Popcorn 3

17/12/15

This below is a microwave oven i made in Flash for my WIP Popcorn project. I used shape tools and before I figured out where the text tool was I used a mixture between the line tool and shape tool to make the numbers on them.

This an animated piece kernel popping into popcorn. I used a pencil tool to draw the kernel and the popcorn and then filled the empty spaces with a paint bucket. I used the same process as I did with my bouncing ball animation on a past post.

This is the screenshot of the final product by far of How to make Popcorn.

I have the above sequences ready to go.

My film

17/12/15



My film has no music except at the credits, because I didn't really had the time to think of what music to put in it; however on reflection the strengths of not having background music gives a peaceful setting and it is appropriate for the park. The sound was all ambience at the beginning it's a typical park ambience, such as birds and cars driving by, then the scene changes to a former train station and seagulls can be heard. I used a different sound for the button and it's a type of laser sound, because it makes it sound like you are transported at the speed of sound. I then gave my character, The Rogue Wizard, a snicker to show he is snivelly, evil, but cowardly (even though that doesn't show). I included the rogue wizard, because I thought I would add something interesting to the film. He was meant to represent the type of character who abuses the power of the button and accidentally loses it to Paige, a mundane person. The title of the film is subtle and enigmatic, because it only says 'Button' and it doesn't give anything away. The final shot of the film is when Paige goes down on her knees pleading why she didn't get the button back and it was a medium shot with a facial expression of misery, it adds the emotion to the story.

Films

16/12/15

https://www.facebook.com/willremmington/videos/10153771420567290/

Will's film has music in the background, it starts off like a soothing violin solo and then it intensifies to the point where the button is gone - to me it sounds like something out of a trailer, because in my opinion it's too epic, there is too much tension and it could possibly be more effectively matched with the setting. The sound effect of the button when it's pushed makes a 'energy-dusty' sound. However this sound kind of makes it sound a bit slow. Visual effects include a blast of blueish-grey smoke/mist, I am curious of where he got it from. A major difference in Will's film is to cut out the rogue wizard, so it makes it look like that Tobie took the button off of Paige. The title for Will's film 'Tobie the Teleportation Wizard' could be seen as a dead giveaway or a spoiler as referred to in the film industry; in my opinion the title of film should focus on the button.


That's all I have to say about his film.

Christmas Animated

15/12/15

Today we were given two parts of the lesson with Steven: the first part was us trying to finish off our popcorn sequences on Flash and then the second half we watched five videos put in three things about them in this blog post.

1. Mog - They used computer graphics to animate the cat
Santa's Workshop - They used hand drawings frame by frame
The Night Before Christmas - They still used hand drawings, but used Cel on each character
Santa Claus is Coming - It was done in Flash
Christmas comes but Once a year - They used as the other two used hand drawn

2. Mog - Very effective
Santa's Workshop - Quite effective, if I were alive back in the early 20th century I would be starstrucked by the colour
The Night Before Christmas - Same as Santa's Workshop
Santa Claus is Coming - Too effective
Christmas comes but Once a year - The quality was kind of poor, but that's what the 1930's

3. Mog - Typical family,
Santa's Workshop - They thought that Caucasian children are more well mannered than children African descent and always refer their mothers "Mamma"
The Night Before Christmas -
Santa Claus is Coming - The fact that Santa is viewed as some messed up monster
Christmas comes but Once a year -

Employability

14/12/15

The class was split into groups of three to present their job roles presentation to each other in Hive D with Leanne.

During this time, the class used the opportunity to finish any unfinished work. I presented my presentation to Leanne and Will. I then worked on my focus group blog in my spare time.

Focus Group

14/12/15

A focus group is a group of people that discuss their opinions or thoughts on a product or design before it is decided.

We had our own focus group (Anouska, Curtis, Paige and Me) on what to put on our cards. So we brought in some pictures we found on Pinterest. (I have only show the few examples I brought into the focus group on this blog below.)

Most of our group prefered the contemporary design, whereas I prefer the more traditional design. My two are the ones I prefer, because it makes a change from all the modernized ideas. So it got me asking myself, "What happened to the real magic of the holidays?"

I like these images below, because the left makes me imagine that Saint Nicholas is like a type of wizard (Reason for making many toys and delivering them to children.) and right with the queen on the stag has the magical mystery to winter. By coincidence this personification of Santa is Ded Moroz, a Slavic wizard of winter, who brings presents to children and often delivers them in person on New Year's Eve. 

