Creative Futures
EOYS Fundraising
As a class, we organised two main fundraising events to raise funds for our End of Year Show and film displays.
Pub Quiz –
I was primarily a part of the Pub Quiz organisers, helping with creating categories and questions, obtaining prizes, the set up, and handling the money and tickets at the show.
Craft Fair –
I also helped out as a volunteer at the craft fair, helping my project teammate Neave to sell their products and man the stall.
Poster Design
Logo Design
I first looked at different media that have similar themes to our film, and their posters and titles. I loved the graphic design including insects into A Bug’s Life’s title however I did not want ours to look exactly the same. I also really like the handwritten appearance of Night in the Woods and Tiny Glade’s titles as they give a more charming appearance.
I came up with a lot of different possible logo designs for our poster, considering storybook styles and handdrawn. The handdrawn titles looked less serious than the font version, which I think matches our film, so I decided to do our logo by hand. I also looked at the idea of including the magnifying glass in the title.
I found this challenging as I do not have a lot of experience of Graphic Design, however I found that if I drew my design and imported it into Adobe Illustrator I can get a vectored version of our title.
Final Vector Title:
The final design is reminiscent of a magnifying glass as the words curve in a similar shape, and I wanted the word “BUG” to be magnified as if you were looking through a magnifying glass. I also added similar shapes of insect antenna onto the “U”. Although I am happy with the overall design, I do think I could have edited the vectors to be more smooth and more parallel and neat if I had given myself more time to work on it.
Poster Concept Designs
Myself and Neave both researched into and came up with a lot of poster ideas and rough layout concepts.
We then refined our favourites.
Neave and I had agreed that I would be the one to draw the lineart for the poster, as I wanted to show my Illustration skills that I had not gotten to demonstrate as much in our film production. Neave would complete the colouring for the poster.
We were planning on using this design as our final poster design because we were running out of time to come up with more poster ideas and it was the best one we had.
I decided to do a quick refine of what the overall layout might look like, however I did not think this fit with the theme of the movie.
Very close to the print deadline, I came up with a new refined poster design, using one of Neave’s compositions instead, with a few of my own details.
Me and Neave were both in agreement that this poster captured the heart and meaning of our film far better.
I brought the sketch into Clip Studio Paint to Line it there.
I am not as experienced using Clip Studio Paint, however with Neave’s help I was able to find nice brushes with pencil and marker-like textures that felt very appropriate for our film’s theme. I wanted the composition of the poster to be of Bluebell and Bug being shrunk down and looking at their tall plant surroundings. Knowing that our posters will be large and hung up, I wanted the viewers to feel like they themselves had been shrunk and are exploring the garden with the characters at our display.
Lineart with Neave’s colouring:
After Neave had coloured the poster, I then brought this version of the poster into Photoshop to add the finished vectored title and to add some final effects and filters. I added particles to look both like filtered sunlight through the leaves as well as looking like firefies, alluding to our film’s plot. I also did some colour correcting, sharpened the image and used chromatic aberration.
When the posters being sent to print, I was told about I had made the canvas 20cm too small, but I was able to fix this error thankfully in time and was able to correct it for the final print. I am extremely proud of how the poster turned out and think its very effective!
Final Poster Design
CV
Myself and Neave wanted to make our CVs linked to the project in some way, so instead of using icons of our faces, we decided to use one of the main characters each and have them as our branding as well as for our CVs to match. We both decided to use green, however, I used dark green and Neave used light green so our designs would not look too similar, and we would both stand out from each other.
Business Cards
I wanted to make business cards to have on our End of Year display table for industry professionals and my peers to take home.
Design Exploration:
At first I wasnt sure what to use for my brand, but I liked the visual imagery of fireflies and so decided to go with that as my overall brand theme. Because I had also drawn the firefly character for my CV, I wanted to use it again to link them together.
I also decided to use an older drawing I had been planning to use as an icon for my art and portfolio Social Media accounts, and colour it in the same scheme as my CV. I think the drawing might be a little too detailed for an animator and looks a bit more like an illustrator’s card, so I may simplify the icon drawing in the future.
Front of card
Back of card
I like the final designs and even though they look simple, I wanted the information and links to my accounts and portfolio to primary focus without too much other clutter. I plan to get these printed soon for the End of Year Show.
Artbook
Myself and Neave compiled together an artbook of the best pieces of concept, visual development and animation art that we had created over the length of our film’s production. I edited the poster design to fit the horizontal canvas we were using as a book template and added our names and more to the title.
I think the amount of content and layout worked really nicely in this and I am excited to have a physical copy.
We plan to have the printed version ready for our display for the EOYS.
Showreel
I also updated my showreel to include my animations from the Major Project.
I would have liked coloured versions of my animations in this but plan to update it when the film is completely done. I maybe could have added artwork and animatic examples of my work also, however I did not have as much concept art for this project and found the animatics to be quite rough and meshy looking in comparison to my animations. I am, overall, satisfied with how this turned out.
Digital Strategies –
Artstation Portfolio
I decided to add some of my Final Major Project work to my artstation portfolio, as well as updating my branding and appearance. I found it looks a lot more professional than it did in second year, and I hope to further add the coloured and finished shots from the final film edit.
Link: https://unamaciver.artstation.com/
I have been using my Instagram account Prokuon to promote my film and brand on, as well as advertising on my story. I’ve got a decent following and have been following others in the industry who I have met at networking events on there as well.
https://www.instagram.com/prokuon/
I also created a LinkedIn account to get into contact with others in the industry as well as to see what the latest projects and updates have been from studios.
EOYS Display
I came into the room during the week to help clear the tables, clean the room and move the furniture in order to help set up for our final year show.
I was then able to go shopping with Neave for decorations for our display.
We wanted a cover for our table and looked at a lot of fabric variables including fake grass and bedsheets. We liked some but found the patterns to be a bit too cliche or childish for an industry event show.
Eventually, we settled on a plain green blanket and bought small fake plants, leaves and insect finding equipment to decorate our table with, as these all matched our theme nicely.
I also had the thrilling job of going gnome shopping for our display…
We decided to go for the medium sized gnome as the large would be far too big for our display, although fitting for our theme, and neither of us wanted to keep it long term.
We then printed out copies of the characters’ turnarounds to have on the table, as well a miniature versions of our main characters to have among the plants on the table.
Final Display (with Placeholders)
With the printed posters finished and all of the components and items we needed, we were able to set up our table for the End of Year Show. Andrew helped us hang our poster and make sure it hung at the right height and angle for us. Then we were able to finish and tidy the final layout.
Final Display Layout (Andrew for scale)
Reflection
Overall, I am really happy with the work me and Neave have put into our Final Year Show displays, film advertising and personal branding. With a bit more time we might have added our names to the poster, fixed the title vector and had the artbook and business cards printed, but these are just minor faults in comarison with how well I think we both produced the overall display. I am confident we will have the final film, artbook and table details completed and added well before the EOYS and are both very excited to share with the public.