I video self portrait is a foreign topic to me, so having this for a culminating was difficult, but I feel I came up with an interesting and creative idea. For my video self portrait I decided to film my whole day and then edit it into short 1-2 second clips, so that my whole day can be see within one minute.
The video starts with my morning alarm that wakes me up in the morning and ends with my drive home from school. I ended the piece at that end of my school day because it is the longest part of my day hence the title.
Some shots are blurry for example the morning alarm shot. I did this to visually represent the parts of my day that are most exhausting, confusing, and tiring. I did not add any extra music to my video because I felt that the normal sounds and voices of my day would be the best fit.
The only exception to this was an enhanced alarm sound at the beginning of my day.
My video has a title intro to start, but abruptly ends I did this because the start of my video is that start of my day, but the end of my video isn't that en of my day it is just the end of the longest part of my day.
Recently I have created a kinetic typography piece using 18 seconds of sound from Finding Nemo (a pixar production). I used garage band to trim the sound to the 18 second piece I needed. I used Adobe Flash CS6 to create the actual animation itself. The animation consists of animated words timed to the sound to create a visual piece to compliment the sound. The first thing seen in the piece is thick blue text rising across the screen. The text says "hey little guy" and is timed with the character Dory. The next thing to be seen is orange text appearing as being heard. This text says "you wanted to go over the trench." The next group of text displayed is blue and moving from right to left ac ross the screen. Next is the build up of letters oas the characters voice becomes more and more higher pitched. Until finally the character(dory) is stung by the jelly fish and the screen flashes blue. Next is again the same orange text saying "dory that was a jelly fish". This sund and text is important as it gives context to this situation and why dory got stung. Next is the two characters now angry at said jelly fish and then all the text is 'flicked' to right.
In my story board I planned to have the text spiral out at the end instead of flick to right. But i couldn't make this work out the way I wanted to. I tried but i couldn't make it look the way I wanted it to.
I over came this challenge by changing my original design to something simpler and something I knew I could over come.
This is my completed work over to the right. Enjoy!
This is kinetic typography piece which was created to help advertise a new book being released about why humans procrastinate. This video is also a good video of the Basic Principles of Animation. Here is eight examples that popped ou at me.
i) (0:00-0:07) right at the beginning of the video and throughout there are many excellent examples of timing within an animation. An animation must coordinate with its sound or else the video will look off, unprofessional and most likely make the viewer confused
ii) (0:17) The angry bird that flies across the screen flies at an arched angle. This arch gives the angry bird and more realistic movement considering that it is being launched into the text.
iii) (0:19) Once the angry bird hits the text there is a following secondary action where te bird falls back onto the invisible ground. Secondary actions are important to make an animation more realistic.
iv) (0:17-0:18) The angry bird also flies in at a fast pace that later slows down. This is the slow in slow out technique that again makes animations a lot more realistic.
v) (0:23) This is an excellent example of staging because of ow it swings in the words and makes a bigger impact.
vi) (0:31) There is a good example of follow trough as the calendar sheet swings back and the forth again following through with a full swinging action.
vii) (0:45) The is a large exaggeration on the word try here. This is because it makes it look better as it matches better with the sound. Because in the sound the word try is also exaggerated.
viii) (2:13) Right here as the salade falls onto the text scale there is a moment of anticipation as the viewer knows that there will be a secondary action of the scale levels out.
I saved my final file as a png file. I did this because png
is a lossless file format. This means that a png file looks for patterns in the
image to create algorithms to save file space; instead of saving each
individual pixel. The compression that occurs in a png file is reversible so it
can be recovered exactly.
The first step I took to create this image was to first find
a jpeg image that I felt would be capable of coping in Illustrator. Once I
found my image I drag and place it into the first layer of my file. I then
locked this layer. I used the pen tool with a gradient colour filter to create
the shapes. I then, using the pen tool, I created shapes on top of the image
mimicking the actual look of the image the best I can. I used gradient tool to
create realistic light and shadow throughout my image. Once I was done I
dragged, placed and resized some shapes that I had create on top of my original
image to fill in wholes and to make it look more realistic. Lastly I saved as a
png.
Once I had fully completed my image, before saving I noticed
there were plank spots in between my created shapes. I noticed this once I took
away the original image I was layering everything on top of. This was
challenging because I really didn’t know what to do about this except start
over. But realizing that I did not have very much time left I felt the best
decision t6o make was to resize and position some of my shapes to fill in those
gaps.
I am pleased with my final result mainly because I like
original image and I felt I copied fairly well’ except now it looks more like a
graphic instead of a photograph.
After creating this piece I save
the psd. (Photoshop file) two times, two different ways. On the left is the
gif. file and on the right is the png. file. Both images side by side at their
original image size of 100p x 150p look the same without any differences that I
can see. When I zoomed in 5 times and compared them side by side again I did
not see any change, I think this maybe because while creating this piece I kept
my colour pallet to a minimum only using colouring change to show obvious
differences in lighting and colour. I felt this was the best choice because the
original photograph had very warm lighting and a lot of shadows. An example of
this is how my eyes are purple in the pixel portrait yet in real life they are
blue. This is the cause and effect of warm light; it turned cool colours such
as blue into a deep purple.
Originally while creating this I
wanted to accentuate my bright blue eyes, but because of the lighting I was not
able to do so without making colour composition looking very out of place. I
did not want this effect so half way through production I made the decision to
keep my eye colour to the original colour pallet found in the image I was
working on.My hair is pretty much the
same colour of a deep and warm brown. When I am in certain lighting you can see
red undertones shine through my hair I believe that this happened in this
image. Like I had said before the lighting I was in while taking this photo was
very warm and it was also coming from my left hand side. I think that because
of this lighting the red undertones were picked and displayed in the original
photo. The interesting part of this is that while I was examining my photo more
closely to be able to choose colours as close a possible to the original photo,
I noticed that the red undertones did not come through as red but instead a
very deep purple. I find this colour change very interesting.While creating my pixel portrait my main goal
was to accentuate the original and natural colours of the photos while at the
same time keeping it simple. I was hoping this would give an interesting
effect. I feel I have succeed.
As far as my technical procedure
goes I used a photograph that I had previously taken without knowledge of this
project. I took the picture my self (selfie) about two weeks before. I created
an rbg file in Photoshop with a white background and 100 pixel by 150 pixel perimeters.
I dragged the original photo into Photoshop through my desktop, positioned and
sized it to my liking and then locked the layer. I worked on top of a single
layer from then on applying each pixel using the pencil tool in a one pt. size.
(Yes I applied15,000 pixels; it wasn’t as
difficult as one may think) I worked on one layer because then I could go over
pixels that I have previously place in to the fastest and most effect way. I felt time was important because I only has a
few days to apply 15,000 pixels. Also because the file was only 15,000 pixels I
knew that my file was not going to get overly large or contemplated. I selected
my colour by using the eyedropper tool to pull colour from my original photo. I
chose the colours by analyzing my photo and pulling the colour that I could see
was appearing the most in a particular area.
