50 word sypnosis for the catalogue.

Looking back on my two years at Monash it's amazing looking at how much I have grown as a designer.

Design for the DVD casing

DVD Design

I decided to try a different style of designing on the CD. My friend told me about lightscribe's where the design is lasered onto the special lightscribe CD/DVD's, it sounded very interesting so I decided to give it a go.

1. This was my first rough mockup design. Light scribe only burns greytones so I went on to brainstorm a few more ideas.

2. I came up with this design, but I felt it was too empty and lacking in design potential.

3. I then added some evil eyes into the black ring area, and placed a few more arms and tentacles everywhere.

4. In my final version here below, I added some abstract lines and strokes in the back to give it depth. After taking out all the colours to make it greyscale i then added my name and other details.

Finito! :)

Inside the DVD- intro and main menu

Before you go into the main menu this little video will flash up. :)
The goldfish logo was done for fun awhile ago... Why a goldfish? Well I used to go to chinese highschool back in Malaysia and one of the nicknames which I was referred to by my friends and classmates was 'goldfish'. (my name 'Kim', is pronounced as 'Jin' in Mandarin which literary translates as gold. I don't know how the fish came into the picture but yeah the fish 'yu' was added and thus goldfish 'jin yu'.)


After the logo fades you are then taken to the main menu. :)
I added a little ambience sound in the BG to give it a bit more feeling of anticipation.

Comparisons between storyboard and final video

I realized I didn't have any images loaded into the blog that show examples of the ended scenes.

Scene one artstyle fixing

Image.1: This was one of the old versions of the first scene. I had a lot of trouble with getting this scene to blend in with the overall scenes of my artstyle.

I then went back into photoshop and redid my textures using paint like brushes and texture brushes. I also painted the masks this time instead of using the eclipse tool because I was making them too round and crisp which didn't fit in at all with the overall artwork.
Image.2: Here you can see the final version of my first scene. I am really happy with the outcome and it really blends into my video stystyle so much better.

Update: texture redo

After Monday's class I jotted down all the notes that everyone commented on my work today.
The major thing was that my scene 1 of the animation didn't match the artstyle in comparison with the rest of the scenes.

Notes on what to change for scene 1:

sky: change black colour/ stars and galaxy to add depth

style: *Hand paint all textures/ rockets/ masks for earth and moon

earth: Add clouds?

moon: fix texture

shadows: sharper

rockets: scale them smaller as they fly back towards earth.


Also other tips I got from the lecturer's regarding final video output format:
720x576
Quick Time
Format: H.264 or MPEG-4 VIDEO



**Also I redid the World map textures. :) In this final version I got hands down and painted every detail with photoshop. After that I added some textures with some texture brushes I have and in the end added some clouds. I also had to edit the composition of both the edges so it would be streamless for animation.

Missiles from the first scene

The image above are the missiles that i chose from my research material. I erased the background and in the beginning stages tried using filters from photoshop to give it a more graphic look.



But in the end I went back and painted the missiles using my drawing tablet. Using photoshop brushes I used my old images as my reference and drew all the 10 missiles as you can see below.

Update

Haven't been updating here that often for the last 2 weeks, my bad.
Basically all I have been doing is retouching up the graphics and composing all the scenes in after affects.

Am aiming to COMPLETE everything by the end of this week. If that goes to plan I will have a week to work through the little things such as the beginning title and end credits, sound effects for certain scenes, and I am planning to make a nice CD/DVD cover to go with it.

Graphic updates.

I painted this map in photoshop using references from the internet.

The above map is the reference I used to paint the map.

Above are clouds that I painted to be used in one of my layers in After Effects.

I fixed up the moon texture, and made a better version of my destroyed moon after it was hit by a rocket.

Youtube video of

Here is a video of where I am currently at, I haven't finished with the animation and putting everything in yet. But care to have a look please. =)

Research- others

So far where I am at.

Textures are all done.
Now it's up to my current Adobe After Effect skills with putting all my art into and animating it.

Things I will need to do in the final-touching up stages:
-Fix up the clouds in the skies.
-Fix up the layers of my earth textures. (aligning them properly and modify them to look more graphic.)

For the last few shots I am considering whether or not to cut it down to make it shorter, but workload-wise I think it wouldn't effect me as much since I have all my textures finalized.
***BUT one major problem is that the computers in the labs and the projector doesn't show my artwork properly and it appears very dark, black, and blotchy. It annoys me because I can't show people the details in my artwork.

Good morning!

I need to mention that I've learnt lots of very neat After Effects tips by Cameron Gough.
Due to the heavy usage of After Effects I will be going to be head-banging on for this 2D animation to lift off and land, he's been the bestest with guiding and running me through the questions that I keep drilling him every Monday afternoon.

Never learnt so much about a program unfamiliar to me in such a short period of time!
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

Finalised Artwork! (Back ground/ Animation psd's)

Not so happy with the earth scene... Too realistic. Will be toning that down ASAP!
Colour wise, the world will blend in with all the other scenes colour palatte after it becomes polluted and dead. :)

Research: Photos of cities in bird's eye view

Messy photoshop brushes!

Been busy sorting out my brush sets, then neatly putting them all in 1 folder.

So frustrating going back to every brush to try and find that one brush that gave me that nice sky texture.

I can't find it. :( But it's ok. I need to get all my skies in check with the same style. And in after effects they will be moving about! So I will have to make long clouds so that I can move them around for animation in after effects.

Artstyle references.

I love cartoons such as Invader Zim, Beast Wars, Thunder Cats, and last but not least Teen Titans! (There are so much more examples but I am keeping the list short!)

I choose teen titans because I love the animation flow.
I am trying to aim for this kind of style, in which they use nicely drawn background images that are harmonized with simplified character art style for animating.
(I have to add that I also love the humor in this show.) =)

In the end I aim to make something original and an art style of my own.

So I will have a very large amount(workload) of background scenes to churn out. After that hopefully I will be successful in delivering good flowing animation that is simplistic but believable to my viewers.
Then after I merge BG and animation together, I will have to also add some niffy effects that After Effects will be able to provide me with. (With the help and mentoring of my very helpful lecturers of course!)

Cheers!

More artwork testing!