YCN Research - Thursday 26th April

Future Project Research - Thursday 26th April

Imminent Self Research - Thursday 26th April

Object Project Research - Thursday 26th April

InDesign Presentation - Wednesday 25th April

This workshop was about setting up our files for assessment so my development for this workshop is shown in the way that my final presentation is laid out. I felt as if this workshop was mainly things that I was already very familiar and I mainly do most the key points shown already in my work. The main methods I took from this were editing images as some of the processes were new to me. For example, the save for web option shown below which helps the images get saved at the correct quality to be used in a presentation this is a useful skill and can be found under the File tab and then export as can be seen below it brings up a dialogue box. We changed the image size appropriately to the size of the file it will be put into and then changed it from a gif to a jpg format.

Then you can insert this image that has been saved into your presentation using place which again is found under the file tab. Then with the gutter we set up using rulers the image can be place and resized appropriately as shown below.

We then looked at inserting videos into your presentation, first starting with the simple import video option then placing it in the spot you want. However next we used a button in order to make it so that when a still image was clicked upon it opened a video in a separate window as can be seen below. This done by simply clicking on the picture, changing the type option in the button and forms menu to button then adding the function with the plus sign to open file, to do this you have to select the file you want it to open.

Another alternative method of inserting a video was to make the still image a hyperlink to a online version of the video on a platform such as YouTube or Vimeo. To do this the button needs to be removed from the image to make it an object again rather than a button, which is done by clicking the little button next to the bin in the buttons and forms menu. Once this is done I opened the windows tab at the top with the image selected and then went to interactive elements to enable the hyperlinks menu. Once this is open you simply type the web address in with the image selected then it should work as shown below.

The last main skill I learnt was something that was in my feedback for my visual analysis at the last formative assessment. It was to do with file compression and how that effects other people when you sent it to them, so for example the submission on uni learn will be quicker using this format. When exporting as a PDF then looking at the define presents options it allows you to save your PDF at a much smaller size whilst maintaining the quality as much as possible which is something that will prove very useful.

After Effects Showreel - Wednesday 21st March

This is another session that I missed due to a sporting commitment, however I have tried to recreate the outcome of the session as fully as possible. This workshop was about showcasing all of the work that we had created in these workshops throughout the whole year and putting it into one big animation or showreel, that could be potentially shown to potential employers at an interview. The main skill with putting this together was making it flow rather than just be clear separate animations, therefore I had to put in several transitions. In this piece I used basic transitions such as change of position to go off the screen and a change in opacity. However I will explain two of the more complex ones that I did. Firstly to do the page turn transition I chose two points on the timeline and applied a keyframe at each for both the fold direction and fold position. I then went to the first keyframe and changed the fold direction to -60 so that it folded away from the bottom right corner and for the fold position I dragged the crosshairs that showed the point down towards the original position until it was laid flat on the surface. I then moved to the second keyframe and pulled the crosshairs for fold position up towards the top left corner of the piece until the fold process was complete and it was completely off the screen, this can be seen below.

The second advanced transition I used was also applied at the start of the piece to a letter to flip it. To do this I had to enable 3D editing, to do this I clicked on the cube on the bar that appears above the list of layers. Both of these examples use the Y axis rotation which allows for the object to be spun around on the spot. In both instances I applied two keyframes and then at the first have the rotation as zero and at the second it was -180. However, in the actual transition I had two opacity keyframes at roughly the same points as the Y axis rotation ones and had it fade out as it rotated to reveal the next animation. Both of these examples can be seen below.

The final outcome of this workshop can be seen below.

After Effects Showreel from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.

Types of Bread - Wednesday 28th February

This workshop was about experimenting with different media in order to create type. The first part of the session was just experimenting on one letter with ways of creating letters. Some experimentations will be shown below.

This was my first idea and it is a little rugged on the edges purely because it was made from a full piece of bread but the only way of cutting it out was by eating it. This idea did not get taken further just because of the amount of time it took to do one so to do a full alphabet would involve eating a lot of bread.

This design is made up of lots of pieces of bread which I ripped up and then press back together in order to make a cube. I then drew on the top with a pencil but pressed down so that it indented into the bread.

This was the idea that inspired the full alphabet, however due to the fact it needs the crust means that we had to modify the method in order to be able to make the full alphabet. I made this by using a knife and scratching the top surface off of the crust to create a contrast between the two textures. However for the final we just used the crusts of normal pieces of bread and then ripped them to form letters that contrasted with the white centre of the bread.