Process and Production Sara - Lesson 4 3D Space

Within this process and production lesson with Sara, we were told that we would be looking at 3D Space. I was very intrigued and interested to find out what this meant and look at something new which I could expand my skills on in the future. The first thing that I did in this process and production lesson was to create an Illustration of a part of Huddersfield town of our choice. The part of Huddersfield that I chose to Illustrate was the Lawerence Batley Theatre, I decided to choose this building because it was very detailed and had a vintage look. I also felt that I wanted to choose a piece of the town that wouldn't be as popular and other people were creating, I also thought that the theatre would connect with me personally too, as going to theatre to watch shows is one of my favourite things to do in my spare time. I wanted to create my Illustration with lots of detail because I wanted the building to look right and similar to the real life building, however I felt after I had created the design that there may have been a bit too much detail to work with. When creating the design in Illustrator I needed to make sure that all the items were on separate layers for example the doors on one, windows on another and the building on another.

I am quite proud of how the building turned out once I had created it in Illustrator. I felt that the design looked very professional and I have definitely improved on my Illustrator skills since my first year at University. We then had to save the illustrator file in a specific way by expanding the Illustrator art board so that the edges would keep in the design that your working with within the art board area. If the edges or images are off the art board you  would have to make sure that the design fits within the page, by modifying this so that it is bigger than the HD. We had to then go to document setup > edit art board > and drag out the corners, so that it would cover the images outside of the art board. To save the design, I had to follow the process of save as > new name which was Enlarged extended version, after I had done this the Illustration was then ready to be imported into after effects. 

I then opened the programme After Effects, where I was then able to import my Illustrator file, by using file > import > single file. Before importing the design into After Effects, I need ed to make sure that the format kind was selected as Composition and this was at layer size. To add the layers of the Illustrator file into the timeline I had to double click on the composition, so that this would transport into the bottom menu which was the timeline. 

After we had done this I then had to create a new composition, by following the process composition > new composition. Before pressing ok, I needed to make sure that the settings for the new composition were correct by naming the comp, as Main composition, the width and height needed to be 1920px by 1080px, the preset had to be HDTV 1080 25, the frame rate per second at 25 and finally the duration to 10 seconds long. We were then ready to select ok.

We then had to drop the visible layers onto the main comp, however to do this we had to do this in a certain way by selecting all of the layers in the Illustrator comp and copying and pasting them into the main comp by using two keyboard shortcuts cmd + c and cmd + v. After we had done this we then had to look at the switched by doing this I had to select the "toggle switches/modes" option in the timeline and select the cube option which activated the 3D option after this we had to make sure that this option had been selected for every layer. 

Furthermore into this we then looked at the position where I had to make sure that the value for Z was changed to 0 for every layer. I learnt that if you use a minus value it moves the design closer, but if you use a plus value it moves the design further away. We then selected the 2 Views horizontal that allowed me to work with the camera and Z space a lot better. To work with the Z space, we had to stagger the objects, so that they were selected and offset slightly in the Z space on the left hand side of the screen. However I had to make sure that there was enough space between the objects so that the camera pan through the design easier. To move the lines we had to use the blue arrows. 

In addition to this we had to create a new camera by following the process of Layer > New > Camera. I had to make sure that the camera that I selected was a 50mm camera which was a 2 node camera, before selecting ok, I had to enable the depth of field at the end. To use the camera in the composition, I had to select the position and the point of interest and change the position to more where the camera was already positioned on the screen. The point of interest was to change the angle of where the points were. I then had to create 2 key frames at the beginning of the timeline where the the camera was on the top of top view and the other one at the bottom, which was at the end. 

We were then able to use the camera tool to do this I had to select the layer and use the keyboard letter U, to show all of the keyframes that I was going to be working with. We were then introduced to motion path, where I had to select the keyframe which you could only see some of the motion path. We then had to go to preferences > display > all keyframes > ok. the keyframes for both position and the point of interest would then show, I was then able to use one of the tools to move the position of the point in the top of the camera section. I had to make sure that the speed and the motion of the animation looked and worked correctly. I found that adding more keyframes meant that the camera did more work, to change the direction or the path of the camera, I had to use the bezier tool. However I felt that this didn't work with my design so I decided to keep the design the same.

