Motion Design in Title Sequences.

I've always liked the thought of my input being within short sequences of animation, in title sequences and advertisements for example.
Particular title sequences are shown in the examples I've picked out, but I find that the title sequences really set the tone to the film involved, and motion design is the perfect partner to this. 'Oz the Great and Powerful' is Disney's recent adaptation of the 1939 Classic 'The Wizard of Oz', and they used the title sequence to reflect this, with the title sequence animation reflecting the vintage side of the production of the previous film, and setting the scene for the abstract nature of the production itself.

I've additionally noted the dramatic effect such title sequences have on such films such as horror films, where title and credits sequences build up a tense atmosphere, like in a film I recently watched called 'The Orphan' which is a horror film that uses scribbly text and rough cut motion design to set the scene.


D.W Griffith 'Intolerance' 1916
It used to be that title sequences were simple black and white type (black and white due to the best results when projecting) but soon it was revolutionised into more specific design elements, that really set the scene for the entire film. The designers in the initial title sequences such as this 1916 Griffith film 'Intolerance' used small serifs for ease of production, but could then in future design elements but more complex in future design and eased into further elements.
These differences include the complex evolution of typography that also lead to more interesting title sequences as well as ending credits.

I found this reaction to the aspect of title sequences from some Motion Design graduates, who produced an animated title sequence that listed the important names in title sequence history. (See link for full video below) And I've found the making of video equally as interesting,
with them explaining the process and why particular shots are important.
(http://www.fromform.nl/a-history-of-the-title-sequence/)
1 min. Making Of "A History Of The Title Sequence" from From Form on Vimeo.

Motion Design in Advertisements.

Throughout this personal development it has become clear that a section of the design industry that particularly appealed to me would be the area of creative advertisement. After previous studies of Creative Media Production at A Level, I had to hypothetically plan the course of advertisements and plot the finances and features that the set up would have to involve. The course of this design and development has further supported this idea that I wanted to further explore.
 I'd love to in future be part of a creative marketing scheme, in which I helped to design and develop an idea for a business and creatively output it with the skills I have collected through this course and other previous courses. The motion design aspect is in particular an additional element that would be successfully received if technical skills could develop to match creative ideas.
I personally love how animated elements within advertising can have any desired effect, with simple ideas being creatively involved into more complex and interactive ones. I love the effect and memorability particular adverts have because of this. Such adverts like this from 'Satsuma Loans' involves an aspect of comedy which gets the point across in a memorable way, and I've always found how inspiring such a concept has been over the years.An extremely memorable advert for me is the scheme of alternate bizarre circumstances representing something unrelated, a particular favourite with this scheme is Cadbury's chocolate advertisement. Cadbury began an advertising scheme years ago that would involve breaking away from traditional chocolate advertisements, and instead producing very abstract and odd forms of commercial advertising. A personal favourite of mine being the eyebrow Cadbury's advertisement, this involved two children sat about to have a school photograph taken, when music appears, and their eyebrows begin to move rather individually and abstractly to realistic movements. The girl wears a purple pinafore, slightly hinting to the Cadbury's trademark colour of purple, yet there are no chocolate bars featured throughout the entire advert.
Cadbury's advert received a mixed response, with viewers questioning throughout what the advert was for, and why they chose such an advertising campaign. For me, I found this campaign an extremely influential and memorable one, with everyone soon recognising and talking about the advertisement and recommending their peers viewing it. It was a breakthrough in terms of advertisements, with the company avoiding the product being included in the advertisement, and yet everyone began to recognise exactly which company it represented.
The chocolate bar only ever appears as a reveal at the end of the advertisement which I feel is a beautiful ending as it built up the tension beforehand to the product being named.

Again with the Cadbury's advert Motion Design (although now mixed with filmed footage) there was an aspect of comedy throughout, with such a random theme within the advertisement being shown, Cadbury's continued the campaign with similar advertisements, which alternatively was as deeply memorable as the first.

