Colour and Light

Our last lecture was about colour and light. We were set the task of finding a picture that screams colour and light. Here is what Ive found in the depths of my hard drive:



This was taken at my house about 2 years ago. Its one of my brothers lining up for the break. Here the dark background gives huge contrast with the foreground objects. These objects, the balls, are brightly coloured, the affinity between them is very small since they are all such different contrasting shades of colour. This photo shows a lot of colour but not much light. The light here is very focus on one area of the picture, the table, and leaves the wall behind it very dark.

Here is another picture I took of some building in London:


I took it because it just so happened that the sun was in the right place. It was hidden slightly behind the building. This makes the building dark and the sky very bright giving high amounts of contrast. This contrast gives the picture an impression of light and brightness. As the sun hits the less denser parts of the clouds, the clouds let through more white light making the picture even brighter.

Poor squidy

I was playing with 3DSM the other day in our seminar and we were set the task of making a squid propell itself across the screen. Unfortunately at the time I didn't have my hard drive so I asked a friend in my seminar to keep hold of it on his hard drive. Turns out he broke it a few days later lol (ops). So unfortunately I can't show my awesome squidy, but I'm going to create another one instead! Expect it soon

Capabilities of computers and software programs

So i was flicking round youtube last night doing the "rounds" when i came across this->



At first i thought this was hilarious and a very cleaver advert. Although an advert which really didn't get its point across too well since the whole thing was too cool for me to care about it.(good job creators, you made an advert so good i didn't care about anything but how it was made thus making the point of that advert useless, ha ha). I still sat there in amusement laughing at how patriotic the actors were about this so called job of building a plane in the sky, it was good.

Anyway, that aside, I was just very interested at how it was made. I don't actually know right now, but it must have been done using chroma-key (green screen effects) Since clearly it is not possible to build a plane in the air. But The whole amazingness of it just made me think of what is really possible with the software and computing power we have nowadays. The amount of detail that goes into these kind of things is astounding almost to the point where it looks life like. I guess in the future this will only get better, so much to the point where it could get hard to tell apart what has been created from what is actually real!

First play with 3d studio max

So the beginning of a new term means new software, as always! yay. This time we are using a 3d modelling and animation software called 3d studio max. So i played around with it and didn't find it too hard, well not at the moment, but ive been told its going to get much much harder, so i aim to have a bit more of a play on it.

The first thing i made was a bouncing animation of a word. The word i used was "lolcats" which some may know about or may not, but its irrelevant. Its just the first thing that popped into my head.



Its short and sweet. A good intro to the animation section on my course. More work to come.

C.R.A.P

Today we reviewed our lecture on the acronym CRAP. The lecture was designed to help show how you can layout screen space for things such as text based design or graphic design and illustration

The acronym stands for:

Contrast

Alignment

Repetition

Proximity

Contrast ->

Contrast can be created in many ways:
LARGE TYPE with small type,
A graceful old style font with a BOLD sans serif,
A thin line with a thick line,
A cool colour with a warm colour,
Smooth texture with rough texture,
Horizontal with Vertical,
Wide spacing with narrow spacing,
Small graphics with large graphics.

Repetition ->

Repetition states that you repeat some aspect of the
design throughout the entire piece.
The purpose of this is to unify and add visual interest.
If a piece looks interesting its more likely to be read.
Think of repetition as being consistent and PUSH the
existing consistencies a little further.
Avoid repeating elements so much that they become
overwhelming or annoying

Alignment ->

The principle of alignment states that nothing should be placed upon the page ARBITRARILY.
Every item should have a visual connection with something else on the page.

Proximity ->

The principle of proximity states that you group related items together.
Proximity or closeness implies a relationship.

Rubix Cube

I had some spare time over christmas to do a thing or two. One of which was this -->



Now the Rubik's cube is a puzzle that has confused mankind for many generations, however after searching through youtube for 10 mins, I came across another vid showing how it can be solved. I used my digital camera and set it to film, I also had to perch it on top of my pin-hole camera I made in the first week because I don't have a tripod.

Once I got the filming done I imported it on my computer and started playing around with some of premier's tools and effects. Two effects that are most noticeable are the brightness and the speed. I decided to use these effect because the actual content of the video was boring and all the same. You are technically just staring at a Rubik's cube while i solve it. To liven it up, i decided to speed up the rate of playback. This keeps the viewers interested at least momentarily, not only because they have to sit there watching it, but also because they cant work out whats going on. This makes them want to know what happens. The colour of the sped up version is slightly lighter, giving a dream like view.

Overall I like it, i got to use priemer some more which is very useful for my course and future works. ^_^

Christmas & New year

Back at last in my little uni room. The first thing I did when I got in was to rearange all of the furniture. I moved my bed to the back wall and my desk to the side so now the open square floor makes the room look much bigger, so I'm happy.

Christmas and new year was very good as usual, I got myself a hard drive for christmas, which I can now use instead of using my mp3 player for storage and movabilty data. My course (Multimedia) requires lots of storge space which the university can't always provide, so im really glad I got an upgrade. What with the files being huge and all (avi formats, grr). As usual, the drinking persisted and not a great deal of work got done, but I did do a few bits and bobs through the holidays. One of which was to explore our next module -> identities!

Currently I am a little confused about this topic. I don't quite get what the aim of the whole thing is. We were asked to make an avatar like creation, a second self, and interact online. One program we were suggested to use was second life. To be completely honest I need to have a better understanding before I go out and play with it, I just need to read more about this topic and it should make sense.

Anywho, time to go, I'm off to the cinema to see the golden compass with flat mates I think. After having my review (which was actually really helpful, i found what i was doing wrong) i think i might critically assess this film. ^_^