Week 5b

Today in class, we chose our logos to animate. I decided to do the Studio Ghibli logo, which as a reminder looks like this:

We had to create 2 different storyboards for how we wanted to animate the logo. For the first one, I decided to do a drawing animation to represent the fact this is an animation company,which is known for their 2d films, many of them being traditionally done. Here is my first one:

For the second one, I had some trouble thinking what I wanted to do. I am not sure how possible this would be, but I thought I would have the characters blink and then have the text appear, since, once again, this is an animation studio. So, here is that storyboard:

I think I will go with the first one. It seems to make more sense and ultimately I think it will be more effective. 

Week 5a

This week we had to choose some logos and discuss different elements about them. Here are my logos:

1. Bee and Puppycat (YouTube animated series)

This logo is from a Youtube based show which updates every once in awhile. This logo describes the title of the show, so it would be shown before the show begins (an opener). The company which produces it, Cartoon Hangover, is an animation company which produces short animated shows like this. Since this show has a very cutesy vibe, if I were to animate it, I would want to stick with that feeling. I think having the bell jingle and the ribbon tie into a bow, with the sparkles twinkling, could really help intensify this logo and help even more to give off the idea of what the show will be like.

2. CATFE Lounge (cat cafe/coffee shop)

This logo is for Catfe Lounge, which is a cat cafe in Michigan. A cat cafe, for those unaware, is a coffee shop that has cats roaming around, or in a separate area. It was popular in Japan, and now the US is trying to move in on the trend. Essentially, this is a coffee shop. I think this could be an endtag after a tour of the shop or commercial. Basically, it would be used after a video of some type. It could be an opener too. If I were to animate this logo, I think having the cat come in and curl up could give off the idea that cats are actually at this cafe and you can hang out with them. The logo as it is now doesn't necessarily give off that idea. It could just be a cafe dedicated to cat decor, but having a moving cat may help nudge it towards the fact that there are living, breathing cats at this cafe.

3. Studio Ghibli (animation studio)

Studio Ghibli is a Japanese animation company known for their films. They are popular all over the world. Their films are pretty unique and they are essentially the Japanese Disney. This logo is used as an opener for their films, so it’s context is in film. Since it is an animation company, I think taking that into consideration when animating the logo is important. Having the characters being drawn out could help add to the logo and make the company's purpose clear.

Overall, it seems important to keep in mind what the company does when animating a logo. If there is a way to enhance it's meaning based on what the company does through motion or design elements, then that will only help to create a stronger design. I was easily able to think of ways to link motion to the logo and the company. Hopefully, when I do decide what I am going to do, I can continue to think about the approach. 

Week 4: Outside of Class - Quote Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSZxl8rAAyk&feature=youtu.be

Here is my finished phrase video. I am overall pleased with how it came out. I think I conveyed the emotion of the phrase successfully. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was trying to employ a dreamy effect, because this quote is speaking about the past and it is also about love. I did this by using the opacity effect, and having the words fade in and out. I also used a dreamy background, and a more playful font, since this is a kid speaking. I am curious to see what others will say.

Week 4b

Today in class we discussed examples of how to achieve our next exercise, which was to display a phrase meaningfully through timing. We could not use audio and were limited to black and white for colors. I decided I didn't want to do the Hobbit quote, since I misunderstood that we didn't necessarily need audio. Instead, I am doing a quote from one of my favorite movies, Moonrise Kingdom. Here is the quote:

"We knew people would be worried, and we still ran away, anyway. But something also happened, which we didn't do on purpose. When we first met each other, something happened to us."

I really want to try to capture the emotion behind this quote, so I think I will employ a dreamy sort of atmosphere when creating the video.

Week 4a

We did not have class on Monday, so we were asked to find a phrase to animate in the next class. I had a couple of potential phrase ideas, but they were very short and so I didn't think I could use them. Ultimately I decided to pick a scene from the Hobbit. Here is my phrase video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG4Ua70mJvw

My particular phrase will be from 1:19 onward.

