End of module evaluation://

Unlike most of the other modules where I’ve had quite a good understanding and experience with in terms of the skills required, the design for digital media module has definitely tested my ability to pick up new skills under intense pressure during the design practice.  After being given the choice of two different briefs, I chose to work on the Movie Season one as I felt that the opportunity of being able to work towards 5 resolutions would mean that I could experiment with different ideas more. From previous projects, it has become apparent that I tend to struggle sometimes with decision-making, where I can never seem to decide on one single idea, so the choice of 5 idents seemed more logical for myself as I get to develop a series of ideas. While working on this module, I have picked up new skills with software that is completely new to me such as Adobe After Effects and DVD Studio Pro, which has opened up new doors to graphic design. Most importantly, I think I have developed my skills with project management and design direction towards digital production. From working on this module I have definitely realized the difference in terms of design practice and managing the work load in comparison to designing for print; eventhough the format of delivery might be set already, there is a lot more to think about with things like interactivity and managing the research/development throughout the brief. This I think I have managed to a satisfactory level with the work, I realised the change in design practice quite early on, which helped identify my design direction for my idents.

To aid my development and design direction, I researched into many different forms of designs for digital media ranging from live interactive motion graphics to existing tv idents. I did this through the resource of magazine, books, design blogs and websites and documented constantly through the use of my contextual studies blog. With the digital age steadily over taking print and would most likely be the most common form of communication in the future, I needed a clear idea of the things that are happening at the moment, the possibilities of design for digital production and most importantly how people would interact with it as this is what I believe the quality that print can offer which digital media cannot currently replace.

Although I’m quite disappointed with how my final idents have turned out, I feel that my decision to focus on the concept and idea before the technical aspect of it has made my outcomes a lot more effective. I wouldn’t see the work of this module as a failure, as I have learnt a lot, which is going towards my development of who I am as a designer. In general, I think my project management skills have improved throughout this module, regular blog posts have made me more aware of my project progress, which I believe has contributed a lot towards the resolving the brief. I managed my time fairly well, allowing myself plenty of time to experiment with DVD Studio Pro, a completely new software to me. The process didn't take too long as my work had already been organised throughout the module and I had a clear concept emphasising clarity and user friendly while still reflecting the visual approach of my idents. Overall, I think my DVD worked rather well, I kept the idea as simple as I could and simply experimented with different variations while still considering the user interactive aspect. In general, I feel that my whole design process and way of working is a lot more professional, in comparison to my 1st year, when I would often do all nighters while still achieving little amounts of work, my work practice now seems more organised which has resulted in more efficient design solutions.

With the change in my design process for this module, I struggled with generating ideas during the initial stages of the project; I found it difficult to visualise my ideas while still considering the aspect of motion. I feel that this was the main issue that caused a major halt to my development, causing myself to constantly revisit my ideas, which therefore left little time for visually developing the ideas digitally.

Five things that I would do differently://

1/ Experiment with software a lot more while working on ideas – although I strongly believe that I should focus on the concept and ideas first before jumping onto a Mac, I also think that a good understanding of the software is essential towards effectively establishing a good idea.

2/ Don’t write unrealistic action plans – chances are, I won’t achieve this and would therefore affect the rest of my development, as I’ll feel that I’ll be behind on things.

3/ Clarify what I would like feedback on for my crit’s – resulting in more focused/relevant feedback.

4/ Focus my ideas and take more risks with my concepts.

5/ I think the main issue with my idents, is the lack of engaging motion to them for the start, as much as I wanted to maintain the standard subtitle format, I could have experimented with kinetic type a bit more, which would have determined the rest of the development and resolve to the brief.

Rational://

Subject://
Tv idents that  promote a season of films that feature Stephen Chow.

Concept://
Design five 10 second idents that function individually and as a set that promotes the chosen genre of films. Chow is a well known actor in Hong Kong but in contrast is practically unknown in the UK, my concept is to promote a season of his films that would introduce a different approach to comedy towards a UK based audience.

