This is a video i rendered which had loads of flowers as i wanted to see what itr would look like with more than one and what colours looked god on the background

I decided that it looked to crowded and there was too much going on but i did like all the different colours going on.

My final video for some reason will not upload onto youtube which means i can not post it on my blog, but i have the file and will so phil and liam in person.

As i was part of the students group there was not that much intense stuff that needed to be filmed it was mainly just them in the classrom playing around with the camera and a bit of dialoge of them talking between themselves. I asked one of my group members how the filming went and did they follow the script, but i was told that they just went with the flow and planned it from there, so i don’t actually know what footage they have got as the group member who has all the footage for the film that needs editing is away on placement.

Before i went away for placement i went through a rehersal shoot with phil and my group to work out what each shot was going to look like and how it was going to work, where the people were going to be sitting? all that sort of stuff. This was helpful as it made me have a clearer understanding of how it was going to work out and they way it was going to be filmed.

All i no is that what i was planned to do for my group has been done and handed in to phil peel and i will send the character profiles to luke.

This is what i had planned for our group but as far as i no the group has now changed?

Team Members: Me, Gemma, Dom, Lynne

Roles:

Lisa = Scripting and planning and filming

Dom = Storyboards and filming

Gemma = Editing and filming

Lynne = Props and filming

Overall i think this is the project that i have least enjoyed out of the whole year, as i am not that interested in film and edit. But i would of liked to be a little bit more invovled with the filming part of the project as i think this would of been a good experience. I am also looking forward to seeing how all the groups come together and show the piece as a whole. If i was to do this again i think i would of change the whole idea of the film and maybe worked with people that all would of put the same effort in.

We worked in a house that he lived with his family it was very clean and worked at a big table where we sat and had discussions and meetings. They were very welcoming and offered us food and drink often which was provided by themselves. There was a lot of space and was suitable workplace. Henry made sure that we knew where all the facilities were located at that they were at a clean standard, which they were. I was told i was covered by insurance through university, Henry Brown was also covered by insurance which my course leader looked into before we was able to go along with the placement. He also had car insurance. He picked us up and dropped us off back to Woodford Station at the end of our working day.

The first day of meeting Henry we sat around the table and had a discussion of what he would like to be done with the website and what kind of style he liked. We looked at other fashion designer websites for inspiration and he told us what he liked and what he didn’t. From this I managed to work out that he had a simple, clean, sleek style. He showed us what pictures he had taken that he wanted to create into a catalog and put up on the site. I suggested to him that I would do some mock ups of different pictures and text styles and he could then choose which ones he liked the best. For me this was a great starting point for the project as I got to put my own designing techniques to work in a way that would please Henry as well. We didn’t have to travel up to London everyday as we worked from home 2 days a week and travelled to London for the other 3 days. This was due to the fact that Henry had to attend lot’s of meeting with places like Liberties and Harrods and top London shops. It was also good for me as I was able to just get on with the work at home on my laptop. I was always in contact with Henry through e-mail and phone calls when I wasn’t there also sent him files so he could see what I had done and how much progress I was making.  Henry was a big part of the process as he was the one who was making decisions, but he did let us get on with things and take our advice on a lot of things. For example if we said to him that it was not a good idea and suggest another way to get around it he would be happy to take your word for it. This is what made it a brilliant placement for me.

I was mainly doing the design side of things whereas my partner was doing the more technical side. For me this meant that I was designing and creating all the different pages and the changes that he wanted on each page. The technical side of things was putting these pages into the Flash cs3 file that was created by the person who made the website previously, this was a task in itself trying to work out what was what. I created the catalog for all the new photos that he had taken and wanted to put up. There was two photos of each dress one was a movement shot and the other was a still shot. I put these two photos next to each other so there was two pictures on each page. Also on the catalogue pages I had to create button that would navigate the pages. To do this I had to do HTML coding which was difficult sussed it in the end, this took me about a week to sort all the coding out and a lot of research on the internet.

Henry also asked if I was able to make the pages fluid, this is so that if you resize the box you won’t lose part of the page. I was able to do this and showed him how it worked on other web pages then I did it to his catalogue. He said he liked it and that it worked well but changed his mind at last minute so I didn’t put these files up but I still have them for my own record. He also asked me to create a e-mail form so that if they e-mail they would receive a brochure of their designs or ask any questions. I made this for him but he then decided that it was good enough just having their e-mail address on the website so they could email or call if they wanted, I thought this was a good choice of his because it would of made the website look like there is too much going on.  

The actual catalogue took me a while to do as Henry kept changing his mind quite a lot, which was sometimes really frustrating as when it has taken you a while to do something and then he didn’t want it to look that way anymore. But I understood why he made the points he did. He was not happy with the size at first and then he wanted to have it as a full screen page that you just clicked on each side to go to the next page. Another thing was the button he didn’t want to see the button until you rolled over them, he also wanted the text really small so you could hardly see it. I then also added a home button as there was no way to get back to the main screen. We changed the Home page, Landing page, Menu page and Contact page. We only had to make minor changes to these pages like changing the images and adding text and changing basic information, all the button were already linked up which meant it would take less time, I managed to make these changes towards the end of the placement as it was the least important thing to put up.

