3. The Posterzine

In this workshop, we created more posters and zines only this time focused on our face. We were given our ID image to begin with and we deconstructed our face. Then we got some textured paper and re-created an image of us using the tones on of the texture. We also had our faces scanned against the scanner. Here are some of my images from the workshop below:

3. Cinema 4D Packaging

In this workshop, we created packaging on Cinema 4D such as a drink can and bottle. This workshop was good because we got an experience of how we can design our own 3d packaging on Cinema 4d and then make it look real with textures and shadows. Here are some of the images i've created below.

Here is a design I've incorporated within this workshop using the same Cinema 4D file. I've created my own 'XO' energy drink that's been a common theme within my process and production work. The can is matte black that was inspired by this monster can. I've kept the design simple to demonstrate how the product looks within my own mockup.

3. The Hand

XO'' -The Hand from Faisal Islam on Vimeo.

So from my sketchbook, I've decided to use this XO as part of my designs and collaborate it between theory and p&p because it's one of my main interest points. This is an animation that was mainly focusing on handwritten drawings being looped with some additional effects. I've also included The Weeknd's 'Starboy' Instrumental from a copyright free website.

Here are my drawings below that are 3 same images but with slight changes to form movements.

2. The Poster

 

In this workshop, we were cutting out letters to make up a poster that is part of music lyrics. We did individual posters then a group collab where we all assigned a line or two. This workshop was good because it made me think about layout and fitting all the content in. This will help me when I create posters in the future.

1. Zines

In this workshop, we had Christian introduce Zines to us. This workshop was great to learn how to make paper zines. I will be considering zines/brochures for my final outcomes for my studio project. We were experimenting with drawing information we hear, this was quite interesting because it created a storyboard telling a narrative.

2. Cinema 4d - Textures and Particles

In comparison to the last Cinema 4d session, this was much more detailed creating different little animations on Cinema 4d. Here are some screenshots below and my videos below:

Cinema 4D - Tube from Faisal Islam on Vimeo.

Cinema 4D - PostModernism from Faisal Islam on Vimeo.

2. Rotoscoping

In this second workshop, we created a second video and used this material to rotoscope. I then used different effects in every loop and created this retro looking style. This is my video below:

Rotoscoping from Faisal Islam on Vimeo.

1. Cinema 4d - Logo

In the first Cinema 4d workshop, we created 2d artwork on Illustrator and transformed them into a 3d rotating animation. I've designed this logo using shapes which was inspired by The Weeknd with his XO label. For the animation to run smooth, we had to add flooring, light and shadows to make it seem natural. I quite like using Cinema 4d and it just helps having step by step guidance on how to use the software.

Cinema 4D - Logo Rotation from Faisal Islam on Vimeo.

1. Exploring Geometry

Year 2's Process and Production begins with Sara's workshop on Exploring Geometry. This workshop allowed us to create shapes on Illustrator that were edited further using motion graphics production techniques on After Effects to create this animation. This was also an introduction to using expressions, much developed effects, and the wiggler. Here is my animation below:

Geometry Shapes from Faisal Islam on Vimeo.

I think my favourite bit from this workshop is how you can manipulate the shape to another, so in mine it went from a triangle to a square. The wiggler effect is also pretty cool and can be useful if the animation could be linked to music and sound waves. Overall it's been a successful session.

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                                 Welcome To My Graphics Blog
                                 Year One
                                 Theory As Practice
                                 Process and Production
                                 Foundation Studio Practice

                              -------------------------------------------------










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Sketchbook Lecture

In this lecture, we had guest lecturer Jay Payne talk about using sketchbooks in our practice. Here is the notes from the lectures:


Sketchbooks as research
A Bridge between Theory & Practice
—————————————

Exercise
Use your sketchbooks to make visual notes during the lecture.
Relax & do not censor this process.
This is not a drawing exercise but a doodling one.
My Practice
Graphic Designer,Technical illustrator & Motionographer
Many areas of work - difficult to define
Constantly evolving - Layers of paint – show Website - contextual portfolio
A Polymath - 'A man can do all things if he will' - (Leon battista alberti 1400's)
My Research
About - Visualising the Invisible
Starting point - Show Video
Now - Autoethnographic investigation of my sketchbooks
Moving towards - Meta Reality - Drawing things that dont exist
Theoretical Context
Confrontations with the Unconscious
Jung - 'Taking inner life seriously' - reinforcing the sketchbook
Mandala / Tarot as a device for mapping the inner world
Deleuze & Rhizomic learning
Discoveries
The difficulty of Research for Creative practicioners
Breaking the rules - A natural resistance to established dogma
Exploring the Nowhere (boundary) - the edges of the real - show Video
Solidity & Fluidity in my practice & thinking
Bergson - Metaphysics - stillness & movement
Eisenstien on Disney - Fluidity in animation. our fascination with the flame.
Zigmunt Bauman - liquid modernity - DIssolving established modernity
Relevance
How is this useful?
The importance of sketchbooks
The importance of Exploration & continued learning
Removal of solid thinking - the 'Am I allowed?'
So how do I get an A?