Idea://
The set of films I have chosen are quite unknown to the British audience, therefore I couldn't really use the imagery from the films to remind or relat to them. With only 10 seconds to draw their interest I had to design something that was both engaging and informative while still reflecting the tone and style of the films. With this in mind my aim was to promote the films to people who wouldn't really know what to expect, I decided to use the idea of subtitles as a way of engaging with the audience, as it would be based on a section of the dialogue from each film. The viewers would essentially get a glimpse of the type of film through a means of the subtitles without actually being shown actual footage. Each ident would be based on the use of subtitles for the 1st few seconds before it gets interrupted by the title sequence.

Audience://
Movie lovers who enjoy trying something new, people who are into international cinema and comedy. Idents are aimed at being broadcasted on Film4

Tone of voice://
Lighthearted, vibrant rather random - following the tone of Chow's films.

Solution://
Five 10 second idents that utilise the concept of subtitles taken from the actual films to engage, inform and provide viewers with an idea of the season of films.

Concluded://

The final packaging for DVD.
Following on from the DVD interface, I wanted to the keep the visual appearance of the packaging quite similar; simple and bold, reflecting the look of my idents in general. The packaging is printed on 180gsm card and folded around the cd case. The packaging itself contains the specification of each brief and details of the dvd's content.

Final DVD interface screen grabs://

Screen grabs of final dvd interface://////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

DVD development 02://

Experimenting with different transition ideas for the DVD interface. I've tried to utilise the combination of vector shapes and simple motion to create an interesting sense of movement, that would be incorporated into the dvd interface throughout. I wanted the dvd to reflect certain elements of the work within it, therefore the black & white have been used as the main colours.

DVD development - circles from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

Small problem during development! Not entirely sure why, but this issue happened twice during the process of putting my DVD together. As DVD Studio Pro works similar to Indesign, in a way that it doesn't host the files within itself, but instead links to external files, losing linked files due to moving, folders etc can be extremely problematic. This happened to me, as I was backing up my work onto an external hard drive. Luckily for me, this issue was resolved simply by restarting the application and running it from user work.


DVD development - lines from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

Working on DVD Studio Pro://
Constructing the dvd with DVD Studio Pro for the first time. Spent about 2 days getting to grips with the software and putting it all together. The software itself didn't seem to complicated, but it was the file management that was difficult. I also wanted to keep the research, development slide shows concise, reflecting a common theme with the use of simple shapes and motion. Therefore, everything had to be pre-prepared, ordered and organised into folders ready to be imported. 

DVD interface://

Development work for dvd interface and visual approach.
My concept for the dvd interface is emphasized on the clarity and ease of use. Throughout my ident's there isn't really a common visual theme that I could run with, the only common thing being the fact that majority of my ident's are vector based that utilise simple motion. Therefore I decided to keep the visual appearance clean and bold for the interface. Colour wise, there isn't really a particular colour that reflects the whole project either so the decision was to use black & white tones with purple being the 3rd colour as it identifies with the colour used throughout the blog for this module. This would hopefully achieve a clean, clear and concise appearance throughout the DVD, which I'm looking to develop for the packaging.

DVD opening 01 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

Initial idea and first visual representation for what I'm looking achieve in terms of interactivity and visual approach. I've kept the shapes, type and use of colour/tones quite limited, putting emphasis on the clean interface and the motion that runs throughout, hopefully offering an enjoyable and functional DVD interface.

DVD opening 02 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

Developement, focusing more on the small details with motion and timing. I wanted to create something interesting but not anything that would be too long to annoy the user.

DVD interface ideas://

Initial ideas and development of the dvd interface. Focusing on the layout and visual approach while still considering the functional and interactive aspects of the design.

Final idents://

The 5 final developed idents are presented as a final presentation.
To be honest, I'm not very satisfied with my finals at all; I focused a lot of my time trying to figure out a solid idea that I could run with throughout all my ideas, and after putting all together I don't really think the subtitles work as well as I planned. The crit feedback I recevied definitely helped structure my design development but looking back, I don't think I had a very strong idea so in a way I was 'polishing a turd'.

