After Effects: 3D Camera

Illustrator progress, creating work outside of the canvas for the camera.

Our next session using After Effects evolved from the previous workshops we'd already done, combining easier techniques and using After Effects to create a piece of motion from an illustrative file.

This was one of my first times using illustrator, so it was nowhere near as perfect or as detailed as I'd like (I struggled to begin with initially even making a shape properly) so, despite this not being as high quality as my peers, it was still an accomplishment for me to even use illustrator and making the file at some remote detail.

I wanted to capture Manchester in how I interpreted it; with football, and the bad weather that plagued the city, so I used my skills I'd already garned from previous workshops to change the scene from day to night at the end. What I lacked in detail in the illustrator file I tried to make up for in what I'd already learned in After Effects and Photoshop, adding textures to the piece to give it some more "rustic", or "inperfect" look. 

I'd done the session outside of the dedicated hours so had to insert a few things that was learnt in the session at the end, because of this, I feel this is not my strongest piece, however, I'm incredibly happy with what I learned in Illustrator and managed to produce something that I was quite fond of, and I could make up for my lack of illustrator skills with other things, like fonts, texts, effects, etc. Creating a camera and moving it around was quite easy for me, simply changing the keyframes and dragging the camera in and out using the zoom.

3D Camera V2 from Charlotte Wilson on Vimeo.

Hyperrealities: Final Project

Hyperrealities: Brief Three

Explore and research:

• Hyperrealities
• The meme
• Millennials

Hyperrealities:

This theme particularly stuck out for me based upon the film examples referring to hyperrealities - this genre was one I was particularly interested in, such as Inception, Black Mirror, Interstellar, Shutter Island, all films that conform to the hyperrealities (an inability to distinguish reality from the simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies) Sort of the main relation is “what is real and what isn’t” - they blend seamlessly together.

My first initial idea reflected upon my favourite film, Inception, and either doing something related to this, or taking it further and applying the concept to other people that I knew. I knew this was early stages but the idea stuck out immediately and I already imagined working on it, so I wanted to research further into this topic. 

An application of hyperrealities can be seen in The Fight Club, a film I’ve seen but not enjoyed due to the lack of plot, however it dictates a good sense of hyperrealities.

The Meme:

This was something I was really familiar with, being part of the generation based around memes, I’ve seen so many in my life time, however I was not interested in doing much research into this at all, I found it fickle, boring, and something that wouldn’t make a good project for my interests and style. Although I do find some quite funny, share them to my friends etc, consistently giving to this “trend” I didn’t know whether I wanted to apply my project to the meme.  Though the definition, “an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture” could be taken out of the definition of a meme and in general sense, I still didn’t know where I’d be able to take this to an extent that I would enjoy it.

I was familiar with Andre the Giant Has a Posse, based upon watching Banksy film, but I feel this set in stone my lack of interest in the meme, I didn’t quite grasp the concept of them well enough, I felt, to do it justice.

Millennial:

This was one I was on the border about. Being a millennial myself, it meant I was quite familiar with the term and through living in a world of Social Media and in the western society, we have an “extreme rate of materialism, and technology addiction” (which I was all too familiar with) but I’d already done a project on myself - so I’d like to apply this to someone else.

I felt very relatable to the definition and research provided in the lecture “Generation Maybe”, seemed to apply to me alarming well. I wouldn’t know quite yet how to take this into graphic design, but thought it was a good starting point to research the differences of the term throughout the globe, and how this relates to me and my peers. 

We’re a group of people who have been so educated, and risen in a society that is crumbling, growing ever more expensive and depressive, with fast rates of terrorism - yet we still manage to be the most open and supportive generation there is; which I love and find so empowering. 

Though arguable with the “special snowflake” term (I already knew of this from the blogging site Tumblr) we were a generation that is easily offended, but we also change culture, set technology, can campaign, be educated, mental health is equally now a priority.

So…

My general approach to the research was to start by stuff I’d already known and grown to love, and then narrow it down based on what I’d found. I knew immediately a few ideas I’d wanted to do (but would have to wait to apply them, as I really wanted to thoughoughly research first) and was still a bit confused at how I could apply this to design, but I’d hoped with some research I could get going.

Immediate terms to research:

• Dreams
• Psychology
• Inception
• Black Mirror
• Christopher Nolan (theorists from him)
• Propaganda in our generation
• Women’s March
• The Matrix theory

It seemed rationale to research on things I’d loved and always been obsessed with, hyperrealities films are ones I’ve enjoyed the most so would be my main focus to begin with.

