My Station Ident

For our Animation rotation we were asked to make a 'station ident' as our final product. The brief stated imagine your facebook, hobbies, interests etc were all rolled into one and turned into an ident. Such examples that we researched were the infamous BBC idents that cover all their channels.
Our first week consisted of animating text as you can see from below, the jelly word. In this seminar, i struggled for the first hour but it became a lot easier by the end, eventually completing a jelly word that i was very happy with. Week two seminar was a different story. I spent 3 hours pretty much with my head in my hands pulling my hair out trying to make the jelly man. I did alot of work out of class time completing it  the main struggle being how to make it move with the 'pick form scene' action, once i had this it was all pretty straight forward. Whilst I got there in the end, I found 3ds max very hard to use and it proved a bit to stressful for me. I'm sure though if you know how, it's easy like I find photoshop easy for example. Some things you just don't stick too.

My TV Ident - Myles Harvey from Myles Harvey on Vimeo.

Sticking to my strengths, my ident consisted of a combined animation of both the text and the jelly man. Obviously i couldn't just do andrews animation just put together so I with the brief in mind, i thought i'd bring my music into it. Doing so i added the Deadmau5 track 'Ghosts N' Stuff' to the animation and got the jelly to sing and dance to it. With the text, i changed it to my name and got it to act like a credit for a film, moving to the front of the screen at the end. The main problem i had was that when i rendered it, i lost around 2 seconds of film, making my jelly out of time with the music. With a bit more time next time i will try and find methods to prevent this as i really liked the idea. Although i feel the effect is still the same and it is also quite similar to the Daft Punk video in 'my multimedia' how the characters mouths are out of sync with the music. The video itself is still as powerful and meaningful.

C.R.A.P Website Design

C.R.A.P - Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity.


After our C.R.A.P lecture we were asked to edit a website that had all the bad features of C.R.A.P and turn it into a functional, and exciting one. The image below represents the website i chose. It is a website for 'Blues Ski Shop' who sell ski equipment and clothing and provide useful links to ski information.

The reasons for picking this and categorising it under C.R.A.P are....

Contrast: First of all the colour scheme of the website is awful, its dull and boring and everything is pretty much the same blue, there is now big colour clashes to draw you to it. There is large and small type in the main page. The text is your standard base font, nothing exciting or edgy. The icons that take you round the site are surrounded by big and small lines. The random box at the bottom uses warm colours for the text on a warm background completely drowning it out. The images are compressed and therefore look really un-professional. Lastly the graphics of the whole site are very dated.

Repitition: There is repitition as the home page holds information that you would find on other pages of the site.

Alignment: On the main page and others there is no alignment whatsoever, everything is just scattered across the page.

Proximity: Again due to the alignment, the whole proximity is off creating a very confusing site and a lack of group related items being together.

Here is my newly designed website for Blues Ski Shop....

Improvements....

Contrast: I changed the colour scheme to a deep hard hitting royal blue that contrasts highly to the black making it edgy and more modern, this is heightened also by the sort of street white spray can effect. I created better graphics, the title is more up to date and the fonts of the page are more exciting and the same size. The icons now all fit equally into exact sized skis that i made more dense for the writing to stand out. I created images that aren't compressed to look more professional. The main thing was that i tidied all the confusing writing into the icons and created a simple working site and that the graphics of the site were more up to date and extremely appealing.

Repetition: I fixed the repetition by erasing all the unnecessary writing from the main page, leaving it in its separate pages.

Alignment: I fixed the alignment by creating a symmetrical site and placing the un-aligned writing in their actual pages under the icons (the skis).

Proximity: The site now looks like a professional site, rather than a messy splatter of all sorts of different words and graphics.

All in all the big change was re-vamping the site as it was very dated. I changed it to a professional, modern, more appealing site to the skiers of today. Something you'd go on and want to use not fall asleep at the computer, or move away from.

My 1st Animation

For our first task in animation we were asked to create a text animation of the word 'Jelly'. The creation would be made in such a way that it actually looks as if it is made by jelly! Here was mine....

Jelly from Myles Harvey on Vimeo.

Starting Animation

Going into Animation, something i have never done before, i was very excited about trying new things and had millions of ideas. In particular referring back to 'My Multimedia' and combining music with animation/illustration. Below is the video of 'Watch The Sun Come Up' by Example. This again combines illustrative animation with music. In this video though, the animation is combined with film. I am pretty set on choosing film as my pathway and i would love to combine that with illustration/animation and music. This video shows very illustrative animation, like drawings, the type i would love to pursue, again combining it to the film and music composition aspect.

Rule Of Thirds

Following todays lecture on image and composition, i took away a lot of interest as one of my main hobbies (also a freelance job) is photography. One main idea i had not known before was the 'rule of thirds'. Jools asked us to state a definition of the practice for our blogs in order to help with ideas in image and composition and to help with our practice, in my case photography.

The rule of thirds takes in image and splits it into 9 equal parts by using 2 parallel vertical and 2 parallel horizontal lines. The idea is that key elements of the image should be placed on these lines to create more tension, energy and interest in the composition, rather than just focusing on image as a whole.

Here is my own image, i added the thirds lines in photoshop. Here you can see how the lines can be effective. One example is the centre part, it creates more energy and focus on where the smoke hits the light, the middle left emphasises the result of the combination. Another example of the photo is the bottom middle part. It singles out the chimney, creating focus and knowledge of the source of the smoke.

