Mood Board Madness

On my computer I have a little folder just full of everything and anything I find inspirational or visually inspiring. 

As the size of it is increasing I thought it would be nice to create digital mood boards to publish these for myself and other people to take inspiration from. As from now on there will be a link to it in my links section of my blog. or if you are too lazy to go there there is also a link here:

My mood boards

Here's a little sneak peak to get you interested...

Doodle Dump pt 5

Data and Analytic Motion

This task was to create an animation to be used in the heritage quay information point at the university. This info graphic would be one of many put together to give a detailed and visual data description relating to the extensive archive on campus.

Before starting my section of the project I looked into pre-existing infographic videos for inspiration like this one below:

This video truly highlights how interesting you can present data and facts through dynamic movement and colour. The concepts and themes in this video gives great inspiration on the kind of work I could produce around data relating to Heritage Quay.

The fun aspect of this task was ensuring I stuck to the key; a set of 'rules' of the Heritage Quay design book. I always like design restrictions as they foster more problem solving.

The key consisted of alternate colours, fonts and the context and positioning of which the logo can be place. these restrictions are crucial for large corporate companies and brands to create a familiarity and brand recognition.

Before taking any of my work into Adobe After Effects I first created layouts, patterns and mood boards for the animation i wanted to create. Laying out art boards like storyboards for the individual scenes I would have to create. With the layout of my animation organised I can easily proceed to create my animation in a shorter amount of time.

The animation I created:

infographic test from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

This animation was then added into a compilation of other peoples work so the last transition is actually made transparent to allow for the next animation to fall into place. This allows the transition from one animation to another to look more seamless. This is a very good trick to use in larger projects with multiple peoples work.

Heritage Quay Final Movie - Group 3 from Motion-go on Vimeo.

This infographic was made using information and assets from the Football Museum Website and the only restriction to the work was to use a specific shade of green, Beyond that any colours or styles were usable in ten second segments of animation.

When working on my assets I intended to use two separate scenes, you can see the transition layout in the lower image. this is done to give a more smooth and natural transition from scene to scene.

I got one quote and since the text was quite large I split the information between two ten second compositions that would be next to each other in the end composition that features everyones work.

WW1 Football infographic from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

this is the version with my work included with everyone in my group:

Group C - The Past from Motion-go on Vimeo.

Wallpaper Colaboration

I decided to work alongside an aspiring illustrator/animator to create a series of fun patterns that could be used personally or for marketing. 

Cornelius and Onion is an original created series by Jcrow. To work on the collaboration I asked for some sketches of the character Onion to work with. This character is small, quirky and full of character so I thought it would lend well to a pattern as well as giving freedom for variety regarding posing and emotions.

See their work here:
https://www.instagram.com/the_jcrow/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLkN7DfWxCAWz_9-U4xfrlQ

Based on the work previously done by Jcrow they tend to use a lot of bright colours or pastels with thick lines. I wanted to stick to the feeling given by the work of the original artist in the patterns I made.

The sketch I got given was the one below, hand drawn and scanned onto the PC before being sent to me:

I then took these sketches into Adobe Illustrator to vector them making them more appropriate for large scaling or morphing. I made a large variety of different colours and styles all fitting with the theme of the series and character. 

Making a few variations meant there would be more variety for Jcrow to work with if needed. I made most of my patterns scaled to a standard size of 1920x1080 but can easily adjust them if they are needed for a more specific use.

All of the patterns I made are below but due to the character not being owned by me I have chosen to watermark the images:

Punk Stencil Posters - 70s french revoultion vibes

This workshop was inspired by the hand made protest posters similar to the 1968 french civil war. The université 'populaire' screenprint style is popular even now for its crude and strong imagery and cheap manufacturing costs. This style often uses one or two colours to give bold contrast on print.

 http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9018309t/f1.highres

https://media.vam.ac.uk/media/thira/collection_images/2006AT/2006AT6184.jpg

 https://i.pinimg.com/originals/82/0c/6d/820c6d2a7223e7060f85f89e9994a88c.jpg

https://d2r4pw5uddxm3r.cloudfront.net/content/uploads/imported/uploads/2008/04/174-the-struggle-continues.jpg

Each student was given a draw from a box to see what theme we had to create a stencil of. I got'Factory'. My first thoughts for factory are the production lines. The conveyor belts of made to order items. Playing with the anti-establishment punk themes I opted for a 'made to order war' using the conveyor belt as a way to transport ammo and bombs/bullets.

