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Reflection

During this project I have learnt the capabilities that photoshop has with animation. I previously thought animation could only be done through flash or after effects. I realize that simpler animations can easily be created within photoshop and that I will be using these skills in the future. Especially because design is moving more digital where more animation will be used.

The most important thing I learnt to appreciate is typography as a whole. Before this paper I had no interest in typography and didn’t appreciate the art of it. I’m an illustrator so typography was a foreign form of design for me. But after being taught a few rules and shown examples of good typography, I gained some appreciation for it. While making my type specimen booklet I realized how boring my use of type and my layouts we’re which made me appreciate creative typographic design even more.

One thing I wish I learnt to do better was research. Researching is not my strength but I feel that I should’ve done more of it to fully understand my allocated typeface so that the qualities of the typeface can translate into my work. What ended up happening was an incomplete identity created for the typeface leading to inconsistent themes and work.

Another thing is that I should’ve spent more time learning how to use the video timeline method. I was too caught up and used to using the frame by frame method that I was lost when using the video timeline. Video timeline has the same possibilities of creating animation as frame by frame. I just needed to learn how.

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Rationale

Gelasio is an organic and natural looking typeface. Because of this, I wanted to include a lot of movement and transitions because movement is associated with natural and living things. I took advantage of the frame by frame animation method to create as many different kinds of movements as I could. However, although the movement was suitable for the tone of the typeface, the content I was animating was not. The information was very vague. For example, I would have the words bold, medium, and italic come onto screen with each word being in their allocated weight. Sure it gets the point across but it just lacked depth.

My animations have a very limited colour palette. Just dark and light blue. The reasoning for this is because my animations have a lot of movement in them. Having too many colours would be over stimulating and hard to look at. Keeping the colours limited allowed the viewer to focus more on the animation and not get distracted by too many colours. This lack of colour and high contrast made the transitions very effective as the change from a light background to dark background would be emphasized. I also wanted to keep it consistent with my type specimen booklet.

When using frame by frame animation it was easy to convey speed and momentum as well as create creative transitions in my animations because each frame was manually created by hand. However, when starting my timeline animations, I felt I couldn’t produce the same animations because tweening doesn’t produce the same style that frame by frame creates. So I had to switch up my animation style for my mp4 animations. I decided to simplify the animation a lot and get rid of a lot of movement. I took advantage of the lack of animation to show more animation. Deciding to properly show all the type weights, show the anatomy of my typeface and finally introduce the creator of the typeface who I forgot to include in my previous animations.

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Timeline video

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Reasoning for design choices

previously I mentioned that I would do alot of movement in my frame by frames and do more simplistic animations for my video timelines. Karol has given me feedback that my animations don’t describe the type well enough. I need to show the form, and research behind the typeface. So I plan to use the simplicity of the timeline animations to more clearly show these aspects of my typeface.

Also I want to explain my reasoning for limiting the colour to dark and light blue. I did it because my animations include alot of transitions and I wanted to increase the impact and contrast of these transitions by having such a contrasting colour pallet. It also gives more contrast to the objects and text within the animation.

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Adding on to second animation

Original:

Added

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Remake of previous animation

Original:

New version:

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storyboarding my next animations

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My plan going forward

In class today we started learning about using the video timeline. Even though the video timeline produces smoother movement, I feel like my style of animation can only be produced using frame by frame as I use alot of blurring and movement. 

So Ive decided to stick to my style for and produce similar things when it comes to the 2 frame by frame gifs and go for a more simplistic animation for the video timeline mp4 videos.

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Feedback from class

T has recommended that for the first animation gif, I should make it a droplet rather than a pouring motion and that it should come down much quicker.

My own feedback to myself is that I need to have a little bit more intention behind the animation and showcase the type more rather than just doing what i think looks “cool”

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504 2D Typeface Animate.

When I read the name “Gelasio” I think of organic and movement. This is why I included hands, lots of movement, blur, lighting changes.

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Brainstorming/storybording for SDL

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SDL

I tried to play with movement and blur to imitate what my specimen book looked like.  As well as switching between light and dark.

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Week 7: Iteration sketches

I plan to have alot of animated movement in it. Stuff with physics. And I want to utilize motion blur so that it matches the aesthetic of panels similar to my specimen book.

I also want shapes to build up and create a final design looking like this

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Week 7: Starting animations

Today in class we learnt how to create gifs using the timeline in photoshop. 

Im going to start creating ideations for more creative ways to showcase my text in an animation.

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Reflection

During this project I have gained a new appreciation for typography. Before I used to think it was boring and that all there is to it are different fonts. I know now how much thought and care is put into designing a typeface. I also know now that type is not just for body text or to write things with. It is a full on design asset. It is just as crucial as colour and imagery. 

I began this project not liking my typeface Gelasio. I preferred simple serif fonts instead. However, while working with Gelasio I learnt I needed to play to it’s strength. It was elegant and curvy so I made my designs organic rather than cold and futuristic as I initially wanted to do.

I started the specimen booklet very poorly. I jumped in with no research and no planning. As a result, I created a booklet that was boring and uninspired. So I did a reboot. I changed the colour palette and restarted. I started with some research on existing specimen booklets. I learnt that you can get very creative with the layout and sizing of the pages. You can do so much more than just putting text in the middle of the screen. I then proceeded to sketch out multiple layouts on paper for my specimen booklet. This resulted in a much more interesting page with a heavy use of glyphs and shapes as backgrounds.

During the process I noticed I had 2 different design styles I was doing which I first thought would get me in trouble because it caused inconsistency. But I liked both the styles alot. I realized I could turn this inconsistency into a consistency by alternating styles every 2 spreads and using it to create a contrast. One style is dark with glowing light text while the other is light using dark text and makes use of alot of glyphs to create patterns and shapes. One is simple and the other is very busy.

I know now that I could’ve made more use of illustrator when creating graphics and importing them into InDesign rather than creating everything within InDesign since it is not InDesign’s strength. 

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Rationale

-Got alot more comfortable with InDesign -Understood how to better utilize paragraph and character tool panel when creating paragraphs. -Understood the power of typography more. -Learnt to look at places like Behance for inspiration rather than places like Pinterest. -learnt to create tables. -Learnt to create outlines when creating shapes and imagery using type.