Spencers Lecture: 30th October 2015

Geissbuhler piece poster 

Poster Analysis: From this poster I get that the two fictional characters King Kong and Godzilla represent Japan and America. The fact that they are holding hands looking towards a sunset which appears to be the Japanese flag suggests to me that this piece poster is about a war which happened between America and Japan. This is a poster which represents peace. The films characters themselves also may link into this since King Kong and Godzilla were both classed as monsters in their films. However in this poster it seems that the two monsters are at peace with one another. 

Activity: "Think of three things you associate most with Japan" 

My answers: Mount Fuji, Pokemon, Cherry blossom 

I found this activity fun as it demonstrates how a culture or place can have different connotations connected to it that we think of when we hear or see the place. I find it quite amusing how I have picked completely different things which all connect to this idea of "Japanness". 

"The theory and appeal of Giant Monsters" Jase Short

I really love this artwork because of it's how real it looks on the page even though it's obviously fictional, I'm sure there is a bigger meaning behind this art work maybe what appears to be the monster in the background represents a culture, nation or entity. Something bigger that what we are that we are hiding from. Whether this be more symbolically driven in the fact that it represents global warming or whether it be more politically driven by representing a huge nation or past war like Germany, Russia or America. However if it was something to do with this I would think that he would have made the connection a little more obvious by adding some politically driven style. 

I would prefer it if the monster wasn't actually symbolic at all and the fact that we think that it's symbolic of something else or has a bigger meaning expresses how we read into things too much instead of taking things for what they are and what they appear to be a giant fictional character in a wood.  This also relates to the First things first manifesto that we did in one of Rob's earlier seminars where the message was very much that we as designers have our talent wasted on toothpaste commercials we are designing for a meaning rather than designing for the love of design.

Empirical texts: (The Distinction between saying and showing) In other words when you go see a film the first thing you go for is the entertainment of actually watching the film and seeing some form of action (Godzilla destroying a city), but there is also something else we can read off it some form of political or social happening that is going on which can be much more serious. Subconsciously we are being given two stories through this primary idea of entertainment which we are buying into. 

 I could apply these empirical tests in my practice by creating posters and using a hidden meaning behind something else. Symbolism and semiotics are important in defining and describing something political and important through visual techniques such as characters and illustrations told by films and graphics alike. 

Spencer's Lecture- 26th October 2015

 James Elkins & Types of Knowing: Can Art and Design be taught? 



Impact on Contemporary art schools 

• We still value a loose/free investigation of meaning
• Tutors try to cultivate student individuality 

WHAT I THINK

These are the points that I feel mean the most to me, I do believe that tutors do try and uphold a loose and free investigation of meaning. In Graphic design I feel that it's important that this is upheld, we need to have a sense of anything is possible and that we are being taught not as a group but as individuals which are being taught the same things but we are learning different things from it.

Bauhaus 1919-1933 

• Belief in formal and universal rudiments of practice
• Focus on experiences/ exploration 
• to increase sensitivity to phenomena 
• Is there a Tabula Rasa? (The idea of the mind as a blank state) 

My Response : I believe that there isn't a blank state of mind (Tabula Rasa), we are constantly thinking about something and to say we are thinking about nothing is quite unusual. Although I am taking this question that spencer proposed quite literal I feel I prefer the literal answer a lot more that any other. 

 James Elkin:

•   Book: Artists with PHS'S,   
•  Book: Why art can't be taught
• He is an art critic 

 

Rotoscoping

Franz Ferdinand - Take me out from Helin Film & Animation on Vimeo.

We looked at the Franz Ferdinand music video "Take me out" as an example of rotoscoping being used, this gave us a basic idea of what we were going to create.

The first thing we did was collect our footage, we were instructed to use small pieces of video or sections of selected footage which didn't last very long, this made rotoscoping easier and would make the rotoscope look a lot more fluid.

First we looked at the settings of our composition before we started rotoscoping, we ensured that we changed our frame rate and elected the Conform to frame rate button. These settings were very important in ensuring that our comp was set up properly. 

The next step was importing out footage into after effects, we did this by going to file>Import and then choosing the file we wanted to work with. Now our footage was ready to be edited 

and rotoscoped. I also used the shortcut Alt>square bracket keys left or right to clip my footage, this made my footage shorter and easier to work with. 