Now that they're all completed and put together as a completed set, I can see the areas I could have changed at an earlier stage. I think the main problem that made me struggle was the fact that all the films were quite different in a sense that the only common aspect of it would be the fact that it's got Stephen Chow in. I found it difficult to link them all together as a set while still being able to work as individual idents.

However, whatever's done is done, there are things that could have been improved but for now, I should just focus on the DVD interface and look into packaging the dvd!

5 Idents promoting a season of Stephen Chow films from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

Screen grabs of final idents:///

Shaolin Soccer Development://

Development from storyboards for the tv ident promoting Shaolin Soccer, a film directed and featuring Stephen Chow as the leading actor. The film is basically a blend of football and Shaolin Kung Fu put together with Chow's trademark comedy. I wanted to the keep the idea quite simple, focusing on the subject of football, while still incorporating the subtitled beginning.  The film is quite fast paced, with highly exaggerated CGI effects. I decided to use the motion of a dot to represent a football, which would knock the subtitles out of place, leaving space for the title to move into frame.


Shaolin Soccer 01 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

First development, I decided to use a grey fading to white gradient as the background as it it made it slightly more engaging. I limited the colour palette to black aswell as I wanted the emphasis to be on the motion and the transitions rather than the subjective matter. The first attempt was just to test out whether I have picked a suitable dialogue for the subtitles and also to review the general timing that I had planned from my storyboards. I think the main issue with the first attempt that I have noticed is the timing, the beginning seems quite slow, until it is interrupted quite suddenly by the black dot. From there on, everything seems quite rushed. I think from here, I need to play around with balancing out the motion more, probably adding something moving at the start to accompany the type.


Shaolin Soccer 02 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
Minor tweaks were made to this, with emphasis on the timing. The final transition with the black circle has been adjusted so it runs a lot smoother. I am still unsure about whether it works, the motion of the football coming out of nowhere just seems too abrupt.


Shaolin Soccer 03 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
Further developing this, I decided to add a bit more motion to the beginning of the ident. I decided add some clouds to make it seem as though the ident's falling from the sky, with the dot falling ahead and bouncing back from the ground. I think this definitely makes the ident a lot more dynamic in terms of the motion. Aswell as the major change with added motion at the start, I've also adjusted the timing by an extra second; shifting the animation half a second earlier, allowing more time for the title to appear.

6 Million Dollar Man Development://

6 Million Dollar Man is a comical film featuring Stephen Chow whose on screen character gets blown to pieces by triads. But then get revived as an almost state of the art robot who can only transform into household appliances such as a rice cooker, microwave etc.

With this ident, I wanted the text to be affected by a glitchy, malfunctioning effect that would resemble the idea of unreliable technology. (referencing the film) I selected a rather random part of the dialogue to use for the subtitles, as this would seem rather bizarre to the viewer, making want to find out more hopefully. It also reflects the whole tone of the film on how it's quite random and quirky.



6 Million Dollar Man 01 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
 First attempt:///
About 10 photographs of the tv static was taken and put into a sequence acting as the main glitchy effect throughout the ident. The noise was added ontop aswell to replace the actual audio of the film. I kept the colours to a minimal just to keep it clear and concise. This first attempt demonstrates the effect of the static really, so far I think it works quite well, but need a lot of work to make the timing and overall ident work.


Unfortunately due to the encoding issues on Vimeo, the ident looks really pixilated and distorted, which doesn't do it any justice at all. Therefore I have included a few static frames of the ident below, which hopefully represent the detail of the idents better.

6 Million Dollar Man 02 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
Development://
Aswell at matching up the subtitles and balancing out the glitchy effect thoughout, I've started applying more adjustments to the text, playing around with flickering effects. The only issue I found was that the whole ident still looked quite static, with little movement, therefore played around with overlaying textures to give a more digital finish.

I think the resolution represent the storyboards well, obviously I had to make a few adjustments such as the timing but overall, it's achieved what I had in mind. Throughout working on After Effects, I was able to realize the design practice, the importance of storyboarding and having an idea to work on first.