My Multimedia

We were set a task to talk about a piece of multimedia that we like/are interested in and talk about why we do. Personally music is my first love, in particular dance music genres such as house, progressive house, electro house, acid house, funky house, crack house, electro, techno, trance, garage, dubstep and liquid. Music like this is more of a piece of art hence why it is so appealing. Its not just some poorly written song for an artist who can sing a few good notes and look good, just to sell records, holding a celebrity, cosmopolitan image because of it. Or someone screaming down a microphone on a three chord guitar riff. My music is art, a composition, alike to the forms of art that i pursue.
Coming from a graphics/illustration background my love of art will always be these forms. In conclusion the two things i love most are music and art so the combination is something of my most interest.
Above is the video 'One More Time' by Daft Punk. It resembles the acid house/electronic music of the start of the 21st century. The reason i chose this for 'my multimedia' is that it combines such a euphoric melody and lyric with an animation that resembles the song. The animation itself isn't the best but that shows how technology has changed. The story in the animation is told my the song and its lyrics. The magna world we are seeing is raving out to a daft punk concert. The lyrics 'musics got me feeling so free, gunna celebrate' describes the emotions running through the characters 'one more time' emphasises their need to do it again and again as they are in a state of euphoria and wanting it to be continuous.
It is a perfect example of my multimedia as it combines my music with illustration/multimedia. The main reason is that the music is the base of the animation, without it, we'd just simply see some characters dancing to a band. With the music we know the feelings and emotions behind the characters and therefore know the story behind the animation. This is something i would like to bring to my work. As i love music so much, bringing it into my multimedia as a way of telling a story and discovering meaning, would be a perfect way of working.

A treat for you! Heres the real life version ;) (the real world being exactly the same as the euphoric world in the video!) Enjoy!....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hjRwew3_8U

My Interactive Space

For my interactive space my idea was to do a virtual tour around my halls. Here are some of the images.

 The image pictured right shows the last image showing the view from my window after taking the whole tour of the accomodation.

Final Images

Ive been away from my blog for a fair bit now, but going to start updating it with my 1st terms work in preperation for my final presentation.
This post should have followed my 15 image sequence post. These are photos i didnt use yet i feel were my most successful and prospective pictures for my photography portfolio, the image below especially.

15 Image Sequence

Our 5 image task later progressed to a 15 image. The task again was simply to make our own images that could be linked in a 15 image sequence to tell a story or process. I went out on location with my camera to photograph Tom again this time obviously creating more images. I used Hampden halls balcony as my location as it provided a nice backdrop, the city image seemed fitting for a photograph of a student. The city backdrop later proved a perfect piece of art for some of my final images, some images that proved quite strong. The final 15 images i choose are the ones shown above. After shooting, i worked with colour tints and black and white effects on photoshop and created this mosaic like effect to present the 15 sequence as an image and as a story.

                                                                                               on location images.....

5 Image Sequence

On our first introduction to interactive space we were introduced to how image can work in sequence. We were directed to the works of Alfred Hitchcock and his film 'Vertigo' from 1958, an American psychological thriller. We were asked to study the stills from the film and appreciate how a still image sequence can tell a story. We were then asked to try and take some of the stills from any part of the film and turn them into sequence. In the end we created a 5 image sequence that told a story, even though they were taken from different parts of the film. It proved alone that a sequence of still images can tell a story, it doesn't have to be constant. We completed 3 of these as background research and ideas for our own practice. our task was to create our own images that could be linked in sequence. I choose to create images that would resemble something someone of our age would do every day, smoking being a very common habit. My 5 image sequence shows my friend Tom in the process of making a roll up cigarette. The sequence is short, but it shows in 5 images, you can tell a story or in this case a process.

Design Process Example

The design process i'll talk about is the creation of my final piece for my foundation course, in which I created three large illustrations (shown above). The design process starts with a self-thought title in which I choose 'Perception Of People'. From your title you start to generate ideas through artist research developing to research on your subject which then generates idea development, finalising into a final piece. My specific design process is some what different i think as i knew what I wanted to produce from the outset. Therefore instead of looking for ideas to prove a certain idea, I create evidence to back up my point portrayed in the image. As a foundation project it is generally sketchbook based. My sketchbook contained my specific way of working, this being; sketching, but mainly illustration using tonal imagery focusing on shadow and body form to portray my ideas. My sketchbook itself was extremely collage based, in which my quite pin-point work rested on top as the evidence. Where I got my marks was through my connection between my piece and my work. Going back to my piece 'Perception Of People' it represents how in modern society people rule certain stereotypes off for either their appearance, weight, colour, race etc. I feel I choose three main stereotypes, a black man, a fat man and an anorexic woman. Society holds in areas a strong racial opinion of black people, when in actual fact they are exactly the same as us. Alot of people in society would automatically turn their nose up at a fat/anorexic person, why? They are still people. So this was my thinking process. The connection came from my design process in which I first started looking at artists that portrayed these ideas such as Cindy Sherman and Gillian Wearing. This gave me ideas for stereotypes in society which i then studied. I narrowed off the ones i felt most strongly about by developing the original idea leading to the ones in my piece and started to draw ideas up, looking back at my research as i went, eventually leading to what you see as the final piece. The reason the three are separate, is the idea that they have been singled out. In summary, my design process is mainly sketch based, but there is a broad collection of research that backs up a certain idea. That is the main way i have worked so far to date.