Second Project: Storyboard

This week we're looking at our storyboard progress for our TV opening. I managed to finish my storyboard, but boy, was it not easy.

So in a nut shell, my visual plot for the opening is to stimulate the curiosity and/or interest about human as part of the animal kingdom.

The scene starts with dawn breaking over an urban landscape, followed by quick cut to close up shot on human's feet rushing by. This creates the description of daily activity in common metropolitan area. 

Next scene shows similar angle, still close up shot but the feet is now the feet of birds, hopping past. On both scene we can see there is writing on the pavement, displaying the latin names of human (in second scene) and of birds (in the third scene). The scene will cut to long shot from low angle where a flock of bird is flying in the sky.

Couple of next shot will be a variation of clips of human activities in the city, in between short clips of common birds behavior. The whole sequence is designed to display the obvious difference--and at the same time subtle similarities--between the two species.

There will be 2 types of text treatment: main text and secondary one. Main text is the one delivering the production team's name, while secondary text is actually designed to be part of the image. More like part of background to inflict interest and add the value of the visual; in this case is the latin names to indicate the relationship between human and birds in the eyes of science.

Project 02

Here comes project 02.

We suppose to create an opening video, sort of TV bump-in, for a fictional TV show. An interesting project. I've always been interested in studying motion graphic or motion image.

We have pitched in our initial ideas in class. I had three basic ideas, but one is considered boring (*sobs), and another one turned out to be too similar with previous student's work. Damn. So I guess I'm lucky I have 3 ideas. I'll go with the one that is still (somewhat) original and interesting.

The idea is a TV show about birds. Especially birds live in Melbourne. The show would discuss about the behaviour of birds, their habit, their interaction with humans, how our urban lifestyle and culture affect their circle of life. I guess the underlying positive message in this kind of TV show is to raise awareness about our environment, to remind us that we share the place we're living in (in this case is our city) with other living creatures.

Target audience for this TV show is very wide, as it is appropriate for almost all age range. But I want to aim mainly for teenager to adult, let's say 15 to 50. This is the productive age, when--should they wish--people have as much biggest a chance as they have to make active contribution. Of course this doesn't mean people out of that age range would not be able to.

The following is my visual planning summary:

Visual approach: realistic, fun, modern, clean

Tone and manner : dynamic, elegant, playful

Keywords: birds, natural wonders, harmony, interaction.

As birds are, the visual of the opening should be graceful, elegant, and at the same time agile and light. 

That's all for now. I'll continue with the storyboard soon!

My First Project with After effect-part2

Finally, after struggling with the storyboard trying to create some kind of continuity with  my story, I get it sorted out. Meaning, the hardest part is here: drawing. 

I had this image in my mind of a classic glasswork usually found in old church, so I set the illustrations to have the same atmosphere. I want it to be graceful, and yet still light and enjoyable. Took me days to get all of them done! The coloring part was the fun part, also the filtering in Photoshop and adding special effect so that they would look like etched glass.

The illustrations done, now come the technical part in After Effect. I anticipated long nights of painful trial and errors, but surprisingly it wasn't that bad. After Effect apparently has decided to agree with me and I got it finish in one day. Probably because I only use simple of transitions, really. Nothing sort of fancy or complicated. Good thing, because the drawing part has got me exhausted already. Of course, can't stop myself tweaking the final file consistently, but all in all, I'm happy with the result.

One thing I'm so gladly found out as a newbie: the path for moving object can be adjusted easily just as we adjust path in Illustration using pen tool! And adding a new point in the path automatically adds a keyframe in the time line. That's just wonderful.

Link to the final work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43-wiyBLH2A

My First Project with After Effect

The first minor project to be done with After Effect is some kind of fruit advertisement. Only instead of using realistic photo or video footage, we have to compose the ad entirely from graphic images. So this is more like the graphical representation (my representation, I should say) of the fruit.

The Story

I decided to do apple. The interesting thing about apple is that despite its humble appearance, apple has been the star in human history, and also in mythology. Come to think of it, there's no other fruit has been awarded important 'role' as apple was. Since the dawn of time, it was apple who was said to be the forbidden apple, the fruit of knowledge which caused Adam and Eva to be cast down to earth. In Greek myth, there is no shortage of the mentioning of apple: the garden of Hesperides (which suppose to be full of golden apples), or the story about Atalanta which was beaten in the race because she was distracted by fallen apples. We're also very familiar with the classic fairy tale of Snow White and the poison apple.

In human history, the mention of apple can be found in well-known legends: the heroic William Tell, or the story of Sir Isaac Newton unfolding the concept of gravity. And of course, in this 21st century, apple is one of the most popular computer manufacturers in the world.

So what I want to do is to capture the ever presence of apple in human mind across the century. Why are we so obsessed with apple? Why our forefathers chose to mention apple in their stories? No one knows for sure. What we do know is, apple is there, it has always been there. Apple could look humble enough with its dull shape, but we can't deny its influence in our history.

The Visual

I think the most appropriate visual approach to convey 'the epic tale of apple' is something classic and graceful. Something timeless and beautiful. That brings up the image of glasswork into my mind. The ones usually found in old church. I decided to do something like that.

The Storyboard

This is the short storyboard for my 15 seconds fruit ad. The motion transition and visual effect will be kept as simple as possible, because in this work we're going to rely on the visual. I want the images who do the talking, not fancy effects.

Painted Veil

Still about trailers, I found another interesting work from prologuefilms.com. This one is for the movie Painted Veil. I haven't watched it, but I think I will. The trailer promised a classic, beautiful movie with outstanding score from Alexandre Desplat, one of my favorite composers.

I love patterns and colors. And that's what captured my first attention in this trailer. There are some intricate patterns, animated to swirl and unfold, in between images of slow-motion blooming flowers in reverse. Combined with the melodious score, the overall effect is a mysterious, bittersweet allure that gives me the expectation of a quiet yet dramatic movie about love and humanity.

Source: prologuefilms.com

Graphic Manipulation

Ever seen Zathura? Some people called it Jumanji 2. For me? Not even close. The film tragically lack the magic Jumanji had.

But surprisingly, Zathura had a really wonderful trailer. It really worked on the wonderful graphic of the game board. Displayed as an old game, the drawings on the game board's surface is badly scratched in some places, the color is a bit off, with all the hallmarks of an old skul comic.

And there is where the beauty lies. The trailer makes use of this beautiful drawing, animate them and combines them with actual clip of the movie. Interestingly, although the color of the graphic is a bit off, it blends nicely with the movie snapshot. It successfully portray the imaginary outer-space world in the mind of, let's say, 10 years old boy.

One interesting technique they used here that I think would be really helpful for any moving-graphic designer is the way they chopped up the outer space graphic elements, and animate it separately, to create the illusion of depth in a 2D world. There are rockets, planets, clouds, smokes and of course texts, moving around in a beautiful choreography. 

This trailer really exceeds my expectation (I watched the movie first and then the trailer). For you who haven't watched the movie, you might be better off just watching the trailer. It is the kind of work who would have led innocent audience to expect a really cool movie. But, again, don't bother, it's just a way of us, designers, manipulating the public to run to cinemas.  A really fine work at that :-)

 

Source: Trailer from prologuefilms.com