Typography Transcription - Final Edition

It was my last Process and Production workshop today, and I was back with John, once again, editing and developing my personalised font. In the first of the three sessions, I created two bold fonts that I wass really fond of, with inspiration from given existing art work. I decided to take ahead, the font that presented sharp, bold letters. I preferred a thicker, more detailed font as apposed to the design I created with the red triangles. I have shown my starting point below, and the design work I produced in my second session, involving a full, quickly sketched alphabet. 

I came to this workshop, understanding and excited for the next stage. I was refining my fully sketched out alphabet, creating a full set of matching letter forms. As you can see from the alphabet above, the letters have a lot of detailed edges, some more than others - this was the main focal point that I needed to refine, making sure they all had a similar amount of cut out edges and tidying up the look of them all together. I had to draft each letter a number of times, to help me figure out which line arrangement would work the best. Some letters I really struggled with, such as 'R' and 'V'. Letters with diagonal lines were quite hard to piece together; I had to make sure they were legible, and the right shape was being arranged, including all the diagonals, as well as cut out square edges. It took me all session to draft each letter and decide on which I was taking ahead. Eventually I pieced my alphabet together on graph paper - this was the easiest paper to use because of the existing squares. I decided on using four full squares for the heigh of each letter, and three for the length. Inside these measurements, I could use the lines that also included smaller squares, creating the squared look very easily. Below I have shown my draft work that lead me to creating my final drawn outcome.

My refinement was now complete, and all I had to do was piece my alphabet together. Below is my personalised typography. I believe that my work has been refined very well, the sides of each letter work well against the others, and each letter is clear (although the shapes are distorted). My edges are tidy, and my letters are all the same size, using capitalised letters to create more cut out edges (due to the capitals taking up all four squares in length rather than just halves). The next stage for me was to create the font digitally. I did this in my own time at home after university, using InDesign and the pen tool. I created a guide that gave me equal sided squares, enough for me to use instead of graph paper. I then copied my font and filled the letters in. 

The only letter I was told to possibly adjust was the 'V'. I agree that it didn't really match the rest of the letters, so when designing it digitally, I added a cut out on the diagonal line, making sure it was the same size as all my other cut out edges. Now I have a full, digitally produced font that I am extremely happy with. 

Year One Finale - Collaborative Film

My final After Effects workshop was held today, with Sara producing another animation. For the final session, we were to create a ten second film, using an object that would fly through the sky, from the right side to the left. At the end of designing our object and adding effects to our personal animations, we collected each students video, and produced one final, four minute movie that included every students flying object/animal. 

I brought my flying object to the lesson with me, I created it using Illustrator, and produced a butterfly. Starting out, I traced the shape of an existing photograph, then added colour, and a lot of detail to the wings. As you can see, the patterns inside the wings are soft - I created a feather look, using an inner glow on each segment, as well as the smaller circles around the edges. The colours are warm tones of orange and yellow, not too bright for the black body of the butterfly. I was happy to use this in my animation, it also faced the left side, which is the direction it should be flying once I set up my animation. 

To start the video process, I set up a workspace in After Effects, and coloured the background in a dark blue. This blue was a default colour for us to use, it would be used throughout the whole finale film so the background for every students flying object would stay the same throughout the three minute movie. Once this was set, I imported my butterfly, making sure each layer that I wanted to move separately, was clearly labelled. I had the body, the left wing, right wing, and anteneyes all on different layers, ready for me to start adding effects. For an object to move across the screen, throughout the ten seconds, the positioning, anchor points, scale, and rotation settings could all be changed. I had a problem with trying the move my wings correctly, I then realised my butterfly had a 3D look rather than just a flat shape, so I changed each of the wings to 3D, giving me other options and ways to rotate my layers. I have shown the X, Y and Z rotation options below - I then used my own knowledge and practice to work out which of the options I needed to adjust to make my wings flutter in the right direction, on the right angle. I have the timeline for one of my wings open below. Key frames have been placed throughout the ten seconds for each of the rotation settings, at a speed I thought worked well. 

As well as submitting the movement of the wings, I needed it to fly across the screen, which was a original given task. I created I null object to attach my butterfly to, I then used anchor points to move my butterfly with from one side to the other, setting one key frame at the beginning and one at the end. As well as seeing the butterfly fly in a curved movement (using the anchor bars along the movement line) I wanted it to get smaller as it got closer to the left side. This gave the effect of the butterfly flying into a distance, as it was facing towards a distance anyway which made it easier. So to make this work, I changed the scale of the whole butterfly, slowly decreasing the size as it got to the ten second mark. 

