Evaluation / final product.

Evaluation

Creating a short film 

At the beginning of our project, We created potential characters that we would later use in our final product whether that be with the use of graphic design, using Photoshop or creating a short film. We story boarded and planned how our characters would look and what role they would have as part of our design process before later sketching and drawing out what we wanted them to look like. This design process was so that we could initially scan our images into Photoshop so that we were able to turn them into graphic designs. However pretty early on we decided that we wanted to create a short film instead of a game or graphic design. We created two characters in our planning stage one a girl and one a boy called 'Seth' and 'Kye'. We aimed to use our characters as people in our short film. We wanted our characters to have completely different roles; 'Seth' the girl would act as the 'innocent' character who would suffer with social anxiety and would be the protagonist and more isolated character, where as 'kye' the boy in our story would be more 'wild' and be the influencer in the story, this is where the drug use and smoking would come into play; he would be the antagonist.

Story boarding our ideas for our characters meant that we were able to plan out our ideas more effectively which I found really useful. As inspiration for our short film we spent a small amount of time watch youtube videos on some short films that already existed on the internet. This was so that we could grasp an idea of the sort of shots we would like to use and the techniques we wanted to use to get the frames the way we wanted before we would later edit our film. During this planning stage we also did our own research looking at different artists, photographers, illustrators, film makers and graphic designers; getting information about that individual and looking at there work and the way that they produce there products.

After our time spent planning, myself and a few friends (that I wanted to be in my short film) went out to our local town 'Bridgnorth' to shoot our short film, the film was shot over 3 different days and included a variety of different locations. Overall I wanted the film to be produced with cinematic themes, artistic and aestheticly pleasing shots, which I feel i have achieved. I took many 3-5 second shots along with a few longer frames that were around 10 seconds long, to create our film, our final product is around 3 minutes long and took two days to edit.

While editing we experienced some technical issues as, as our computer was exporting our videos on to imovie which also took a long hour and half to fully export, our computer crashed from overheating. This was were we had thought that we had lost all of our work however we realised that the software automatically saves after ever bit of editing- which was something I never knew before. Apart from our computer crashing every so often nothing really bad happened when shooting and editing our film. But we did have a little bit of trouble inputting music over the top of our video as our college computer had blocked itunes on our imacs. To overcome this situation I then had to export my video on to my desktop before exporting it on to google drive so that I could save the video on to my iphone so that I was able to input music through imovie that way.

Through this entire project I have learnt how to create a short film with better editing and more cinematic shots, as I had previously made a few short films with some random video clips on my phone however they were never as well edited as what I had produced this time around. I learnt how to adjust the colour and contrast of the frames, adding fading from one clip to another, using text to add the title and times through out the video and also how to add filters over the top of the videos. While messing around with the editing software I also was able play and reverse some of the frames which really helped to create the cinematic theme that I was trying to achieve. The use of slow motion and sped up clips also helped to create more of an aesthetic appearance. Overall i feel that i have improved my filming and editing skills as i was able to shoot and edit the entire film within five days.

Conceptual designers And Illustrators.

Glen Keane

Concept Film Artist

Glen Keane is a leading animation artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Glens career at Walt Disney spanned a long 37 years, his work has help to produce the second golden age of Disney films. Glens help to create very popular and well known characters such as Ariel from 'The Little Mermaid', Aladdin and Pocahontas. After his retirement Glen created a short film about two young youths who both led completely different lives. Glen first took my interest when I realised that he was both an animator and an illustrator, I find that glen is an inspiration to me as, as a child I used to spend hours and hours watching Disney animations and films. I hope that I can take inspiration in the future from his work so that then I am able to create my own short film or animation that is as good as is as capturing as the way Glen created some of today's most known characters.

Here are some of Glens short animations and short films:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsQ4--X2ls4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9CG_PoEWCg

   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBbzdNb5nEU

Ralph McQuarrie

Conceptual designer and illustrator 

Ralph McQuarrie was both an illustrator and a conceptual designer. Ralph has worked on many well know TV series and movies which includes the star wars trilogy, the film E.T, the original battle star galactic and the film cocoon for which he won a academy award. Ralph was born in Indiana and later died in California in 2012. Ralph worked as a conceptual designer for Boeing then later worked making the star wars trilogy. For the original star wars there had o be a believable size for the death star to be that would allow it to appear round for long takes and shots when filming, therefor ralph and the special effects team had to make it appear real, which seemed to be quite difficult as it had to look round for longer takes and look flat close up, these had to created using flat sections of model, placed on flat tables. This is were Ralph ended up calculating that the death star was 92 miles in diameter. Ralph initially worked for a dentistry firm where he would draw teeth and equipment before he later worked as an artist and preliminary design illustrator at the company I previously mentioned 'Boeing'. McQuarrie would draw diagrams for a manual jumbo jet while he was working with the company as well as designing film posters and animating for the coverage of the apollo space program as part of a 3 man company 'Reel Three'. while Ralph worked at Reel Three he was asked to produce some illustrations for a film project that himself and a team member.

