Colour palettes

Because I'm really struggling with colouring my illustrations I've decided I need to start looking more in depth at the sort of palettes that illustrators use. I've begun to compile a few to pick colours from on Adobe Color:

It's then another challenge picking which of the colour palettes are appropriate for illustration, and then how to incorporate them in terms of what's coloured what. I tried colouring in my illustration for The Judgement using a modified palette but it still feels a bit off and I don't know why:

The Judgement composition

I'm trying to compose a scene from the story The Judgement, which I've already designed a rough cover for. I'm paying particular attention to the perspective of the scene in order to help solidify the composition and subject matter.

Final Vice ident

This is my final Vice ident. The soundtrack is "Harry Roy and his Mayfair Hotel Orchestra - Bugle Call Rag", which I was able to find for free at archive.org.

I'm pleased with how the animation looks, and after wrestling with the sound effects, I feel I struck a good chord with the way they sound and are integrated into the animation. I think that I've been able to paint a humorously ironic picture of the series, given that the title "Rule Britannia" refers to the empiric times, yet the series focuses on the decay of British society today.

I think doing this brief has pushed my skills in animation in terms of working smartly and efficiently. Instead of hand drawing most of it, I discovered Photoshop's simplistic key frame functions which I could use to export image sequences into After Effects for more detailed editing. Most of the animation was made up of single image elements which I moved around with key frames to good effect, such as the backgrounds.

This brief also proved to be quite heavy on sound editing - I found lots of stock sound effects online, but had to edit every one quite significantly in order to get it to sound just right for the animation. I used both Audacity and Adobe Audition to pitch bend, stretch and chop up tiny clips of audio. Little things like extending the cymbal splash at the end of the music by a few milliseconds to end less abruptly made a huge difference.

I've really surprised myself at the skills I've put to use and developed with this brief, definitely learned a lot. Also I feel like my relatively quick turn over for this brief is a sign of improvements to my workflow and professional skills.

Final WWF boards

These are the final boards we submitted for the WWF brief. We are both quite pleased with the products, the range and the look of the boards. We tried to put as little text as possible on each slide and made the images the main focal point.

Notepad

Me and Astrid bought a cheap notepad, took some nice pictures of it in the studio and then photoshopped the relevant illustrations on it. We decided on using the back of the notepad as a cover page which we both felt looked like an eco-friendly cover, making it even more fit for purpose.

We will consider the quality of these photographs when making our final boards and dedicate one board for them as a continuation of our product range.

Another Kafka cover

Another cover idea - the letter is important in the first part of the story and is arguably the catalyst for the conflict in the second part. I'm trying to consider the covers to be part of a series so it is similar to the other one I did for The Metamorphosis.

Mocked up as covers:

Seeing them in context like this, perhaps they're a bit too bare bones. I need to tighten up the compositions and layouts.

Screen printed shirts - Secret 7 extended

 

Unfortunately my phone's camera is really bad, but here is the most successful of the three shirts I screen printed based on my Secret 7 design.

Unfortunately none of the three shirts came out without at least one flaw.

What went wrong:
-Pulling the squeegee through an A4 screen was difficult to manoeuvre, meaning that the ink was inconsistent in spots and patchy.
-I forgot to put a sheet of paper inside the shirt to stop the ink from bleeding to the inside of the back of the shirt
-I got smudges of ink on random spots despite my best efforts to keep it clean and all that I had learnt while etching last module.
-I didn't consider how hard the design would be to see on white when the ink was such a bright orange. I should've darkened the design. This is exacerbated by my poor camera.

At least I have an idea of what it's like to screen print on shirts now. This is definitely something that I will need to investigate again as I'm confident it would go much better than it has now.

The Judgement thumbnails

Some thumbnails for the next story in the collection, The Judgement:

The last one I'm interested in taking and developing further because of the strong use of perspective to make the scene work.

Vice concept developments

' Open your ident with the VICE logo and the text “A VICE original series” '

Type tests:

 Moving concept:

 

Wasn't really sure whether or not to have the VICE logo be the text for "Vice original series" or not, but I think it has potential to work. I felt similarly about having the Union Jack colour in the logo, so I came to a compromise by having the white turn into it in this initial video of progress:

Pretty pleased with this so far, but it's hard to gauge how effective it is with the abrupt end, as the whole ident is about the punchy and snappy way in which the isles fly up - the next scene needs to occur immediately afterwards to keep the intensity.

Final WWF illustrations

Me and Astrid decided that in order to have consistency throughout the campaign, and since we both have different ways of drawing, the best way to approach the production of the illustrations would be to have Astrid illustrate the animals, and me illustrate the environmental concepts of the Report.

Concept developments

Marine ecosystems support more than 660 million jobs worldwide

768 million people don't have a safe, clean water supply

Of the 63 most populated urban areas, 39 are exposed to a high risk of at least one natural hazard - including flooding, cyclones and droughts.

Secret 7" extended

Based on one of my submissions for Secret 7", I made this psychedelic swirly pattern.

I want to screenprint this designto on a t-shirt because I think it might look quite cool. I've never done a colour blend before, nor printed on fabric so I don't know how good a job I'll do.

Potential colour options:

Photography workshop

Me and Astrid went to a photography workshop in order to get a bit of experience using the DSLRs so that when we come to photographing our products, such as the notepad, we are able to take our own nice pictures rather than use stock images found off of the internet.

In a crit where we presented half-finished boards, the mock ups of the note pad product received good feedback.

Syfy final idents and boards

While making the web banners, I realized that since I couldn't make each one fit well to the various types of web banner sizes, they could all at least be made to fit a 16:9 format. So I turned them into idents since it will just give me another thing to present on my presentation boards.