As the design has to be simple to cut out I had to consider minimal approaches to get the desire effect so I made use of movement lines and simple shapes. While I like this design a lot, as a stencil it was a little bit too dainty in parts and I should have left larger gaps between certain parts of the image to keep the paper stencil strong and to avoid ripping.

After creating our first stencil we were given another lucky dip for a quote to overlap our previous stencil, I got "Submission ends it all". These words are strong and bold and when planning out the composition of them I had to consider the shape of letters with parts in the middle and the overall layout of the piece.

the quotes we were lyrics to the song "bye bye man" by the stone roses. This song relates back to this movement as discussed here: https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/stone-roses/why-do-the-stone-roses-have-a-lemon-as-a-logo/

When combined together my two pieces looked like this:

When combined the type and the image give a whole new context and message, this juxtaposition is something i'm a big fan of myself.

I had some extra time to create more stencils so I pulled a different key word from the box, this time I got 'Police Officer'. Going with the traditional slang of calling British police officers 'pigs' I decided to stencil a pig in a 'bobby' hat.

 

I decided to make a pseudo 3D effect using the blue and red on the stencil out of alignment with each other. To finish it, I used someone else's type as I liked the idea of it being misspelt. It gives an odd DIY punk feeling to the image as well as mixed signals through the types misspelling.

looking at similar processes that are cheap and DIY I decided to make lino-cut stamps. The lino can be carved into in a similar style to the stencils to create re-usable stamps for posters or whatever you want to ink. The cutting process is limited to carved and not carved to give desired effects so the constraints of that helps creative thinking.

The stamps I created were inspired by Hayao Miyazaki Studio Ghibli movie 'Spirited away. I decided to re-create two of the creatures from the movie. The first was the 'soot sprites', their small and simple design made them quite easy and transferable to lino.The second was of no-face. This character has a partially transparent body which i thought would lend well to different carving techniques. With this piece I tried to intentionally create a chipping away effect that will be more effective when used with ink as it can leave a faded effect.

http://78.media.tumblr.com/48b758283447c2fd4e7e99056a21fd48/tumblr_nuxsx6pBnC1tomovco2_540.gif

http://media.giphy.com/media/ayMW3eqvuP00o/giphy.gif

The creativity that comes with quick and cheap graphics is something I have enjoyed exploring and can see myself doing more of in the future. I don't see myself as a "hands on" kind of person but these tasks have made me see the joy in limited colours or materials and I would love to explore this type of work more.

C4D Model Making - a place to start

This session focused on working with sub-object modelling, opposed to parametric objects e.g. Cubes, polygons and pre-made assets in C4D. The end goal for the end of this session was a 3D developed character with individual limbs that would be able to be 3D printed.

The way that 3D printing works, every step it prints it moves down and it builds itself through layers. If you print multiple objects placed together in 3D it will not be able to tell the difference between each object. You have to alter one shape using its sub-parts to create a fluid 3D object.

"If you poured water in it, would it leak? If so, it isn't a good 3D model."

We explored in more depth extra tools and abilities that can be used within C4D and developed a simple polygon character. The most used tools for this kind of creation include Extrude: used to extend a polygon into a new section and Inner extrusion: this creates smaller subsections to build from within a section. Most other tools are ones I had used previously on other projects.

 

  

Once I had built my polygon character, I put it into a subdivided surface as a way to round off any of the edges to make it a lot smoother and consistent. After tweaking the shape, in and out of the subdivided view I got to use group surfaces to colour my creature.

