Walking Avatar

Here he is! Me! Bobbing along, shuffling around his own little world.

Obviously, there's no camera movement or textures yet, they're to come!

Online Environments

I think I'll most probably do online environments for my pathway.

I mean, if you need any sort of push into it, this website will pretty much do that for you!
http://www.normann-copenhagen.com/

It's the most clean, modern and classy piece of... well... I would called it art work I've seen in a long time! It runs very smoothly, the ambiance sounds great, the smooth moves between links looks brilliant, and the fact you can make it full screen adds a more cinematic presence to it.

Very creative, very cool! Not completely original though.

Website and Final Ideas

Here's the initial idea I have for a website.

After deciding to choose the online environments pathway, I thought it would be a good idea to experiment with making a website on photoshop.

The website will feature a timeline in the portfolio section for all the work i've done, under the year's I did them and then include a preview of each piece and my thoughts about it.

Having done this first idea, I think i'll use it as my 5th and final identities object.

So here's my final list:

AV -40 Min D-GEM Radio Clip

Logo -Speach Bubble

Avatar - Myself, now

MY CHOICE - "Bolt" Soda Can

MY CHOICE - Profile Website

Car Render

This will be so useful if I choose to do the New York city scape as I will be able to import various versions of the car into the city scape to create a more realistic looking street. Here's a quick example.

Interactive Showcase Idea

Here's an idea I had for my interactive showcase. Basicly, its the beginning of a club. I thought this would be really cool, especially to add lighting effects and stuff.

It's something i'll play around with I think.

SPP Research Task

Over the last few years, my creativity has been mainly for myself. I have created a lot of music videos of general things, such as going out clubbing and using the photos and videos with a song to make the event a memorable one. I have also used pictures and photos of when my friends have visited and put them into a music video for us all when we’re not together to watch and reminisce. I’ve also used my creativity in a theatre production for school where I created the entire backing video which was a prominent part of our show. I had to create a powerful and expressive video that was effective but simple enough for the audience to watch without getting too distracted. I’ve obviously also used my creativity in the work I’ve done. I devised a fruit juice advertising campaign, a mobile phone campaign and various other things such as a music video about a girl who’s abused in the relationship and nearly overdoses on drugs. I also managed to create an online radio station, but this was more business related as I not only had to choose between various website templates, I also had to organise and timetable the DJing times. I even created a video for my Mum as she had a party to commemorate the building of her new summer house. She asked me to film the day and then create a video for her, which I did. Not only that, I managed to create a stunning video of her garden in the summer, with extreme close –ups of plants and nature in her garden.My creativity has been done this way as I think it’s important to get other people’s views on things, such as the online station and the theatre production video. I like to take in other people’s points of view and then edit it to make a more dynamic production.In the future, I’d love to continue my hobby of making videos and taking photos as it’s what I’m really interested in. But as far as jobs go, I think I’ll have to go into something where I don’t take too much of a main role as a lot of media based professions require collaboration and once I have an idea, I like to roll with it, so therefore I don’t think doing AV for a career would be the best aspect for me. However, I do enjoy online environments; I just don’t know enough about it. I’d like to work for big companies such as Pixar in the virtual department but I’m not sure I have the right creative spark when it comes to character design. Therefore, I think online environments would be a good route to go down as I can still experiment with Flash, Photoshop and learn Dreamweaver
Research is going to help me get to where I want to go as I think it’s important to make an informed decision. Looking at how the internet is progressing, especially with Web 2.0 will be interesting to see. I also need to research how companies use their websites to promote themselves. The SmartCar website I reference below is a good example of this. I think I’m most drawn to the “Behind” aspect of researching. It’s a good idea to see what influenced the work at the time it was made, if we look at this we can probably tell why the website was made in a specific way. For example, websites made way back in 1997 would look very dated and simple, with a lot of “bad design” by today’s standards due to the advances in technology and the invention of Flash etc. I feel quite wary of the “In front of” aspect of research as it’s quite difficult to find out how people reacted to a website when it was made and put online as there’s so many websites and online environments that not all of them will be documented, unless you look at larger sites such as Google and creative sites such as The SmartCar one and social sites such as Facebook. “In/Through” seems the most irrelevant of the research aspects as I don’t really think it’s important to look at how it comes together. In a lot of creative mediums, it can be very experimental and there’s no logic to why it’s done the way it is, it just works because it looks good and is functional.

D-GEM Radio Clip

Here's the first draft for the radio clip I'm creating as part of the identities module. This will construct the audio/visual aspect.

It's only 1 song long so far as I've just been playing around with it. Hope you like it!

D-GEM Radio came about in 2004 when I owned the station and created an online environment for users to listen to their favourite music, as well as requesting their own tracks. Unfortunately, the station was closed down as I had other commitments such as GCSE's and then A Levels.

I wanted to pick up the station and give it a new spin with this opportunity I couldn't miss! Each song reflects something in my life. The songs lyrics tell you something about me as I chose songs for their lyrics, not their fame value.

Press play below to listen.

Essay Research

Having NO idea what pathway I want to do next year, I've been on http://www.thefwa.com/ to look at a few flash animations. I LOVE this site. http://www.truthaboutsmart.co.uk/ Probably because I'm a massive fan of smart cars, but I also love the interactivity of it and the way it gets you to challenge your own personal views of Smart Cars. I must say, I'm very tempted!

