Digital Processes 2017 – DANEY’S BRAIN

Final Project: Measure

admin — Sun, 14 May 2017 22:34:30 +0000

Well, I finished my final video! Here’s a link to it, since the filesize was too large for me to imbed it. I like how it turned out, I think. It might not be my favorite among all the things I’ve made this year, but it’s by far the one I learned the most from, which makes it the best as far as I’m concerned. I’ve kept good track of all the stuff I’ve made since I took up digital art as a pastime some five years ago, and the projects I learned the most from always stick out the most to me when I look back over old stuff. Anyway, about what I learned! Mainly stuff about FinalCut and Flash, although there are a few miscellaneous life lessons I’ll take from this too (if a rock has holes in it, there are almost definitely bugs living in said holes so don’t bring the rock inside unless you want them crawling all over your computer keyboard the next day. Don’t ask). As for the digital stuff, I learned how to use keyframes in FinalCut for doing things like moving images and changing background colors over time, and I’m more comfortable with the program in general. There are things that I would’ve needed two or three programs for before this project, but that I’d now be confident doing entirely in FinalCut, which should really speed up future projects. And I’m no expert in Adobe Flash yet, but I have a grasp of the basics, whereas before I’d never even touched the program. Did you know that animating is hard? Because it’s hard. I don’t think I’d at all enjoy a career in animation, but I’m glad I have a better grasp of how it works now because I’m sure there will be times in the future where I’ll need it again.

As for how I think my final video turned out, I’m…. not sure? It’s finished to a point I like, and I’m not planning on revisiting it, but it’s by no means perfect. I need to do more stuff with sound, and with shooting video, if I want future projects to have quality I’m satisfied with in those areas. This isn’t surprising, these are the two areas of this project I had the least experience with going in. I think I did a good job of unifying all the different aspects of the video, though. It may not feel polished, but it feels whole, so I’m satisfied.

Anyway, this was my final project for Digital Processes, so I won’t be posting for that class anymore! I’ll try to still update throughout the summer though, since I’m sure I’ll be doing digital stuff. Maybe I’ll actually make a webcomic…

See you guys whenever!

Video Elevator Pitch

admin — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 19:38:27 +0000

The video I’m making as my final project is based on the words strong and cyclical, and it’s about animated ants turning into real rocks turning into piles of rocks, forever. It’s inspired by the tenacity of ants and the longevity of rocks, though I also drew inspiration from ant death spirals.

Final Project Storyboard

admin — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 19:46:00 +0000

I apologize in advance if you were hoping to make sense of this.

so, here’s my grand plan for everything! I didn’t realize that these were to be shared, so this probably isn’t legible to anyone but me. Still, I promise that everything is Fine and Under Control. Basically, I’m making a one minute movie about ants and rocks. The two themes to keep in mind for this were “strong” and “cyclical” and that brought to mind piles of rocks- you know those really nicely balanced ones people make in the woods? those. The ants ended up in this because I think they fit in nicely, and because I like ants. I’ll probably animate the ants in Flash and overlay them on top of camera footage of the rock piles. Although, stop motion is also an option? That sounds like more work than Flash but less work than training ants.

Working with FinalCut Pro (and Flash)

admin — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 19:41:16 +0000

http://daney.agnesscott.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/glump.mp4

so, here’s what I’ve been doing lately.Our final project of the year in Digital Processes is a one minute long video made in final cut pro. I’m not sure this clip is going to be in my finished video, but it helped me figure out how to create an animation in Adobe Flash and integrate it into FinalCut along with video shot from my camera. I’ve never really done animation before (you can probably tell), but I like the aesthetic I have going here so I’ll probably try more of it.

Thoughts on TEDtalk: Marian Bantjes

admin — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 16:58:56 +0000

I watched this TEDtalk for class, and it was an interesting look into the different ways people think about graphic design. The graphic design community isn’t something I’d explored in depth at all before taking this class, so I don’t have a lot of background information to compare this talk to. For one thing, it came as a surprise to me that graphic design isn’t considered something you put your individuality into. Maybe that statement means something other than what it does to me if you have a more solid background in graphic design, but its still a really weird thing to hear. I’ve always considered any form of art impossible to separate from the artist. I suppose since a lot of graphic design is stuff other people commission, the customer’s wants to take a main focus, but it’s still something created by your hand. Maybe Marian was referring to individuality as in something separate from what most people are doing? She never really specified during her talk, or if she did it went over my head. That would make more sense but it’s a confusing way of wording things. Anyway, I guess her art is interesting. Her more typographically focused stuff isn’t really my thing, but I enjoyed the christmas card valentines day cards.

Letterforms in Illustrator

admin — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 16:41:03 +0000

It’s been a while since I last posted, but I should talk about what I worked on before spring break! Our assignment was essentially to invent a new letter of the alphabet, and then render it in Helvetica and Baskerville using Adobe Illustrator. Here are mine. I like how they ended up with regards to blending in with the rest of the alphabet, but I think I could tweak the capital form a little bit. Particularly in Helvetica, it’s a little bit top heavy and needs to be more distinguished from the letter P. A possible redesign is under the cut, for those interested!

Illustrator Finished Object

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 19:29:07 +0000

Mothman is here….

Also, I figured out what was wrong with the pattern tiling. I needed to choose “art optimized” instead of “type optimized” in the export options.

Working in Illustrator- Progress Post

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 17:20:44 +0000

I’m new to vector programs in general, so working with Illustrator has been interesting. There’s definitely a wider range of things possible than I had expected, but it’s still weird how different everything is from photoshop. Case in point, this pattern I tried making earlier. I’m satisfied with how it looks in Illustrator, but when I export things containing it you can see the seams where it repeats, so I’ll need to figure out how that works.

Monster Party

admin — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 18:15:30 +0000

Here’s my final image! I like how this turned out for the most part, although I may go back and make the frame more realistic, I can’t decide. I may also add reflections to make the screen look more like glass, but I can’t decide how to go about that. I drew the monsters in from scratch, and the frame is a modified version of oneI created using “render frame” (Filter>Render>Picture Frame…), but the original images for the background and the sludge textures are under the cut.

combining images: progress post

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 18:08:09 +0000

I’ve been working on this photo of the observatory telescope room for a while. I think I’ve added all the monsters I’d like to add, as well as their shadows, but everything still needs texturing. I may also add some noise and a timestamp to make the picture look like it’s from a CCTV camera.