Sunday 20 December 2009

Having completed the Silent Movie brief, the next brief is looking at creating a piece of video. Either a title sequence for a proposed television programme or a series of 5 television idents for a promotion of a season of films. Having watched these many a times by being a TV person and a lover of idents, I have just been watching "AD of the Decade" on ITV, this to be honest is quite a useful programme although we are not using moving image its none the less inspiring and illustrates creative thinking at its best. I love the Guiness Advertisement with the dominoes, Cadbury's "A Glass and Half Full" productions, Sony's Bravia Adverts and Honda Domino effect advertisement. From dancing eyebrows and talking meerkats, to a car made of cake and the world’s longest waterslide, Ben Shephard narrates a celebratory countdown of the 20 greatest commercials to grace our TV screens over the past decade. Finding out how technology lent a hand in bringing Gene Kelly back to our screens, how a Sunday league football ref came to book Jackie Charlton and who was actually in the monkey suit, in the now infamous drumming gorilla advert.









Sunday 13 December 2009


Having gone to the Brudenell Christmas fair earlier today I had a look at some of the blogs of the business card I collected. Here I found some lovely illustration by Katie Rose Gill and this lovely stopframe animation she had found which is perfect for the module I am currently working on. By Bang-yao Liu, a project at Savannah College of Art and Design, the idea being about how that every time when I am busy, I feel that I am not fighting with my works, I am fighting with those post-it notes and deadlines. By manipulating the post-it notes to do pixel-like stop motion, interactions can be made between real actor and post-its, I thought it was really nice and simple idea.

Saturday 12 December 2009





Yes, i just had to put this on.
On looking again at something more crafted and illustrated I remembered audi produced an advertisement for their new Q5 not so long ago. The character must have been superimposed onto the box other wise they would have gone through loads, this could I think therefore be produced using After Effects. I like the interacticvity and of course the character, it makes it more personal and hand crafted, bringing in i suppose that idea of the car being crafted to perfection.
I love craft and tactile graphics, this video I found whilst Youtube surfing as it were by Su Blackwell a renowned crafter in design whom often uses paper. I really like this stop-frame animation, you have no idea it is an advertisement for a product until right at the end. Beautiful. This type of motion graphics may come in use later in on in the design for digital media module as I would definitely like to experiment again with this form of video.

Its hard not to laugh really. Some lovely stop frame animation by the PEZ design group, myself and Hannah Jackson can across these last year, the one just below gave a little bit of an awkward moment and is very twisted but it was none the less fantastically animated. View their site for full information on their practice and other quirky videos.



BioBak is an interacive site/game, made by Coen Grift (apparently). Fred showed us it on the module brief, its awesome. Incredibly creative yet so simple, it is a completely interactive world in which you complete various tasks and such, like a big adventure. Have a play if you get the chance.

This video is a critical statement towards the Pseudoscience "Intelligent Design" from a Graphic-Designers point of view, i thought it was rather interesting. By 78Bram Via Youtube.

Today we had been looking at story-boarding and looking at dissecting a short film that contained typography of a conversation or short piece of text, working together with Heather Bradley we dissected the text The Hush Sound — Lions Roar from Mig Reyes via Vimeo. We partnered together really well, Heather first looked at the video earlier and is a really interesting piece, I love how interactive the video was and how the text moved although it may not have bared any relation to the sung audio. I also like the use of limited colour pallet on this which I think works really successfully especially with the interaction of the characters.


After having had a look at so many typographic videos I had a look at some ones more related to image. Claire Birtwistle is a third year student whom I have been talking to for a while now and I asked her about how the former second years attempted the brief. She gave me a couple of useful links and from looking at her blog I found a couple more I really like the one above, 'I Met the Walrus' was nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Animated Short, although image based I thought it was interesting the relation between moving image and the dialogue.
Below is another video actually created in After Effects which is quite inspiring, having used the software recently it almost seems quite simple thinking about it, using very simple imagery using two-dimensions within a three-dimensional environment but I bet it took a long time to produce. The video below that is again created using After Effects and is a kind of ident for Liquid Live. Enjoy.


The first brief of the next module is a good ice breaker, a 5 second silent typographic movie. it sounds really exciting and there are loads of different ones out there, maybe not all silent but some which are really interesting and have such fantastic interactivity. There were many I could choose from by simply searching typography in Youtube. I quite like this one the wittiness of the conversation and the use of 2 colours which is appropriate to the current brief. A Typographical response taken from the film, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, by Ben White via Youtube. Having never used the software before I am feeling quite optimistic about what I am going to be producing as most of my colleagues are on the same software skill level.