character design and colour

Front cover of a computer arts magazineof ollies, the bright use of colour is something to consider for our design for this brief, also the use of simple shapes and a cushy feel to it. This look appeals to kids and could hopefully inspire their imaginations.

Size Flyer

Here's a size flyer Ollie picked up with a photograph of a little paper installation. These image are created in a really interesting way, you have to set things out alot further away that you want them to appear in the image, I'm guessing as well that you need to be working on a slope to get a tidy composition.

making a paper toy.

Taken from thunderpanda.com, a step by step of how to craft a paper toy from the print stage, obviously if we do go on to make any crafted characters, we will be designing them as well.

You will need:

• Your net
• scalpol
• scissors
• some paper adhesive.
  

Cut all your bits out.

cut out any slats and tabs.

Assemble parts

Tada!

Thunder panda

some more paper characters made of simple shapes. Taken from www.thunderpanda.com, where I beleive you can get these nets for free and print and make them.

Shin Tanaka

Shin Tanaka is a character designer who amongst other things, creates paper toys, above is a small selection of some of my favourites, olly has a net of one of these characters so we're going to make it at some point hopefully and I'm also going to print out some nets I have found on the net of come characters and objects, just to see how hard it is to physically craft paper characters.

Shin's work is easy on the eye and relatively simple looking, but most importantly, memorable. I think this is the key thing we should be thinking about because this is a competition.

paper craft

I remeber as a kid thinking paper toys are just crap versions of plastic toys, but i think nowadays this isnt so much of an issue because design has moved on a fair bit from when i was a kid, for a start not many families had the internet back in the day and a printer that was any good! I think things have moved on alot now and it gives me and ol a hell of a lot of scope when it comes to making these things for kids, here are some examples of paper toys and general nice papercraft I've found.


By paper craft design. Obviously really well thought out and at first glance this really does look like an SLR camera. I dont think it will be necessary or possible given the timescale to make anything this detailed but it is nice and it shows what is possible with paper.




These two pieces are installational pieces and the amount of work that has gone into both is staggering. Installation design is definately worth considering for out video work because it could further enhance the look and feel of our videos and make them more fun to the child viewer and therefor further motivate them into actually being creative.

mad

I think this is a little comlicated for a kid maybe, but making fun stuff on the tv and having a step by step process would be a really nice way of getting kids to use their imaginations, me and ol spoke to fred becasue we were a little stuck about a concept and this is what we got out of it,

"T.V is doing" so making and doing stuff in the t.v spots is really relevant and its a good way to get the parents involved to with supervision of creative practices. We distinguished the fact that the target audience specified in the brief are possibly the next generation of creatives and therefor need nurturing in the right way. Ill talk about this more in a DP blog post.

stop motion

Me and ollie have been toying with the idea of producing an image sequence for cartoon network, and at the moment we are thining about using paper craft. I found this video and I think it conveys the idea pretty well in terms of in a way, something similar to what we would like to do.




Also found this paper shop stop motion spoof of photoshop. shows a similar idea and is done well, i like the geometric shapes and the way things are brought in and out of shot. laverly.

six point harness

Again with the six point harness I know, but his approach is very relevant and mad, crazy etc and fits really well with the cartoon network visual approach and also somewhat zany mindstate of the kids the channel caters for. Six point's animation is smooth and rich with colour and making something like sixpoint's work would work really well, but I think it isnt a realistic target to set for me and ollie, but is a starting point for a visual approach.

cartoon network visual approaches/ characters

A couple of the best shows from cartoon network's opening scenes. Brings back happy memorys of early childhood vegetation...

The visual style I think is quite mischievous and tongue and cheek and the way some things are animated is hilariously dark, for example watch the I am weasel opening theme and watch when weasel snaps a womans neck into place as if to perform a heroic miracle to show the kids he is the good guy! We could really have a field day animating for cartoon network here.

collaborative brief ycn initial research

as you can probably tell me and ollie have chosen to have a go at the ycn cartoon network competition brief in which the brief outlines : get kids to use their imaginations and also to do something with it. I want to kick off this research with a look at some exisiting cartoon network idents because this brief is going to be largely screen based for me and ol.

Im keen on the fun and boucny appearance of the type in the boxes in these idents, they look simple but I can imagine something like would be incredibly hard to produce. Me and ollie have predicted that other entrants for this brief around the country will most likely be design for digital media students and will be producing videos like this. We are thinking a slightly more stripped back approach could be appropriate, and much more impressive and relevant to the idea of kids using their imaginations.