Saman Kesh

Saman Kesh is a well know filmmaker and best known for his narrative music video work. Saman is based in Los Angeles, California and has worked with music artists such as: Calvin Harris, Basement Jaxx, Kygo and Placebo. In 2009 Saman worked on his first music video for Cinnamon Chasers first single called 'luv deluxe' this was all while he was attending Art centre college of design as a student. 'Luv deluxe has received over 7 million views on youtube and won an award for the best music video for SXSW. Later on in 2012 Saman went on to direct a music video for the Ed Sheeran, Deus and Calvin Harris for the song 'Stamina' however this video created controversy because of its thematic statements regarding weight loss and obesity, however this resulted

In 2012, he went on to direct videos for Ed Sheeran, Deus and Calvin Harris, his video for the track 'Stamina' from French producer Vitalic sparked controversy with its thematic statements regarding weight loss and obesity in pop culture.^[9] The video resulted in Kesh winning his second SXSW 'Best Video" award in 2013.

Graphic Artists And Street Photographers.

Tyler Spangler

Psychedelic / Graphic Design

Artist Tyler Spangler worked in producing vintage pictures with visual psychedelic touches to create  art work that looks distorted. Some of Tyler's work have elements of illusion, which really helps to portray that psychedelic vibe that Spangler is often known for. His work also includes graphics, this adds to the sort of surreal and distorted feel that Tyler is trying to portray. Spangler took inspiration from the local beach in San Clemente, as surfing was the biggest non-art related inspiration. Tyler's work is colourful and vibrant however also portrays elements of chaos and tranquillity in some of his pieces.
I particularly like Tyler's work as it has elements of psychedelic graphic design, something that I have found myself interested in. Tyler's work has a lot of bold block colour which really helps to grasp my attention. His work reminds  me of pop art as it hold the same sort of elements with the bold lines and bright colours, which I like. Tyler's work inspires me to want to create my own artwork with sort of the same style and elements that are portrayed throughout his artwork. Taking that inspiration I would like to interpret hat into my own artwork, photography edits and graphic design with the influence of bold lettering and colour in addition to distorted image and allusion.

Wittner Fabrice

Street Photographer

Fabrice started his photography through his own artist journey. Before Fabrice became a professional photographer  worked  in the outdoor  sports industry doing editorial designs and assignments. This meant that he was able to capture an array of different images while travelling; capturing new horizons and new cultures.  Fabrice then played around with the concept of painting, drawing at tattooing however he never took to it as a potential job role.  Instead for three years he took work, as part of a slack line company where he dealt with creative media aspects and designing on an everyday basis. His work within the company included high quality illustrations, creative photography, and editorial graphic design and advertising. Now a professional photographer farbrice creates urban architectural images that are high focused or distorted and adds mono-tonal graphic designs to create images that add elements of surrealism. Not only are his photographs professionally taken and edited but he is also now a creative manager for one of the biggest companies within his area. The images that Fabrice takes for the majority includes street and urban photography from all over different parts of the world, his images are portrayed as simplistic yet sophisticated when taking photographs and documenting individuals and crowds within urban areas and streets. Wittner uses daylight and low light when taking his images which really helps to create dark shadows and cool lighting in his photographs. I have really taken an interest in this specific artist as I find that he captures images that I myself would like to capture in the future, therefore I feel he has helped me to get some inspiration with how I want to take some of my own photographs while adding the graphic aspect.

9 shots

Street Photographer

9 shots is a street photographer who captures peoples emotions and motions in everyday situations, the images he takes are natural and portray stories without effort. The high contrasting mono tone images are what I believe makes the images 100% more captivating. The images he tends to capture show  raw emotion and often show isolated expression, he also edits his images so that they give the look of being underexposed and show a dark grey tints or shadows to his images. The majority of his images are black and white and are captured at a wide and low angle .Both aspects on the images are high quality and well focused; the background images normally consist of some architectural building or industrial aesthetic and the main focus- such as a specific individual or group are captured in highly focused and crisp frames. 9 shots particularly took my interest as I find that I can relate to the images. The images that he takes are something I would very much like to capture myself. I love the over all style of his photography and the image make you feel that you are there living in that image as they are such everyday things and are in an everyday scenario. ' the world Carry's on spinning as you capture the moment' a quote from 9 shots himself.

