My contribution so far...

I have been focusing mainly on my portfolio for the first few weeks of the course and am happy to say i am only about 10 pages away from completion. i have filled sketch pad with designs and research and it is very close to the standard that i hope it to be. i put all my effort into this as 1) i was waiting for Ali to complete the logo so i could begin work on the animated intro and 2) because i intend on doing a lot of work on the flash file in the later stages - as this was the key skill that i was chosen to bring to the group.

The picture on the right is "Canny" our 3d animated company representative. After sketching out ideas for Canny and discussing him in our meetings, I created the 3D character in the 3DS Max. I then began to animate him using squash and stretch techniques, until i had enough animation to edit with later on. I next placed a green-plane behind Canny, so that i could extract him from it in a picture editing software later on.

After greenscreening all every key-frame in 3DS Max, i then imported the sequence into AfterEffects. Here i chroma-keyed out the green from my image sequence, and then replaced the background with an image-based stage; a pavement and a brick wall. I needed to do the animation this way because its impossible to synchronise an AVI in 3DS max with moving objects - as i plan on making my character spray onto a brick wall.

I then made a very flexible mask layer with lots of points on the frame so that i could easily manouver it with the actions of my spray can. In the next screenshot you can see me editing the pictures into sequence.

Finally, below you can see the finished AVI file of my animated introduction. The sounds on it are copyright-free samples from www.freesamples.net - as I have a lot more work to do and don't have the equipment or time to record my own samples for this project. I would have prefered to use my own stuff but time is a factor here, and i must press on with storyboarding my debate video.

second logo design

I designed two ideas for the 'aero-soul' logo, i already edited the first design in Photoshop so now i edited the second line drawing using Photoshop as well.
As you can see in the images below i used the gradient tool with a range of colours gradually getting deeper and darker for the words 'aero soul' on the piece. Once i had added the colour to the lettering i used a filter called 'Spatter' to give the text a textured surface. To get the brush strokes effect seen on the pink parts of the piece i used the gradient fill tool and then added a filter called 'Rough Pastels' to give that textured surface look.



The image below is the final piece, to complete the image i just added the relevant fill colours and added shadow to the bottom side of the piece, we aren't going to use this piece for the introduction because we already agreed that we would use the other piece however i could put this in the slide show of graffiti section of our CD rom.

after effects slide show

I have never used the 'after effects' software so i decided to do a bit of experimenting with it, i was shown a short tutorial by one of my teachers Paul Emmery. He covered all the basics and explained what each window in after effects is used for, with this new found knowledge i started to play about with the key frames etc and made a short slide show using the photographs i took in Belfast.
The methods i used to create this short video were key framing, changing the blending modes of the images and varying the opacity of the images to give a 'fade in' effect.
This is the finished render

logo for intro updated

I decided to spend a bit more time on editing the logo for the introduction because i wasn't entirely happy on the finished piece, this is the finished piece now


I added more shadows to the piece using the magic wand tool and the gradient tool with half transparency to the fill, i also took off a filter that i put on the shapes found in the center of the piece, the filter i took off was called 'glowing edges'. I removed it because the colours were too dark for the piece and too disorganized, once i removed the filter i added shadows to these shapes as well. The other main change i made to the piece was the colouring on the word 'soul', i removed the green fill and used the filter 'clouds' with three different colours (light blue, purple and deep purple) to create the colour blending look. after i did this i once again added shadows with the gradient tool. i feel therse small changes make the piece look more complete and overall a better composition, i am glad i took the time to go back and change them.

logo for animated introduction

our CD rom will feature an animated introduction that will appear at the beginning of the application, the introduction will be 2D and 3D. There will be a spray can character that will hop along the screen and spray our logo onto a brick background.
i was set the job role of designing the logo that the spray can will spray onto the wall, i designed an idea then drew out an outline drawing of the logo onto paper with pencils and a fine liner, i came up with two designs for the logo, one of which will be used in the animation. the image above is my first design.

this first design is very neat and graphic, we agreed that my second design would fit the introduction better because it looks more like a piece of graffiti that you would find on the streets. The image to the left is my second design





Once i knew which design we were going to use i went onto Photoshop to add colour to the piece. i imported the line drawaing into Photopshop and put the different sections into layers and named the layers to save confusion later on.


After i broke everything into layers i started to add colour using the select tool and the paint bucket tool.


I also wanted to add certain filters to the piece to give a textured appearance look, the first filter i decided to add was 'Crystallize' this would give the surface a variety of colours, once i added that i added 'ocean ripple' this gives the block colours a textured look.


for the city scape in the background i just used a simple gradient tool with two colours that were light and dark, this gives the effect that there is light below like a real city.


To finish off i added a lens flair above the city scape to give the effect of a sun or moon in the sky and added a omni light from the lighting effects filter to cast a slight shadow on the piece, this is the final piece

Belfast Graffiti Photography

Over the weekend i took a trip to Scotland and went over to Belfast for the day, this was a perfect opportunity for me to take some photographs of Graffiti from different cities which can be used in our image gallery and time-line section.
there was plenty of graffiti dotted around the city. here are a few example's of of the photographs from the city center



This style of graffiti is very raw and inspiring to me because i am very interested in the colourful and 'off the wall' pieces found in the streets.
There was also some nice stencil pieces of graffiti (the artist sprays over a template to create a piece of work) in Belfast


Another advantage of visiting Belfast was the history of the city, because there was and still is conflict with certain groups in Belfast so a string of graffiti murals were painted around the city over the years. These murals hold political and social views in them so there are a lot of messages involved within the pieces. This 'mural' type of graffiti and historic factor would be ideal to put in the time-line and types of graffiti sections to our application. Here are a few examples of these murals



Before i put any of these images into our application i will edit them in Photoshop so that i can get the most out of the images, i will use the techniques such as colour balance, Levels, curves etc