Experimenting with textures and ink using the children's character
I invented " Flonny "
Flonny Animation
Monday, 19 December 2016
Tuesday, 26 August 2014
Provence France March 2014
I love going to France. We had the opportunity to travel for 10 days around the Provence area, spending 3 days in Nice, and after that we hired a small cottage for 7 days in a place called Eyragues. Provence is a region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the lower Rhone River on the west, the Italian border on the east and bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on the south. The Romans made the region into the first Roman province beyond the Alps.
Some of the places we visited were
Nice. The first known hominid settlements in the Nice area date back approximately 400,000 years, the Terra Amata archeological site shows one of the earliest uses of fire.
Nice
Avignon (The Roman Catholic Papacy from 1309 until 1377)
Arles, this city has a long history, the Roman and Romanesque Monuments were listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh lived in Arles in 1888-1889 and produced over 300 paintings and drawing during his time there.
Saint-Remy-de-Provence was the birthplace of Nostradamus a 16th century author of prophecies, Vincent can Gogh was treated here in the psychiatric center at Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole (1889-1890). On the southern outskirts of the city, the ruins of the Roman city of Glanum can still be seen, including a "triumphal arch). La Camargue is a home to more than 400 species of birds and has been identified as an important Bird area by Birdlife International. Its brine ponds provide one of the few European habitats for the greater flamingo. The Camargue horses, the famous white Camarguais ridden by the cowboys(gardens),who rear the region's cattle for fighting bulls for export to Spain.
Patterns from the 70s, colour
Final outcome
The Story
Creating the frames for the animation
Animation
More references. I still don't know what Im doing.Ive been thinking how to create the story, and I don't know where to start. We should see.
Research definition and history of the Psychedelic movement in art. Vibrantly colored artwork, curvy shapes, optical illusions, illegible typography, kaleidoscopic patterns This movement refers to the time of social, musical and artistic change influenced by psychedelic drugs. Artists were trying to capture the feeling of "tripping" on certain drugs. The style spread over fashion and pop culture. Some consider this era to be more tightly limited to the years 1965-1969
Peter Max
Victor Moscoso
Wes Wilson
Tuesday, 19 August 2014
Starting a New Blog just to tell and illustrate stories
Hello everybody!!!. I have decided to open a new blog. This is just to keep my designs tidy and easy to follow. The previous blog still is on, but will be just for pattern design, soft furnishing, fabric, fashion.
I love telling stories. And for me the best way of doing it is illustrating the stories. Im going to be posting the process for a new story. The story of a group of teenagers who started a new adventure in a completely new school, not just for them, was also new for the teachers, the librarian running the library, the people running the coffee shop and of course the Head Teacher. This school was even new for the city where they live.
The aim of this project will be to research and create an illustrated book about the beginning of a new school, and to deliver an outcome probably as a hardback book and e-book or an animated video.
At this stage, I have decided the audience will be for young adults and grown ups.
I have to read and research illustrated teenagers books, to get an understanding of approach and style ( adolescents). Ive got already my own style, I just need to check if that style is suitable for this project.
Artists research (If the story is going to be semiotic but easy to understand)
I will also going to need to get photos and stories of the characters who are going to be in the story. Those stories and quotes will be the briefs to follow, which are going to help me to create the illustrations.
I need to start creating the story board. That would give me an idea of how many frames will be in the story in case is an animated video. I also need the storyboard for the book.
The illustrations will reflect the era of the 70s. Which means I have to research all about that era. I will also need to consider the typography in the text and how this relates to the subject, audience and images. If Im using just illustrations or a mix media with photos to tell the story (no typography),I need to consider the use of music in case is an animated video.
References. Some photos from the 70s
Monday, 18 August 2014
"This Water" TV and Advertising Campaign-Introduction
The brief for this collaborative project was to design a TV advert with an accompanying media campaign around a product related to the theme of hydration.
First of all I researched various aspects of hydration from water, flavoured water, sports drinks, cosmetics and water conservation. After discussion with the rest of the group, it was decided to follow the theme of a flavoured water drink though this was after giving serious consideration to a Starbucks Coffee drink and also a charitable project for the Global Water Challenge.
At first, I worked on developing a new product based on a water drink made from fresh fruit juice (For example lime and lemons). This led to the idea of Blimey (B-Lime-y) which was a word play around a well known expression to say something is "Wow!" with the name of a fruit.