Minor things to alter before exporting to final://
- It says '5 million dollar man' this will be changed to '6 million dollar man' instead!
- From the feedback on the crit, Stephen Chow season doesn't get mentioned much in the majority of the idents, so the final web address will be altered to include the details regarding 'Stephen Chow movie Season'

Action plan://

With just over 1 week left before the final hand in, an action plan sounds ideal to help organise and plan ahead on what else I need to do.

- Complete and blog ident development & finals
- Blog DVD interface research
- Blog developed storyboards
- Develop DVD interface
      < Prepare images
      < Development/variations
      < Organise & link files
- Ideas for DVD packaging
- Blog research on Film4
- Photography remaining support work for blog/PDF/DVD

AND THAT'S IT

Final Crit://

I aimed to get all 5 roughly completed for the crit as there is still the DVD interface to work on, but have failed by a long way! Nevertheless, below are the 3 closest to finishing/ complete but are open for suggestions and feedback.

Best viewed on full screen!

God of Cookery 04 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.


God of Gamblers 03 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.


King of Comedy 05 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

FIVE questions I would like to ask://

01/ Audio - incorporate original audio from film which would syncronize with subtitles, have no audio or simple sound effects?
02/ Do the current idents work? - Is concept/ design direction clear from my idents + support work?
03/ Does the concept justify the simplicity of some of my idents? ( ie should I work more on the visuals or are my ideas communicated well enough and I shouldn't overcomplicate it)
04/ Does my blog seem to represent my ongoing investigation/ development or are there significant areas that are absent and needs addressing?
05/What do you think of my choice of colour and type? Are they appropriate as a set etc?

God of Gamblers Development://

As suggested by the title of the film; God of Gamblers is generally about gambling and triad but with a typical Stephen Chow comedy twist to it. I wanted to keep the theme quite straight forward therefore decided to use casino chips as the main imagery. The ident starts off with subtitles again taken from the actual film, the chips will then start to fall, covering up the subtitles. I had the idea drawn out quite clearly on the storyboards and technically it wasn't too difficult. 


God of Gamblers 01 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
First attempt, the chips were first drawn out on Ai and imported into Ae for the animating.



God of Gamblers 02 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
Another hour or so was put into this, I changed the font and the background colour, hoping to steer towards the theme/ colours of a casino, I also added more chips falling onto the surface. I wanted to cover up the whole table, but this was rather time consuming and I started to question whether it would be necessary to cover the green completely. Although it wasn't technically complicated, the amount of chips I had to animate made this quite time consuming and confusing, particularly after working on so many layers, speeds etc. I'm not particularly happy with this due to the motion of the chips flying onto the surface, but will see what the feedback's like from the crit.

God of Cookery Development://

Development from storyboards. The ident starts off with the standard subtitle format that I have decided to use throughout all the designs. Because the film God of Cookery is basically about cooking with a comedy - exaggerated twist, I decided to incorporate this into the design. The idea of this is to 'cut up' the subtitles so they would fall to pieces and eventually end up as a bowl of noodles. I followed the storyboards accordingly and the results wern't too bad. 


God of Cookery from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
The first one was to simply test out the timing, and the range of technical areas that I needed to address. I wanted to get an idea of how it would be constructed and how long it would take before I committed to a particular visual style. From this example, there are plenty of errors, one major issue is the timing of everything. Initial problems with this so far is the timing, it's wasting too much time falling down for no reason and have therefore left no time for the program details at the end.



God of Cookery 02 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
With the 2nd one, I paid more attention to detail, particularly with the blade flying through leaving subtle cut marks on the type. I've also tested out different typefaces/ layouts for the final title sequence and incorporated this into the development.


God of Cookery 03 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
Timing has been improved a lot more, the general idea of this is beginning to come together and I am now at the stage where I can adjust minor things and start consider smaller details that might enhance the final resolution. Currently, I haven't really considered the audio for this ident, It seems to work well with no dialogue behind it, but sound effects might be something to look into.

