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.

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 - 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.

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.

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.

Workshop Week - InDesign Tutorial

InDesign is a software used by a majority of designer to create books, documents,  presentations, newspapers, magazines, posters etc. In today's workshop tutorial we learned how to use some basics of this software by Jeffrey Bowman. We  worked on different 3 different briefs throughout the workshop which each tackled a separate subject on InDesign.. First we started off on looking at how to set up a new document and how different platforms (such as annual reports or mood boards) would have different document settings. Below are all the details of the briefs, which we received in the workshop.

Brief

Exercise 01 - Making a basic moodboard using 02 techniques

Specifications

Size: A3

Orientation: Landscape

Margins: 15mm

Columns: 4, with a 4mm gutter

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Moodboard 01

Place 8 images onto your moodboard and lay them out using the grid structure

01. Make a new document using the above specifications.

02. Press CMD + D or go to File>Place.

03. Locate the Exercise 01 folder on your desktop and select the image 01.jpg.

04. Now your cursor will be loaded with the image.

05. Click and drag out your cursor on the art board and a picture box with the image should appear, let go when you are happy with the size.

06. Repeat this process until all the images are on the art board.

07. Now arrange the images to the grid lines.

08. To scale up an image box, use the Selection tool (black arrow) and hold down SHIFT + CMD and grab the anchor point around the selected image an scale up or down.

09. Make sure you arrange your images so they all fit on, look neat are aligned to the columns and inside the margins.

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Moodboard 02

Making a moodpboard form a structured picture box.

01. In the page pallet press the 'Create New Page' button.

02. Now from the Tool Palette you want to select the Rectangle Frame Tool.

03. Now click and drag out a picture box that sits from the top left of your margin to the bottom right.

04. Now delete this and do it again. But this time once you have dragged out the picture box, do not let go of the mouse, instead keep the mouse pressed down and use the arrow keys on your keyboard. Press up and down to add rows and right and left to add columns. This will split up the picture box.

05. Using this technique, split the box into 8.

06. Note, this may be tricky so try it a few times.

07. Now using your Selection tool (black arrow) click on one of the boxes and then press CMD +D or File>Place and locate the Exercise 01 folder on our desktop and select image 01.jpg

08. Now the image will be inside the picture box.

09.Now select the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow) and you should be able to pick up the image inside the picture box - a brown box will appear around it when you have got this, and you can then move the image around inside the box.

10. You can shrink the image down by pressing shift and grabbing one of the anchor points and scaling it up or down. Make sure you always hold SHIFT to keep it in proportion.

11. A shortcut to shrink it into the box is simple - Click the image and press CMD + ALT + SHIFT+ E (the claw).

12. Practice this for the other 07 remaining images.

Now all your mood boards for the rest of Uni should be presented like this!

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Brief

Exercise 02 - Formatting type

Specifications

Size: A4

Orientation: Portrait

Margins: 13mm

Columns: 4, with a 4mm gutter

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Styling up text

01. Set up your document with the specifications above.

02. Select the Text Tool from the Tool Palette.

03. Draw out  text box over 03 columns.

04. Open the TEXT.rtf file from the Exercise 02 folder. Copy it (CMD+C) and then come back into InDesign and paste it (CMD+V) into your text box.

05. Now turn on Hidden Characters. Either press ALT + CMD + i or go to Type>Show Hidden Characters.

06. Delete these 03 Hard-Returns, but leave the ones that are at the endow the title, sub-title and each the 03 paragraph sentences.

07. Now open your Character Palette, either press CMD + T or go to Windows>Type & Tables>Character.

08.Highlight all the text and go to the Character Palette and select the font:

Helvetica Neue and 55 Roman.

Set the point size to 8pt

Set the leading to 11pt

09. Now highlight the top line including the hard return:

10. Set the text to:

Helvetica Neue and 75 Bold.

Set the point size to 30pt

Set the leading to 30pt

Delete the word (title)

11. Highlight the second line 'sub-title', include the hard return and then set the font to:

Helvetica Neue and 65 Medium.

Set the point size to 15pt

Set the leading to 20pt

Delete the word '(sub-title)'

12. Next we want to open up the space between the paragraphs. This is called SPACE AFTER.

13. Open the Paragraph Palette by pressing CMD + ALT + T or going to Window>Type & Styles>Paragraph.

14. In the paragraph palette, set the SPACE AFTER to 3pt.

15. Now try playing around with the different values for the title and sub-title, maybe they are too big, maybe the space after needs to be bigger or the leading  (space between the line).

These are basic ways to typeset text.

- Body copy can be 8p-12pt in size with always 2pt extra or leading.

-Leading refers to the space between each letter.

-Kerning is the space between each word.

-Space After is set between 2pt and 4pt as a rule.

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Obviously the above is specific instructions as to what I did on the tutorial, however, the basic points and helpful shortcuts can be seen by anyone and used on any InDesign task/project.

My first go at Adobe After Effects (Film Trailer)

My first go at After Effects at Uni from Junaid Arshad on Vimeo.

This is the result of my first try on Adobe After Effects in the Uni workshop/lessons. The process of this was actually quite easy; I got some images of my own and then imported them to the After Effects composition. I then got some audio clips and the rest just consisted of editing (cutting, timing the audio clips to the images etc.)

Photoshop first tutorial - Tree in a lightbulb with reflection

I know a bit about Photoshop from before, but with this tutorial I learned some new features of Photoshop. Our task was to place different layers of a tree and lightbulb and make it look like the tree was inside the lightbulb. Once I had finished, I was told to change the hue/saturation of the tree to give it a bit of colour. Below is the finished result.

Adobe Illustrator first tutorial - Marilyn Munroe

So, I have just had my first tutorial on Adobe Illustrator and have actually enjoyed it very much, even though I'm a Photoshop user. Our tutor (Steven) told us that for graphic designers it's the holy grail of softwares (so I need to get practicing!). I quite like that Illustrator uses vectors instead of pixels (which Photoshop uses), so this means that when I blow up an image it won't pixelate. In our first lesson on Illustrator I learnt how to use the pen tool and various other basic things regarding colour and layers. Our group had to create a pop art style picture of Marilyn Monroe befits starting out with a real picture of her. Below is the finished result.