Personal Work

Sherlock: The Six Thatchers

Inspired by the BBC Show; created into a bust based on the plot.

Inspired by Netflix's "A Series of Unfortunate Events" 

Eye to indicate Count Olaf's tattoo & smoke stock for Baulderlaire fire.

Inspired by the Women's March (21st Jan) 

Using half-tone and quotes from posters.

Physical Process: Acrylic Printing

The process - using a roller over the stencil with acrylic paint

Our first session back with Nick was one of my favourite ones - creating a stencil to then print onto an A3 paper. I was really surprised, throughout the entirety of the year, with how thrilled I was with Nicks' sessions - completely out of my comfort zone and stuff I'd never done before, but it was so enjoyable to sit and relax and go back to simple designs with just small drawings.

The propaganda-esque posters inspired me to do work for the Women's March, outside of my work time and to do something empowering with bright colours that stand out from the crowd. Because of the way the images were given to us at random, it really pushed the creativity out from me and how to work them together with little information given to us. I was best pleased with my first one, the factory design, it was so basic yet so effective.

I'd really love to do this project again, it was so simple but enjoyable for the entire group to do, and didn't take too long to create. I'd also created posters in response to my designs; changing the colour, adding texture, for more impact, and they worked quite well with different schemes.

My favourite part of the process was getting the chance to create the print, it was messy, almost like being back in Primary School, but it was enchanting and fulfilling to create work which was so tactile and imperfect. Because of the fun aspect of the session I also couldn't resist to add a pun into my work, which, despite Nick sort of half-groaning at, I really enjoyed, it made the work way more light-hearted.

Guest Lecture: Jonathan Sands (Elmwood)

The first lecture back after the new year was a self-volunteered one, for extra information about my CV. This was presented by Jonathan Sands, from Elmwood Studios, whose humor and mix of information proved really resourceful to me and allowed me to make a lot of changes to my CV and points that I'd retain for future use.
At first my CV was very boring; with little colour and more information based, however after retaining lots of information from Jonathan it seemed better to incorporate myself and my own personality into the work. For this, I included my own piece of work that I used for an older project which was a portrait of myself (this would then allow the employer to see what I'd look like) and I found this to be a much more creative point about my CV and that it would look much better and would stand out from the crowd, which is what the idea of the lecture was about.

The points given to us were simple - the time constraint that the people reading the CV's are under are minimal, so they need to stand out - hence the pop of colour I gave the CV to begin with. The main point (design your CV and make it look interesting) I really took from this lecture and applied it to my own work.

A employer would prefer:
- Good ideas
- Craft Skills
- Intelligence
- Nice person*
- Interpersonal skills

*Quite an important one - you'd like to be able to go out with these people too as you spend a lot of time with them

Lots of other jobs within a design studio if they didn't want to do flat work, such as the work we've been doing throughout university can then use these skills as transferable ones - typography, illustration, etc, all require the skills that can be used throughout any employment, so if you decide you didn't want to do design then you'd be able to change.

Further more, we were given lots of tips how to best approach someone when applying for a placement. You'd ideally want to address the person who ran the business by name, and not just as "sir/madam" (this implies you've done your research and are genuinely interested in doing your placement with them)
Jonathan gave us examples of work he'd loved that had been sent to him, particularly work that was physical, the idea is to never underestimate the power of getting something through the post.

- Show some interest, make us smile
- Make a visual portfolio; visual projects and information
- Progress work would also be great to see how you got to your point
- Always listen and pay attention

Jonathan's lecture captivated his work perfectly; though some projects would be considered slightly uninteresting to us to view at a lecture he made them interesting and unique and made us all laugh, which is what I wanted out of this lecture. Overall I gained a lot of information and completely re-vamped my CV because of this, and it would prove the most beneficial lecture about my placement year that I've had so far.

"I choose this is the best place to work and it is"

Personal Work: Animation

Animation re-fresh I did whilst my internet connection was down, using only resources I currently had on my computer. Was a nice refresh to learn how to use tracking, generating, and use of colours to create something I was happy with. I managed to get quite far without being able to google anything I needed a re-fresh of, and was quite happy with the outcome, though wish I could have changed the speeding slightly as I felt it was a bit off. However I'm happy with how it came out, despite not having any idea what I initially wanted the video to look like.