To sum up this lecture, we learnt that sketchbook is a very powerful way of working because you can jot down any ideas straight away. The process of is it wrong doesn't matter because it's all about developing the ideas. He showed us his website and went over all the pieces of work he has created/ Most of these are based on drawings in sketchbooks and a lot was just self taught. This was pretty interesting because the only technique was to use a sketchbook to begin with.

This is an example of a mixed media sketchbook. It's just a visual example of what a sketchbook could look like. There isn't a rule where it has to be neat and professional, it can even be scribbles. It's a way of just letting you draw with no control over how perfectionist it has to look. I quite like the look of a sketchbook that is all rough because it shows that there's so much ideas, thoughts and considerations going on. It's a way of collecting those and just putting it down on paper.

Animation Heroes

In this lecture, we were looking at animation in depth. We began doing a quiz on Disney films. tv and games. Then looked into different types of animations and how it effects us and the theories behind each one.

There is a lot of controversy in some of these animations that we just never notice. For example, Yogi Bear lives in a safari park but steals picnics. We also looked at sofa satires such as Family Guy and The Simpsons which both are very popular and recognised. These shows tackles a lot of press in the news in their own satire way.

Then there was girl culture where there's franchises of cartoon characters such as Dora the Explorer which is an example that created merchandise and it's mainly about making money.

South Park is the uncut version of a satire, they deal with serious and bold subjects to pass on a message to the audience. It's very much always up to date with the news and they embed that in their show.

It was interesting looking at all these various examples of animations and how much we look into it as we're grown up. There is a lot of adult humor embedded within these cartoons which we never used to understand. There's also a level of animation of how realistic the characters can look. For example, Tomb Raider is an animation that looks very uncanny and realistic compared to Spongebob Squarepants which is just animated shapes.

Post Modernism

This is another catch up post on Post Modernism. This is a departure from modernism. This includes skeptical interpretations on a lot of subject matters. It's from the late 20th century and it's often associated with deconstruction.

Here is an example of Post Modernism. It is a very skeptical styled poster that is usually political. It's captioned with almost inappropriate terms and it's using different portraits as a mockery.

Design & Emotion

This lecture was during my operation so here's a quick overview of what I've missed. It was about emotional and meaningful communication within design. There was a load of image illusions in the lecture that effect people differently. These are created with different colours, angles and patters that an eye cannot understand. We filter these and make sense of what's happening differently. Our eyes can deceive us. Here are some examples of illusion:

This is an example where we get tricked with the angle. Our eyes are deceived because the outline is a face on both sides. It looks like it's the center then from the left. There are many illusions out there and it's just a quirky way of understanding different perspective within graphic design.

Here is another eye tricking image where some people can read this. It's the right letters all jumbled up but our eyes process all this information enabling us to still be able to read this. As it says, if the first and last letters are in the right position then we are still able to read it all. That is how fast our eyes and brains react when we read something.

Type

Typeface or font? So similar yet so different. Typeface is referring to the design of the collection. Whereas font is referring to the collection of letters, numbers and symbols. In other words, fonts put together make up the typeface. In the lecture, we looked at Jan Tschichold's The New Typography which had some principles about utilising white space and having the element balance of symmetric for the font.

‘The physical embodiment of a collection of letters, numbers, symbols, etc. (whether it’s a case of metal pieces or a computer file) is a font. When referring to the design of the collection (the way it looks) you call it a typeface.’ – Mark Simonson, designer

I found the next bit interesting when we looked at Herbert Bayer's Universal Alphabet (1925). This font had no capital letters and looked very modern till this day. Bayer was a student at the Bauhaus school and created this in 1925. For some strange reason, the letters G and K was highlighted which we can't explain. The typeface was easy to read and it focuses on the geometrical shapes on the font. This featured the bauhaus elements of perfect circles and lines which was known through the Bauhaus research in the previous post.

Along the lecture, we started looking at kinetic type which I found interesting, seeing type visually pleasing with some animation and movement. This video below is one of the examples from the lecture that I liked the flow of. I thought this video was a good example to demonstrate how kinetic type works. This also ties in with our post and production workshops we do, experimenting on kinetic typography. 

29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE from TO-FU on Vimeo.

It is clear to say that movies and tv shows also use a lot of kinetic type for the opening and ending credits which we've seen examples of. Here are some independent examples of kinetic type I've been looking at:

Scream | Kinetic Typography from Nicolás Funes on Vimeo.

