I'm soo releaved! I spent so much time on AE and I could only have time after 5 to work on it plus my AHS work and GRAHH!! so much is due this week! - lol to get it done I even had to miss 3 days of school this week...if only cs4 was easeir to find! - I just found the program this Monday, because Mum doesn't trust internet buying...gotta agree with her; what would happen if the internet stopped in the middle of the download 0.0.
Anyway, onto my progress. Sadly enough I haven't finished any other task since not having the program at home had made it really difficult to complete the task within the week). I'm already halfway through most of them, so I should get the other four tasks for QUT completed sooon though, as with the assignment done all I have to focus is on now is my upcomming exam block, my english and art assignment, the QCS exams on Tuesday and Wednesday...kill me TwT
With the assignment, since I've had a taste of what After Effects can do - which is possible everthing at this rate - I decided rather about the how I should concetrate on the what (composition first). I originally had three topics in mind to promote: Japan (as I just went there recently and I hance heaps of imagery), Art in general (a favourite subject of mine that I'm pretty familiar with and have access to lots of imagery on the net) and lastly; copic markers (a japanese alcohol marker brand that i'm Really find of, and I have all the products of XD, plus there are heaps of images on flickr).
In the end Idecided for copics since it's not a general as 'Art' and I'm more familiar of the 'feel' of the object in comprison to japan, also it's harder fo me to create a trourism advertisement, making Copic the easiest to pomote.
Next I needed to find an 'arty/copicy' music - not a requirement but I know that music is important in setting the feel and creating appeal for a item that your promoting (yr 10 marketing). In the end I choose a more country/barnyard song, a slow one, becuse I feel that it expressions of 'art/copic' very well "Wired but Disconnected" by duckett. Of course this meant my final product can't neccessarily be one of those retro, abstract compositon - in my opinion anyway. Although the music lyrics itself has nothing to do with copic or art I love how it says; "a thousand tunes ringing in my ears no time for conversation" soo much like me and other firends I have when we're drawing; 'Don't talk to me!!" XD
Now that my music, style nad theme was picked I had to think about the actual composition and how it will tie to both the music and promote the item. I then had a quick search (in my memory ;D, so that I won't copy it) for what other art product advertisments would look like. I had thought to do a really rough, comopisiont but in the end I come up with promoting Copics by saying "see what the end result could be if you use me" kinda thing. For this I obviously need the imagery of artists that use copics first.
Finding imagery, of actual artworks was a real task for me as, as any artist would be, very anal about people using and/or editing their imagery. In the end I opted to draw my own images (from scratch since my own drawings tend to be a manga style and thus not really workng for the advertisment I had im mind).
That done I also had to work out how to fit it what I had in mind to the music. For this music, the highlight or standing out pieces are in the beginning and end, so to make things easy I choose to use the beggining piece Xp. So looking at the beggning 30 secs I took note of all the high and lows and 'drags' in the music and came up times I needed to either make a 'escalated' prt in the video and how many "connecting" scenes I have between and also whjat should be the tone of the opening and ending of the advertisement - a vague idea of how the advertisement would turn out came form there.
After, it was all technical work which, while it takes alot of time with the fine tuning and getting the exact timing correct, was the simpleset part to execute. All the skills I needed to take my idea from my head and onto the computer was all there from tutorials, or if I needed extra help google is GOD! Ontop of the images I drew I took photos of my copics, drew my own edited vesion of the logo, and generated basic shapes such as circles, squiggles to at final touches - for this photoshop, which I got with AE, is my Goddess! As I went along I noticed that the more I used After Effects the better and more efficient I became at knowing how to use the programs, brainstormiing ideas to achieve my desired result.
The only great mile stone here point was the darn memory cach for the music! When I opened the file once it couldn't or woudn't recognise the .cfa file for the music despite me Directing it Sooo many times!! and then it wouldn't let me reload the darn music without it being mute!! in the end I was able to resolve this be renaming the music file and moving it to another locating before reloading it. This ment I needed to redited the timing for the music (since I didn't actually start at least 4 seconds into the musc and have a bit of a slight pause at the end of the composition). This happened in three ocassions!! once right when I was in the middle of watch the playback too! Another small hichup I had was theRAM playback for some reason on Wednesday morning it decided to become small - it would only play back 15secs at a time. Luckly for me by then I aldreay had a vague idea what the final piece woul look like and ha all the main imagery in place and timed. Then starngly enough, just 4 hrs before I completed the video the RAM went up again so that I could watch the whole vide in one go...Huh, weird no? Lucky for me I guess...
I used Everything we have covered in the tutorial basically, Masks and animating them especially! Panning the 'camera', photoshop, animating images, ease in/holing on key frames, timing. Also bits from lectuers like small movement details such as the hand-finger movement (not a stiff movement as shown in examples we're given) and advertising the 'identity' not the actual object.
Really at the end I only have 3/4 regrets about the final outcome:
- maybe I should of planted in more word effects? - perhaps a slogan?
- the last image of the fan when fading out should have compressed itself -but I didn't know how to do that y
- maybe the colour wheel near the end needed of cleaning near the edges?
- the whole composition...was it too repetitive? too plain? too traditional and not adstract/funky enough?
When search through the other students assignments I kinda feel conflicted over my choice in composition rather then my actual application of effects. It's really interesting to see all the different styles and types of advertisments the other students have come up with - lol the advertiment for the rock and lama paradise had my cracking up XD. In my opinion the most effective advertisements was the snow boarding one, creative spice industries and the beach (surfborad brands?), They really keep within the 'personality' of the object they're promoting. like the surfboeard add, for instance, effects and imagery, composition are all very similar to parishar adds seen on tv.
Anyway despite my doubts I'm still really proud of mysefl! I was able to complete the whole video with 5 days, minus all my AHS commitments!~ XD
The video link for the final result is here:
http://www.vimeo.com/user4449078/videos
its annoying how the video when completed is actually larger in size than when I was composing it... it makes of world of difference when the compostions is smaller (A better too).
What I shoul have done was create black border ends, either on top and underneath the promotion or at the sides. This would have a visual balance with all the white in the video, still stay within personality of promotion, visually more interesting - plus how It's how it looked when in aftereffects beacuese of the black background in the program.
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