair in the background. It looked really bad otherwise. I also needed the text to fit in nicely, and through the blur tool, this was accomplished. Because the hand colour was so un-natural, it also clashed with the background. I had to experiment with different filters and saturation to get it to blend well. I still think that there are some blending issues, but I did the best that I could and I think it looks fine.
Comments:
Typography
This poster for Tim Burton's, "Corpse Bride" uses a very quirky and somewhat creepy type. The slogan doesn't present anything special, but the movie title is quite interesting. Firstly, it establishes the nature of the movie as the type is very "Burton-esque". His movies tend to have that quirky, gothic feel to it and this type portrays that. Secondly, if you look at the poster closely, you can see little curled vines on the borders. These vines play nicely with the type as they both mimic each other. The curls of the vines look similar to the curls and rough edges of the title. Overall, they type is quite effective in enhancing the poster's message; and although the slogan type is a bit bland, it actually works well with the rest of poster as it creates contrast to the dark, gothic feel of the other images.
The type on this bottle of Mountain dew is kinda cool...The acutal font is nothing special but the effects are what make it interesting. They made it so that the words are almost flowing with the movements in the background, creating the illusion of dynamic motion...again, it's kinda cool, but nothing special. It's relatively effective as Mountain Dew is an energy drink, and this type kinda of gives emphasizes this but...overall, it's a bit bland...So...it's good, but not great. And effective, but not amazingly effective.
It's a pretty standard horror movie font; very gritty and scratchy. It's interesting to note that there are two different fonts. The lettering in white is a really sharp and distorted font while the title is a blocky, gritty font. What I really like about the title font, is that it sort of mimics the woman's flow of hair. The lettering is broken up by lines and scratches, and I personally think that it adds an element of repetition. It can also be mirroring the texture of the monster's head, as it is also quite broken up and cracked. I think it's pretty effective...but I mean, it's not really anything new; As I said before, it's a pretty standard horror movie font. It gets the job done. From the font, one can get that this movie might be unnerving and edgy.Image Sources:
Corpse Bride Poster - Poster from my house
Mountain Dew Bottle - Bottle from my refrigerator
FEAST Movie Poster - (It won't let me post the link) from best-horror-movies.com under images and Feast movie poster.
Photoshop...Frightening Possibilities?
Photoshop...what can't you do with it? Today in class, we were taught how to edit a photo so that it looked like it was taken with movement. While I initially thought this was amazing, I started to dig a little deeper. I began thinking, "hey, if you can do this to a picture that easily...where do the possibilities end?" In other words, is every picture I'm seeing legitimate?
This is, maybe not so much frightening, but it adds a whole new perspective to the way we see things. How can we trust everything we see? And even if it was photoshopped, how could we tell that the image was altered? With all of the advanced capabilities of this program, one could theoretically seemlessly paste a picture of themselves sitting on the top of the CN tower. I don't really have too much to say...I just wanted to raise that point so that you'll think twice about everything you see.
This is, maybe not so much frightening, but it adds a whole new perspective to the way we see things. How can we trust everything we see? And even if it was photoshopped, how could we tell that the image was altered? With all of the advanced capabilities of this program, one could theoretically seemlessly paste a picture of themselves sitting on the top of the CN tower. I don't really have too much to say...I just wanted to raise that point so that you'll think twice about everything you see.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
I wanna talk about C.R.A.P....Principles
Picture 1: Proximity is the name of the game! What the advertisers did here was place a bunch of like objects together (the crosses) to create a sense of repetition. However, there seems to be one section which is clear of these crosses. What is achieved by this? A sense of contrast due to the break in repetition, making the blank spot very noticeable. Where this patch is placed is also important as it's location (proximity) is in an "off-beaten" spot. In a way, this advertisement shows us the principle of proximity being used, as well as being defied.Picture 2: Sweet and simple. This ad doesn't use much to look interesting. A slight tilt in the text makes it all that much more fun to look at. If the advertisers had decided to leave the text aligned in the middle, we'd be looking at one boring piece of crap. Speaking of crap, this ad showcases the principle of alignment. Again, sweet and simple...wait, does it say bloody diarrhea?