This is the Stretch tool we used it to make our footage faster or slower depending on how we wanted our outcome to look, the lower the number the faster the speed the higher the number the slower it went. Because I wanted a walk pace I used 200 I felt that this was a high enough number for it to be not too slow but not too fast. 

We were told that these were the most important settings when we were first setting our after effects file up, we needed to ensure that the button called "PRESERVE CONSTANT VERTES" was un-ticked, this made it so the keyframe before the last one wasn't deleted and all of the footage remained in tact. After we had untucked this we could click ok and carry on with our creation. 

At this point of the rotoscope I felt very comfortable with what I was making, because I am used to using a lot of the pen tool in Illustrator I got to grips with using this pen tool quite easily

We used the Pen tool in after effects to create our mask, we then moved the playback head until we got to a point where the character we were tracing moved slightly out of the pen lines, we then adjusted the lines of the pen outline so that the new position of the character matched up with the new pen tool lines. I repeated this until I was happy with the outcome and that the looped effect was sufficient. The set the time originally to 2 seconds but in my case I found that it took another second to be fully complete. After we had completed the pen tool outlines we made a new composition and dragged the original comp into the timeline. We could now interchange between the two compositions and anything I edited on the previous comp was now updated on the new comp as well. 

In the new comp we made the length of the composition 10 seconds and then used the Time remap tool which was situation on the 3 little lines on the main comp button, we created new keyframes so that the last keyframe wasn't blank, this made the animation finish on an action shot and made the whole thing loop and work all together. 

I added a black solid by using the Layer solid tool and used the toggle switches and mode and trakmat to make a silhouette in the shape of the character, I preferred this to the actual character because it made the effect of the desert more realistic and the implication of the character being hot and shadowed under the sun. 

Rotoscoping from Josh Juhasz on Vimeo.

This is my final looped animation, Overall I am happy with the outcome and the process we went through was pretty understandable, I feel that If I was to use this method in the future I would be much more prepared. The background and the characters movements work well together and the composition as a whole works together. I enjoyed this process and production and I feel that I could use rotoscoping in the future if I needed to. 

Pete Norris Lecture: 26th October 2015

Business and Design


Market Issues

Market Segment
Real market issues
End user aspect 

Communication issues

• Shannon & Weaver Model of Communication 
• Sender  > The message > Encode > Transmit > Decode > Receive 
•  Once you send it you could have Noise/Interference this is anything that interferes or obscures the message you are trying to send. An example of this would be a billboard with the company name covered with dirt. 

Once the message has been decoded this does not mean to say that the receiver understands the message you are trying to get across. Every piece of design that is created goes through this process and it is imperative that it works because if it doesn't work the design doesn't work. 

The sender needs to think about the ethics and the reason for communication to make sure that the message is clear in the receivers mind. If anything is disrupted 

BRAD: British rate advertising data you can search for any magazine that is published in this published, you can get a whole series of direct contacts to Graphic designers and Editors. This is helpful when looking at placements if you want to create page layouts and magazines. 

DCM: Digital Cinema Media This is more for animation, but it's intentions are the same links and direct contacts are on this site. 

Once you know all this you can start to design, knowing where you are going is 90% of the problem. Once you have it decoded, the receiver is going to have problems. If the receiver isn't in a good mood it doesn't matter how good the designer is you can't do nothing about it. Especially on the 26th January it's the worst day of the whole year apparently! 

Attitude specific: what are the attitudes of the people that are receiving your design? 

The film swordfish was pulled because of the tragedy of 911, you need to know when to pull your design because if you don't and it gets released at the wrong time it can reflect badly on you and make you look unsympathetic and cruel. 

Mental state relates to all of these different aspects... 

1. Sex
2. Age
3. Emotion
4. Experiences 
5. Memory (Of a nation: 911) 
6. Social 
7. Psychological 
8. Learning

0-14 years: Highly inquisitive (Experimental, learning by touching) 

14-30 years: Social independence (Walking behind/In front of parents) 

55-85 years: Social dependence increases (More socially dependent) 

Scotopic vision: Night time vision where you really only see shades of blue. 

Photopic vision: Day time vision where all of the colours are usually bright and easy to see. 

Managers and Designers are completely different, Managers focus more on people and systems while designers focus more on things and the environment they are in. Designers are much more short term rather than managers, briefs are short and the focus is on getting it done to the best of our abilities. 

