updates and what i've been upto. (personal development blog 3)

So so so. This is whats been happening with me.
It is currently 3.40 in the morning (saturday night is it, or sunday morning) so this may not make much sense as i am very tired.

First off, you should know by know i'm a massive film geek! all i do is watch films and all i wanna do i watch films. SO! films i've seen recently. JUNO! Wow, fantastic, brilliant. A film that is unbelievably funny and it doesn't have to be stupid. Fans of Little Miss Sunshine, sideways and other quirky dramas will LOVE this. CLOVERFIELD another surprisingly good film. NONE STOP fun, there is always something to keep you going. Only critism is you get to see too many close ups of the monster. when its from a far or on the video camera screen your like "wow, what is it" and you can't make up your mind...is it a fish, is it a dinosaur, but then they show you it and then your like " oh, so thats it" kind of takes away the edge. RATATOUIE or how every its spelt, Again FANTASTIC, i rented it, then i bought it because i wanna see the specail features. unfortunitely i cant find my remote so that be comes a serious problem. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, could have been better, some of the dialouge was a bit too long and unnessercery, but the intense parts were at its best and the cinematography were great. HALLAM FOE, i have to say it i like Jamie Bell and this low bugdit flick has a treat.

NEXT
Books, i have been getting myself into the habbit of reading, so i bought myself some new books. First, SHORTCOMINGS by Adrian Tomine, a graphic novel tackerling relationship problems. I really enjoyed this, only took me two nights to read it, kept me going. Second, BLANKETS by Craig Thompson, another graphic novel about a teenager growing up and meeting a girl. I first read this when i was in my late teens (about 16-17) and it truely changed my life. I thought i'd go back to it to see if i feel the same. AND yes, the story is really touching. I decided that i want to make a film about it, and i am being deadly serious. I am going to contact Craig and pitch the idea. THIRD, STREET SKETCHBOOK, a collection of young illustrators and grafitti artists. This book is really inspiring it shows you artists work in there natural form, hense the title. I recommand this to everyone on our course.

LAST
What have i been upto, well i can tell you that i haven't been doing the critical studies essay, should really start that. I HAVE been making myself a website www.mystrangeworld.co.uk it is still under construction, the idea is...i am going to change the style of website every other month to co-inside with the main feature. At the moment it looks all dirty, that is because the feature is going to be a gallery i have been working on called TORTURE.
I have also created some more posters for the soundpeople gig promotions, although i haven't been paid again. You shoudl be able to see the previous posters around leeds now.
AND very last, i have continued to keep up with my doodle pad and it is full of wonderful sketches, this will be available to view on my website. also i rented out a video camera from college. They are much fun.

Ice Age (personal development part 1 blog 2)

THis weekend i watched Ice Age 1 and 2 back to back, couldn't believe how bad ice age one as aged. ( could have thrown in a bad joke then, about it looked like to came from the ice age, but i won't...or did i just do it anyway.) The first one was made in 2002 and to say Monsters Inc was 2001, Ice Age was very poor for it's time. The animal look blocky and sharpe

However, i was unbelievabally shocked when i watched the second one as it look amazing, the fur looked very good and moved well. BUT the big plus was the water, and especially when the animals went in the water. this was 4 years after the first one (2006), and what an improvement. This shows how much the CGI animation as come in such a short time.

I was going to put up some youtube links, but don't think you would be able to tell the difference on the internet.

Oscar nominations for Visual effects

The nominations are THE GOLDEN COMPASS, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: at world's end and TRANSFORMERS.

I'm a big Oscar fan, unfortunately they usually get it wrong. I can't honestly believe that Spider-man 3 or 300 did not get nominated for this award. I thought both films were visually excellant.

I agree with Pirates and Transformers both blew me away at the cinema. However if i remember rightly The Golden Compass was quite poor, haven't seen it though so i can't criticize.

Other than that saw JUNO on Sunday, thought it was brilliant. Made me laugh out loud, not because it was stupidly funny, but because it was genuinely funny. It was highlighting general life and life is funny. Fans of Little Miss Sunshine will enjoy this movie.

Final Magazine Layout

This is my final piece. I feel i could have done better.

My evaluation:
The meaning of this project was to create a magazine layout and then make that into a website. My initial thoughts were this should be easy. However the more progressed into the project I realised these is a massive difference between screen and print, text looks smaller on screen than it does on print. Colours are also different. The size of images may also change, the difference in pixels is huge, 300 for print and only 72 for web. These may all seem like small problems, but when put together they turn into one big problem.

To tackle these inconveniences I had to learn a few programs. In Design, Dreamweaver and I had to learn an understanding of HTML ad CSS. To help with the design I used techniques I had learnt from previous projects, Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator. The only program I had difficulty with was In Design; this is a program that is completely new to me. I feel I need to learn how to work to properly to be able to create something to industry standards.. This is something I will catch up on in my spare time.

I preferred the web design to the magazine layout, but I still found CSS coding very hard. I believe I have a good understanding of HTML, however I don’t think this is a lasting code and is being slowly replaced by CSS. Although I can’t see why you would use CSS on a three page website, I can see the massive advantages of CSS on a ten to hundred page site, but for something like this project HTML should be sufficient.

Looking over my final pieces as a whole I am fairly disappointed with the way they have turned out. I think with more time or better time management I could create something superior to what I have done. I would use this time to improve on the software and coding I had trouble with. Also I think the website what have looked nicer with a better navigation, however when you have a three page website it is hard to make one bigger and more in depth.
I am pleased with the magazine layout; I kept fine-tuning and improving little aspects. I don’t think it would cut it in a real magazine. There are areas that make it look unprofessional. I feel the font is still too big, which makes it look childish. The layout as a whole isn’t very experimental.

I can clearly say that a future in either magazine or web design is not for me. I enjoy the graphics side. Creating fonts, graphics and illustrating, but the actual building process, the putting together of the site and layout, the coding I find frustrating and not enjoyable.

Final Animation

Here is my final animation piece.

Not that pleased with it.

Poster Making.

Hello all.

I have recently been working for free Leeds magazine VIBRATIONS.
I'm not getting paid, but hopefully i will get some more work off the back of it.

Here are some posters.
I'm quite pleased with them.
So keep your eyes open and you will see them around leeds, in shops, colleges and those poster bins.

Personal Development Part1, blog1

First blog, for the first part of the Personal Development chapter to the course. It's a wee bit late, but as it goes better late than never.

I just picked up DIGIT magazine from April 2005, The first article to catch my eye was called ANIMATICS, maybe this is because i have just handed in my animation project.
If you can't be bothered reading it i'll sum it up. It says when George Lucas made the the original Star Wars trilogies he did his animatics hand drawn with loads of detail and used archived footage of WWII, but now with CGI technology he make use programs like Maya to do animatics much quicker.

Whilst reading this i kept on thinking the original trilogy is miles better than the prequels. And it is probably these little details that made the films better. Don't get me wrong i love CGI animations and SFX, however when it comes down to animatics you should use what gets your ideas across the best.