Soda Can - 3DSMax

Here's the first render of my Soda Can.

I chose to do a Soda Can as I thought it would be cool to model an object in SMAX and to design my own drink. :D

I chose a blue background to represent water and the green, mixed with the stars shows a vivid and exciting side to the drink which would represent the fizzy bubbles inside.

Logo - The Final Idea

Here it is! The final idea for my logo.

I think this is the idea i'm going to go with! I really like it, its eye catching, simple and bold.

The blue represents a clean and solid approach to design. The speachbubble itself represents me, as I love to socialise and catch up with friends. I also know I'm quite a possitive person with a lot to say, so it fits well! The divisions inside the logo are the thoughts and interests that goes on inside, as well as representing all the aspects I talk about and ideas I express. Obviously, some ideas are bigger than others, and that shows here.

Logos, part 2!

Here's some more ideas I've been playing around with.

Logo

Here's the first version of my logo.

My design style is that I love simple but effective graphics, and I think this really captures that.

The colours are my favourite design colours, using the cream and browns in this way make them really work together. Plus, the darker brown around the edge of the logo adds a bit more depth.

The letters are my initials.

I used the stars begind my initials to show a bit more of my personality, a more fun and "superstar" style. The stars add more to the logo by lifting off the letters a bit to make it a bit more 3D and apealing.

Animation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta7VHKGuoJY&feature=featured

Watch that video for a fantastic piece of animation by Aardman.

The 004 - Album Covers

I was approached by someone on a forum I used to use (http://www.denden.co.uk/) and he told me he had a band and wanted me to help him with some art work for their CD covers.

They've made various CD's of song that they've coverd. (Nothing released by a record label, its more just for fun on their behalf) So I decided to take up the challenge and help them.

They approached me various times and I've created a variety of different CD covers for them. Here's their first one.

I wanted to make the album artwork look as realistic as possible, so I included the copyright and barcode.

I was given a pretty grainy picture with not much to it other than a grassy background where the paving stops. I wanted to cut this out and make the cover seem cleaner and remove any strong, harsh colours so that there was no contrast with their clothing.

The second album is more interesting. I was given a single photo of each band member, and I managed to create this quite impressive and realistic looking photograph. It looks as though they are all lying on the floor next to each other, and the background fits too as I managed to create a large version of the floor and add a lighting effect from the centre to create a more central focus.

The text at the bottom looks quite good and stands out and the colours in the text brings out the colours of their clothes.

Here's the Greastest Hits cover I designed for them. They sent me two photos, very similar and the winter clothes made it seem very fresh and crisp, so I reflected this with a light diffuse glow, removed the grain but kept the white in. This washes out any softer colours but keeps others looking bright and raw. The back cover is very simple as I didn't want to take over the album cover with too much detail as the font is quite grand and may start looking too busy. I used this font as a Greatest Hits is the best tracks from an artist and suppose to be the best, therefore I used this font to reflect that.

Interactive Showcase

Here's a render of my city scape. As you can see, I've removed most of the reflective surfaces so they look more industrial now. Not only does this speed up the rendering time by about 4 times, I can also render it at a bigger file size, better quality and it's still an hour faster to compile. Also, the more "solid" feel to the buildings gives it a more realistic feel, at the end of the day, not all buildings are made of full glass are they?

Interactive Showcase - Hiccup!

Here is the video I produced of my New York city scape.

The quality is very low and it only lasts a couple of seconds, however it took over 2 hours to render.

Having rendered this small file, I'm having second thoughts about how exactly I will go about this project. I'm going to have to create a less dynamic city scape to be able to render the images quicker. This is quite anoying as I'm really proud of the work I've done.

I'll try and keep my original idea, that you're presented with the first image and then you click a window or something and then it zooms onto that window, however it's going to be quite difficult to reduce the quality.

Interactive Showcase

After attempting the tutorial to create the building, I then applied the same techniques to create my own New York street with the same textures, which I think i'll keep if this is the idea i'm sticking to.

I love the way the light shines through between the buildings, looks beautiful. Only issue is, it will take so long to render when creating it for flash!

3D S Max - Spider

Here's a spider I made on SMAX as a little project, it's kinda cute.

3D S Max - Building

Here are a couple of images of a building I've modelled in 3D S Max using the tutorial feature. I think they're look really quite amazing!!

Hopefully, i'll be able to put the same sort of editting into my New York City scape to create a similar effect.

Fingers crossed!

City Scape 3Ds Max

Here is the 3D render of my basic world so far. It's very soft at the moment due to the lack of textures. But you can see the idea so far.

City Scape idea

Following last weeks seminar with Roma, we spoke about what I am like, what makes me who I am, what I enjoy and my future aspirations. What seemed quite prominant was the organisational skills and New York. Therefore I've drawn up a sketch of a possible design for a box. It's a view down a street in new York. It will be created in 3D S Max and then exported and put into Flash so that the windows etc are clickable. Click the picture to see the full design.

Branding Help

Just a quick note to show you guys about a site I found on Google.

Check it out if you need help on branding research.

http://www.salescreators.com/Section1/branding.html