The aspect of purple is also and important use of colour for the advertising referencing. Purple is often recognised as the correct colour for Cadbury's with a lot of people being reminded of the chocolate when they come across the deep purple colour.

On the other hand, I find that adverts such as the EDF adverts, which also include an aspect of Motion Design, use simplistic stop motion elements to produce a theme of comedy and fun, additionally being a memorable form of advertising. Stop motion paired up with the song "Together in Electric Dreams" produces a comedic source of advertising. The character of a little blob that dances along to alternate forms of electricity is a memorable form of advertising and is used to develop the company's energy policies. The character included involves a cute theme, everyone I've seen view the advert sees the character as a cute character, in the way it looks and moves, and yet the animators have stripped away features such as not having a mouth, but still with an effective impact on the viewer who supplies their own emotion around the character.

The character named by EDF Energy as 'Zingy' is a cute little orange blob type character, which is produced with a mixed range of animation and real time filmed footage.

Additionally, a factor of advertising is used in relating objects everyday to animals such as a flock of birds. The advertising production team of the Ikea advert analysed the behaviour of birds in a flock in order to link such everyday objects like clothing to imitate their behavioural patterns and make them learn more of how such everyday objects would relate to such things as animals and their behavioural patterns.
Analysing the animals that they needed to be related to is an important part of the concept research that would have been involved in the production of the advertisement, such as Pixar when creating 'Finding Nemo' had a full exotic fish tank placed in the studio in order to implicate further research on how the animals behaved with each other, and how such surroundings interacted with the characters. Such research that allowed further evolution into the production, a similar process applied to this advertisement for Ikea.
The Director of this advertisement Dougal Wilson who is regarded as one of the top commercial producers, begins to explain the process of the advertisement for the YCN (You Can Now) Articles.

Interviewer: What process do you go through to turn an idea like this one into a polished ad?
Dougal Wilson:"Well the original idea isn’t mine — that obviously comes from the agency creative team — but I can elaborate on the basic thought. In this case, I just took the idea of a flock of flying T-shirts being like migratory birds who constantly have to move on. I plotted out a story, using all the reasons we could think of as to why they couldn’t stay where they landed. In the first location, it’s too cold, then they get shot at by a river, then they have to get out of the way of a big ferry, then they get chased by a child, then a dog, before finally finding a house with a nice wardrobe. This journey takes the viewer from a cold, remote place, eventually arriving in a built-up, inhabited environment. A lot of the inspiration came from wildlife documentaries. There's some amazing footage of geese that had been 'imprinted' since birth to follow a handler, and then trained to fly alongside a microlight aircraft, enabling them to be filmed very close up — as in the movie 'Winged Migration' for example. I thought it would be fun to contrast this kind of epic tone with our very mundane participants: the everyday T-shirts."

An additional favourite for the aspect of advertising, is the Ikea advert with the tagline 'There's No Bed Like Home' which elaborates on the cosy and appealing side of Ikea furniture and what would be included in their alternate products and how these things could be further displayed in their customer's minds. Again, the audience's attention is additionally transformed through the underlying aspect of humour in the advert. 

Typography Workshop

As a small workshop, I felt that this session really assisted the functional typography skills and knowledge I had from previous courses. The overall session helped to further develop these skills and learn about other typography jargon that I had previously encountered but not fully delved into.

Kerning
Kerning is a particular technique that I felt was elaborated on well, with the alteration of letters being important for the compositional matters of the piece.
"In typography, kerning (less commonly mortising) is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result." (Oxford Dictionary Definition) 
There are certain elements of design where kerning and other methods of composition with typography take place, such as set design and prop composition. Rick gave examples of kerning within such posters of production such as the kerning that was purposefully used in film posters such as "The Grand Budapest Hotel" which the designer used lack of kerning skills to develop the idea of old vintage style posters such as the old hotel signs etc. it was said that the kerning was purposefully produced and that other designers were correcting the kerning when it was purposefully produced to reference to the old fashioned signs.
The aspect of kerning really begins to impact the composition of the overall text and design. The advantages of kerning impact the over all layout of design and is an important skill to us as Motion Designers and designers alike, to recognise bad kerning and typography and know how to correct and improve it in our own form of designs and creative projects.



Narrative Research

In accordance to the brief given, it has appealed to me the aspect of researching alternate methods of narration through film. Flashbacks for example are a key method used, as well as transportation methods used to transport the viewer where the directors want them to look. The directors and producers can manipulate the reaction of the viewer almost like a puppeteer, making them look and feel where and what they want them to do.

Narrative Brief- A New Way of Looking

A new way of looking is the part of the brief where we look into a film, the creation and research of such a film that develops the idea of expanding on something that people don't usually notice. We have finalised 3 main ideas with photographic research which we will then cut down into a main idea to film.

Idea 1- Water
For the ideas to commence, it was suggested that perhaps we should go for a walk, as there we would stumble across unknown objects or sources of inspiration. For my walk I decided to venture into the High Peak, to see the rural surroundings and what ideas they would present to me.
Water was my first initial idea, an idea that transpired from an initial idea that I had thought of when being briefed, this idea was to film an eye blinking horizontally, and then to flip it vertically to reveal the wings of a bird flying, mimicking the arch of the eyeball. I believed this idea was inspirational with the idea of representing things that everyone doesn't necessarily see within each other.
This then revealed an idea of making such connections within something more that I could control, such as water.
I began by taking quick shots of water in small streams that passed by me, inspired by the behaviour of the water that reminded me of water in other formats, such as water I saw in a field's trough for the cattle, showed similarities to things such as cups of tea, which I then decided to photograph as a possible link.
This then inspired me into looking at more vast
areas where water was present, not just in small puddles or cups of tea, but in vaster areas such as rivers and waterfalls. The waterfall in particular was most inspiring, as it produced an abundance of foam, which I found interesting as it reminded me of boiling water in a pan, the foam rising from the heat, whereas in this form was simply being pelted by the action of the water.

Idea 2- Trails
An additional idea that I had produced is the idea of trails, I like the intricate idea that there are fragments of trails left behind, only to be found and a narrative being possessed within them. I went to the Peak District, into a nature pathway that is also a route used for off roading, therefore it was a rich hive of tracks and trails that each include their own storyline. The rough grooves and depths in the mud and dirt simply tells its own story, the weight of the vehicle or use of trail, the speed etc.

Idea 3- Lines
This idea which was built on during the Courtyard brief, was the idea of following line elements building up to a mosaic of line implications.

Wind Idea.

Upon learning to interpret new ideas from old ones, I went for a walk to try to decide on the idea I'd like to select. However, I was pleasantly surprised to be inspired by two pieces of paper floating in the wind, almost personified and seeming to dance, and I was inspired by the small but elegant movement that they created through the aspect of the wind. The actual litter itself danced and interacted well with each other and I decided that there was something in that idea.
I went out to film the litter on a very windy day, but found it pretty difficult to capture the moments naturally rather than forced movements, so in order to do so, I placed the litter freely and allowed it to move by itself rather than anticipating chasing litter that happened to be there. In addition, when collecting alternate videos of the litter, I began filming other fragments I noticed that were too effected and manipulated by the aspect of the wind. Therefore I decided to take advantage of the high depth of focus within the camera and film different things blowing in the wind such as hair, pieces of plants, dust, leaves etc. and to generally create a nice, calm atmosphere.

Due to the filming of litter being quite unpredictable, it was an important element to ensure that they all worked well, each shot from selective angles, as I wanted a form of closeness to be present within the piece, such as the close shot angles I produced of the leaves slightly swaying from the wind and how this is impacted overall.
When editing the clips together, I ensured that there was a slight blend of textures to ensure a calming transition between the clips, something that was an important element for me to include at this time. Such as the feather merging into the hair etc. These transitions really added strength to the piece as it allowed the overall composition to flow well together. In addition to this, I tried a few testers with sound before adding final clips of sound to the piece, my first initial plan was to produce my own Foley using a variety of objects, however, the outcome was not favourable in my opinion, as the objects looked rather odd in comparison to the sounds, and it also created more of a tense atmosphere rather than a relaxed one, something I wanted to avoid. Therefore, in conjunction to this, I decided to include sound effects of relaxing elements which I would then combine together to produce an overall relaxing composition. 

In accordance to this, I watched through the edited clip that I had produced and looked and planned what effects would work as I went through the composition. It occurred to me that the following interactions and links would work well for the composition overall.
  • How to establish the idea of wind without using a manipulation of wind itself- my idea- use calming swayed sounds, such as wind chimes and pipes, which cause mellow, clinking movement sounds which are often related to wind. Also perfect music to represent relaxation with the instruments often used in relaxing activities such as meditation. 
  • I noticed the animalistic references that occurred in the composition which I decided I could successfully establish further such as the feather being represented with bird songs, whereas I also decided to pair up slight movements of dust and leaves to the howling of wolves, something I noticed when looking through the clips. The leaves looked like wolves raising their heads to the sky to howl. Using the similar movement in the composition with the clip of the sound effect of wolves howling, I believe that they went well in co-ordination with each other.
  • Storm sounds and rain were added for the movement of some of the litter, I added this as storms are unpredictable and manipulated by the surroundings, which is the same for the litter filmed therefore establishing a clear connection between the two. 









Specifications of Businesses in Animation.

As part of the research process of personal development, I have looked up current jobs further and I want to then look into what they look for. Here are a selection of jobs I've seen locally and in other places across the country, and what they look for generally.

3D Animator & Visualiser (Manchester)
What they look for:
·Degree in Animation (or equivalent),
·A minimum of 12 months experience with Autodesk 3DS Max or Maya,
·Experience using Adobe Photoshop and After effects,
·Experience of producing edited animations with sounds and effects, producing high quality 3D imagery and 3D modelling (including texturing) from given details,
·A professional manner with good communication and people skills,
·Good verbal and written communication skills,
·Strong organisation skills, details orientated and the ability to handle multiple priorities,
·Willingness to learn and take up new challenges.

Ideally you will also have:-
·Experience using AutoCAD,
·Experience of graphic design packages such as InDesign and Illustrator to create Infographics using 3D images,
·Experience in editing short video production using animated and video footage from around the business to assist in presentations,
·Experience of Temporary Works,
·Experience in the Construction Industry

Motion Graphics Designer (Southport)
Role Responsibilities:
- Creating videos from supplied, stock and/or self created graphics, screencasts and/or screenshots.
- Thinking creatively to produce new ideas and concepts.
- Manage customer and supplier relationships as required.
- Recording all project details in their CMS.
- Working with a wide range of media, including photography, illustration, animation and video.
- Proofreading to produce accurate and high-quality work.
- Working with printers, copywriters, photographers, other designers, account executives, web developers and marketing specialists.
- Various administrative tasks to help the smooth running of the office and projects.


Person Specification:
- Creative flair, originality and a strong visual sense.
- Strong computer skills.
- Fluent in the Adobe Creative Cloud package particularly Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects & Premiere Pro.
- A professional approach to time, costs and deadlines.
- Ability to work to a brief agreed with the client or account manager.
- The ability to grasp client needs and consider practical solutions.
- The ability to pay attention to detail.
- The ability to balance work on several projects at a time.
- You will instinctively know when a design feels right and have a strong visual sense of what is looks right.
- Typically you'll be opinionated about fonts and may have a collection

Creative Multimedia/Animator Designer- Creative Agency (Leeds)
The ideal candidate should have:
• a university degree or equivalent in graphic design and visual communication
• creative flair, originality and a strong visual sense
• accuracy and meticulous attention to detail
• confidence in presenting and explaining ideas to clients and colleagues
• full proficiency in the Adobe Creative suite / Premier / After Effects
• working knowledge of Microsoft Office
• solid working knowledge of the print process
• skills with animation (a distinct advantage)
• a full driving licence