Week 3b

In today's class we were able to redo our sound rhythm project. I was pretty happy with mine, and was even used as an example in class. However, I decided to play around with the different transform options and key frames. I did not finish mine so I did not upload it. It definitely was not as successful as my first one. I was trying to put more and more effects on so it would be more complex, however, I think that simpler was ultimately better. The next thing we did was learn about and begin our next exercise, which is to represent the word rhythm through type and movement. I started thinking about a good way to show this, and I figured that a song which had a very repetitive beat would be a good inspiration. I tried to make a pretty fast rhythm, however, it was too fast and almost painful to look at. I ended up scrapping that one, however it did give me a better idea of what direction to take. I think that I will develop a better one outside of class.

Week 3: Outside of Class - Rhythm Exercise

YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/WQD4OXBMnCc

Infinite Looper link:

http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=WQD4OXBMnCc&p=n

For this week's assignment we had to create a video that would loop and describe the word rhythm strictly through movement. This was a very difficult assignment, not so much in how it was done, but rather in the concept behind it. Since we could not use music, we essentially had to make up a rhythm in our heads, which wouldn't necessarily work in real life, or even sound good. I was trying to imagine a techno song, or other type of song with a consistent bass beat that was very repetitive. I remade mine two times, as I just couldn't seem to get it right. I think this is the most successful out of my attempts. 

Week 3a: Shape Rhythm exercise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3AmKgGmfp4&feature=youtu.be

For today's class we did another exercise. For this one we had to take a song and then use shapes to go along with the rhythm. I chose the more techno beat and tried to pick colors for my shapes that I felt went along with the song. I was kind of imagining those laser pianos, see below:

This was the primary inspiration for how I went about this and I think it was successful overall.

Week 2: Outside of Class, Sequential Dreamscape

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AhqfArVa1I&feature=youtu.be

Here is my sequential dreamscape. I actually liked how it turned out and I think you can gather the warmth and happiness that was in the dream. I wonder how it will be received by my class. I know for the last project, there were many interpretations and I would not be surprised to see the same here. Hopefully a majority of the class can understand the main thing that happened in this dream, but it will also be cool to see what other people think and how far off or close they may be overall.

Day of Design: George Hakim

The second speaker I attended for Day of Design was George Hakim, a Creative Project Manager at Toyota of America. I was interested in this talk because I know how important storytelling is for a business, but also because another field I am interested in is animation, which is big on storytelling. Hakim gave a brief introduction and said that he came from a background in graphic design and worked at many different places before ending up at Toyota. He then went on to describe some history of storytelling, in that we have been telling stories since the beginning of time. With developments in technology, we began to see new avenues of storytelling. One of the most recent and important ones being virtual reality. After this, he showed us a short clip from a TED talk describing the Golden Circle as a method of thinking. The speaker in this video described how the average person thinks of the what, then the how, and finally the why. He said that the difference between these people and successful, inspired leaders was their thought process. He gave Apple as an example and said that great companies like these think of the why, then the how, and then the what. The ultimate message of this video was that people buy "why" you do what you do. George Hakim then went on to say that Toyota uses this thinking process and goes even further by asking "why" five times to find out the core message of the product. He then explained some different important terms they use at Toyota. The first was "hoshin" which means goal. They pay a lot of attention to the big picture. The next term was "muda" which means waster. Hakim said that they wanted to be able to explain to a non-technical person what they were going for and to avoid inaccessibility. Another term he described was "genchi genbutsu" which meant to go and see or to get to the source. At Toyota they always research the history of whatever they are doing to better understand it. After he explained these terms he went on to show a commercial for the 2014 Toyota Corolla (which I'm pretty sure I've been to the filming site of, as a side note). He used the commercial to explain that when marketing to people they wanted to keep in mind their target audience. For this commerical in particular, the appeal was supposed to be to a younger audience and to highlight that the car never goes out of style. While they wanted to attract a potential new audience, they also wanted to maintain their current audience. Hakim said that Toyota was all about customer first, and that that drove all of their decisions. The other core component of Toyota was "kaizen" which means continual improvement. After talking about this, he went into their process of development at Toyota which is to ideate, create, test, refine, repeat. Another way this was described was to plan, do, check, act, then repeat. What I found interesting about this was that it was very similar to Alexander Reyna's description of the process at MLB. What this says to me, is that it is likely a consistent process throughout much of the industry, so it is definitely something to keep in mind. While I found all of the talk interesting, the most interesting part was when Hakim talked about the Kiki/ Bouba effect. I actually wish that he would've gone more into this, however what he did say about it really interested me as it had to do with character creation. Basically this was a theory that people attributed certain characteristics to certain shapes and that more "bad" characters had Kiki shapes than "good" characters, who were mostly made of Bouba shapes. However, the fact that they still take this into consideration made it interesting in this context, nonetheless. Overall, I found George Hakim's presentation to be interesting as I never really thought about what exactly went into storytelling from a company's perspective. His talk definitely gave me some things to think about and I will likely research more about it as I later move into my career.

