I was looking forward to commencing this brief as the main draw for me into digital media was movie title sequences and channel "Idents" although at the time I didn't know they were called that! I just referred to them as "graphic things" so I was excited about getting to use after effects as I'd never used it before!
I chose to do "custard" because I like cartoons and quirky fun things so I thought I could do something similar to my Treesprite story that I did for the interactive brief, which I really enjoyed because I got to use my own narrative and was able to go wild and create my own thing.
I started with the idea of using the ingredients used to make custard, I knew that I would stick to this idea no matter what so there was no point wasting time going through lots of ideas, although I did think about different ways in which I could do this, (as you can see from earlier posts) I thought of pouring ingredients into letter shapes, making a custard pie and filming it, etc but in the end I decided I wanted a little story that would appeal to kids, so I chose to have an egg getting slaughtered and then mixed in with flour etc and the word Custard to appear from the mixture, I was never 100% on how I was going to implement this aspect however.
I thought the slight dark humor involved would appeal to older kids and the brief stated that it wanted a fun and chaotic Ident and logo.
I did have to change things at the end, because I found my entire script was over and done with in about 12 seconds, so I had to improvise and add the "flour clouds" into the mix that would then become the word custard instead of the egg yolk, I'm glad I did this however as I think it looks much better.
I know this all comes down to having an animatic and wish I had done a better one with the sound then I would have a better idea of timing, this has made me realize how important this part is, I did have an experimental movie that I did on pencil but it is not a fully realized animatic with sound.
I did do a little research on the "tweens" and found that most shows aimed at them are documentary style, cooking, arts and crafts, animals, discovery etc rather than ben 10 and fosters home for imaginary friends, (although I like kids cartoons I had to remember that older kids just want to be grown up and so cartoons are probably considered very "un-cool" for them) this is why I came up with the idea of cooking some custard because it would be real life footage as a pose to a cartoon, and it would have some kind of instruction and "coolness" to it, (cause I would have made making a custard look cool!) but then I really wanted to have it as a cartoony graphicy look, my reasoning being that it would be easier to create the writing using graphics instead of attempting to do them using moulds etc, plus I didn't have the money to get these made!
so maybe if this was a professional brief and I had funding I would have gone with the first idea, (live film footage) and would have involved some kids in the process so that it felt more like it was "their" channel and involved them in some way.
But I am happy with the result of my ident and I can see it being used on a kids TV channel, but maybe one aimed at younger viewers, but to be fair the brief was a bit odd in that it came across as being a show for younger kids in the way it was presented and even the title, but then it went on to say it was for tweens? this just seemed a bit mismatched anyway and as it was a fictional brief I felt a little improvisation would be ok.
With regard to using the software, thankfully I found it quite easy in comparison to other packages we've worked with, I had to view a few tutorials on "video co-pilot" before I could even start a project so thank you to VCP for having such clear and concise tutorials that I had no trouble following, they are stars! and I didn't even have to pay them! how ironic.
We had a 2 day introduction in to the software at college as usual and then you are expected to find out the rest yourself, which I did, and am glad I did, I don't feel this justifies the expense of the course however and am a little put out that when I asked for help on a couple of occasions I was not given it. However on other occasions I was helped by the technicians and Matt did come and see how my work was going a few times and offered a bit of help too so I am thankful
for the effort.
I am very happy with my attempt considering it was my first time and I had no training, I am looking forward to using after effects again and want to explore the software package in more depth and would like to experiment with live footage and fonts next time I use it.
I previously wanted to go down the "Flash" route but am not so sure now as it seems I can do the same in AE.
Having now done a bit of everything and with the decision of what we want to specialize in coming up I would say I definitely drawn to motion graphics as I thought I would be, and would like to learn a hell of a lot more! but I am also still interested in 2D animation which I can do in AE of Flash.
If I had to do this brief again I would produce an animatic that demonstrated timing, sound etc and I would experiment with more ideas, but again to be fair I would need more time to do all of this, or maybe now that I know the software a bit better I would feel more able to just get on with it instead of feeling a little lost and unmotivated as a result of not knowing the software.
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