Using group surfaces makes larger more complex objects easier to colour and alter, so if I am unsure on a visual look, this method would be a smarter way of working as it easily lets me colour selected areas quickly.

  

3D Model Cell Shaded Test from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

here is another I attempted at a later date:

with this model I added a twist and bend modifier to give the implication of movement.

alien from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

The method of colouring I used is called Cell Shading, it uses solid colours for shading an enviroment, creating harsh strong shade lines, popular with more cartoonish aesthetic. This style is particularly popular with video games as a easier and more stylistic method of give 3D depth. Popular examples of media that uses cel shading include Video game; Legend of Zelda Wind Waker,  Video Game; Jet Set Radio and Video Game; Catherine.

 http://www.gamekyo.com/Webmasters/Images/101511920130809_175759_1_big.jpg

 http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110529020944/catherinethegame/images/thumb/c/ce/EricaCap3.png/830px-EricaCap3.png

http://pixelperfectgaming.com/wp-content/gallery/jet_set_radio_hd_screenshots/jet_set_radio_screenshot_01.jpg

This task helped me a lot in my personal projects I have been working on independently. The extra practice to master these basic modelling skill and adapt my knowledge from this session and tutorials online is really beneficial. I plan to work on more 3D modelling projects after being inspired by the Motion North event I visited recently.

coffee shop model 360 from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.

Motion North - Inspiring Motion Go Trip

As part of the motion go club we decided to go to the Motion North, a collective of animation, vfx, motion and film designers event. The night we went, the focus was on three different animation and motion lead companies and what they had been working on over the past year.

Each company had a show reel of work and sneak peeks of other projects they are working on and I wanted to talk a little about what I found particularly interesting about each of them.

Ani-made
https://animade.tv/studio

Ani-made is a London based company.  They showcased a lot of interactive project they worked on such as 'Ready Stead Bang' a minimal monotone cowboy game comprised of fast paced mini games. A lot of their animations are quirky and show the backgrounds of their staff in traditional 2D cel animation and character design.I loved their diversity in their styles and media.

The Complete Animade Lernz from Animade on Vimeo.

Mainframe North
https://www.mainframe.co.uk

Mainframe is an animation company based in Manchester and London focusing on motion graphics and animation. They showed us some of the more fun projects they have been working on including this video below:

For Approval from Mainframe (North) on Vimeo.

The unexpected nature of this video is what makes it so interesting to watch and its creativity created a big following on social media. The use of 3D with soft pastel colours and clever sound effects made this video a visual treat.

They talked about a project called 'MASH' a developed dynamics modes system for the 3D software Maya that creates more realistic and impressive physics effects to objects in fake 3D enviroments. As someone relatively familiar with how difficult it can be to fake physics in similar software, I found it very impressive.

Boutique Studio
http://btq.fi/work/

Helsinki based studio, this team showed a great understanding of how to present 'serious' content in a fun and silly way. Describing themselves as an illustration team disguised as a design agency their success allowed their market to become worldwide.

Ruutu TV Channel Idents from Boutique on Vimeo.

The project I liked the most was one where they had to create a brand for a Tv Channel/vod called Ruutu. They had control over full branding for the channel and integrated 3D with audio algorithms to create unique patterns in a variety of styles keeping an open and consistent style through the colour scheme.

Conclusion

After listening to these talks I felt inspired to be more playful with my own work, a recent fear of mine was that I wasn't being too 'serious' with my project ideas, so it was incredibly refreshing to hear these creative companies doing what they want to do and then getting work from doing it.

I want to implement more puns and colour into the things I create, or surprising twists and left the event with a strong urge to work harder with 3D software.

In my own time I played around with 3D software and created donuts with a physics effect to give the impression of them falling. While visually it is relatively simple, it was a great learning process for me and I left with a stronger knowledge of the software. I am also going to put in a video of one of my failed attempts below cause I found it personally amusing: donut gone wrong

donut Physics from Sophie Wales on Vimeo.