We then moved on to look at importing some textures into the after effects programmes, the textures that I decided to use for my design were a Ice Texture for the sky and a brick texture for part of the building. For the texture to work I had to make sure that this was applied to the correct layer and the overlay mode was changed to multiply. I also decided to add a page turn to some of the layers that I had created, to do this I used the cc page turn tool option and changed the positioning of some of the layers so that the layer would fold upwards. I was very happy with this process and production lesson after I finally got the hang of it. 

3D Space from Rebecca Thorp on Vimeo.

Business Lecture Budgeting and Business Planning

Budgeting

As we have already accounted, budgets are a corner stone that is made up of good accounts.

What is a budget?

An allocation of money (or resource) to undertake a particular task. It may be over a specific task (such as a project) or a time period, or both. Furthermore into this topic budget is meant to be the rea use of resources that supply us with information. Over time, this information is then used to improve companies and future budgets. Budgets also help us to understand HOW and WHERE your costs go and how the money is spent.

Budget
Proposal
Resource
Allocation

Actual
Actual
Resource
Used

Variance
Difference between the Two.
(May be positive, neutral, or negative).

We where then shown an example of the budget actual variance and cumulative variance.

The example shows that the maths and sums to this has already been done so that the answers have already been worked out and easier to see, but it shows that you have overly spent by £12. This is why budgeting is so important so that you can see and work out the problems that feed into one budget. Within the second part of the lecture we then talked about Business and Planning and Media types which I thought would become very useful within the future, when I am a designer working for a company or a company that I have set up and managing yourself. 

We firstly started off by talking about the basics of business planning and what it is meant by this and why it is so important to companies. We were firstly told about the purpose which is the Income, Profit, Charity and Kudos? So what do you want out of this? and why? The next thing we were told was Tye is it Freelance, Ltd, Semi-Partnership and or Partnership. What is the nature of this, what are you actually doing? This MUST be legal and you have to think what you can do, and just something that you want to do. The final basics we looked at was where, where do you want to geographically do business and where would you want this business to be, not New York think smaller such as where would like this company to be located in the United Kingdom. 

This is very important as you need to think these points all through very carefully which will allow these aspects to be successful. If you have no direction, you will slowly drift and will become unsuccessful. The knowledge of where you are will help you out and help you to understand where you would like to go and where you want to be in the future. However try not to start a business until you have thought and mastered these points, so that you will be likely to be unsuccessful. 

After you have done this you can then start to develop several plans so that you can succeed at the task that you have and are trying to do. Plans can go three different way these are: Good, Bad and Ugly, however you do need to address the situation what you have to do. You need to consider the basics which are the cost of living, the facilities that you have and also need to require that includes food and drink the equipment and materials that you need, but also where you are going to live and the cost of travel too and from places. To do this you need to split these two situations into two different groups one being your personal life and the other your business. 

To be certain you need to the financial and resources for both groups in order for you to keep track of your spending and income in an easier and understandable way. For example you need to consider the amount that you earn in order for you have an easy way of living and this will also indicate that when you need to set up your business. However for your Business Life you need look into the cost of running the firm and company, but you also need to consider the way in which is going to run and its from here where you consider the business plan. I found that this lecture was very interesting and was factual and will defiantly help within the future. 

Seminar #9: the Abstract Polina Zioga

This was our final seminar session with Polina, I found this seminar very interesting and useful because I was able to grab some key points from this lecture for when I am writing my own essay abstract. For this seminar we looked at an example abstract that we could highlight and make notes about to answer four questions that I was given to analyse. These were:

What are the main terms and concepts?
The main terms and concepts of the abstract were the keywords that were displayed just below the abstract.

What background information is provided?
The background information that was provided within the abstract to give a brief summary to start off the essay on Visual Hierarchy was "Visual Hierarchy is a significant concept in the field of advertising, a field that is dominated by effective communication, visual recognition and motion".

What do you think is the research question?
The research question is also the title of the abstract and the essay which is "Visual Hierarchy and Mind Motion in Advertising Design".

How do you think the author attempts to answer the question?
The author attempts to answer the question by giving reasons and examples to back up the evidence that they're providing for the question.