This kinetic typography was created based on the Scream franchise. They've selected the traditional phone call dialogues and created this kinetic video that interacts with the dialogue. I like the composition of this video with the colours of black, red and white which represents Scream. I selected this video because I grew up watching this franchise and it's great how you can tie interest with designs. This will keep my head open minded when it comes to doing work, relating it to me as much as I can.

In the seminar, we cut up these 10 shapes and created our own fonts. Here are some of the letters we created below during the seminar:

Typography Transcription - Final

We have here the last physical studio session with John today, and it's all about creating and finalising our font. I enjoyed the previous two sessions because I got to explore and experiment with different fonts and now I will create a full alphabet on just a singular font. So far I liked the simplistic, clean and symmetric look for my font so I will be using this theory and putting it into practice on my font. Here are the images for my final font:

The creation of this font went well. I used an ruler and grid paper to create lines that would form into each letter in the alphabet. I kept it symmetric and clean just how I wanted and I quite like the simplistic effect with the font. The grid paper helped drawing up this font because I was able to reference each point so I knew where to draw. It also helped me space it out equally so the aesthetics look pleasing. The rounded shapes like the O and Q were probably the toughest to do but I managed to do it nicely by taking my time and completing it in my own free time. This enabled me to get the best results with my font.

Cinema 4D

In today's last CC suite, we had Stephen introducing Cinema 4D. We started watching an introduction video that demonstrates how Cinema 4D is used in reality, and there was some amazing examples. It's used a lot in the design industry and it has a lot of different purposes you can use it towards. This is a show reel demonstrating how well Cinema 4D is used in the industry.

So in this workshop, we were going through different tasks and exploring the interface of this new software. Here are some screenshots below of some of the tasks:

This is a packaging task where we experimented with the interface, You can zoom in and out of the shot. The packages are made up with textures.

This is a little animation that was created of a cloner spinning. We changed some of the properties, added a light and made it our own. The animation I made will be down below.

This is the independent bit where we create our own text and make a short animation. I decided to use the word 'HYPE' perhaps because of the mood during this session. After all, we were just going with the flow and it was all fun and chilled. I liked the look of the 3D text so I will be turning this into some sort of animation.

Just before I decided to render my video, I added a texture and a gradient background which gives it a nice clean look. Using the texture and pattern just made the render extremely low. So I changed the settings to low resolution and rendered it eventually. Here are the two videos from the workshop:

Cinema 4D - Cloner Spin from Faisal Islam on Vimeo.

HYPE - Cinema 4D from Faisal Islam on Vimeo.

Year One Finale - Collaborative Film

I present you the last After Effects workshop. This session, we created a 10 second animation with the theme of 'Sky'. We had to create any object that flies through the sky from right to left. Then we collaborated as a group and put all our work in a compilation. For this animation, I designed an alien on Photoshop, which was made up of different layers to enable some animation effects. I also included some skies. The colour code was set for everyone's work so there's some consistent theme throughout. Here are some screenshots from the session:

So continuing the usual routine, I saved this PSD file and imported it into After Effects. Then I set up my composition and organised how I want my frame set. I added animations to the alien and the sky. We had to ensure it starts off as a blank blue background and also ends the same. This way, the next student's work would flow in. We set up a Null object on our creations and that determined the movement from right to left. The best feature I liked on my animations is the way the sky drops down and goes up. I liked the effect it gives introducing a crazy alien in the sky. Once I was happy with my animation, I rendered the animation in a way that the background was transparent so it can be put together. We then shared our animations on the server which got put together by Sara.

To end our final session, we had the opportunity to end it on a good note and watch all of our animations. Throughout the year, I've learned so much on using After Effects coming from a background with no experience in it. It has been fun almost doodling around on After Effects and just having the chance to do some explorations. Below is my animation for this session, and also the group animation that we completed.

The Skies from Faisal Islam on Vimeo.

Group B Finale - 16:40 from Motion-go on Vimeo.

Typography Transcription - Development

This second session on Typography Transcription, we created full alphabet designs that was influeced from our references. I was working on this graph lined paper which is slightly different from the last session. I also used tracing paper so my design looked clean. Here are some images from the workshop:

Here is one font I roughly finished that was influenced from the first session. I noticed as we was drawing out each letters, some were more challenging than others. It was a good problem solving task that we completed. I like the simplistic, ruler look so neatness for this design was key. However, the design below is more freehand. As you can see, that is the image where I got my influences from with the curves. To make this font better, I would of added colour but I quite liked the greyscale look. This font wasn't too hard to draw and the letters were decent and equal in size.

It was another good session drawing up the full alphabet. The next session will be the final transcription workshop so it would be interesting to see how my final font looks like. I think I will stick to the ruler method because I'm not so confident with my drawings so doing it freehand just doesn't look as good as a smarter font.