Justification is very important, the manager needs to be able to understand why you have done something a certain way, you might have an amazing design but unless you explain it in his terms and terms he is interested in he's not going to understand why the design will benefit him/her. Be definitive and confident in what you are pitching. Why have you done it? Why will it relate to your market? 

"First Things First" Manifesto

This is the first things first manifesto that we read in our seminar, we were asked to read the manifesto and pick out key words and phrases that matter the most to us and resonate with our practice. After I read it I identified that the manifesto was all about how designers talents are wasted in the present on toothpaste commercials and advertisements that don't really matter that much. The manifesto is saying that we could be doing better things, more important things which put our talents to better use. Why can't we work on environmental and political problems instead of making advertisements and posters for "Dog food". 

The manifesto means a lot to me because I believe the same, that we as designers are forced to waste our talents on things that don't really matter too much. At least not as much as wars and environmental issues. Marketing and branding designs are becoming too infested, and we deserve to be put to better use. 

This is the next process we went through, a process called "Radication". Where we erased things that didn't matter to us and things that we wouldn't want in our own manifesto. I erased quite a lot and found that the paragraph I kept the most intact was the second paragraph where we talk about how we perceive design and how we could be doing much more important things. This is the paragraph which effects me the most and the one that I wanted to keep the most of. In one paragraph I removed all of the words apart from "Consumerism is running uncontested", I felt that this phrase sums up perfectly how we the technology generation are focused on consumerism we are brought up with advertisements shoved in our face and forced onto us by brands. It's about time that this consumerist generation started thinking for themselves and started to look at design not for it's advertising techniques but for its design and artistic merit alone. 

Spencer's Lecture: 23rd October 2015

Emigre Magazine

1984 - 2004 - typography magazine
The Apple Mac meets a dislocated team of designers
Rudy Vanderlands (Dutch founder, editor, designer)
Zuzana Licko (Czech founder, typeface designer)

The original intention was to focus upon liminality - "Inbetween-ness"
Showcase work of Emigres: writers, artists, actors who live or had lived outside their country of origin.
Emigre exploited the quirks and possibilities of software to produce a new innovative design language.
After issue 3 it became known for coarse bitmap typeface created by Vanderlands Zuzana Licko (partner and wife)

Personal Research:

My Thoughts: Personally I don't like EMIGRE magazine because of how post modern it is, the layouts and designs seem random and thrown together, I prefer a much more modernist style because of the structure and the kind of set guides behind it. Although many post modernists say that modernists lack emotion and creativeness when designing I feel that modernism still withholds the same amount of emotive visual language it's just displayed in a different way. 

Its weird looking at the cover and then looking inside the magazine itself, the cover is very post modern, no particular grid system is used or setting for the type and one image that is held on the cover. We look inside and we get a sense of a neo modernist style with some grid implications incorporated into the magazine. I really can't understand this magazine because of it's style, the magazine itself is obviously based on typography and different types but from looking at the style I can't fathom what the style of the magazine is all supposed to be about. 

Critics:

Massimo Vignelli (Neo modernist)  
"A national calamity"
"An abberation of culture"

Darvid Carson (postmodernist)
He once championed their work for its aggressiveness
Then began to condemn it for being too readily identifiable, therefore unusable.
Magazine published with the words "No Emigre fonts" although the logo itself was Licko's Senator.
Ironically it was designers like Carson who had popularised the style.

Stephen Heller (middleground - design journalism)
"A blip in the continuum"
"Cult of the ugly"

Output:

• Issue dedicated to Vaughan Oliver, trying to contextualise his work. 
• Known for having a very diverse involving style. 
• Can see a set of tendencies that are manifested in a number of different ways. 
• Use of very organic experimental type forms, use of ornate technical forms.
• They often collaborated with particular designers/design groups. E.g Designers Republic, David Carson, Experimental Jetset. 
• Tuning into a combination of punk aesthetic with a very expressive and artistic form as well as being playful and experimental with the construction. 
• They talk about type and composition, heated discussion. 
• Influenced by the idea that there are technological aspects to page design - reflected political and social shifts in art, culture and communication. 
• Tried to destabilise the post-war design ethic of righteous form.
• Contested universal graphic vocabulary, built on grid systems which was adopted by corporate culture.
• Relaxation of grids, provocative clutter and visual forms of anarchy.

