Research

Jobs, Interactive Media, Website Analysis.

We started the project by looking at jobs. I learnt about different employment contract types (full-time, part-time and freelance), different methods of finding jobs and jobs that I would like to do. This was interesting as it has made me think into the future on what I want to do; I have always known that I will do something creative but this has given me the opportunity to explore that route in more detail. Learning about different jobs also helped me to start thinking about what I wanted to include on my portfolio website as I could make it more tailored towards the types of jobs roles I would like to do.

The next part of the research phase was to learn about interactive media, and the two sections: Interactive Media Graphics and Graphic Design Techniques. I used Sam's Powerpoint for the majority of my learning in this section, however, I did look at the colour theory in more detail using a youtube video which I think really helped to expand my knowledge in this section and on the different types of colour combinations. I never thought about the process that went into website creation with the different types of Interactive Media Graphics like the roll-over button and the dropdown menu. In my work, I tried to relate the different graphics to things that I am passionate about for example football-related websites.

For the last part of the research, I had to look at 3 portfolio websites. I think without looking at these websites my final website would look a lot different, in a bad way, as it helped me to think about what I wanted on my website and what did and didn't work. I looked critically at the websites and the use of interactive media graphics and graphic design techniques in the websites. I also used this as an opportunity to develop my ideas as well as use parts of these or learn from what I didn't like about the website. I wish that I could have compared the websites to each other more but I wanted to start to move on to the production stage of the project.

Pre-Production

Logo Design, Website Creation and Logo Animation

When it came to designing my logo I knew that I wanted my logo to be simple and modern. I was really inspired to create a logo and I spent a lot of time over two days drawing, looking at other logos before I came to my final design. Overall, I am extremely happy with my design and happy that my vision was able to be put onto paper, well screen actually. There isn't anything I would change about my logo or my process to get to my final design because I am happy with how it turned out and enjoyed the process. My one flaw with the logo is that it may be hard to fit in a profile photo as they are generally circular and my logo is a square/rectangle shape but it's not the end of the world and I am sure I can find a solution. I did struggle when creating the final design in the Adobe softwares as I created it in Photoshop but I didn't realise that I could export it as a vector. This meant I had to open the PSD document in Illustrator, make a minor adjustment to the film reels as it didn't convert properly from Photoshop and then export as a vector file. Vector files basically mean that the logo won't lose quality when put on a large scale.

Making the website was very fun. I found the process quite simple as I had already come up with a design using a blueprint and so I just had to copy that and put it onto Webnode. I had thought about using Wix for my website but I chose to use Webnode in the end because I feel that I know how to use it in detail since starting to use it in September. I used 3 main colours (green, black and white) throughout my website to keep it modern and keep the focus on the content rather than the colours. I think this was a good idea, however, looking at it now, I think that I should have used two shades of grey or white rather than the green. I was also able to simplify the sections which I think is good for the user. I had thought about implementing animated graphics but I felt that it would negatively affect the walkthrough video, the editing function would be slightly annoying. The only way to remove this is to pay for the premium service but I don't really want to do that.

This animation took me quite a while to make. This is likely because I didn't really have a plan for what I wanted to create. I used a couple of videos from youtube to help me create my final animation as I am still a beginner when it comes to using After Effects. I am really happy with the animation considering what I have created previously. I do have two small criticisms about the video. Firstly, I think that the length of the video should be shortened as the animation only takes 3 seconds so I could shorten it to around 5 seconds. Secondly, I feel there should be some sort of sound effect but I am not sure what type of sound, possibly a "warp" sort of sound. I have created the animation to allow me to change the logo and colours of the design in case I want to use the animation but change something in the future. I learnt this through a video where it suggested putting different layers into different compositions. This does, however, mean that the file is larger than it would normally be. Overall, I think that the animation works well with my aesthetic for the portfolio and something that I am proud of.

Walkthrough Video

The script, Audio Recording, Screen Recording and Editing

To write my script I used Celtx. This website was very useful as it helped me to layout my scripts quite professionally compared to last time when I just used the word document and laid out as well as I could. I only wrote one draft of my script as I felt I was able to put out what I wanted to say however if I was to change it I would have removed the "my good friend Elliott Jedras" and just had "my friend Elliott Jedras" as it seems a bit cringy to me, looking back at it. Writing the script was quite quick, for the amount of time I expected a two-minute script to take me to write. I felt that Celtx was very good at helping me layout my script and I feel this helped me when it came to recording my audio as it was clear what parts I needed to read and what parts were directions.

After writing my script I record my audio. I tried to complete this part before Christmas as I knew the quality I would have got through using the equipment would be a lot better than at home. Tom helped me with this and I was able to record it with minimum fuss. I recorded it one take, in sections, and used claps to separate the different parts. I liked this method as it made it easier when it came to finding all the parts I needed however, there were 8 minutes of audio I needed to listen to. Also by having Tom to help me I didn't have the problem of only having audio on one side, unlike last time.

Screen Recording should have been easy however I found it quite tricky doing it at home. For context, my mac is a 2013 model which means it does struggle to run programs and do simple tasks like using chrome at times. This meant that when I screen recorded my website it did struggle to load parts and lag at sections. I was able to overcome this when I edited the video by cutting sections to line it up more to the audio. I used Quicktime Player as I felt downloading OBS wouldn't help my attempt to record, especially when I don't know how to use it.

What a pain this was. I was able to cut my audio before the Christmas break which meant all I had to do was add the screen recording and make sure it all fitted together and add music. What I didn't expect was there to be an update to my mac which made all Adobe programs unusable for a week. When I did get it to work it didn't seem to like my screen capture and it looked like the video was corrupted. To resolve the issue and complete the edit, I exported the video with audio only (to ensure I didn't have to re-cut the audio) and use iMovie to edit the video. This method worked however I now realise how simple and basic iMovie is. Due to these problems editing took me way longer than I wanted it to but I was able to achieve what I wanted. I spent ages trying to find music that I liked, was copyright free and fitted the style of video I wanted. I listen to a lot of music by Ehrling however I settled on Warm Nights by Lakey INSPIRED.

Final Walkthrough Video

I think that my final video was quite well planned out due to the script being quite self-explanatory and had a detailed plan on what I wanted to happen. I didn't create a storyboard but I had mentally thought about what I wanted and was able to achieve what I wanted. I think I coped with the timescale fine but it would have been better if my mac hadn't played up and I would have had more time to focus on the final parts of the project, like writing this. As previously mentioned, I had problems with Premiere Pro and my mac during the final part of this project. To minimise the impact of this I used my laptop (which can't install the Adobe products on) to start writing everything up and hope that the mac will fix itself in that time. I also had a problem with Premiere Pro which just resulted in me using another editing software for the video.

I am really happy with how the audio turned out in the video as I was able to use the equipment at college. It sounded crisp and I didn't have the problem with the audio not being mono either, which is an improvement. I used a transition between the iPhone and Mac screen recordings to make the change more clear and I had envisioned it looking like a dream/flashback sort of effect which I was able to get using iMovie. I don't quite know why I wanted it to be like that but I think it worked well. I think that I mixed the audio well, not that there was much for me to do, I didn't want the music to be too off-putting so it is quiet.

To improve this video, I would have changed the start to use either the welcome text thing that I did in my "how-to" video as I think that it worked really well. I would have also liked to include my logo animation, it possibly could have gone at the start or at the end of the video.