Final presentation boards for submission:

Since the initial drawings were made in quite a small format with the intention to become small GIFs, they're probably not as sharp as they need to be (this is obvious most on the cloudy city ident), but as concepts I think they convey an idea well.

I feel that this brief has been a process of me battling with my idea and not really sure how to go about executing it. I think it was a good idea to develop my images into idents since web banners on their own wouldn't have really made for a significant body of work to submit.

I think my presentation boards are of a suitable quality, with little text needed to explain the simple concept. If I had more time, I suppose I would try and redraw my landscapes at a larger scale, which would make them a lot sharper and aesthetically appropriate.

Syfy web banners

Standard web advert sizes:

I'm adhering to these web banner standards when making my GIFs. Some of these formats suit some compositions better than others, so some of my banners may only be able to work in certain formats, but I will try and fit each one to as many as I can.

I created them entirely on Photoshop using its timeline feature which is similar to After Effects' functions and then exported them as videos:

Afterwards, I decided to bring the video back into Photoshop and import the frames as layers to make a GIF out of it that could appear on a web page:

I cut down some unnecessary frames at the beginning and end and sped up the animation to make the file size as small as possible so that it is appropriate for web use.

The file size for this one is a bit big so it may have to be simplified or its use restricted to small size banners. I have these set to play only once so that once they're finished, all that's left i the Syfy logo as an advertisement.

Third GIF:

Vice concept images

Development of the first storyboard idea of the floating British Isles:

Here's a mock up of what I hope the final frame of the ident will look like when the land has flown up to space, the flag pops up and the "Rule Brittania" title appears: 

Pretty pleased with how it looks at 16:9 but will probably experiment with the font when it comes to making it.

Syfy - newer idea

New idea is to scrap the spaceship from the web banners and just animate the scenes themselves.
These are the final scenes I have drawn up to work with as animated backgrounds:

I went for traditional mediums as I felt it would be best at replicating the same aesthetic you get with famous sci-fi concept art.

After scanning them in I tweaked and adjusted them, and in the case of the planet, I changed the format that would be appropriate it for it to fit in a tall web banner

These are the base images I will use for the animations.

WWF - Contextualising products

Me and Astrid have begun to create designs for our product range:

Here's an illustration and simple layout idea I had for a series of posters which reveal facts about endangered animals, accompanied by sympathetic illustrations of the animals.
Pitch board showing a few more contextualised products:

One of Astrid's illustrations in a similar poster:

VICE initial storyboards

Mandatories for the brief:

- Create a moving image ident between 10 and 15 seconds long.

- Open your ident with the VICE logo and the text “A VICE original series”.

- Show the text “Rule Britannia” at some point in the ident. You can either use the existing Rule Britannia brand representation or create a new Rule Britannia logo.

Keeping these in mind, here are two initial storyboard ideas I have for the Vice ident:

First idea is to have the British Isles drawn out and have it rumble until it shoots out of the earth and is a flying platform in space to symbolise the importance of Britain in the the series - I feel like this has a lot of potential to be very punchy.

This second ident is based on a speech that Boris Johnson gave to the public in regards to the Olympic games which was featured in Vice's Rule Brittania episode about the games in which he claims ping pong was invented in Britain and used to be called "wiff waff". 

It features a ping pong ball going back and forth and then falling into a tea cup. The shot cuts to the top of the tea cup and when the ball rolls over inside it reveals the title "Rule Brittania.

Here is the speech in question:

VICE Rule Britannia

I've decided to try out the Vice Rule Brittania brief because I think it might be quite fun to try out a bit more simple animation. I started looking at some existing idents to get me a bit more inspired:

The Challenge idents all achieve a nice uniformity by keeping the animation really simple and using bolding flat colours that makes them easy to 'digest' but punchy

More subtle focusing just on the logo - their logo is established enough for them to get away with this

Mix of animation and live action - Shows potential for hand drawn animation in an ident - also is humorous and contains its own narrative, which makes it a bit more interesting to watch.

The Tom and Jerry one makes me super nostalgic - it's snappy and funny.

This James Jarvis one is great - simple hand drawn animation but really well executed.

In general, I think what I need to keep in mind is that idents need to be punchy to make a lasting impression on the viewer - if they have a narrative then that's even better.

Oranges Penguin submission

Simple boards to finally submit, laid out in accordance to the submission guidelines.

I've found this brief challenging, but incredibly enjoyable. It has close ties with what I am doing in OUIL505, book illustration, which is an area I'm interested in exploring. I feel that through this brief I have developed an ability to analyse texts that I've read quite quickly and visualise concepts and ideas.

When the rough brown pebble was first introduced in the story, I was sure that I would make an illustration which plays with that, but as I continued to read, I identified the theme of oppressive normality which informed the final illustration.

I've also gathered an idea of the importance of type on a book cover - having looked at other examples, more illustrative book covers use it in a completely different way to most others.

Another aspect of this brief which I enjoyed was the provided template - I really love being given a template to work with and placing my work within it - not only does it give direction, but it also allows you to get a peek at what your work might look like professionally in context which is rewarding. Every time I work on a brief with templates, I am working with excitement to see the template applied to my artwork.

WWF Visual Concept/Investigation

Me and Astrid thought a good starting point for the brief would be to draw some animals, particularly endangered ones. The visual concept is that they're "washing away", i.e. becoming endangered. This is why I've taken a water colour approach to the illustrations.

 

As the Living Planet Report doesn't just focus on animals but the environment as well, it is also important to illustrate the statistics about that as well. I did some quick watercolour sketches of natural hazards which are apparently more likely to strike urban areas than we might think: