Various PDP session notes

Advertising (Part 2) - Immersion and the Cinema Experience

Tracy Lannan

• Immersion is deep mental involvement in something, such as being immersed in a film  on a cinema screen.
• Immersion is the state of consciousness where an immersant’s awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being surrounded in an engrossing total environment… and where the immersant is seemingly altogether disconnected from exterior physical space

Intro to Design and Emotion

• You need to be able to design human experiences
• Previous understanding of objects and things.
• Everything we look at, we assume something, and then we feel something about it (an associated emotion).

Perception or Illusion? - Sensory Information Processing

We are consumers of everything around us, being selective of what we take in.

As designers we should break out of that barrier and be aware of everything us so that we can take in more inspiration and influence and make ourselves more creative.

(Early 20th Century - Horse called Hans. Very good at picking up minute cues/body language of people. He tapped a certain taps every time someone was showing different body language. (Humans do the same.)

Rosenthal (a psychologist) did experiments on mice.

Don’t judge on what you see first time, challenge yourself and look again.

OPTICAL ILLUSION’S ARE GREAT TO LOOK AT FOR THIS TOPIC.

We are born with a depth of sensing danger and trying to survive (look at tests done with babies and mothers and the “mirror drop” - Nature vs Nurture, Depth Perception).

The Meaning of Life.

Art, Design & Consumer Culture

”Culture is everything we don’t have to do.

We have to eat but we don’t have to have to eat certain cuisines like Big Macs or Sushi.

OTHER NOTES ARE ON UNILEARN

• Barbara Kruger
• Consumption is what drives us and what legitimises us
• Money/Income gives us fulfilment, along with following the latest styles, music, gadgets etc: technology (in general)
• Culture is the lens in which we perceive ourselves and how we buy things in the world

Consumer Culture:

• Corporate, national, global consumption
• Fulfilment drives consumer culture and it’s what drives us to buy things all the time.
• Chris Jordan (Running the numbers - global mass culture)

Aesthetic Theory:

What is Art?

• Theodore Adorno (autonomy of art and culture)

QUESTION THE STATUS QUO IN ART

George Bernard Shaw - The ‘new unreasonable’ designer

Graphic design cannot be understood in isolation, but within a communication system

Appropriation in art.

View the clips of Shrek animated film.
How are they using appropriation?

Consider the following:

• what ideas are being referenced?
• how are they being referenced and do they differ from their original?
• to what effect are they used in the film?

Contextual Portfolio | Rene Magritte & Storm Thorgerson | Inspiration

Rene Magritte was a Belgian painter and considered one of the fathers of Surrealism. He looked at the topics of reality and twisted them in his pieces of art. Magritte experimented with Fauve and Cubist-Futurist styles. Magritte chose to create the majority of his work in a surrealist style, and it was from his works and style that Storm Thorgeson became inspired to follow. Magritte's works usually influenced others through his use of turning the ordinary into the unordinary. Elements in his images were repeated and this was probably influenced through his job of  creating wallpaper designs. This repetition in his work made viewers analyse it and forced them to decipher the messages behind his pieces. Magritte's work had reoccurring subjects, such as bowler hat topped men and floating rocks. His images also became a big influence on the Pop Art movement and has been featured in a reinterpreted manner on album covers. The image below called 'The two lovers', shows two lovers kissing while they're faces are covered with white cloth, therefore they are in an intimate embrace, however they are also at the same time  restrained from carrying out any intimate actions due the cloth. This may signify abstinence before marriage or perhaps a desire which is unfulfilled.

Moving onto Storm Thorgerson who was an artist greatly influenced by Magritte's work from a young age. Like Magritte, Thorgerson also created surrealist imagery. Thorgerson created images which were physically real, however they didn't seem to look it. His images provoked many interpretations, thus encouraging the viewers to look twice at his work. This was very helpful hen he designed album covers as it gave the band's album more "looks" and thus making the consumer subconsciously attracted to look at it. For example, with his 'Wish You Were Here' piece there are many interpretations - one being that the man on fire has made some sort of great deal with the other man and is feeling 'on fire' with how well his business is going. Another interpretation could be symbolising the man to the audience as such, and it could be that the man is actually the Devil, placed on the Earth, filling people with greed which then fuels consumerism.

Thorgerson also had a studio with Aubrey Powell called Hipgnosis. Within the studio, there were many photos and pieces of work depicting surreal scenes formed of surreal characters, taking us into the archives of the Hipgnosis design agency that helped form the mythologies surrounding some of the biggest names in music in the 20th Century. Formed by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell in 1967, Hipgnosis started art directing their buddies Pink Floyd, going on to create the now iconic, prism-based sleeve for The Dark Side of the Moon. The pair was joined by Peter Christopherson in 1974, who later became a full partner. Hipgnosis Portraits is a glorious, cohesive and exhaustive collection of some of the agency’s most famous works alongside lesser-known designs, with the work seeming as far out and intoxicating as it did almost 50 years ago. As well as showing finished imagery, the book’s first half details the stories behind them through archival materials and explanations of each work, penned by Aubrey himself. Whether it’s Voyager’s haunting images of a suicidal girl in the bathtub, Rick Wakeman flicking his big prog mane or Keith Moon reclining in nothing but a medallion and a fur stole, the images merge a supreme talent for art direction with flawless execution and ideas that few studios could top.

5 Steps to Creativity

1 - Think of multiple ideas
2 - Two heads are better than one
3 - Recognise the role of your subconscious in the creative process
4 - Break out of your established thought patterns by introducing random stimuli
5 - Don't be afraid to build on other people's ideas

Contextual Portfolio | Lori Nix

Lori Nix is a photographer and printer based in Brooklyn, NY who has been building dioramas and then photographing them since the early 1990s. She is interested in depicting danger and disaster, but tempers this with a touch of humour. She says her work was influenced by landscape painters. Her childhood was spent in a rural part of the United States which is known more for it’s natural disasters than anything else. She was born in a small town in western Kansas. Each passing season where she lived brought it’s own drama, from winter snow storms, spring floods and tornados to summer insect infestations and drought. As said by herself, she “considered these things euphoric compared to adults who viewed these seasonal disruptions with angst”. In her newest body of work “The City” she has imagined a city of our future, where something either natural or as the result of mankind, has emptied the city of it’s human inhabitants. Art museums, Broadway theatres, laundromats and bars no longer function. The walls are deteriorating, the ceilings are falling in, the structures barely stand, yet Mother Nature is slowly taking them over. These spaces are filled with flora, fauna and insects, reclaiming what was theirs before man’s encroachment. Her work on 'The City', looks at the convergence or change of a city. I really do like the way she has taken her influence from the city; looking at it and portraying a different timeline of it as truly as she can in her own imaginative and creative way. I also praise the attention to detail and scaling of her work as that is what truly brings together the whole scene. Nix said that in order to get the maquettes and models to scale, she first chooses one main item in the scene, builds it to scale, and then builds up the rest of the models around that. The main inspiration I take away from Lori Nix is the way she uses her imagination. She likes to portray things in a different perspective, and that is an area of thought I like to think about often when it comes to designing.

Seminar Notes

DADA

• https://libcom.org/files/imagecache/article/images/library/dada.jpg
• Form rather than substance
• Walter Benjamin
• The dadaists attached muss less importance to the sales value of their work than to its usefulness for contemplative immersion.
• Francis Picabia , L’Oeil cacodylate, The cacodylic eye, 1921
• Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto 1918

Bauhaus

• Wassily Kandinsky - Triangle, Square Circle, A Psychological Test, 1923
• Universal font (one of the most important fonts to be produced from Bauhaus). There’s no uppercase on the font, only lower to reflect that we don’t speak in uppercase or lowercase

Form and function

• Louis Sullivan and the Chicago School (1890s) - “It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognisable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law”.
• Adolf Loos Ornament and Crime - “The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects”.
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - “less is more”. ‘We use the German word ‘Baukunst’ that is two words, ‘Bau’ (building) and kunst’ (art). The art is the refinement of a building. We hated the word ‘architecture’ because architecture is something from outside.
• Walter Gropius
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-KeLk1sECI
• Conclusion:
• Form can be made to follow function if the function is clearly defined
• no law compels it to do so
• A law of nature is not a law of culture
• A law is discovered, a rule is applied
• Evolution is an ideological metaphor 

Uncanny

• Cindy Sherman - Black & white film still - creating something which looks like it belongs to a film but doesn’t actually exist
• Margitte
• For an uncanny effect we can distinguish:
  something strange about something familiar from
  something strange
• Uncanny likeness… a likeness that is strange, but not complete (‘complete’ likeness would be identity rather than likeness)
• We are used to thinking of people as unique, so it is unsettling to see twins, and twins can be used to create an unsettling effect in photography and film. Freud says the ‘double’ is an element in the uncanny - the closer the resemblance the more we see the difference. Any one of these girls on their own would seem quite normal
• Masahiro Mori, The Uncanny Valley (1970) - this idea is concerned with the question of likeness or resemblance. (Note that where the characters are more or less like humans, a human isn’t ‘like’ a human, so a ‘real person’ doesn’t represent the goal of realism)
• FREUD ON THE UNCANNY:
  Freud thinks this question of likeness is not very interesting and not the real meaning of the uncanny.
  He thinks it is more about repressing a disturbing memory though repeated behaviour.
• ‘Return of the repressed’ - Louis Bourgeois
• The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1816) - THE KEY REFERENCE FOR ALL STUDIES OF THE UNCANNY

Postmodernism (Part 1: constructivism)

• Linear perspective: was it invented or was it discovered? - A postmodernist would say invented.
• Relativism: denies, ‘that any standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others.’
• We would not privilege linear perspective as ‘true’. It is merely a different kind of visual representation.
• Constructivism: ‘The most radical postmodernists do not distinguish acceptance as true from being true; they claim that
• Examples: Culture Nature, Rich Poor, Rational Emotional, Wake Sleep, Man Woman, Line Colour, Mechanical Organic.
• The dangers of supplement - Jeans Jacques Russo: Essay on the Origins of Languages
• Russo thinks SPEECH is authentic, and that WRITING is merely a supplement to speech.
• Examples of dangerous supplement:
• Prosthesis (body)
• Civilisation (nature)
• Clothing (body)
• Superstructure (base)
• Mask (face)
• Masturbation (sex)
• Copy (original)
• Colour (line)
• Harmony (melody)

Simulacrum - An image or representation of someone or something

In today's PDP session, we learned about the word 'simulacrum', and the application of simulation to reality. We looked several films such as The Matrix, Avatar, Inception etc. all of which include the theme/idea of virtual reality. It's a concept which takes unrealistic possibilities, and places them in a realistic (or realistic looking/alternative) world. For example,  in the film 'The Matrix', depicts a dystopian future in which reality as perceived by humans is actually a simulated reality called 'The Matrix', created by sentient machines to subdue the human population, while their bodies' heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. Computer programmer 'Neo' learns the truth and is drawn into a rebellion against the machines, which involves other people who have been freed from the 'dream world'.

In the session we also looked at how the concept of a simulated reality branched out to different industries such as the fashion and game industry as well as the film industry, and how the concept of a more interactive and virtual reality can help to make the industry move forward and become more modern. New technology such as 3D goggles have been introduced i the game industry which allows the user to immerse themselves in the gameplay, in the sense of looking at all angles of the game in a 3 dimensional view compared just a 2 dimensional view. A popular company which uses this technology is Oculus in their Oculus Rift goggles. We saw many examples of a simulated environment and the concept of interactivity being used - below are a few:

Artist typeface transcription (Part 3) - Process & Production

Below are my final designs for my 3 typefaces, from drawing up ideas, to filtering them down to more neater and accurate graphic styles, to the final thing done on Adobe Illustrator on the computer. Once I finished making these typefaces, John (one of my tutors) told me to choose my best typeface out of all the 3 and I chose the 3rd typeface below. He then told me to write the sentence 'THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE FAT LAZY MOOON' to determine whether the typeface actually looked well put together in a sentence rather than on its own as individual letters.

Photoshop Animation - Using the Photoshop timeline

In this process & Production session we learned how to create animation by using the timeline on Photoshop. We learned several ways to animate. One way was to use the paint tool to draw on a frame and then to make the drawing on the next frame just slightly different from before (this is shown below in my 'snake' animation). Another was by getting a video layer and then using the person in the video as a guide to draw over (however I did mine on one layer instead of a separate layer so that I could take away the guide layer afterwards).

Snake animation from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

Contextual Portfolio | Steve Cutts | Inspiration

Steve Cutts is an illustrator and animator who works in London. He has previously spent several years as an illustrator at London creative agency Glueisobar working on digital projects for a wide range of clients including Coca-Cola, Google, Reebok, Magners, Kellog's, Virgin, 3, Nokia, Sony, Bacardi and Toyota. In 2012 he left Glueisobar to venture into the world of freelance and since then I've been working with production houses and agencies such as Analog Folk, Lean Mean Fighting Machine, Stink Digital, The Gaia Foundation, Athlon and Bite Global to name a few. His work has also been featured on various television channels throughout the world, including the Adult Swim network and Channel 4. He mainly works with After Effects, Photoshop, Flash and Cinema 4D.

I have chosen Steve Cutts as inspiration towards my portfolio because his work is quite satirical, crude and full of humour. His visual style is illustrative and colourful which makes it appealing to me. One of his pieces of work called 'Man' is a short animation based on the evolution of man (through the eyes of Steve Cutts). This is where I first came across his work. I found it  quite inspirational and also helpful as a project I was doing at the time was also based on showing how man has evolved/changed over time up until now, the present day.

Animation showreel 2014 from Steve Cutts on Vimeo.

MAN from Steve Cutts on Vimeo.

Contextual Portfolio | Banksy | Inspiration

When looking for inspiration towards my contextual portfolio, the first artist I thought to include was Banksy. Ever since I first looked at Banksy work, my work has been inspired by his in terms of the subject matter he includes in it. I also love the style of his work visually. Elements of Banksy's work have run through into my pieces of work over the years such as the satirical subjects he uses, the black and white stencil style and the areas where he does these stencils. Some of Banksy's works are parodic because he uses the original an artist and makes it look like it has somehow been invaded/vandalised by Banksy. The subject matter of his work consists of satire on modernism and in some cases is based on topics happening in the UK as Banksy himself was born and raised in the UK.

After Effects 'Title' workshop

This workshop on After Effects was to help us on how to use key points more effectively and on how to create a title with animation. First I tried to find a word/words to use as a title and so I used the word 'MONEY'. However to give my title a bit more substance and meaning to it, I joined the word SOS to it but changed the S's to dollar signs to represent currency. I also did this with the E in MONEY by changing it to a pound sign. The title says $O$/MON£Y which is actually a shorter phrase for 'save our souls money'. I was trying to give out the message that money is large part of our life. After choosing the font and creating the title, we had to find a texture to use in conjunction with the title, and so I used a texture of dollar notes to relate to the title.

After Effects 'Title' workshop from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

Workshop Week - 3D to 2D Workflows - Cinema 4D

In this workshop I learned how to use Cinema 4D for the first time. I changed the look of shapes in Cinema 4D and learned how to create lighting in Cinema 4D. I also learned how to create keyframes in order to make an animation. I am happy that I took this workshop ad it was very helpful towards my animation knowledge and gave me an insight into the kinds of things Cinema 4D is capable of. With this software you can create many shapes, textures, designs, looks, movements etc. and for these reasons I may develop my knowledge further into Cinema 4D. This software is used to create many things such as idents or TV channels, or the text used at the start of the films (the start and end credits). Learning this software more thoroughly could potentially unlock many doors for me for when I leave University in search for a job.

Artist typeface transcription (Part 2) - Process & Production

After making my 1st draft designs for a typeface, I was told to choose 3 of the designs to go forward with. Seeing as I only drew up 3 1st draft designs in the first place and I only really liked 1 of these, I am choosing to draw up the whole alphabet for the one I liked more neatly on graph paper, and then draw the other 2 on computer while also transferring the 1st design on computer as well, giving me 3 altogether. Below is my 1st typeface design drawn up on graph paper.

Workshop Week - Motion Graphic Fairytale - Animation Sequence project

Using the basic components of storytelling, this workshop aimed to produce a contemporary fairy-tale using motion graphics and After Effects. In the workshop we all first saw some some motion graphic projects for reference which all included a storyline with a hero, villain, donor, princess etc. (role types on screen which make up the storyline). Below is one of the references we saw...

La Queue de la Souris from Reineke on Vimeo.

From these references there was one which the workshop was mainly based on and that is the 'Animation Sequence Project' by in60seconds (below)...


Animation Sequence Project - BEST OF - October 2012 from in60seconds on Vimeo.

In the workshop we were given a similar task to the 'Animation Sequence Project' which was to make a whole story by each student creating a 10 second long scene from the story and then putting them together at the end. Each student's scene had to finish and end with a square (250 x250 pixels) in the middle of the screen. Each student in the workshop was given a scene from the story which Sara (the tutor running the workshop) made. My part was called 'Struggle' which consisted of the hero and villain going into direct combat.