Day of Design: Alexander Reyna

The first Day of Design speaker I attended was Alexander Reyna who is a Creative Director for Major League Baseball. Initially, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this talk, however I actually found it to be the most fascinating of the two I attended. Reyna first spoke about his background in the industry, about 25 years, which he boiled down to making stuff, tinkering, motion, interactivity, art, and curiosity. He then went on to speak about what he does as the Creative Director for MLB. The goal for MLB is to make the future and to drive innovation in the field of baseball. For Reyna, this means pushing the user experience and interaction. Some of his experience in this field has dealt with creating user experiences at all intersections of media. One example he gave that he said was a huge breakthrough was the creation of instant, 3D play-by-play moments on live TV. This allowed for the viewers of the game on TV to get in depth statistics about the play that was happening right then. This was a big example of what kind of experiences they were trying to push for. After speaking about some of his career examples, Alexander Reyna went into talking about his process and some simple rules he wanted to share with us as we progressed into the field. His process was very simple, being sketch, feedback, wireframe, build, and repeat. I found this to be interesting because it is very similar, if not exactly, what we are doing and have done here in school. It was nice to know that what we were learning was applicable to "the real world".  He also spoke a lot about personas and how important they were when developing a product or experience. Hearing this was also reassuring for the same reasons, and I also found it interesting how in-depth he went with them. One of his examples was for this game that had to deal with dogs that was aimed at a younger female audience. He said that while they consider age, gender, likes, dislikes, they also think about the users family life, their parents, what types of devices they have access to and for how long, those kind of things. Some of the things he listed I had never thought about, but now that he mentioned them, I see why they could be important and definitely why they are helpful. Finally, Reyna spoke about five rules that he has come across in his time in the field that he lives by. His first one was to aim for simplicity, because people should just get good design. The next one was that honesty is obvious and that UX doesn't hide the truth. He said that designers needed to avoid dark patterns and gave us a website that could help us better understand what he meant by that. Looking at the website helped me better understand what he meant by this and simply put, a dark pattern is something that tricks the user into doing something they may not want to do. His third rule was that users who trust, stay. This one was pretty self explanatory and really extends to all facets of business. His fourth rule was that consistency equals comfort, meaning that a consistent design makes a user comfortable. His final rule was to create delight by making products that work right. This rule I really liked because ultimately, that's what most designers are trying to do, but sometimes it can get lost in the process. Overall, I found Alexander Reyna's talk to be really interesting and also reassuring. Perhaps the best part for me was when he talked about being involved in the game design industry because that is where I want to be some day. It was a great experience hearing from someone in the field and knowing that there are plenty of opportunities out there for us in all fields.