Unit 54 - Film & Video Editing Techniques

Test Videos

Joke trailer

Voice over a trailer of anything and just say random stuff, over exaggerating how good the product/film/game is, or a parody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdQTR8FNjpo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV469dBmXCA

In-game comedy sketch

Use one of the Halo games to make a comedy show. Taking and using celebrity/character lines and putting them over the top of the game making it look like they're playing or are in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x0RLPwHKhM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I95W5o5UqyY

Storyboard

Final Video

I came up with this idea after having a Shaun of the dead/Hot Fuzz montage/scene transition pop into my head randomly. My friend, Damon, came up with a bit and I carried it on from there. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y98tKxyQ1Xw

Evaluation

I have created a short ninety-second video using the idea of the Hot Fuzz/Shaun of The Dead scene transitions. They inspired me and I took those transitions to make a short montage at the beginning, which then turned out to be a random Hitman type video with a bright mood instead of a dark mood.

I had a few ideas to choose from. I chose the real world video, because my other ideas were using video games, and the main part of the Unit was to learn about camera shots, which would have been difficult to do in a game, plus it would have taken much longer to make a video using a game due to getting everything perfectly on time.

The people that helped me make my video were Damon and my dad. My dad held the camera while I played for the montage, and Damon held the camera for the second part, and then played the oblivious person being shot. I recorded Damon being shot.

The development took a while. The first time recording the first part (montage), I tried making the room dark by closing the curtains whilst only letting a little light in. It didn’t work out so well, because the scenes came out a lot darker than we thought. The second time I had the curtains wide open, and it may not have been what I wanted, but it worked better than the first shot.  

I was having troubles coming up with an idea for the second part that came after the montage. Damon had an idea, so I extended on his idea and we ended up with the second part of the video. Damon volunteered to be the person I shoot.

There were a lot more scenes shot than there are in the final video. One of the scenes was of me getting angry over not being able to do my tie up properly, and another one was of me walking out of the room with the gun resting on my shoulder.

I used techniques that I already knew in video editing, so I didn’t really learn much from doing this. To me, iMovie doesn’t seem to be the best programme to use to make a more professional video, for example, the slow motion part, which I made, wasn’t really slow motion, it was just frame by frame. If I was using a more professional programme like Sony Vegas Pro, the slow motion part would have been a lot smoother and it would have looked a little more professional.

An improvement to my video would be to add more sounds. I didn’t like the part where it was silent when I was opening the window and setting up, while the rest of the video had sound. It was a little awkward watching it back when it was finished. 

I am happy with the outcome of my video. People found it funny, and I didn’t expect it to be funny at all. It came out a little slower than I thought of, but it was close enough. I also helped Damon making his video about Action Man.

Unit 1 - Art of the game

Designing a poster in a gothic style for a survival horror game.

Before making the poster, I drew out ideas of what to use in the poster. The hat and the Mushroom's were simple to think of because it is a very iconic part of Mario. They were easy to draw, but took a while to get perfect.

My initial idea was to make Mario and Luigi zombies. All the good guys from the Mario series would be zombies and the bad guys would be the ones trying to survive.

This is the original Mario level image that I used the final poster design. As I said before, I changed the brightness, contrast and saturation to make it less entertaining and more gothic.

I added the grey clouds to make it a little more dark and gothic. Without the clouds the background would have looked a little boring or too cheerful with the blue sky.

The way I manipulated the picture in Photoshop was by taking a picture of a Mario level from the game and changing the brightness, contrast and saturation. I added a sky with grey clouds and changed the brightness, contrast and saturation to match the darkness of the clouds. I drew Mario's hat and the Mushroom's, and then photo copied them into Photoshop. I added colours to the hat and mushroom's and placed them into the scene. I downloaded a Super Mario Brothers font from DaFont and used it for the title above the whole picture. I added the actual colours to it, but a little bit darker. The clouds of the Mario level were still white, so I went over them with a brush and painted them grey.