Whilst me and some of the group loved this concept, it was decided that it may be easier to use a product already in the market. A product we found with which we felt we could relate to from our concept idea was "This Water"
However, we didn't want to totally abandon "Blimey!" which then became the name of our group.
First of all I researched various aspects of hydration from water, flavoured water, sports drinks, cosmetics and water conservation. After discussion with the rest of the group, it was decided to follow the theme of a flavoured water drink though this was after giving serious consideration to a Starbucks Coffee drink and also a charitable project for the Global Water Challenge.
At first, I worked on developing a new product based on a water drink made from fresh fruit juice (For example lime and lemons). This led to the idea of Blimey (B-Lime-y) which was a word play around a well known expression to say something is "Wow!" with the name of a fruit.
Whilst me and some of the group loved this concept, it was decided that it may be easier to use a product already in the market. A product we found with which we felt we could relate to from our concept idea was "This Water"
However, we didn't want to totally abandon "Blimey!" which then became the name of our group.
The above image shows some of my ideas for the original Blimey concept including typography examples to create a logo for the brand.
Idea Development for the TV Ad and Media Campaign
A starting point for the ideas generation really has to come from the product, value proposition, brand identity and also target audience/ market.
In this case, This Water is essentially a relaunch of Juicy Water by the Innocent group who are more known for their smoothies rather than their water drinks. Therefore, the product needs to build its own identity and market rather than ride on the back of the Innocent name which was the case with Juicy Water.
For This Water, the value proposition was that the drink was very simple. It contains only fresh fruit and water. At the heart of the image is simplicity.
As for the corporate values of the manufacturer, responsible care for the environment and for the communities where they operate. They also sponsor several charitable projects.
Therefore the potential market for this product are people who share these values and expectations of the product itself. Such people may put these values before actual price. I expect they will be a quality focused audience.
Our prime objective was to build this brand and product awareness emphasising the selling points of the product.
Since I did not believe that customer age would be a factor regarding the potential customer base, I thought it important that the tone of the TV ad and the media campaign should be contemporary whilst not appearing trivial which may alienate and older audience.
Storyboard Development and Final Outcomes
The first idea I thought of was that of the drink travelling through the body refreshing the internal organs on the way. To add some humour I thought of the idea of developing characters around each internal organ.
From this starting point, the following storyboard evolved:
Another story was also presented by a group member which involved a young man running after a bus and then drinking the water to refresh himself. However this idea was rejected because we were moving away from values of the product....natural and simple. This became the focus of my next idea.
The general idea was to explore how we could bring together the elements of fruit and water. By this time, Abigail had already developed a very good poster idea along the lines of "This Lime, This Lemon, This Water". I continued along this theme.
This resulted in my next storyboard:
For the characters, it seemed obvious that I should follow the style already given to me from the labels on the bottles of This Water.
Using Adobe Illustrator, I generated the following characters as vector images:
In my view this mixed media approach didn't work. The colours were too bright and the photos and illustrations didn't appear to fit together. Even though this approach was inspired by the Ben and Jerry's ice cream advert, I decided to take a 100% illustrative route.
The revised storyboard is shown below:
I felt that I was much nearer to my objective with this storyboard and imagery. The emphasis was totally on nature with a clean, simple design. However, I thought the hills and the tree were not suitable. This was confirmed by group feedback. It was also decided that the last 3 frames and slogan needed alteration.
The main criticism was the formation of a bottle of drink from the tree something more natural was required.
It was also suggested that the use of a pattern as a background was desirable. To be consistent with other parts of the media campaign I thought it would be good to use the same background pattern as in the poster.
At this point the background on the right had a texture which was later removed.
The bottle formed by rainwater in the previous story was replaced by the coming together of a lemon and lime from different trees. The slogan was also removed.
Believe it or not we were still not finished!!!
The problem was the tree and also having "This Water" right next to a bottle saying the same thing which is repetitive.
After some experimentation using watercolours and digital painting, we decided to make the tree from the same shapes as the clouds. Look carefully. The foliage in the tree in the next storyboard are essentially a collage of clouds coloured green! Perfect!
The final storyboard:
To remove the This Water from the final frame, I actually created two more frames. A last minute detail was also added in that we decided to have the butterfly carrying the bottle cap in a vertical way instead of horizontal way.
Reflection on the Final Outcome
I am very pleased with the final outcome to which I have contributed. It was a long process but in the end I believe that the storyboard and the TV ad animation have been faithful to the brand image and the "promise" of the product in that both are very simple. I think our objective of giving this product a "makeover" has been successful. I have also been pleased with the feedback we have received from our peers and lecturers which has been very positive.