DVD studio pro intro://

We had a 3 hour introduction lesson on DVD pro studio, where we learnt about the method of preparing files to import and a basic idea of constructing the DVD content. I got the basic idea of the software and was made aware about the possibilities and limits of the software, which has allowed me to start thinking about how I would want my DVD interface to be.

King of Comedy Development://

Because my set of ident ideas are generally quite different,  I decided to tackle each one individually first starting with what I had initially thought would be the easiest one. So here are the development, mock ups and experiments for the film : King of Comedy

The basic concept is to show the subtitles at the start, accompanied by the audio, which would intrigue the audience as it's in a different language meaning that they'll be forced to read the subtitles to understand what is going on. I wanted to focus on the idea so keeping the motion as minimal and appropriate was essential, rather than letting the software take over.


King of comedy 01 from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
This is my first attempt, mainly to test out the timing and to get an idea of how my storyboards would compare for the other idents. I think it's worked rather well, the subtitles go well with the audio, which makes it quite interesting. From playing around with this idea, I have discovered that 10 seconds is an incredibly short time to play around with. I found that I had to limit the dialogue to be able to fit in the title in the end.

I am aware that there are so many things that need changing / tweaking and I'm looking to resolve this my experimenting more with AE and developing my storyboards when I need to. Things to consider:

Audio - should it continue till the end?
Title at the end - needs to have show time and channel 4 logo
Colours - Sticking with the original white on black text for the subtitles was the initial idea, but looks a bit bland.
Type - again, the layout and choice of type? Should I go for the realistic subtitles look or experimental/ aesthetics approach?
Timing - Still a bit tight with the timing, particularly with the ending, it feels quite abrupt.




King of Comedy ident development from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

Further developed this a bit, changing the colour of the type, but mainly experimenting with the ending. I've managed to get some fonts for Chinese characters so I've been playing around those along with the layout and title sequence. I am still unsure about several things, one of them being the audio and whether it's suitable as an ident. The 'Coming soon' page seems a bit rushed, with the subtitles and everything else before, I was only left with about 3 seconds to display the program information. It was difficult to achieve a suitable layout while fitting in all the information. Perhaps the solution could be to separate the information into 2 frames?


Ident Development from Tim Wan on Vimeo.
Again, a bit more tweaking around and altering minor areas. The starting point is pretty much how I planned it to be, but I'm still not sure whether to stick with it or try to be more experimental. I've also changed the background colour to white as I felt that the black gave it quite a dark impression especially as people won't know what the film is. The audio was stripped off for this one and it seems to work aswell, I guess this might be a point to raise during the crits. Finally, I spent a bit more time playing with the ending again, this time, I took away the 4 logo, so there's less distraction from the title. The website for the channel would then be displayed right at the end for about 1 second.

Development

After dedicating a few extra days on refining my concept through storyboarding, I have finally started to translate my ideas into digital. These were not really ideas, but simply a few experiments to test out the timing, getting a rough idea of how fast things will need to move and realistically how many seconds I'll have to reserve for displaying the title and channel four logo at the end.

You might have noticed that I've started uploading my videos through Vimeo now, I think the playback quality is better, the player itself looks a bit better than youtube and it actually displays the full video without cutting a seconds off the end. It'll take longer as they won't get converted straight away and that, but I think with good time management and a bit of patience, this shouldn't be a major issue!


Idea Experiment from Tim Wan on Vimeo.

Developed storyboards - Digital://

Further developing my storyboards - focusing on visualising the ideas, exploring the use of typography, choice of colours and design direction so far. 

DVD interface://

Developed Storyboards://

With these storyboards, I have decided and focused my ideas around the concept of incorporating the original audio along side subtitles at the start. This would act as the main theme throughout all the idents, which would make them easy to recognise as a set. The storyboards show how I have developed and tweaked some of my ideas, paying more attention to detail, timing and trying to interpret my ideas onto paper as accurately as I can.

The idea of each ident would start as a sequence of subtitles based on part of the selected film's dialogue. I wanted to films to speak for themselves yet didn't want to spoil it for the viewers, therefore only giving them a preview through audio and written text.