I tried making a similar look to the Amnesia The Dark Descent poster. It gave me an idea of changing the flowing water below the rose to red to show it's blood, and changing the rose to Mario's hat giving the intention of Mario's death. Obviously it didn't go the same way as I wanted it to and used two different images to make one instead of just using the background of the Amnesia poster.

Redesign a popular game character as an artwork

German Expressionism

In this task I had to redesign a popular game character in a famous artwork. I chose Lara Croft and German Expressionism. I tried to get the same type of art style.
(Not a lot of experience with Photoshop back then)

Research

Isaac Hannaford

http://www.geek-art.net/isaac-hannaford-halo/

I like this concept art because it is very highly detailed and it is the type of style I would like to make my concepts. It also has a very strong atmosphere and is very detailed. The use of colour is very well done, it makes the character at the front stand out from the rest of the scene.

This concept has a more sketchy look to it, but the colours make it look a lot less sketchy from a distance. This also has a lot a detail, but it is mostly shown on the main character. This concept also has a strong atmosphere.

Francois L Cannels (IgnusDei - DeviantArt)

Art for Sins Of A Solar Empire

http://ignusdei.deviantart.com/gallery/9491373

This concept is very detailed. and it looks a little more difficult than the concept below. It has quite a few little bits and pieces coming off of everything, and I like that. It shows how much the creator has put into it, making this concept a very highly detailed and very well visualised piece of art.

This concept art reminds me of H.R Giger. It has the same effect and the type of atmosphere as H.R Giger's Alien work. I like it because it is simple, with the colours making it look a lot more detailed. The grainy/grit effect gives the concept a great look, making it show that the character being shown is probably an enemy.

Task 3

Character & Environment/Level Design

Unit 72 - What is the purpose of Concept Art for Video Games

What is the purpose of concept art for video games?

Concept art plays an important role in the gaming/film industry.  Concept art is technically peoples ideas of what is going to be in the game, book, film or comic. Concept art helps the developers create the characters, objects or anything in the scene, even the terrain itself.

The concept art I have chosen to use are from the game developer, Bungie. A lot of people will know Bungie for making the Halo franchise only exclusive to the Xbox (Halo 1 & 2 being the only ones on PC), but with Destiny just around the corner (September 2014), they'll also be widely known on Playstation.

Bungie released concept art for Destiny, giving people a glimpse of what's to come in their game for the next generation consoles. This concept art shows one of the playable races called Exo. Bungie was inspired by Master Chief, Terminator and the undead to create Exo (You can easily see the resemblance).

Forerunner Concept Art

This was the original concept art of the Forerunner made by the artists at Bungie.

This makes a great concept art because it shows quite a bit of detail and a brief idea of what this certain character in the game would have looked like. I like how the artwork has been kept simple whilst giving it some detail. The artist kept the background one colour, instead of having a super detailed one showing a certain area of a place, like some concept arts do. I also like the design of the character. It's very creative and unique. 

Aaron Limonick

Aaron Limonick is a concept artist at the game developer, Naughty Dog. Aaron created some amazing concept art for the Playstation exclusive, The Last Of Us. His work on environment designs are spectacular, and they are really detailed, even down to the grass. Each artwork has a different mood due to Aaron's epic work on the atmosphere. 

http://conceptartworld.com/?p=24769

Pat Presley

http://conceptartworld.com/?p=6832

Harmonic & Dissonant Landscapes

EvE Online. Dissonance.

Harmonic.

Harmonic.

This image, of War Thunder Ground Forces, is a mixture of harmonic and dissonance.

Concept art of Halo 3, by Isaac Hannaford. Dissonance.

Unit 2 Materials, Techniques and Processes

Using Mask Layers

This technique helped me with my work because it allowed me to change a simple night sky picture to a sci-fi type picture.

I did this by taking a picture of Jupiter and a night sky. I opened both in Photoshop. I placed Jupiter into the night sky picture and resized and rotated it.