Picture 3: Orange hair, floating notes and an outfit slightly resembling Ronald Mcdonald?! What the hell is going on! Well I'll tell you what's going on; This advertisement showcases the principle of repetition. The design of flowing movements are repeated throughout the poster. Her hair and the notes seem to mirror each other in their curvy appearance, and as a result, they mingle well together. If the notes were layed out in a straight line, or her hair was much more tamed, then the ad would not work at all. This would create a conflict, not contrast, and would make the ad look very unappealing and busy. With the Ronald suit, I unfortuantely can't help you with that.
Picture 4: This picture is very striking. Why? Perhaps it's the panda in the WWF logo. Looking at it with the CRAP principles, perhaps it's because of the very evident contrast of colours. Ya, let's focus on the latter. The majority of the poster is very flat and white, making the red stain on the ground pop out. Red is a very vibrant coulour, and by placing a small amount of it on the white backdrop, it becomes very noticable. There is also a contrast in terms of the images itself. When one thinks of an airport, they normally don't associate large red blood stains upon the floor. Because the stain is so out of place, colour-wise and image wise, it becomes very striking and presents a strong message.
And now for everyone's favourite part, my list of sources! yay:
Picture 1+2: http://adsoftheworld.com/taxonomy/media/print?page=59
Picture 3: http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/web/40-brilliantly-photoshopped-print-ads/
Picture 4: http://www.cartridgesave.co.uk/news/30-sensational-print-ads-from-around-the-world/
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Digital Media Lecture; First Class, First Impressions
Honestly speaking, before September 8th, I never really put any thought into what Digital Media (or any of my other courses for that matter) was about...at all! The whole time I had been anticipating my writing courses as that was the path I was wanting to venture down in the media, and I sort of neglected my other classes. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I didn't really have an impression at all of what Digital Media was. After the lecture, boy did my thought pattern change!
I had no idea how much Digital Media encompassed. If you were to ask me what I thought it was prior to the class, I probably would've guessed that it just had to do with creating logos animation. How much deeper this course is completely flew by my head. I now realize that Digital Media is so much more. It requires creativity, the ability to find out what people want and what they don't want, and great story-telling skills...In fact, in order to succeed in this course, it seems that one would also need to be hone in the skills learned from the other RTA courses; And the other courses require one to use the skills learned in Digital Media. As such, this course is important for a student in this program to take, as all of the courses in RTA feed off of each other. What you learn in one course, may and probably will come in handy in another course.
Talk about a wake up call. I came into this program with blinders on, looking only into to screenwriting and thinking that I could just shmuck my way through everything else. However, after being slapped in the face by this lecture as well the other classes from the first week, I can say that my mind is so much more open now. I now realize that I should take all of my courses seriously, as they all tie in with each other and will give me a stronger sense of the media buisness.
-Allan Toda
I had no idea how much Digital Media encompassed. If you were to ask me what I thought it was prior to the class, I probably would've guessed that it just had to do with creating logos animation. How much deeper this course is completely flew by my head. I now realize that Digital Media is so much more. It requires creativity, the ability to find out what people want and what they don't want, and great story-telling skills...In fact, in order to succeed in this course, it seems that one would also need to be hone in the skills learned from the other RTA courses; And the other courses require one to use the skills learned in Digital Media. As such, this course is important for a student in this program to take, as all of the courses in RTA feed off of each other. What you learn in one course, may and probably will come in handy in another course.
Talk about a wake up call. I came into this program with blinders on, looking only into to screenwriting and thinking that I could just shmuck my way through everything else. However, after being slapped in the face by this lecture as well the other classes from the first week, I can say that my mind is so much more open now. I now realize that I should take all of my courses seriously, as they all tie in with each other and will give me a stronger sense of the media buisness.
-Allan Toda
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