Anne Delany 

Street Photographer

Anne Delany is a New York and New Zealand based photographer documenting life in gritty urban decay architecture and street photography that often involves portrait's and high quality natural shots. Anne is on of the best street photographer's in terms of her ability to capture raw facial expression within the first shot or in seconds.  As well as some of the other high quality street photographers that I have already looked, Anne also uses mono tonal editing with her images, to create contrast and shading within her photography. Personally Anne is one of my favourite urban decay and street photographers that I have came across so far. The way that she is able to captures images in only a few frames is how I would like to capture photographs my self. I really love her urban style as I feel it creates edgy and aesthetic shots while also telling a story just by one image. I would quite like to try and take my own photographs in the same sort of style that Anne uses as her images, sort of like an artist copy taking similar shots to what she has already captured before taking my own photographs in that style. Her images are what really caught my eye and grasped my attention when I was looking at photography and artists that I liked the style of. Annes images are natural but also chaotic, as they are simply taken in a natural technique and not set up or posed. This portrays the photographs, as if they have been taken in everyday life or an everyday scenario. Overall I love Anne Delany's work and the way that she captures photographs.

Photoshop Tutorial.

Photo shop Tutorial

This was my first time ever using Photo shop therefore I had no experience with how the software worked and operated. I was completely new to the whole thing. At the beginning of the lesson we were shown the basics of Photo shop and how we were to use certain elements of Photo shop using the tools that Photo shop supplied.  Our aim at the start of our lesson was to be able to use a verity of different tools within Photo shop in order to edit our image. The overall steps that we were working towards using correctly and understanding were:

Steps: 

• Creating a new document to a specific paper size (A3)
• Pasting an image 
• Layers - Creating new layers
• Levels - using the levels tool to adjust your image's white and dark balance
• Multiply- Changing your layer style to multiply , to make sketches into tracing paper
• Painting - with the paintbrush and erase tool 
• Select - highlighting areas of my page with various selecting tools such as the lasso tool
• Changing the opacity of a paint brush or the erase tool to build u new areas of colour and detail
• Saving and Screenshotting work

 My first step in using photo shop  was to firstly open a new document and adjust it to the correct size that I wanted, the size that i selected was A3 as I thought that A4 would be too small. The paper that i used also had be changed and was set to a specific type. The next step was to alter the page so that it would either be landscape or portrait depending on what the image was that you selected and weather the image would look and fit best on either landscape or portrait. I opted to stay with my page being portrait as I felt that my image looked and fitted better being in that position as it meant that there was more room for me to expand my image to make it larger. The next step was to then find an image that i liked, however it was important that this image was already made to be a sketch so that it was easier for me to edit in Photo Shop . Here's where I found my image

I  then copied my image from the Internet and pasted it on to my Photo shop document. The image that I had chosen was a sketch of Bambi, which later on  I found out that it was a  bit harder to do then what my class mates had chose for there images as there's were a lot easier to add highlighting and shading too rather than mine, and overall just simpler for a first attempt on Photo shop. For my next step I then adjusted the size of my image so that it fit the page well and wasn't burred, I did this by using the ctrl and shift buttons on the keypad of my computer, this made moving and adjusting my image easy as it meant that i was able to stretch my image to fit the page so that it wouldn't look out of proportion.

The next step was to create a layer for my image so that I was able to add colour, shading and highlighting with out adjusting or messing up my initial image or first layer. The layer that we created we renamed 'image' so that we knew that, that was the original image so that we didn't touch the first layer. The next layer that we made was called 'colour' and that was the layer that we were able to play around with using the paint tool and eraser tool to make outlines and add colour over the top of our image. However before we were actually able to use colour we first had to adjust the levels  of white and dark tones in our image or layer by adjusting the white outcast shadows and the dark sketch colouring of our image to make it more balanced, this was so that we could get rid of any harsh lines or to outcast any sketch shadows we did not want to be shown after adding colour to our image.
Within our layers there is also an option to change the layers from 'normal' to 'multiply' this change meant that we were now able to change our layer to tracing paper so that we could add colour over the top of our image and still be able to see the outlines, this made things a lot easier when trying to add colour to our image.

After all of those steps I was finally able to add colour and outlines to my image, I selected the specific colour that I wanted to be the main colour for my image and began to fill in the areas that I wished that colour to be. Any mistakes that I made I was able to correct by going around the edges with the eraser tool, this was to clean up and make the overall look of my image a lot more put together. After filling the areas that i wanted in that certain colour we were to make another layer.

The next layer that i made I called 'shade' like the name this was the layer that we used in order to add shading to our image, we used the shading tool to adjust the amount of paint on the paintbrush so that it was partly faded, this specific brush made the shading look more real on the image, this tool also meant we could adjust the size of the brush so that I could get into any smaller areas and corners with out having to go back and use the eraser tool too much. Another tool that i found very useful when using Photo shop was the 'polygonal lasso tool' as it meant that I was able to select my image by going around the lines of the sketch until it matched up, this tool I found was quite easy to use and was effective.
 For my last step I created another final layer to add more detail to my image, this layer was for highlighting, within this layer i highlighted the specific areas where light would naturally be on the image to show more depth and make my image look more real and more 3D. On this layer I was also able to change the opacity of the paintbrush tool to build up new areas of colour and add more detail to my image. After all of those steps  I saved my image and screen shot my final product.

This was what my image looked like after I had adjusted the white and dark tones, removing the outcast of shadows