Grey-Scaling an Image

How to install a font in Windows 8.1 using dafont

How to make tank tracks in 3DS Max 2014

Unit 34 - Digital Imaging

First Edit

Second Edit

First time editing a planet into a sky picture. Not the best.

Third Edit

 Saturn in the Background :)

Fourth Edit

New York Edit.

Light and Shade

(It's bad, tutorial was confusing)

Summer Collage

Hypnotic Tortoise

...

Surf

Tiger

Holiday Collage (New York)

Street Collage

...

Collage Research

Focal Points

Research

Proposal

Moodboards

Architecture Artworks/Collages

Images Used

These images were used in my first collage.

These images were cut up and used to make my latest collage.

Collage

Artist Critique

Julieanne Kost


Why is her work topical?

      Her work is topical because it combines photography and digital imaging techniques to construct a world using her dreams and her personal reality. She creates the images to form a cohesive message.  

What ideas, both through form and content, are they exploring? 

      She likes to construct a world similar enough to appear familiar, yet obviously an interpretation to the physical reality that surrounds us. Julieanne uses her dreams and personal reality to create her artworks, but they are abstract enough to be based on each individuals history and life experiences.

What techniques were employed to produce the selected work? 

      Julieanne has taken photographs of textures and landscapes, and scanned objects she found, as well as using charcoal. She has also used other paintings for inspiration. 

How does their work relate to traditional art forms or the works of earlier artists? 

      Julieanne's work relates to impressionism because it can give people different opinions and they are wide in contrast. People don't have the same opinion when viewing these types of  images. The stories behind the images can be different to so many other people.

How does it define, critique, or embrace the future? 

      Her work can, and probably has inspired many people to create and keep the impressionist art style alive. One of her works makes me think of loneliness, due to the leaf being alone in an endless ocean. 

Do you respond (or NOT respond) to its content, its construction, its aesthetics, or its storyline? 

      I like her work, but I don't really understand the story behind some of her works. 

Evaluation

      I have made two collages on Architecture/buildings around Bristol. 

      

      On my first collage I used three pictures of different style of buildings and cut them into pieces. The styles were modern and olden style gothic. I moved the cut up pieces around giving the buildings a different style, making the buildings look bloated or crooked. On the @t Bristol sphere, I gave it a wavy look by using the skew tool. I placed a picture of a garage door I took a while ago and used it in the background as a texture.

      On my second collage, I made it more simple. I took a few images of @t Bristol while panning the camera across. I used those images and cut them up into smaller pictures, and placing them back in the same place but not in the exact same position, giving the image a disjointed and fragmented look, while trying to keep the shape of the building. I placed a gradient in the background just behind the made up images. 

      The point of my collages was to combine old and new architecture. To some people, the message behind my first collage shows that modern architecture is not as sturdy as the old historical buildings due to me making the design of the gothic style building more wide. It also resembled modern architecture slowly taking over the historical architecture and soon replacing it. 

      It is useful and I could use it in the future as an example to improve on some work and remind me that doing something random with a collage can still represent a message about the work to people.

      I made one collage that wasn't successful because I didn't put a lot of time into it. The collage was too plain and it didn't really represent a message, it was just a mirrored image. This collage gave me an even bigger understanding of how to approach a concept from different angles.

      My first collage was successful because it has an absurdist approach due to the mix of non-matching objects. It contributes to my work because it has given me an easier understanding of how to mix materials and made it easier for me to make this sort of art style. 

      My first collage was said to be cluttered to some people. There isn't much of a focal point to my first collage, so some people can't concentrate and move around the collage to understand what the message is behind my work. The materials were just pictures I found that I once took on my phone, so I used them because they were part of buildings. I could improve this by not randomly throwing in a texture because I like it, but a texture that fits with the style of the collage. There is no white space in my first collage, so I have changed that in my second one.

My second collage is a lot less cluttered, and I think it has a focal point now.