    

Thursday

11/12/15

We worked on our storyboard templates and film schedules. I missed them but my group handled that. It was agreed that we could film in January.

I worked in a different room on my film treatment while two teaching trainees are being given a lecture.

We all worked towards finishing our Christmas cards to sell on Monday and Thursday.

Candy

10/12/15

I made a pattern in Photoshop.

I then copied the pattern into another document and create a clipping mask on the text layer.

I then free transformed the pattern and gave the text layer different Layer Styles, Drop Shadow, Stroke and Bevel & Emboss.

White Balance 2

9/12/15

We continued with the filming task from yesterday. We filmed the last bit using Tobie in it and spent the remainder of the lesson editing.

Popcorn 2

8/12/15

I used a text tool to type down words. I randomly chose the Arial font without thinking. After I created the initial menu, I highlighted one button and select 'Insert > New Symbol' from the drop down menu.  I then choose 'Modify > Convert to Symbol' to create a symbol and then double-clicked my button to get inside it.

I used the same tools I used the week before to create an animation of the popcorn popping.

White Balance

8/12/15

This morning we watched a video on 'Story vs. Plot', a short film called Plot Device and were given a task to make a film that features a button in five different locations in relevance of the short film we watched.

One of us suggested that this button was a teleporter. The story of it is that Paige finds a button and now she is everywhere! I haven't heard what the ending was gonna be, but the last thing that was happening was I was a rogue sorcerer that stole the button off of Paige and it would somehow come back into Tobie's hands.

We had to change the white balance at every location we are at, for example the park had a wintery feel, there was dew all over the ground and the sun was sort of cloudy. I feel like I need to know how to change the white balance on the camera. I do know that white balance is to intensify colour on film.

Leanne

7/12/15

Today Leanne caught up with some of the students individually to assess them on missing work. Then she talked about 'Job role' presentation for next week. I worked on my cue cards for my presentation. Generally we were allowed to catch up on outstanding work in between individual chats.

Possible items to Include in a Film schedule

04/12/15

Pre-production

• Scripts
• Storyboard
• Location scouting
• Risk Assessment
• Booking Equipment

Production

• Who's filming
• Timing
• Locations
• Further filming?

Post-production

• Edit
• Levels
• After-effects

Media Theory again

04/12/15

 

Yesterday we watched a short YouTube video about plot structure. We answered questions about our film scripts. Peer-assessed each others' scripts just as mine was too.

 

We then began our schedules for pre-production, production and post production of our films. This was started individually but continued in groups.

 

We then worked on our Christmas card designs(see below.) We were then put into pairs discussing Christmas card design. I brought in a card and wrote about it in a Google Doc.

 

I produced a greetings card proposal for the hand drawn Santa I did. We watched a short tutorial on creating our own brushes in Photoshop. I then outlined the hand drawn image I did using the brush tool. I then duplicated the same layer used the paint bucket tool to fill in the necessary gaps. I then used the 'magic wand' tool to outline the area of the layers and try to avoid colours spilling outside the blank spaces.

 



Short film

2/12/15

Today we were discussing about what makes a short film interesting. We were given time to catch-up on our work - I worked on my script.

We discussed about White balance. it is a process where unrealistic colour casts so that the objects are rendered white in your photo, because it gives a natural look.

Interview with a Guitarist

1/12/15


We were working on our Guitar interview edits. We all watched each other's, including mine and we gave a bit of good bits and constructive criticism on our work. My shots worked well (five shot method), I used the rule of thirds and a gave a good interviewing style. However I should have reduced the distortion at the beginning, worked somewhere without background noise(especially the interruptive clapping!), improve white balance to reduce e.g. tan effect on Tobie and show the interviewer's (me) - possibly re-recording me reading out the questions again.

Popcorn

1/12/15

• I used the brush tool and paint bucket tool to create a popcorn kernel in the 'up' state.
• I then worked on the 'down' state and used the same method to create an exploded kernel. It's not pure white: it has a yellowy tinge to it.
• I moved to the 'over' state and sized the kernel down so it would reduce in size when the cursor was moved over it.
• I then tested it by going into 'Scene 1' and then choosing 'Commands' and 'test movie: In Air debug launcher (Desktop).'
• I downloaded a sound effect from the Freesound website and dragged the file into the image of the exploded popcorn kernel in the 'down' state to create a popping sound when someone clicks the button.
• I then opened a new symbol and pasted my original popcorn kernel into it. I used the 'Free Transform' tool to change the angle of the kernel, and changed the angle in different ways across several key frames to create a jiggle effect.

