AfterEffects Motion Graphic: A Work in Progress

With the Motion Graphics assignment looming, everyone's slowly moving from the planning phase to the production and implementation phase. I guess this would also include myself, however my idea is still more of a concept and in the relatively early stages. In talking to Laurie, I've decided to go with one of my two ideas, which was for the movie "White Chicks" (a personal favourite).

http://www.movieposterdb.com/poster/716f3e63

The movie's logo uses white lowercase i's overtop black lowercase i's to give the illusion of male stick figures, but that's as far as the figures are used in the film's branding and marketing. My idea is to take this branding a step further in my motion graphic. For starters, I plan on creating my own stick figures inspired by the ones found on public restroom doors -- in Illustrator, at Laurie's suggestion. The plan is to have two black stick figures move, in stop-motion, through some sort of screen and come out on the other end as white female stick figures. This summarizes the basic plot of the movie: two black men go undercover as white women. The music would go from something more urban (stereotypical, I know, but reflective of the film) to some sort track that would be more identifiably feminine. At the end, I think I'd have the name of the film in a similar, but not identical, typeface to the one shown above, though I don't want it to look like a copy. For now, I'll have to work on nailing down a solid concept, but I'm excited to get to work!

Week 7: Typography

1. PlayStation 3

(http://tinyurl.com/n6gwl7)

Although the PS3 logo has been revamped since its launch in 2006, its initial logo was what is referred to as "the Spider-Man font," taken from the most recent Spider-Man franchise. Although the article this image is sourced from does point out that a factor in PS3 using this font was that its maker, Sony, already owned the Spider-Man rights, the use of this typography is still effective in channeling the system's target demographic; the Spider-Man viewer audience of young males is also the target consumer group for video games, so using the identical typefaces was certainly a clever decision on Sony's part.

2. The Walt Disney Company

(http://tinyurl.com/3qdl7sd)

The Walt Disney Company logo is one of the most iconic and easily-recognized in the world because of how distinct it is. The use of its founder's signature as its logo creates an emotional familiarity between consumer and corporation, one which the Disney brand is synonymous with. Disney fans are known to be extremely loyal as consumers, and the fact that the logo has remained the same basically since the company's inception has helped to keep this loyalty strong through the ages.

3. Nike

(http://tinyurl.com/3wk7q6h)

Like the Disney logo, Nike's is also iconic, but largely because of its signature "swoosh" symbol. The simple typography used on the word "NIKE" serves not to distract from the image. Seemingly made in "Impact" font, the typography is also italicized which works well given that Nike is a sporting goods company; the italics could be seen to represent swiftness, speed, or movement. 

Motion Graphics - aka, my top 5 favourite GIFs

As an avid internet user, I'm already very familiar with motion graphics. My area of expertise lies in the realm of GIF files related to internet memes, popular on such websites such as Tumblr. I actually have over 530 GIFs in a folder on my desktop, so it is literally impossible to pick one as my favourite. Instead, I'll compile a top 5 list of my favourite motion graphics!

5) Arthur - "Haters Gonna Hate"

This GIF pretty much embodies what I love about internet memes: taking something and putting it into a different, usually humorous context. Also notable is the fact that the colours have been slightly edited from the original media, seemingly to give it a glossier look.

4) Excited Beyonce

 I really like this GIF for two reasons. First, it's edited really well; GIFs are essentially looping animations, but in this one it's hard to tell where exactly the loop cut is - it flows really nicely. Secondly, the maker of the graphic edited it so that Beyonce is the only person moving in the clip - everyone else is frozen in each frame, which makes it look very cool.
Plus, I really like using this GIF whenever I refer to a song/movie/generally any other piece of media I consider "my jam" (i.e. "that's my JAM!!!")

3) Pocahontas - "Hey Gurl Hey!"

This GIF, aside from being humorous, also shows off another cool thing about motion graphics in general: the many ways to use text. Instead of having the entire phrase up for the duration of the loop, the creator lets each word flash for a few frames. Just an interesting detail. Plus, I've had "Colours of the Wind" stuck in my head literally this entire week, so I had to include my girl Pocahontas in my blog somehow.

2) Woody - "I Can't"

This one's really only on the list because I made it myself, without any prior training in photoshop, so I was pretty proud of myself to figure out how to make a GIF almost entirely on my own (except for an online tutorial or two). The "I can't," well, I'll let Urban Dictionary explain what that means in internet lingo: http://bit.ly/rgvJNg

1) The Oprah "Ugly Cry"

This is my favourite motion graphic, probably ever. GIFs of Oprah Winfrey crying are abundant on the web, and it's well-known that no one does a full-out ugly cry quite like Oprah. This GIF is perfect for expressing a wide variety of emotions: extreme joy, extreme sadness, extreme excitement, etc.

My Poster!

My poster is an advertisement for rapper Kanye West’s 2007 album Graduation. Taking inspiration from West’s actual marketing campaign and design scheme for the album, my poster features certain trademarks of the Graduation era, including the teddy bear mascot and the “shutter shades” sunglasses. Additionally, a similar colour scheme to the actual album was used in the poster, to create proximity between the two images. The bright colours, youthful font, and familiar mascot all serve to effectively meet the target audience in a unique manner.

In order to incorporate the elements mentioned above, I took photos of a teddy bear in my house and a pair of shutter shades I purchased around the release of the album. Once I had the photos in Photoshop, I removed the backgrounds of each image. I used the magic wand tool to select the entire teddy bear and paint over it to make it look like a cartoon, a technique I repeated on the glasses. To create the new background, I used the rectangle tool to create a rectangle that covered the entire canvas, and used a gradient to go from purple to yellow. I wanted to use purple because the actual Graduation album is primarily purple, and I chose yellow as a second colour because it complements purple on the colour wheel. I used a gradient overlay to make the two colours fade into each other. In terms of the text, I chose a modern font that was close to the one used on Graduation’s cover, but still distinct. Additionally, I capitalized only the “Y” and “W” in “Kanye West,” just as on the album. By duplicating the text several times, lowering it and reducing the opacity by 10% each time, I was able to make it appear as though West’s name flew up to the place it is in. A similar effect was used on “The New Album” and “In Stores September 11^th,” but instead the duplication occurred on both sides of the text. These two phrases additionally were lined up with one another, a technique learned in lecture called alignment.