Working for Felicity Brown has been such a brilliant experience for me, it was what I want to do in the future and after this it has made me realise that I do really want to become a web designer and maybe even work for myself. It also made me realise that I still need to do a lot more research and education in this area. I do know the basics of building a website but when it comes to the technical side like HMTL coding and action scripting I need a bit more experience. The internet is so useful these days and everything I needed to know or learn is on there, this helped me get through the problems that I came across during the placement. I was doing two projects whilst I was on placement, which meant that I had a lot of catching up to do, this was difficult as the placement took up most of my time as it had to be done by 2 weeks, but it went a week over that due to complications. My course leader gave me a 2 week extension on my project which was helpful. But doing this placement in London made me realise how much I miss being at home and pushed me to go ahead and decide what i want to do for myself. I have realised that all the other projects I have done has not helped me at all with web design. I have gained a lot of skill in the previous projects which is really helpful, also using flash has been useful as nowadays websites are created using flash and adding flash effects to them. I want to be able to better myself and make sure I know what I am doing when it comes to web design, as I don’t want to disappoint any customers that I help out. I am very grateful to Phil Beards to arranging this for me and asking me to take part in this placement, it means a lot to me and I’m very happy that I made it clear to him of what it was I exactly wanted to do in the future.

I am extremely pleased with myself that I managed to complete this placement as I did have moments when I thought that I had jumped into the deep end and wasn’t going to be able to swim. I got through it and learnt a lot of skills off my own back which I am really proud of. If I was to do this kind of placement again I would make sure exactly what they want from me before I sign up to it so that I don’t disappoint. Henry was very pleased the final outcome. I have to thank Toria Trinity as well for helping out also, we managed to work really well as a team and got through each other’s problems together. Henry wrote me a reference:

Hi Lisa,

Thank you so much for participating in work experience with us at Felicity Brown.  We thank you for your hard work and you were an absolute pleasure to work with.

 We advertised a work experience opportunity to find a web designer to assist us on revamping and implementing improvements to our existing company website.  Lisa was recommended to us by her course leader at Bournemouth University.

Lisa was issued a brief outlining exactly what we were wanting to achieve.  We were looking for a high-end finish, simple to use website that showed off our product (clothing) to its full potential.  We ran through current sites that we as a company really admired and wanted to take inspiration from.  We all worked very closely together day to day making adjustments as we went to reach the finished version.

Lisa showed a good understanding and stuck to the brief throughout. Lisa also showed a great work effort and was very accommodating to our needs and requests.  We are particularly thankful to Lisa who clearly worked outside the office hours on the project in her own time to help us meet our deadline.

 Lisa proved to be a reliable, hardworking addition to our team and we hope to see her soon and wish her best in her career.

 Kind regards

 Henry Brown

Director

I was very pleased when I got this message. I don’t think he will be asking us to do anymore work for him as it was just a one off. But he let us put our names onto the website so if anyone looks at the website and they like what they see they are able to get in contact with us through Henry which may help us get some more work. Even though this was voluntary work Henry still paid for all our travel up to London and brought us lunch every day, which I was very grateful for. 

Finally I just would like to say that this has been an amazing experience and definitely do it again for another company paid or unpaid. It has made me realise that I should carry on with my choice of being a web designer and to work extra hard to make myself become successful in that area.

I also have been playing around with some effects like changing the colour. This was easy for me to do as i had drawn the floral pattern in black with a white background which makes it easier to change the colour of both to whatever i like.

As you can see its a bit messy but i found how to duplicate the animation and add colour effects this was just a messing around test that i did.

Here are the photos that i uploaded to the website

This was the layout of the cataloge that we uploaded to the site, the pictures are in pairs as they are the same dress but one is a still shot and the other is a movement shot.

Picture 1- My final video for Night Out project

Picture2- My final video for Blu Tac advert for the viral video project

Picture3- My final video for 3D animation

Picture4- Floral design I made in Photoshop

All these pictures where print screened from my blog:

www.wordpress.com/lisadalton

During my year I have used the following sources:

• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Premier Pro
• After Effects
• Maya
• Flash
• YouTube
• www.videocopiolet.net (video tutorials for AE)

First year at Arts University College Bournemouth has been an eventful and have gained a lot of skills.

 The first unit that we started off doing was the Principles of Computer Graphics, which was the Night Out project. For this I produced a stop motion film and added effects in After Effects. The idea of it was to show the getting ready stage of a night out and for me this is the most fun part, instead of just showing the “getting drunk” stage of a night out I also changed the speed that it planned and put some music to it. I did a lot of brainstorming and writing down word and expanding from them words to come up with my idea, I then started looking and drinking awareness adverts to get a feel of peoples reactions and movements. When it came to adding the effects in, I had a look at colour physiology to get a feel of what each colour represents. This was the main section of my project when it started developing it and it started to all come together. The only problem that I came across was that when I imported the footage in I cut it up in sections to rearrange them, i then wanted to speed the footage up but where I cut them into pieces I couldn’t do this all at the same time so had to do them individually, which took up quite a lot of editing time. Overall I really enjoyed doing this project as I like going out so had a lot of knowledge and experience.