Roles of Employability

30/11/15

We were given a lesson on How to Pitch and Present ideas.

• We listed as many jobs in the industry as possible
• We listed skills required for the jobs
• We've been shown a skills map
• We talked about pitching & what a pitch is
• We were shown types of pitches: Business, video, sales, elevator. We watched a clip from the Apprentice.
• We then talked about our message maps and started making them on Photoshop.

Media Theory & Practice

26/11/15

Today we were answering questions on a Google Doc. We then shared our answers with the rest of each other. I then worked on my film treatment and developed some ideas for my film such as the mysterious phone call.

 

We then worked on our Christmas card projects: we sketched three design ideas on paper. We used Fontpair.com to experiment with font pairing. We then used stencils and letter stamps to experiment our ideas of what to write on our cards. The we all followed a tree tutorial on Photoshop. (see below)

 





Interview with a Guitarist

25/11/15

We all had a recap on the Five Shot method and we were testing our knowledge by using footage we took of interviewing a guitarist. I thought of having my video as a type of intro to a simplistic movie.

The Five shot Method

24/11/15

Today we were learning about The Five shot Method. So we were also given a few clips of some Cambodian women making rice paper crepes to put them into the right sequence by the Method:

1. Hand
2. Face
3. Medium
4. Over the shoulder
5. Random

But  fortunately, there was no law saying it has to be accurate, so a few other things may have had to be missed out.

6 word story

24/11/15

"Peanut brittle bought and ate yesterday." 

I bought peanut brittle at the weekend and finished them off on Monday. I then did an animated gif of the word Peanut Brittle moving across into a mouth with a small calendar depicting it's Monday.

I chose the Dungeons font for kicks. I inserted keyframes and used a classic tween to animate the text across the screen. I added a mouth using the pencil tool, because Brittle is made to be eaten. I needed to find out how to bring the teeth closer together. Some frames were inserted into a new layer and from there I highlighted it and used the classic tween again for the mouth. I added a calendar that says 'Mon' for Monday - that was yesterday. I decided to represent the word 'ate' visually using the closing mouth. I wasn't sure how to incorporate 'bought' so i left it out.

The Forest gives an insight of how bureaucracy, crude media and society affects the lives of wrongly accused people, such as the girl. It makes me feel appalled of how she was expelled from school for 'day-dreaming', how is that criminal? The animation on the other hand has this feel to it that starts off as like normal but the as it progress, it shows a much darker side.

Employability

23/11/15

Today Ed showed us Kloodle blog and how to sign up to sign up to an account. (Could they come up with any more names that doesn't sound like Moodle? People might think they offer the same service as Moodle, but it's only the name i don't like.) We all when we did worked on our biographies on our Kloodle accounts. I think we did all this to get potential employers to notice us.

Thursday lessons

19/11/15

Today we were shown about genres and how they can shown in a movie, TV show, graphic novel or video game. We were told to choose a genre we like. We were also reminded on our task of Film treatments.  I then realized I was suppose to make a film that has the scenario in the brief.

We were then given a Photoshop tutorial on making a good Christmas card. (see previous blog post)

Market research on Christmas Cards

19/11/15

I like the sort of cards with a vintage style fantasy non-contemporary cards, because they show a much more outlandish and magical side of Christmas. These characters and creatures are to be featured in my card(s). I do not really have a favourite design, I seem to like all of them really. I decided that my design is going to be the tree (bottom right) surrounded by Santa the wizard with him holding a present (top left) with a baby griffin (right) inside, The Snow Queen on the White Stag and the two white wolves.

Photoshop practice

I started off by giving the background a gradient effect.

I used the Polygonal Lasso Tool to shape into a triangle. I then used a Paint Bucket Tool to fill the triangle.

I downloaded a Snowflake Brush pattern from the internet and used it in the Paint Brush tool to drag along the sides of the triangle. www.gavtrain.com/ts/snow.zip

I duplicated the layer the Brush pattern was on a few times and resized them to make it look like a real tree.

I used the same Paint Brush pattern but in white.

I added texting "Yuletide Greetings!" with the text tool.

And that's about it.

I kind of like what I did, but it is not really my chosen design.