Monotony of 'International Style'

The text is as provocative as the imagery, not a balanced argument.
"A rant with visual elements". A rant against modernism.
Trying to ironically drawing attention to the fact it's not expressing anything.

Old modernism:

• Mostly black and white, bit of primary colours. 
• Helvetica, lots of white space. 
• Big ideas, visual puns that everyone understands. 
• Organising principals are expressed through vigorously articulated systems. 
• Iconic.
• Form follows function.
• Less is more,
• Lots of use of bars and lines. 
• Collage. Imitates fine art. 
• Geometric.
• Ornament is a crime. 
• Precision craftsmanship. 
• Simplicity is best. 

Modernism 8.0

• Mostly black and white with tertiary and a bit of primary colour. 
• Helvetica. Empty space. 
• Little ideas and visual slapstick that nobody understands. 
• Form follows function but function is negotiable. 
• Less is safe. 
• Underlines and strikethrough. 
• Crude collage. 
• Imitates fine art. 
• Form is provided by software. 
• Bitmapped abstraction. 
• Whats an ornament? 
• An obvious repression of any expression, afraid of unable to express themselves. 
• Whatever. 
• Simplistic is popular. 

Personal note: I find it funny how post modernism is being told as "Old modernism" because of how post modernist design feels it has changed the face of design. 

Format changes:

Tabloid
Smaller news magazine
Issue 60 (audio CD)
Issue 62 DVD "Catfish"
Emigre Music Publishing

In part these were attempts to move away from a style that was being commerciality appropriated (MTV, mainstream fashion, designer and music magazines of the 90's)

I AM: Further Research

Cucurumbé by Ceci Peralta - 

This is an of research I have found where a grid and typography has been used, this has helped me come up with more ideas for the layout of the type and how it will appear on the grid as a composition. This piece by Ceci Peralta has made me realise that although it is about the type and how it looks and compares to the word it also matters how we look at it as a 

whole composition. 

Hope Strength Courage by Mary Kate McDevitt: 

I was fed up of drawing in grids and I wanted to do something different, this piece by Mary Kate Mcdevitt doesn't use a grid and I think that's its much more up my street in terms of how the composition is presented. I feel that this type of composition is much more creative because of how there are no real restrictions. Working in a grid is great for setting your type but as far as being creative is concerned I found it to be 

quite restrictive. 

My idea inspired by research

This is a design I have created from the further research I have made, some sort of grid has been used to make the type look more geometric and 3 dimensional but I feel that I felt freer when I was making this than i did when I was making the first type using nothing but the grid. 

  I have used the word "MONUMENTAL" in this phrase along with "I am" to create this design, I have focused again on the word and the meaning behind it. Monumental obviously meaning something huge and epic, for this reason I have made the style of the font and whole phrase in fact very bold and looming; I felt that this captured the essence of the word and helped me describe how monumental the phrase actually is. I chose this word in the first place simply because it was the first interesting word that I thought of! I also felt that this word would be able to hold it's own and give me plenty of ideas to what the style of the phrase should appear like. I have created a 3D effect by using a perspective technique where the letter is stretched at an angle to create the effect of a 3 dimensional shape. I feel that I could develop this forward and make some great designs around this word, maybe buildings or an actual monument could be formed out of the phrase which would be very interesting. 

"I am" Development

This is my next development of my "I am" typography piece. Before this development I was creating smaller "I am" pieces on a small A4 16X16 grid. In this development I have gone bigger and better by using a whole A4 page for each of the letters in my type. First I used a pencil and sketched out a replica of the original on separate pieces of paper. I then added some detail to make the type look more interesting and personal. I like the composition of the type as a whole and how the layout looks. Because of where the letters are positioned it looks quite blocky and full. I have done this on purpose to try and make the link between the actual word and the type itself, I think by making the letters and the type "Monumental" in themselves this makes the type and the design as a whole a lot stronger. I am happy with leaving the spaces blank I feel more design might ruin it instead of adding to it.