New Skills and Working as a Group
This project has allowed me to learn some new skills. I have learnt some new technical skills from being involved with the stop motion production and also animating with already familiar software such as Photoshop. A new software was also introduced called After Effects about which I'd like to learn more in the future.
Aside from the technical skills, this project has required me to think in a more commercial way since the objective in reality is to sell a product. I have learnt more about how the work we do requires an understanding of the customer and product (Brand image, corporate values, product selling points and target market) and to really think about the objectives.
I have been lucky to have been working with this group of students. We have shared an enthusiasm for this project and everyone has contributed in some way to each of the final outcomes. However, I can imagine that if my group had been quite different, the work would not be equally shared and somebody would have to step in to make sure the brief was completed. After all in a real work situation the most important thing is to keep the client happy and to take individual responsibility.
New Animation Knowledge
One of the key outcomes from this project was to learn new skills. As an illustrator in this group it was necessary for me to learn more about animation techniques. For example, the video below was an animation I created to show a tree growing which could have been used in our TV ad. For this, I created the frames in Photoshop and the final outcome was exported as a rendered .MOV file to view in Quicktime. In order to view the animation properly on a HD widescreen display it was necessary to ensure the file was 1080 pixels wide.
I only used purple as a background colour because purple is opposite green on the colour wheel and I thought that these two colours could work together.
Our first attempt at animating our storyboard was using stop/motion animation using cut outs (Prepared by me, Mindy and Abigail) of the elements of the storyboard.
This can be found using the following link to the web site of Riz Khan one of our group animators:
Even though it may look a little "handmade" (Because it was), I actually thought that this quality actually fitted with the tone of voice we were looking for. I thought it was in keeping with the simplicity of the product we were trying to advertise.
In the end we decided to take a more refined approach and the final TV ad was completed using Adobe After Effects for which I attended a workshop to familiarise myself with the basics.
Of course we needed some music for the TV ad. We decided that a soft piece of music possibly using a piano and harp would be suitable. Mindy found some copyright free music which we agreed to use:
Even though the above video was not in reality my own work, I feel that I have learnt something about the software which has encouraged me to learn more about it and I wish to use this in the future to create my own animations.
Equally, I was sufficiently encouraged by what we achieved in the stop/motion animation and this too will be another tool I can use where appropriate.
Website Design for Media Campaign
I also experimented with some typography I designed in Adobe Illustrator (However "Simple Natural Ingredients" was Mindy's original work and I just put it into vector format) for use in the website design for Mike to use in his animation.
This was an idea I worked on for the website design but Mike in the end followed his own idea using some of the above typography.
Media Campaign Posters
Ad Campaign - Mindy Teo
Promotional gifts make a fantastic marketing strategy for branding.
Giving out the balloons and stickers at places such as supermarket when having a product sampling or shopping centre might appeal to the wide audience.
It is also a low cost and effective method to promote branding and products.
Giving out the balloons and stickers at places such as supermarket when having a product sampling or shopping centre might appeal to the wide audience.
It is also a low cost and effective method to promote branding and products.
Ambient marketing allows a business to create brand recognition without necessarily pushing their products.
Bus stop advertising is a great way to gain exposure for the product or service. People have to wait until the bus arrives and do not have anything to do besides waiting. Also, advertising at bus stop could have catch a pedestrians's attention as well.
The inspiration came from the Dancing Grass Van of London- owned by renegade smoothies makers Innocent. The vans are covered in real, growing grass and can often be seen around the city making deliveries.
Bus stop advertising is a great way to gain exposure for the product or service. People have to wait until the bus arrives and do not have anything to do besides waiting. Also, advertising at bus stop could have catch a pedestrians's attention as well.
The inspiration came from the Dancing Grass Van of London- owned by renegade smoothies makers Innocent. The vans are covered in real, growing grass and can often be seen around the city making deliveries.
Despite an overall dip in traditional advertising, caused by the growing online and new media spending, billboard advertising is still in remarkably good health. Furthermore, there's no promotion bigger than a billboard and there's no doubt they catch the eyes of passers-by.
These billboards were done using the same concept as the poster. The amount of text used is less and brings out the strong branding of our product which still providing useful information. The simplicity of the design could easily grab people's attention and the message of the products is clear.
Sport's campaign
Web Banner
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