For the next lecture I need to find Illustrated text images of stills from movie opening sequences that can be any type of 2D image. When writing our essay we need to make sure that we add images to your essay. We then talked through a structure of an essay and looked at some examples. A question that we were told was what can we write together with a conclusion? What you would further investigate and what you would look into further. This is a good point and what can we gain from this so that we can carry on evolving and developing, we should also consider using sub headings. I thought that this seminar session with Polina was interesting and I am going to keep things into consideration when writing my own essay and abstract.

The Writing Process

Within this seminar we didn't have our usual lecture with Spencer, however we had a lady named Elizabeth Caldwell. We then focused on the topic of the writing process.

So what is a style? 

It is a particular way that the design is created.

We then talked about the words that we need to use when writing n essay. we need to consider more professional words that you can put into your essay. To do this we could use a Thesaurus. 

For our task we had to look at several extract and work out what sort of language and media was and can feature in.

Extract 1

In a text message or social media message 

Its predictive, short, good punctuation 

Extract 2 

Media, newspaper, tabloid

It is formal. 

Extract 4

Shakespeare - quote from the play script of Romeo and Juliet 

Poetic 

So what is Academic Writing.

Academic writing is:

1. Impersonal
2. Concise 
3. Clear 
4. Precise
5. Cautious 
6. Politically correct
7. Formal 
8. Transparent

I found this seminar was very useful and interesting. This is because I am able to look at the wording that I use in my essay more carefully. 

Process and Production Nick - Lesson 3 Self Publishing Portrait Zine

Within this process and production lesson with Nick, we looked at the Poster Zine. Where we looked at self portraits of ourselves, I was very interested in this process and production lesson because I had enjoyed the previous two process and production lessons with Nick. I was very happy about this lesson because I always learn a lot from them and I like that they are very productive and busy to keep me going. The first thing that we did in this lesson was work with our self portrait that had been taken for University Badges, for this part we had to look at the self portrait a think about how we wanted to display this on the poster zine that we had created. I decided that I wanted to cut out the background that was based around the photograph, however using some of this I decided to take a strip of the paper and cover my eyes so that you couldn't see them. I thought about doing this because I am not so keen on my eyes which is why I decided to cover them up, if I was able to change something about myself it would be my eyes.

We then moved onto the next page of the Zine which was to use the self portrait that we had just cut out and stuck on the previous page. However this time we had to draw ourselves, but the drawing wasn't meant to be a detailed sketch just a quick drawing. I found that this was a pretty easy part of the lesson because it was just draw yourself out on a piece of paper however I found that it was the best drawing of myself in the whole wide world, but I felt that it was a good drawing to say that we didn't have a long time on the design.

For the next part of the lesson we then used the photocopier to scan our face. I thought that this process was very interesting, but weird and different to the previous things that we had done in this lesson. After we had scanned our face using the scanner we then opened up the zine and placed our scans on the page, however before we did this we were allowed to be a little bit creative and destroy and change the scan so that it fit the page and was made to look different and create a effective art piece using the scan that we had of ourselves.

In addition to this process, we then moved on to the next part of the poster zine and started to work with emoji symbols, where we were given three different ones to work with. I found that this task was quite fun because we had to create a self portrait of ourselves just using the emoji's, once I had been playing round with emoji's to create my final self portrait for this task I found that the portrait of myself looked like it was a judge or from a Shakespeare play. I found that this was very amusing when I had created it.

For my final task within this process and production lesson we were given the task of creating a self portrait of ourselves using paper that consisted of black dot from small dots to large ones. We were told that the larger dots would represent the darker areas of the self portrait that we would be referencing from and the smaller dots would represent the lighter areas of the photograph. I found this process quite fun and very different, however I also found the task quite hard because I had to make sure that we I was using the dots I got the right size for the portrait but also the correct dots that I wanted to work with.

Overall I was pleased with how the poster zine went and to improve on this further I might make zine in to several different posters. To create a range and a series that would connect well together.

How To Write A Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Within this Business Lecture we were shown how to write the perfect Curriculum Vitae (CV), in order for us as students to be prepared to apply for jobs and placements that we will want to take or do within our or after our university course. Below is the perfect structure that we follow to create a good CV.

