Presentation Details - Thursday 4th May

To show my presentation I have decide to show the foundation studio projects in a PDF pitch format, one of which is an interactive PDF built using the skills from one of the process and production workshops. I have made a website in order to show my 3 developed process and production blog posts for the presentation, however they also feature on the blog. The 5 theory as practise posts will just be shown on the blog format.

Process and Production links:

Rob session link - http://benbowdendesign.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/cinema-4d-thursday-30th-march.html

John session link - http://benbowdendesign.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/final-type-workshop-thursday-16th-march.html

Sara session link - http://benbowdendesign.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/after-effects-workshop-thursday-27th.html


Theory as Practise links:

http://benbowdendesign.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/design-emotion-seminar-monday-28th.html

http://benbowdendesign.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/brand-vs-anti-brand-thursday-24th.html

http://benbowdendesign.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/postproducing-monday-13th-march.html

http://benbowdendesign.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/animation-seminar-monday-3rd-april.html

http://benbowdendesign.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/animation-monday-6th-february.html

Persona Website Builder - Thursday 6th April

This was a different workshop than usual which only lasted for an hour with Sara. It was about looking at a website which we can use to document our portfolio of work, this will become more useful in the second year when applying to placement. The website we were advised to used was called Persona as it enables much more visual customisation options for the pages of your website to truly reflect your design. On my website homepage pictured above, I chose to have links to my other forms of social media on which I document my work as well a very small personal statement, the same as the one on this blog. Then to the right of the homepage there is a cycle of images that just repeat, I felt it was important not to have too many as most people will not be on the page for a long time therefore if too many were in the cycle most would not be seen. One of the screenshots shows the various images that appear in the rotation. The other two screenshots show how the page looks at different points when you scroll down it.


Since this I have later changed my design onto Wix as I personally felt as if it was easier to navigate and use than Persona. The website is now live and has 3 pages one for each of the different process and production workshops. At the moment there is just 3 developed blog post on the site however over time I plan to add to this and start including some of my own work away from university. As well as this I will also add more of my university work to this eventually to build upon this and use it as an online portfolio of work. There is screenshots below of the pages of my website as well as the link for the website being in the links section on the right hand side of the blog.

Cinema 4D - Thursday 30th March

This was a session that I was really looking forward to due to the power of the software and its limitless possibilities. This is a software that I believe that if you can get to grips to it and understand it, then it puts you at a great advantage in the world of design and can be used to enhance your work. We went through lots of different steps in order to make different scenes to experiment with, just so that we got to understand the different features of the software slightly better. This is the initial result below however I will be looking to use the skills that I learnt to go back to this in the near future to try and make a more complex outcome.

First Cinema 4D video from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.

I have since gone back to improve upon my Cinema 4D skills through my own research. I looked at various tutorials, however the one I found the most useful and well explained was the one below.
This video was well explained and was suitable for my current beginner skill set. The skills I learnt from this tutorial allowed me to develop a short animation which is a clear improvement upon my first use of Cinema 4D. The end result that I produced is shown below. The idea is that this is a particles to text transition in which the camera pans around the text as more of it forms. To do this I used the MoText tool and applied a texture onto it, which is something that I had learnt in the original workshop with Stephen. However the transition was made with the PolyFX tool which then had to be placed in the same place as the start of the text which meant using the different camera views, another skill from the workshop, in order to get the animation to include the whole text. This can be seen in the screenshot as the yellow line which in the first screenshot is at the start and in the second, when the text has been formed, is then at the end.

The next screenshot shows the PolyFx layer half way through the transition in a non rendered format, you can see how as the yellow line passes over the piece the letters form underneath it.

The final two screenshots show all the layers that I used in the piece. On the MoText layer you can see two textures applied however in the second of the two screenshots under the tag section and then the selection option, you can see the code R1 entered. This is so that the black texture only acts as an outline on the text however if I was to type in R2 then the black would be the main colour with a white outline.

The final outcome is below.

Improved Cinema 4D video from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.

Flying finale - Thursday 23rd March

This lesson was about learning the skills on After Effects that we have learnt in the previous weeks in order to make a whole class collaborative project with each person having a small 10 second clip of a larger film. The idea was to show something flying through the air so that the end product would show a sort of journey through the skies encountering lots of different creatures and objects. Below are my personal 10 second clip and then the full class version of the animation featuring my animation.

Flying Pig from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.

A - MID afternoon finale from Motion-go on Vimeo.

Final Type workshop - Thursday 16th March

Today was about choosing one font that we had created in the previous weeks in order to create one final alphabet. This was a font that I had created in the past however it lacked consistency for example stem widths and sizes. This was something that I tried to amend in this version. I am fairly happy with the final product as the stem widths have become more consistent however it could be improved as the size of letters differs slightly throughout the alphabet.

I have now gone back and developed this further after reading through my notes from other workshops. I used the skills I learnt in one of the Adobe Creative Suite Workshops based on Morpholo that allowed you to edit letterforms in illustrator. I then used this to try and make an existing font and try and change it into my own font. Initially I used the original scan in order to trace around the letters, drawing them on screen and cleaning them up slightly.