I was finished before the end of the lesson, so to improve my animation, I produced a rotation for the full butterfly. This gave a swooping effect and added more movement that equals to a realistic butterfly. I also duplicated my butterfly so I have two, however I changed the movement of the second butterfly, creating a separate curve on the null object, and started it a few seconds after, so they both flew in at different times. 

I have added a lot of my own techniques into this animation and I am very pleased with the overall 3D looking outcome. I rendered this movie to add onto my Vimeo site, the animation is shown below. I have also linked the full film that my group put together. 

Butterflies from Emily-Beth Phillips on Vimeo.
Group B Finale - 16:40 from Motion-go on Vimeo.

Cinema 4D Introduction

Stephen was holding my afternoon Creative Suit workshop today, he introduced a new programme to me, Maxon Cinema4D. Cinema4D lies at the intersection between 2D and 3D digital asset generation, and its industry leading toolset allows for the production of high-fidelity static and motion based work. Its capability can be applied to almost any creative brief and its rendered output options reach across the entire spectrum of digital media - from posters to packaging, and from movie effects to full 3D animation and even VR. The basis of the workshop, included going over the various palettes and manager panels before going trough a number of small experiments aimed at familiarising me with a 3D computer graphic workflow. At the end of the workshop, I had an outcome that displayed a 3D logo in Cinema4D, by extruding a vector and adding a material. I also had a few pieces to share from the experimental tasks as well. 

Tools and features that I looked at including exploring the workspace, adding objects for static renders, applying deformers and monograph objects, and working with splines and NURBS. I also utilised light and shadow, as well as adding colour, texture and simulated materials to objects. I rendered for both still images and animation, and added additional cameras to my work to add numerous points of view. I will go through these steps in details below, to show my understanding of the programme.

I was given the screenshot above before I opened up the Cinema4D programme. This analysis gave me an idea on how the software is played out, and what setting and tools I will most likely be using today. This included the Menu, command groups, object manager, data entry fields, coordinator manager, animation toolbar, material manager, 3D view, and command palettes. As a starter lesson, remembering all these features was extremely hard, but it was just an introduction, I will most likely be using this software properly in my second year - increasing my knowledge even more. 

Opening the programme, I set my layout to startup, it should automatically be on this setting anyway, but if not, for future reference, I will be using this layout. To be able to use the tools and features, I needed to create a box in my workspace, this cube could then be changed and adjusted using the toolbars around the edge. I selected the box button, and it drew out a box in the middle of my view. 

With this box, I could change the scale, placement, length, etc using the buttons on the top tool bar. These could be used with any given shape or object. There are also shortcuts on the keyboard that I can use instead, once I understand where everything else is inside the programme. Below are screenshots of the tools, as well as different sized boxes, also using the handle bars inside the shape itself. 

I could change how many segments I wanted inside the cube. For each face, I could split the length into smaller squares, this would be used for measuring the side of a shape. 

I opened up a file that Stephen had saved for us - it was a set up of creams and a box. These were all 3D looking, and I was to render these objects so that they could save and look good on a professionally set up background, rather than sat in the original 3D editing view. I saved it as a still image to be able to render it correctly. There were no moving, animated elements. 

After learning the effects of rendering, we opened a number of other Cinema 4D documents. This was key, to be able to find our way around many other sections of the programme. We could dig into layers of art work, using extreme amounts of detail to create one final outcome. We also looked at a piece of work that gave us different perspectives and views inside one piece of work, using many different cameras. I have screenshots below of the work I opened - showing an insight of many angles. 

The next stage involved our own interpretation. We opened an animated piece of work, leaving us to edit the rotating object. I could add rectangular bricks inside the rotation, I could change the angle of the shadow, and I could also change the speed the rotation kept to. I did this by using the setting in the bottom right corner. I rendered this animation as a movie, and uploaded it to my vimeo account.

Cloner spin from Emily-Beth Phillips on Vimeo

After editing the short animated object, I worked on created a cube that displayed a number of lighting and shadowing. I added in a floor, that I had previously looked at, and create a surface for the lighting to bounce off. This cube was then adjusted so that faces were covered by shadows, created by the lighting from another angle. I changed the colour of the lights, as well as the colour of the cube itself. I added in a number of lights, adjusting the strength and distance from the object. I have screenshot my development and presented it below, showing the change in form and perspective. I was happy with the way my 3D object looked, after only using this programme for the first time today. 