We should firstly start out by writing our:

Name and contact details

- Your Name
- Address
- Telephone (Personal Mobile)
- Email (Uni and Personal)
- Webpage (Portfolio)

Then:

Age - clarifies how old you are
D.O.B - clarifies when you were born
Status - Single, Relationship

After this:

Education - Most recent first
the University of Huddersfield - course
- from/to (give date of expected graduation)
don't put in the grades, grades can tell something about me. this may under sell my self

College - etc

Skills - such as computer literacy (programmes specific?)
Driving Licence

Further more:

work experience - date, organisation and job
couple of sentences explaining this.
most recent to the top

Hobbies and Interests - be brief
Don't put down that you like socialising

Finally:

Referees - work and academic reference
Name
Company
Position
Address
Telephone
Email

After writing out our CV for ourselves we also need to write a cover letter for each job or placement that we apply for, it is important that we always change the cover letter for each job and placement, so that it fits the firm and it is for that firm that you are applying for.

The final part that we looked at within this lecture was I.P, which is known as Intellectual Property. This is like a copyright protected symbol to show that it is your own work. We also talked about:
Intellectual Property Rights
People Own what they create
Idea, Brand, Invention, Design, Written work, Song, Performace etc.
So how do you protect yourself?

I found that this Business Lecture was very interesting because I was able to take a lot on board for when I am creating my own CV and cover letters for the place that I am going to be applying for my Placement Year.

Seminar #8: Information Skills - Laura Williams

Today's seminar was a little different as we had a library session with Laura William instead of having our usual seminar with Polina on a Friday. Within this seminar we started out by talking how we should do when writing our essay and where we can get help or what information and materials we can use to help us produce our essay. The first is to identify all the keywords for the essay topic that we want to explore, this would then allow us to explore all of the areas of our chosen subject to see what we can look into further to find the answers for our essay topic. The next one is that we need to evaluate our information sources, are they reliable or useful. Are they up to date? Is the source trustworthy and can we trust and relate it to our essay topic to back up to our point that we are wanting to make. The next is finding your information for your essay, where could I find this. I could use books, magazines, newspapers or article and internet sources. The final point that we were told was were can we find help, we can find help from tutors and the people that are in the library, so that if were struggling to find something we can find it easily.

We then moved on to how we should generate keywords from our essay's research question. For example by following the process of looking at the research question, then breaking down the question and finding keywords from there. For our task we were told to look at the words in our question and see what words we could come up with from this. My research question was:

"How has the technology in Title Design in Films between the 1960's to Now".

Some of the keywords that I thought of from my research question was:

• Technology
• Film Design 
• Title Design
• Title Sequences
• Films
• Short Films
• History
• Old
• Modern

The next part that we looked at was something that is known as the CRAAP test, which a process that you should use when examining a source that we have found to use for our essay. The CRAAP test stands for:

C- Currency

This is the timeless of the information which means is the information and source you have researched up to date, when was it published? Was it published around the date of the original event because this is very important to consider.  

R- Reliability/Relevance

This is the importance of the information for your needs. We have to consider who published the source? Is the source that you found primary or secondary information? Also does all the information that is provided within article or source all relevant to the essay topic that you are writing. Can we trust the article, as it may contain some false answers and maybe misleading for your essay. 

A- Authority

This is the source of the information. For this we have to consider who the author/publisher is of the source that your looking at? Is the publisher qualified to write about the topic. 

A- Accuracy

This is the reliability, the truthfulness and correctness of the content. Never rely on just one source and the information that is told in the article. Another point to look into is where the information is from and when you look at the information throughly are there any spelling errors.

P- Purpose

This is the reason the information exists. What is the purpose of the information that you decided to look at, is it to inform people about the topic that you have researched. Do the authors make their intentions or the purpose of the information clear. Does the point of view seem impartial or objective?

The final task that we were given for this seminar was to put the process into action, to do this we were given two different sources of information. We were told to find out whether the source of information was useful or not using the process of the CRAAP test. 

I found that this seminar was very useful, as I will be able to se this process when looking into different sources of my own for my essay and topic.