Tag Archives: design

2 Heads Are Better Than 1

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I love to create. Especially collaboratively. Sometimes it gets tricky when you have too many cooks in the kitchen, but I find that good ideas get reinforced with the right people at the table. Likewise, bad ideas get the axe before you waste too much time and energy going in the wrong direction.

At Awaken, almost everything is accomplished in teams of some sort. When we plan a new series or produce a video, it’s even more important that everyone is “fishing in the same stream.” There have been times when I’ve pitched an idea that sounded solid to me, but when I brought it to the team, for whatever reason, it is became obvious that the idea was incompatible with the focus of the project. Such is the nature of an idea.

You have to wade through them to find the ones that just leap off the page. That said, I’m currently working with a friend of mine at Awaken to collaborate on the art for the next series.  To give credit where credit is due, he did all of the work to create the scene, 3D text with beautiful shading, etc.

Here’s what he came up with:

He gave me permission (very important when working as a team) to play around with it.   So I did. It may not be the finished product, but it gives us options.                               Here’s what I came up with:

While the contents stayed the same (with the exception of the wind turbines), the effects change the tone entirely.

I wanted to give it a slightly different story. Something vintage, magical and worn.

 

Here’s an overview of what I did:
  • added film scratches (using a paint tool at a low opacity)
  • added blotches (also paint tool at low opacity but bigger in size)
  • a very light but dirty vignette (just a layer of brown via paint bucket brought down to an opacity of 20% and soft eraser also at a low opacity across the crest of the hill)
  • and some “fast” clouds (inspired by intro and outro of Toy Story 3, thank you Ed Catmull also using the paint tool, a subtle white glow and the smudge tool)

I seriously love the 3D text that my friend created. I didn’t want to lose all the work that went into making that but I wanted to accentuate the series title more than anything.  Using the blur tool, I swept across the lower third of the graphic at decreasing intensities as I worked upward towards the crest of the hill. This effectively miniaturizes the piece and gives it a unique depth of field.

If you remember one thing from this post, remember this:

 

Subtle vignettes do a really good job in assisting your audience towards the focal point. Frame the focus with a vignette and you instantly make your concept more accessible to the viewer.

 

Final Thought:  Art is subjective. What I did, you may hate. You may love. Artistic collaboration takes three things:

  1. holding your art loosely
  2. humility
  3. willingness to go with the better idea, even if it’s not yours

Good luck and play nice.

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[ rest ] + a core concept of design

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Created as a bumper into a message by a guest speaker at Awaken, this project took a few attempts to communicate the core concept.  Many designers struggle with articulating what their core concept is. Understanding the core concept is the key to unlocking the design. It’s like writing a story. Once you know the personality of your lead character, the story practically writes itself.

The next thing is just as important. Once I’ve honed in the core concept the very next thought (often subconscious) is:

What do I want people to feel?

Nostalgic? Creative? Tranquil? Anxious? Contemplative? Assured? Curious? All of the above?

Do I want people to feel light and fluffy or do I contrast rest with the chaos that is our lives?  In the end, I chose a bit of both.  The white backdrop with the pattern behind the logo (see 0:30 of the below vid) reminds me of a pillow or a plush comforter.  The intro of the video being tied to the to-do list gave the short video a bit of tension and release.  Even a narrative arc, if you will.

Here are a few practical things that I did as I got the project started:

  • So the main element needed to create the to-do list was simply a high resolution png file of lined paper.  I rotated it in Z-space to give it believability as an actual 3 dimensional object.  I also tiled the paper to continue the list beyond the size of the original png file.
  • After copying a relatively true-to-life to-do list that I or my wife would make and entering it into a text layer, I was almost ready to begin animating.
  • Before creating keyframes within the timeline, I needed the position of my objects to become interdependent.  I did so by pick-whipping (an After Effects term) the position of the text layer to the tiled paper layer.  I rotated the camera on the Y axis a bit and also pushed it back in Z-space while moving the position down along the Y axis.

I could get into many more of the details but those are the main ones the helped this video take form in a relatively simple way.

 

 

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