Research

Practitioners Concerned with Identity - Kate Moross

I really like Kate Moross' work because they combine real-life media with cartoon-styled media.

For example, in this gif, the skaters are tracked and hand-drawn animations follow them which is incredibly creative.

Kate Moross started as a student working for the music industry designing record covers, posters, and live visuals. Moross founded Studio Moross in 2012 and published Make Your Own Luck two years later. The studio, has established a reputation for warm and inventive music graphics for current pop artists (Anne-Marie), festivals (Parklife), and established stars (The Spice Girls). They also did work for The Depot (Mayfield), animated titles for All That, Nike, Billie Eilish, and MTV.

  

V&A Museum Trip

Experimental Design - April Greiman

April Greiman is an American graphic designer. She's associated with the New Wave Design Movement of 1970s-1980s. She's known for her innovative use of technology in graphic design, especially when she uses digital tools in her work.

She studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and later at the Allgemeine Kunstgewerbeschule Basel in Switzerland (school of design). 

Her most popular artworks are her poster designs, magazine layouts and digital experiments. Especially her work for the design publication "Design Quarterly". She grew up in NYC but her dad was from Russia and her mum was from Romania.

This is a mixed-media poster made by April and I like it a lot because of the way she positioned all the objects in the corridor. This is similar to what I will be doing in my FMP because I will be using hand-illustrated animations implemented in real-world scenes.

Inspiration Research

This is an example of an interview that I like because he asks multiple people similar questions in different locations all about one topic which is very similar to what I will be doing. He does a good job of making this video entertaining however I won't be doing it exactly like him because the person asking the questions (me) will be animated.

A channel that has similar animations to what I will be doing is @ChainsFr. He does a great job of making the videos entertaining by adding sound effects, music and animations which I will be doing. His channel is a great example.

This is a still frame from one of his videos. The way he makes these videos is very efficient; he uses real images for the background then adds in the animated characters on top of it and makes it look like they're actually in the scenes. However, I can make my video look more realistic by using a tint on each animation to match the image's lighting (this is shown in the practical skills section of my Blogger). I also noticed that ChainsFr uses the same base animation in each clip but just adds accessories to make them look like different characters. For example, in this still frame, one student has a cap on, another has long hair and the professor has a tie and moustache. This is very efficient because it saves him time from having to draw a new animation for each character. Instead, he is able to use the same animation and if he wants to make a new character, he can add accessories to it.

He also takes advantage of simple clips like this where he will have him pointing at a whiteboard whilst he talks about a topic. I can make something similar to this but I will improve mine so that it's more dynamic and looks more real. Below is an example of an improved version that I made.

I will use some of these techniques in my video but will also improve certain things such as the images he uses in the background and colour correction to make the animations look more realistic.

Audience Demographic

My audience demographic will all ages but primarily include teenagers/school children. The video can be used as entertainment for teenagers, or for educational purposes in schools to teach young children about identity. It applies to all types of people, not just a single gender, religion or wealth status. 

Infographics

An infographic is a visual representation of data/information designed to make complex information easier to understand when first looking at it. They usually combine text, graphics and images to achieve this effectively. E.G. a bar chart could show the population of different countries and a pie chart could illustrate the breakdown of household expenses. These are both types of infographics.

I really like this infographic from 2016 because of its bright colours, clear contrast and use of fonts. The illustrations are also very clean and minimalistic whilst also being able to present all the information on the future of food very effectively. The style is very modern and the designer has only used around 5 colours which is very minimalistic.

This type of infographic could be implemented in my FMP by making a similar infographic for each person I interview in the video to make it more clear to the viewers what they are talking about.

I also like this infographic because of the old newspaper style and the designer's use of pie charts and statistics (percentages and numbers). They make these statistics very clear, they're a lot bigger than the small text and they are in big black boxes to show that they are the most important parts of the infographic. The illustrations are also very good and they are consistent throughout the whole infographic.

This type of infographic could be implemented in my FMP by making a similar infographic for viewers to look at before they watch the actual interview video. This way, before the viewer watches the video they will know exactly what they are about to watch.

Timelines

A timeline is a visual representation of events that are arranged in chronological order along a line, usually with past events on the left to future events on the right. It helps to illustrate the duration of events very well allowing readers to understand sequential information very easily. They can be used in many different fields such as history, project management and even personal planning.

This timeline presenting the history of the combustion engine made by Timothy Dole is very good because it's unique compared to the other timelines. Instead of doing it horizontally, he made it vertical and put the dates in a red box which stands out a lot. He also uses images with a consistent style throughout the timeline which is very effective. I like the bold red colour used. I could use this in my FMP by making an animated timeline for each person getting interviewed in the video. (If you can't see the image well, click it and it will enlarge)

This is a classic example of a timeline; it's horizontal, the earliest time is on the left and the most recent time is on the right. It has a bold heading at the top in a serif bold font. I like it because of how simple it is. I could also make a timeline like this to show each person getting interviewed in my video.

Google Form Responses

I made a Google form questionnaire that asks people questions that relate to my interview video. These will allow me to improve my FMP when I make it. For example, 

Questions Planning

Some questions I could ask the people being interviewed could be:

- What country are you from

- What is identity to you?

- Who's the most important person in your life?

- What do you dream of doing by the time you're 30 years old

These are the questions I'm going to use in my FMP, I chose these because there is a wide variety of topics which will make the video a lot more interesting.

Shot Research - Shot-Reverse Shots

Most of the footage in my FMP video will be two people next to each other, for example, Taren's interview will be on a bench in a park. So to see how other popular films did scenes like this, I did some research and ended up finding the bench scene from Barbie (2023). I really like this scene because shot-reverse shots are used as well as a wide shot showing both characters on the set which makes it easier for the viewer to see where they are.

Shot-reverse shots are used in a lot of films especially in dialogue-heavy scenes. They are usually used to provide context; this kind of shot makes it seem like both characters in a conversation are in the same space even though they're being filmed by two different camera setups. They're also used to create tone and the camera movement indicates how the viewer should be feeling. For example, if one character is filmed up close and the other is filmed at a medium distance, stronger feelings are felt for the character filmed at a close distance. This type of shot also keeps continuity in the scene.