I then put this into illustrator in which I chose one letterform and tried to recreate it. It took me several attempts to find a similar font that could be transformed into the desired shape. To transform it how I liked I made the text into outlines made up of anchor points.

The first picture below is my first attempt which I eventually decided to not pursue and change the font as shown in the second screenshot. And then the third screenshot is the end product, due to the design of this font being about circles. In some places I found it hard to get the curves perfect, so there is still some imperfections however I believe it is a decent attempt to create a working letterform. The one on the left is the original image and the one on the right is my recreation attempt.

Deconstructing Helvetica - Thursday 9th March

This workshop was the final creative suite workshop with Rob. For this we did a collaborative project in small groups using the deconstructed type that we made in one of our Monday seminars, in order to create a small presentation about Helvetica. We chose to use irony in our piece as Helvetica is not a glyphed font. We made 2 pages each then sent them to one person so that we could combine them all into one joint pdf file.

3D in after effects - Thursday 16th February

This workshop was a lot of fun and taught me skills which I did not previously know. We focused on giving our pieces a sense of depth and making them feel 3D through the use of camera's and perspectives.

3D from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.

This was my end product, I chose the theme of space so drew objects related to space before the workshop then scanned then on to the computer. I chose the music for the piece specifically as I felt as if once all the other drawings, except the spaceship, are no longer visible or lose focus the music then changes into a more sci-fi tone as it zooms in towards the alien. The screen shots I have taken show the use of the camera represented by the pink square, which is used so that as the piece goes on the camera moves forward past the items shown as dotted lines, creating the effect of depth in the piece. The other 2 screenshots are the drawings that I did before they were edited for the purpose of the animation.

Alphabets - Thursday 9th February

This lessons we chose from our experiments at the last experiments in order to then chose 3 fonts to develop further into a full alphabet. One font was a mixture of curves and straight edges. The next was a more experimental 3D font which I used the graph paper to try use proportions to make it have a more realistic perspective. For the third font on it own on a operate sheet, I used a compass for as much of it as possible to make a circular style font.

Interactive pdf workshop - Thursday 2nd February

I could not post the final outcome of this workshop as it is not compatible with blogger however I have posted some screenshots of the process and screens which I can explain what the general idea is. The different colour squares on the piece are not aesthetically pleasing however it made it easier to make then distinguishable as most of us were relatively new to the software. The larger squares are buttons used to perform function on the video, for example one makes it play, one stops it and so on. The play style button and the circular fading out button were both experiments to show that you can make any shape into a button. The green hatched square represents music or audio which was set up using the tool shown in the other screenshot with the speaker on and their is a similar one for the video set up also pictured. The other screenshot shows the set up of one of the buttons, the three different coloured dots shown are how the button reacts to different actions so when you hover over the button it will turn blue and when clicked it will be red. This workshop was very beneficial and is something that I have now implemented into the pdf for my next project.

Kinetic Type - Thursday 26th January

This lesson was learning new animation effects to make type move. In this lesson I learnt lots of new skills for example the uses of null objects. The screenshots above show part of the process that I went through in order to add these transitions into my work. The null objects show up on the screen as transparent red squares. They allowed me to rotate and zoom in on specific parts of objects using the null object as a focus point. This allowed for effective transitions to the colour of the object that I would zoom in on. In my animation I chose the topic of the type font Raleway. The animation gives a bit of background about the font and shows its different variations.

Raleway from Ben Bowden on Vimeo.

Introduction to Typography project - Thursday 19th January

In this workshop we started drawing rough ideas to make our own type font. This is something that I enjoyed as I feel as if the possibilities for the project are very diverse. To inform our work we looked at the work of Eric Spiekermann, Cyrus Highsmith and Kyle Cooper. I picked out a few things from what each of the designers said in each of the videos. For Spiekermann he gave a strong message that everything that exists has its own language and jargon that is unique to it. Another idea I found very interesting was the idea that every idea ever come up with has been influenced by someone or something else that the person has seen, meaning that nothing is truly new just simply a combination of experiences. This resonates with something I personally believe is very important with design that the more informed you are as a designer and about the world in general, the better the work you produce. Then Cyrus Hill suggested that his own design was the product of constant work. He reiterated the importance of always being on the look out for new design and taking notes, which is why he carries a sketchbook everywhere. Furthermore he stressed the importance of experimentation implying that you should care too much about the outcome as you are simply testing ideas, some of which inevitably will not work as well as others. Lastly the work of Kyle Cooper was interesting, like the previous two designers he stated the importance of having lots of ideas before refining your selection. He does work for films such was title sequences and credits, consequently he talked about the importance of getting into the mind of the character and reflecting the mood. The use of thin hand written type in the example featured, presenting in a distorted manner that glitches gave a creepy feel leaving the viewer on edge. This sows the importance of type and the way it is presented to provide a whole new meaning to a piece. These are things that I hope that I will take on board and illustrate within my own work that I shall develop throughout the following workshops.