 The second unit was Principles of Sound and Video Production, which was the Viral Video project, which we worked in groups. There was a lot of research involved in this as there is a lot of viral videos on the internet nowadays. I had to get a clear idea of what a viral video actually was. I was looking at videos on YouTube as this is the most popular site for viral videos. I was looking at pranks, April fools and TV shows like Trigger Happy, this is because we was planning on doing something funny that will make people laugh as in our research it came across that the reason a video becomes viral is because it makes people laugh and they send it around to their friends. As we were doing out planning and storyboards we came across a competition to make a Blu-Tac Advert. We then interlinked this to the projects as most adverts are viral due to the fact that they are watched by thousands or even millions of people. So we watched all the previous Blu-Tac adverts that have been made to get an idea of what not to do as we wanted to do something g different to what has been done. In the brief it said that we had to use Blu-Tac in the advert, we decided to do a stop motion video of Blu-Tac being moulded into famous places around the world. The idea behind this was that Blu-Tac can be used to do anything and anywhere. The problems we had was with the filming as it was stop motion it had to be done in really small steps for it to run smoothly. Also we was making 3D models so had to make them stand upright. We had a play around with the Blu-Tac beforehand and didn’t realize how hard it was to work with. So we filmed it and it didn’t turn out as well as we thought it would do, so we developed it by changing it so that the models would be flat on the page and to make the Blu-Tac into tiny balls that moved along to join to model, this worked a lot better but it just meant that we would have to reverse the footage once imported into Premier Pro. I learnt a lot of interesting information doing the research and did enjoy the project up until it came to producing it. If I was to do this project again I would not do the Blu-Tac advert and would change my idea completely. I think this is because there is so much you could do to create a viral video I would of liked to do something a bit more fun.

 Another project we had was to create a 3D animation which came under the unit Computer Graphics for Animation and Film. For this we had to produce a animation or video in 3D. I was really excited about doing this project as I haven’t really worked with 3D before so I was experimenting using Maya and After Effects as these programme are both 3D. In my research I was looking at shapes and very abstract pieces. I was also looking at colours and how the shapes move in time with the music. I looked on YouTube and posted a few videos onto my blog that gave me some ideas. In the brief it also said that we had to create our own music to go with the animation, so as I have no experience playing or making my own music I used the software called Garage Band. This was really fun to use as you can experiment a lot with different instruments and tempos. I wanted to create my own Drum n Bass style, which I managed quite well. For the development process i was looking at Audio Visualisation and light strokes. I then taught myself how to make light strokes in After Effects and animated them using a tutorial off the internet. I had quite a few problems with this unit, as I wasn’t at all confident using Maya and the idea that i wanted wasn’t suitable for that software. Also when i was animating to make it 3D in After Effects I had to put a camera and make the camera move to change the angle. I made a cube and put the light strokes that i made onto each face of the cube. This was a good effect as the light strokes movie was playing whilst the cube was moving around. For me this was the most challenging unit for me so far as I was not very experienced with it, but made the most of it and manage to teach myself a lot. I also had a lot of help from Jason. I could of improved this by having a lot more going on rather than just a cube moving around the screen, I felt that it wasn’t my best piece.

The whole class is working to get on a project called Short Form Video, we are creating a short drama called Hostage. Our tutor Phil Peel wrote a basic story line of what he could visualise happening. In the drama there are 6 different groups: Lectures, Students, TV News, Police, Terrorist and Documentary. I am part of the Students groups, which there is not really much going on. It’s basically just four main students who will be talking and then there will be others that will just be in the background creating the scenery. There was a lot of planning involved as we had to collaborate with all the other groups as some of the scenes had the others groups involved or they had to film the same section. The idea of it was that each group films their each part and then for all the footage to be put together to create a drama. I think that the whole idea of the brief is a good idea but wasn’t too sure if this was going to work out as well as it sounded. I wrote out a script for the scenes, which had to be detailed as this is the main thing for the person directing to visualise how it’s going to look, so it had to include dialogue, time of day, actors and actions also a description of the scene. Any props that are involved also need to be included, and a detailed description of what is going to happen. I must admit i didn’t find this unit that brilliant as it was mostly filming and editing which is what i am least interested in doing, but it was a experience and would do it again if the opportunity came along.

 Our Final project of the year was Post Production this was the unit i was most excited about. It is the kind of thing that i would to be able to do in future. I have made a floral animation and filmed a bit in my garden which I will then put the animation on top, I also going to change the colours and brightness and add some effects to the animation. This have been my favourite project of the year, although I have found it the hardest to come up with an idea for. I am pleased with my overall outcome of the project as I put a lot of work into it. I found it harder to manage timing as I went on a 3 week placement in London. Which took most of my time up.

 This year at AUCB has been very eventful and in some cases a real life changing moment for me which is why i have decided to take a gap year.

(JUST A NOTE IN THE ESSAY I HAVE ORINTED THERE IS PICTURES AND REFRENCES)

There is a lot more to do… dont panic thats not all of it