After speaking with a tutor we both agreed that the previous development of my "I am" type lacked a little bit of depth and gravity, I decided to fill the 3D parts of the letters in a black colour to make the 3 dimensional effect much more emphasised and bigger. This also gives the individual letters more clarity and makes them a lot easier to read. I am happy with this final text as I feel that the type lives up to the name and offers a monumental appearance. I think that this type would look great as a sticker on a wall of window! The layout of the text has been well thought out and the letters themselves are all unique with the different cracks and imperfections. Overall I am very happy with how the completed "I am" type looks, I feel that if I would continue to develop this type I would add brickwork and more features to the type and vectorise my design to continue to polish and finish my final piece.

Peter Norris Lecture: 19th October

Buyer and behaviour

Need recognition, 
Search, 
Pre-purchase 
Evaluation, 
Purchase, 
Consumption 
Post purchase evaluation (Good decision, Bad decision) 

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

1. Physiological-         Food, Water
2. Safety-                     Shelter, Defense
3. Belongingness-       Relationships, Family, Home
4. Esteem & Status-   Power, respect, worth
5. Self Actualisation- Personal Values

        
         Which Product?

• Memory: (Good, bad or indifferent) 
• Long Term/ Short Term
• 
  
• Aesthetics: Does it look right?
• 
  
• Emotion: Does the product have to evoke an emotion?
• Love, Conscience, Hedonism
• 
  
• Genetics: Men vs Women
• 
  
• Logic and range of choice
• 
  
• Attitude to risk: Some people will be happier taking
• a risk that others.
• 
  
• Nature of Problem routine: Simple vs Complex
• Low/ High involvement. 
• 
  
• Religion/ Belief structures 
• 
  
• Legal issues 
• 
  
• Others views: Peers, Friends, Family
• 
  
• Financial issues

We were asked to choose a product and write the market information, collectively this is what we came up with. We decided to look at Kinder and the Bueno chocolate bar specifically looking at the pros, cons and target audience etc. 

Spencers lecture: 16th October

Claims to expanded practice 

How cinema "spills out" in the world: 

Pervasive animation a book by Susanne Buchanne:  both state these claims of expansion in graphic design and animation that animation has "spilled out" of the screen. 

Johnny Hardstaff: He is engages in every aspect of this expansion idea, he emphasises the design aspect of the animation that he produces. He sees himself as an experimental film maker but someone who is funded by TV advertising. He made adverts like the sony brava ad: Bouncy balls and the honda advert. 




This is his honda cog advert, I love the way he uses the idea of creation which intrigues us as the parts move we are trying to solve what the parts interaction is going to finish with. 

• "In the mouth of advertising- fascinating"  
• He says that within the glow of CGI is a sublime authoritative voice. 
• Honda the Cog TV advert has a cause and effect relationship that uses CGI to create the illusion of the car being built by this cause and effect. 
• 
  
• Honda the Cog was a landmark advert in setting the trend for this type of advert. 
• 
  
• Playstation executives now barking "gentle" and "tender" it switched from a more aggressive advert to a much more relaxed and more subtle advert which related to people more. 

Something seems more natural and beautiful in CGI, if something happened in reality it wouldn't be quite as effective. An example of this is the Sony Brava advert that uses bouncy balls down a San Fransisco street. This was tried for real on the David Letterman show and it wasn't as effective or in captivating as the cgi version. 

Wants us to receive the infantile, the vapid- receive like children. 

In his paint commercial for ORANGE Hardstaff was asked to remove some footage because it was too beautiful and non realistic. 

Tom Gunning: Cinema of attractions

He wanted to think about the history of cinema but rather it be about narrative i want to think of in terms of spectacle and how the cinematic fits into that. He talks about roller coasters being sort of this where you know you are going to have a certain kind of experience. 

Lev Manovich: What is digital cinema? 

He tries to invert the hierarchy we need to start thinking about film as a subset of animation. The thing he draws attention to in this history they were all based around the idea of the loop and they were all hand painted. You get an opposition that is an illusion of life and cinema itself which is kind of like photography so it's real. Film is a claim to the real and animation is an illusion. As technologies of cinema improve we suddenly have mechanisms of illusion such as Green-screen and blue screen. Apollo 13 is a good example of this where skies and grass were altered into a real situation such as the rocket taking off. We are in a position where animation comes before cinema its integrated into film itself. 

Norman Klein: The vatican to vegas- a history of special effects

Principal of animation applied to space itself - scripted, layered Scripted space is a designed environment to give the user a sense of story an example of this is a slot machine where you are the main character and a computer game as we are the ones playing the game. These are all examples of constrained freedom. Animation part spectacle part narrative. 