My chosen films

Moon is predicted to be a future cult classic. made by david bowie's son. the feel of this film is slow and like an unfolding of events which lead to a disturbing truth.



This is such an iconic opening scene I just wanted to post this on here, as I couldnt find a trailer for it that was any good.



ALIEN. Such an iconic film. I want the feel of ambience and then a shock fast movement in my idents because that is ultimately the feel of this film, there is something very disturbing about alien. It's probably because Geiger was the resident artist.



This film is such a dark horse. I could never have guessed where this film leads. Such a brilliant film - I dont care about hwat people say about nicholas cage. "What happens when the numbers run out" is the strapline for this film, and I want to play on that and use the fact that this film is such a mystery in my idents.



Inspired by "alive in Joberg" Worth a watch. I want use the fact that people dont understand the creatures and represent that in a visual way. I think pictograms are the best way to do this.

choices choices! Type

Some typefaces I'm looking at using. I like quer, but its a free font From Dafont so perfect quality of things like vector lines probably isnt assured, after all you cant leave anything down to chance. Rockwell would go really nice for the district 9 ident.

I think at this point it is safe to say I will be definately using helvetica neue, just because of the bad name some companies give it. To me, helvetica connotes alterior motives (after watching the docu- film, helvetica.) and alterior motives is exactly what all these "self aware systems" have in all the films, be the motives evil or not.

Helvetica conceals alterior motives visually and I really like the idea of this.

Another sci fi channel promo

This montage incorporates a set of films and series by using clips and logos, I would like my idents to work as a uniform set if all played together and I think using my design limitations, this is very possible.

context

the halftone effect ( even if that is just because this video is extremely low res) Is something I would like to include in my visuals because it sort of gives the appearance of low quality but can still look really good if done correctly. Because the sci fi channels idents are quite obscure, I would be doing an injustice to make really clean and polished slick looking graphics. I think This idea fits with the whole fallout3/mgs computer interface idea too. In terms of context, i dont think this ad works because there is nothing to do with sci fi except the logo actually int the ad.




Here is a slick one that I found, I'm not really keen and dont have the know how or software to make something like this at my disposal. This ad shows that young contempory sci fi lovers are obviously part of the demographic, and these are the people I am mostly catering for with my selection of old and new sci fi cult classics "other intelligences".




This is much more like what I am aiming to create. Edgy, jumpy sound stabs which lead to intervals of ambient sound and image. To replicate this kind of feel I would have to play with speed, blurs, scale and soundtracks in after effects. This sort of add will obviously appeal to alot of people because it plays on all the right aspects of what sci fi really is.

inspiration for district 9 ident

I just liked how the graphic design sits really well in context and is specifically designed to look low budget and a bit crap. The district 9 website was actually the first thing I saw which triggered off my intial ideas about animating an interface. and replicating it in the dvd interface.

I strongly advise you visit www.d-9.com, its such a strong example of total interaction with an interface. Have a look around on it, its up there as one of my favourite websites.

This kids better

WOW. Nice initial ident as well, I'm wanting to put an initial ident on my dvd for self aware systems.

This Kid's good...

By Jordan Neff, the whole filming himself and that is naff. But, the animated interface is really swich and he's animated it to be really responsive and quick, which is what I was initially going for in my animations and concept transitional animations for the dvd menu - until I realised how bloody hard that is to do - I had a good go though! My work kind of pails to this in comparison.

An extremely good example

This interface is a collaboration between keepadding and scott pagano, its such a good blend of transitional animation and dvd interfacing. This in my opinion, is how a really good dvd interface should work, I'm not really paying as much attention to how it actually looks - I think the devil is in the detail of movement and layout here!

look feel pt. 2

I've always appreciated the look of the metal gear solid game's menus, especially now the retro ones from msg 1 and 2. The more retro games menus look really effective I think, and it would definately be worth bearing them in mind when it comes to my dvd interface. However, I dont feel that the more contempory games can be used as a really substancial source of inspiration because they are complicated and obviously take alot of time to design, catagorise the information and also make work for the user. These menus also use alot of image masking along a path, like I have been experimenting with.

look and feel pt 1

Fallout 3 has a really grungy post apocolyptic edge to all the visuals in the game, the user interface and menu options are no different. It's quite sort of "stereotypical" sci fi computer interface, but I think the look has a niche of its own and a culture behind it with its audience.



I'm wanting to use the dingy green colours on my menu to conform to this look and hopefully successfully convey a dark dingy, yet computer - esque feel in my visuals.