Three is a Magic Number

This week, My mum and dad were away on their holidays and when they leave me in control of the house; I have to do a project to further myself. It's odd. The last time they were away; I did RedesigningNE. This time, having done all the branding I feel comfortable shaking a stick at, I decided to improve my video skills. It was once suggested by a potential freelance design client; that I try a lyric video. I kinda took that note too far and made three lyric videos.

As regular readers of this blog will know (or you saw my post last week); Back to Basics are my (ex?) band. Well I was the song writer and drummer. Well...I mean...I wrote some songs and I played drums. It is/was one of the best things that I have ever done. I loved most of it (the second album sessions were difficult) and playing gigs in front of people is such a thrill.

I chose three songs from our first album because they are the most accessible and because they are the best recorded tracks. It was a pleasure listening to the tracks again; some bum notes, quite a few bits of speeding up and slowing down and some corny lyrics.

I made them in photoshop despite it being a limited video editor, it's functional and it saved me downloading and installing After Effects/Premiere Pro. I limited myself to one typeface; Gotham Bold (a different yet very functional font) because I wanted myself to challenge myself to make something exciting with something so limited.

Here are the tracks in order of creation;

Last night a DJ Saved My Life

Have you ever felt so proud of a piece of work you want to shout it from the rooftops, well that is something that I have just made. In uni I got given the job of developing a TV ident for a new TV channel that I have made. It won't get to telly but hey I wish it was a channel.

I chose to make a TV channel of vinyl records because they are my life outside of graphic design. Style wise it was initially based on the google play logo it has turned into an MTV bright light show. The dots are my love of litchenstein, most of the elements are hand drawn and the bright colours are because I have a little soft spot for design that visually attacks your eyes.  In the words of Miss Sophie Taylor (my bro) "I like it but it hurts my eyes"

Highlights of my first year at uni; Part 1. Congratulations it's a horse

During my first year I was given three moving image projects and I have never done a moving image project on a graphic design. I have studied media before but this was to prove of only minimal use as the software that I was to use was different, the hardware was new and sometimes strange.

We were give the brief of; create a title sequence for a fictional TV program from Charlie Brooker's website http://www.tvgohome.com/. We were given the sitcom "Congratulations, it's a horse". I say we as I was working with my good friend Sophie Taylor. This was the definition we of the program.

Over the first week we came up with the idea of it being stop animation or a POV scene. However, at the end of the week, the tutors did not like it. So we took it on board and just decided the only way to achieve what they thought would work, would be to green screen it. Yes it would look tacky and have a low production value but it would get the job done. We filmed it all in one day and edited it 2 days. The illustrations are done by Sophie and work really well with my bad action on top of them.

65 was the grade that me and Sophie achieved for this piece which, safe to say I thought was a great a achievement.

 Below you can see the finished film;