Motion Graphic Fairytale - Scene 16 - Struggle from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

Workshop Week - Motion Graphic Fairytale - Animation Sequence project RESEARCH

Before we started to actually make our section of the motion graphic fairytale, we had to research various artists and design styles to base our section of the whole fairytale sequence on. I myself looked at the flat 2D styles of motion graphics and looked at the different tones of the colour palettes used. In some of the artists works, the colour palette was bright to connote liveliness in the picture, however in other pieces of work, the colour tones were quite washed out to connote simplification or negativity. In the end I decided to limit my colour palette to 3 simple colours which were black, white and grey. This was to connote the binary opposition in the scene, as my section of the whole sequence was about the battle between the hero and villain. The colours white and black themselves are binary opposites and each connote good and bad. I also used these specific colours because they made the scene easy to look at and were simple due to the separation of white and black, with grey being the neutral colour here in the background. Below are screenshots of the pieces of work I researched.

Workshop Week - Logo Design

In the first day for our 2nd workshop week at Uni I learned the process of designing logos for a client.  First, I had the option to choose out of 3 clients/briefs which were; a juice/coffee shop aimed at young children aged between 7-14; a silent hotel where everything ran like a normal hotel except for nobody talking and everything being absolutely silent (to create a getaway feel from the busy city sounds); a virtual pub where people could put on some type of goggles or an interface where they were immersed in a socialised pub right in the comfort of their own home. I chose the juice/coffee shop brief. I first generated several names and then chose 4 names out of these to progress forward with. Once I did a few logo designs for these 4 names, I chose one to progress forward with and got halfway to create several logo design drafts for it.

Shape movement tutorial on After Effects

In this tutorial we learned how to move an object in After Effects after making the object in Illustrator. In my case I made a footballer. We had to make each joint as a separate layer in Illustrator (such as the shoulder, leg, arms, etc.). After importing the object into After Effects, we had to join the  separate layers of the object to the body (hand > wrist > arm > shoulder > body etc.) via the parent tool on After Effects. Once this was done we had to move around the anchor points on a body part to make them move similarly to a human body.

Footballer from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

Rocket & Pear (Illustrator workshop)

To make the pear was actually very simple. Once I had the image of the pear, we then used the Mesh Tool to create a 3D net over the shape of the pear. Once this was done it was the long process of clicking each point using the direct selection tool and the Eyedropper tool to select the colour of the pear under that certain point. This would colour that point of the mesh in. Once all points had been selected and sampled I found a texture to put on the pear. This was to make it look more realistic. To do this we just had to select an area of the texture and crop it down to the shape of the pear, and turn the opacity down to around 10%.

These 9 print-screens briefly show the stages of making the rocket using illustrator. I first used the Ellipse tool to create the basic shape of the rocket and then modified it using the Direct selection Tool to form the shape seen on the first screenshot. For the rest of the screen shots it consisted of the same technique. To create the dashed lines and patterns etc, I Stuck to using the 'Apearance" window through out all these processes.

Simple shapes animation test on After Effects

This is a quick test I did in order to help me practice towards my final piece for Earth Artifact.

Simple shapes animation test on After Effects from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

Kinetic Typography after effects workshop - Physical Studio

In this workshop with Sara we we taught the process of how to make simple kinetic typography in Adobe After Effects. First we had to choose a quote to make into kinetic typography. Once this was done we made a layout page in Illustrator to give an idea of the font & colours which were going to be used.

After this we started to lay the page out in After Effects like we did in Illustrator (my layout changed a bit when we did this) and then we added an audio track to make the kinetic typography fall in time to. Below is my end result.

My first attempt at Kinetic Typography from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

After Effects animation workshop - Physical Studio

In this session with Sara our group looked at making images in Adobe Illustrator and then animating them in Adobe After Effects. With the image in Illustrator, we had to make the limbs of moving joints of the picture as a separate layer before moving them into After Effects in order to animate each part separately. Below is the Illustrator part of my animation which was of a footballer.

Artist typeface transcription (Part 1) - Process & Production

In this process & production session with John I was looking at typography. At the start of the session, John showed the group some examples of typography from previous students and told us how they were made with a few of them - he showed a picture of something (say a building) and pointed out how there was shape in it which looked a letter of the alphabet.

After looking at several images which John gave us as help for our development, we had develop our own typography from looking at the images and picking letters out. Below is the result of what I did.