Alice Twemlow: What is graphic design for?  

Rather than asking ourselves what is graphic design lets ask ourselves what is graphic design for. 

A type of language communication and ultimately its for a lot of things, a type of seeing, communication, idea generation, political agendas. But it's also about critiquing all of these things, the other side of that is it's about generating new ideas and creating new things. Graphic design is pervasive - enmeshed in all aspects of social life. Regardless of the aesthetics designers find themselves in a post modern culture.  

Robs seminar: 16th October

In this seminar we played a couple of games which eventually would have a visual outcome, this was the first game called BEACH. Beach was a game of four players where we each had a pen and needed to draw a dot where the biggest space after the last dot was drawn was made. We had to stop when we felt that the beach was "crowded". This was the outcome, the whole point of the game was to see how people reacted to space and where to put their next dot. It got harder as the page filled as there wasn't as much space so deciding where to put the next dot got trickier and trickier. We could interpret the rules in whatever way we wanted which is what made this task so fun and active. 

The next game was the perfect circle game, we were given another set of rules explaining that we had to draw circles around a centre circle to try and make a perfect circle. We didn't achieve this and we found that the most perfect circle was the original smaller circle. We still had a very fun time creating this and we found that as a group we were as equally bad at drawing circles as everyone else! 

Umberto Eco: "Poetics of the open work"

We have interpreted the Umberto Eco essay as him suggesting that any form of art, like music and traditional is subjective and that it is the creators duty to make something that is flexible enough, and reaches a wide enough audience so that the spectators of any art form presented to them can stimulate their senses, letting them read the design how they want to. He makes references to older art from time periods such as the Renaissance, in which he describes the aesthetic of the art form and its use of open, or negative space. His conclusion states that the mechanics of aesthetics as a whole creates a new link between how we contemplate art and how it is utilised.


After reading the essay as a small group together we then put our heads together and tried to put into words what we actually felt about the essay and what was Umberto Eco trying to say. This was our interpretation of the essay put into a short paragraph. We explain how he is trying to say that any form of art is subjective, and that design is very much about how we individually interpret it. We concluded this paragraph by trying to summarise his conclusion, and thought he was trying to say that " the mechanics and aesthetics creates a new link between how we contemplate art and how it is utilised."

After this group exercise I feel that I understand this essay more and I can gather a lot more information about how he is trying to define not just music but art as a whole as being very much open to individual interpretations and open suggestions. It has also made me look at my work differently and has made me more conscience of how other people from different backgrounds may view my work.



Bibliography layout

Eco,U (1989), Theopenwork, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press

  Name, Date, Book title, Where it was published, Publisher

Cereal Box: Initial sketches

First we started to sketch some basic character ideas, most of us went with animals of things for our characters as this was easier and more recognisable than a human character. I started by creating basic flat pencil drawings to get my ideas down on paper to start with, this gave me a better platform to be able to build by better ideas on. Out of these very rough sketches I found that my sketch that I could do the most with was my Robot sketch. I already had a cool name in mind! 

Once I had chosen my Character I then worked on making the character looking more dynamic and lifelike, I did this by sketching my character in more poses and action shots. This as a whole made the design a whole lot more interesting and made my thought process on the cereal box a lot clearer. It was also important that we include the bowl of cereal into the design as this is what it was advertising. I also added headphones and made the robot a lot more modernised to todays society. I felt that kids would be able to relate to this more as the robot could be stereotyped as being "cool" since he's wearing headphones and is up to date with new technologies. 

This was the initial layout stage, where we took our favourite sketches and put them into practice on a layout for our cereal boxes. We also added the names of our cereals along with out characters in different positions to find out favourite layout. I looked at some other characters on cereal boxes like Coco pops and Frosties to see how they played out their designs. I took this on board and began to design my own. 

Here are some more finalised pieces of initial ideas, I have used two different designs that I have brought forward from the initial and rough stages to see which one I prefer; I think as a whole the one on the right works the best. The interaction between the character and the name of my cereal seems to be more legible and distinct. I also feel that the space on the box is used up well and more design is being shown rather than just my character holding a bowl. I think there is more room for development in this design and I feel that I can do more at the computer stage on Adobe Illustrator to improve this layout and design. I also need to think about working with colour and how the colours work together on the design itself. Once I have done all this I can start to create my cereal box itself and begin to create a net. 