The last self negotiated task we were given by Stephen was to create a typography based logo or any piece of text. I placed in the words 'Graphic Design' and adjusted the light placement, colour, font, etc. It was a great way to present the tools I had been using in the session, and apply them to my own creation. I enjoyed using this programme for the first time, however I learnt a lot of techniques that are quite hard to remember, however I will get to know more about the software in year two of university - it will become clearer, just like the Adobe programmes I use at the moment. 

The animation below was a piece of work already made, it was there to help me understand how rendering works for different types of media. This was the outcome I created once rendered and saved. Cinema 4D is extremely powerful and can create beautiful art work or animation. Today was a starter and a tester, I will pick up on much more in the future.

PAPER from Emily-Beth Phillips on Vimeo.

Kinetic Type: 3D Space - Three Little Birds

The set task for the start of this session with Sara was to bring in a few illustrations that are linked to a set of lyrics from a song. I decided to do one of my favourite songs, Put your records on by Corrine Bailey. I produced three lines of lyrics, a few illustrations, including a window, and three birds. Obviously, when taking pictures of these sketches and opening them on the computer, the colouring needed to be corrected and lighting needed to be adjusted. Therefore, I opened the image in Photoshop in order to correct the illustrations so they could be placed individually on a new white document. I have displayed the box below that I used to adjust the setting on my image. I used brightness/contrast, increasing both to create deeper black lines, and brightening the white background. I also changed my image to black and white so there was no off white/ yellow toned shadows. The outcome I got is shown below. I then opened a new document, 1920x1080 pixels, and copied each feature into the document, creating a number of layers, rather than them all being on the same layer which would make it hard to move each element separately once placed into After Effects. I have three lines of text separated, the birds are all on different layers, and the window is on an individual layer too. 

I saved this Photoshop document, and then opened it up in After Effects to start my animation. I added it to my timeline, as well as adding a background colour, using 'Layer: Solid' and picking a colour that I thought would go nicely with the animation. I also added another layer, an audio. I downloaded the song to match my lyrics and illustrations, I then placed this onto my motion graphics time line so it played throughout the 10 second composition. I would edit this audio at a later stage. 

At the moment, the illustrations and drawn text, have a white background with black sketched lines. These layers need to be changed so they have no white background, and they stand out well on the coloured background I have chosen. At the bottom of the timeline, is a 'toggle switches/modes' option, I clicked this button and it gave me an option to change the style and colouring of the layers features. It was originally set to 'Normal' however I changed each layer to 'Divide' this deleted the white background, and changes the lines to white, a good colour to stand out on the background colour I had chosen. As you can see on the screenshot displayed above, the background layer is still set to 'Normal'. Now each feature that is going to be shown in my animation looks okay, I moved onto adding the effects for movement and motion. The first stage of developing my animation, was to turn each layer to a 3D layer. I was changing my layers to 3D because later on in my development, I am adding a camera motion, which glides through my illustrations, almost as though they are flying in a three demential setting. 

Before adding the camera layer, I created a few effects on different layers, including position movements, scaling, rotations etc. Below is the extension on my first appearing layer. I have adjusted all three of the options, creating a sliding in effect, as well as increasing in size whilst rotating to its final position where I have set the key frame. Each layer is quite different, for example the window uses a corner reveal effect. Each layer has been set to different times to appear. Starting with a few lyrics, then the window enters, with my birds swooping in from different angles, finishing with a last line of text. 

The final stage to my development (apart from adjusting my audio), was to add the camera. To do this, I went to layer, and selected camera. From this, it was added onto my animation timeline, which I could then adjust the point of interest and position. As you can see below, I have shown where I found the camera form, and how it has been placed onto my timeline, showing across the full 10 second length. 

To develop the movement of my elements, I needed to open two views, one of the animation itself, and one showing how the camera will move between each layer. Each layer is shown in the camera view by a line that holds an axis, the further down the line, the quicker the camera flies by. I can move each of the layers up and down using the Z axis (blue arrow). For example, the bottom layer that the camera flies by first will be my first piece of text, one line of lyrics. The line above this on the camera view, is the second line of text that is shown in my animation. This carries on with each layer, until the last layer is shown and the camera finished zooming in on it. I have linked my final developed video to the bottom of this post. I am very happy with how it looks, as I took time after the session to work on my editing as well. Making sure the effects work nicely with the camera motion and everything is proportioned correctly. 

Three Little Birds from Emily-Beth Phillips on Vimeo.