Spencer lecture: 9th October

History of Graphic design

Tony fry- History is selective, History is affective

Book: Graphic design, a new history. 

Meggs history of design (1985) the first time in history that history and graphic design were used together. He says that heart of graphic design is the namely commercial reason for being. 

Illuminated manuscript Manuscripts decorated with gold/silver light, religion, technology AD 500- AD- 1000

Evolution of type and printing ( Remember, this is both a technological and aesthetic history. 

Jan tschichold: New Typography (1924)

Stephen Eskilson: Graphic design, a new history “Graphic design has too long been presented through a parade of styles and individual achievements”

Loops and Living Holds

My loop and living hold animation stages including the use of coding and the wiggler tool.

I chose to create Tommy cooper for my character, the reason behind this is that I knew that Tommy cooper always famously wore a hat and suit with a bow tie. I felt that because of these features the character would be recognisable and easy to identify. Also because of his unique personality and the fact that he was a comedian it gave me the idea of creating his movements to be almost comedic. After I had thought about all this I Imported the vector into After effects first assuring that everything that I wanted to animate was on a different layer on Illustrator. 

After I had imported we manoeuvred the Anchor points on every layer I wanted to animate so the animation appeared more realistic, this helped identify the centre of gravity and help me realise how the different objects would actually move with Tommy as he moved. For example: The feather on the hat I made would swing from side to side as tommy moved so it made sense for the centre of gravity where I put the anchor point to be at the point where the feather joined to the hat itself. We did this with every layer until we was happy by using the anchor point tool then it was time to 

start animating.

Next, we looked at the layers themselves and realised that when we moved one layer no other layers followed. This wasn't that much of a problem since we could use the parent tool to make child layers follow parent layers. This as a whole made animation a lot easier and it made the movements appear more lifelike and smooth. I connected every layer in a certain order to ensure that the layers followed the right layers. I ended on the suit because I felt that this was the biggest centre of gravity because of how large it was and how little animation I would be doing with the layer anyway. 

 We animated using various layers and keyframes in different orders making sure that the last keyframe was the same as the first one, this created the Loop effect that we were trying to create. The loop effect made it look like an endless animation and I was happy with the outcome of the animation; but now it was time to touch up a few things and make them look more professional. We did this by using the wiggler tool which I will explain next. 

After I had made the basic animation using keyframes and parenting layers, we looked at the "Wiggler" tool (Window,Wiggler) these were the settings that came up. First we had to select and action, I chose the rotation tool on the HAT layer as I felt that the hat would be moving on my characters head as he moved. Once I had selected my action we looked at the settings and worked out what we were trying to achieve. The Frequency tool and the Magnitude tool were the main settings that we focused on when creating this wiggle effect. Frequency was how fast the wiggle was and magnitude was how big the wiggle was. This meant that we had to find the correct balance of frequency and magnitude to make the wiggle look more realistic. I did this well and I feel that I am going to use this tool in the future because of how useful it is to make movements seem more lifelike.

 This is what the "wiggle" looked like in the layers panel. The more messy it looked the bigger the magnitude and frequency.

We did the same thing but with a different method to see which one we preferred. This was a quicker and easier way of making the wiggle effect using Coding. By holding ALT and clicking on the stopwatch we accessed this text box which held the words "transform.position" we changed this text to "wiggle(Frequency,Magnitude)" by inserting numbers into the frequency and magnitude we made the wiggle quicker and simpler. We could easily change the magnitude and frequency by using bigger and smaller numbers depending on what effect you wanted to achieve. 

I found some textures online and used them in places where I thought a texture could be useful. The aim of this was not to be too in your face as make the texture seem more subtle and not really noticeable, this added to the design and overall made the character look more complete. I am happy with the outcome. 

Personal note: I found this tutorial to be a helpful and creative task, I enjoyed the process and the steps we went through to completing this tutorial. I am going to use the Loop and living hold techniques in future animation and I feel learning how to use the wiggler tool has helped me realise how I can make my animation look more lifelike. 

Tommy Cooper from Josh Juhasz on Vimeo.

Here is the completed animation on my Vimeo account!