Some Random Blogpost- Awesome Tumblr Gifs

This year we were supposed to do Weekly Blog posts...You can see how much I kept up with that! :P (I forgot like all the time or kept putting them off I'm sorry) But as like some "Last" Blog post (not really, just since its the end of the school year) I'm going to post one more thing before the Summer vacation (if I see anything interesting i might post about it, haha.)
I just wanted to talk about two REALLY cool gifs on Tumblr that I found on a wonderful Blog by the name of Raiidens  (click to see their wonderful blog)
These Gifs are related to my favourite anime/manga; Tokyo Ghoul, I'm not in the mood to explain the storyline so just...like, click the Wikipedia link and read away, it has a lot of FEELS.

So the two Gifs are;

I havent Reblogged them yet (they're in my Queue) But the original posts are here and here)

I don't have too much to say about them, but i love how they took drawings from the manga and gave them life. Because you know when you're reading Manga its just kind of like still panels that don't move, so seeing them in movement is amazing.

The original manga shots are below; 

See? Compare these to the Gifs above. Pretty amazing right? how they turned these still images into moving "people."

Even though its not a lot to say about it, I hope you can tell what I feel towards these amazing Gifs and that you Check out Raiidens amazing blog. They really are amazing! :) (btw Tokyo Ghoul is also great you should check it out too, especially if you want to bawl your eyes out like omg)

Kinetic Typography- It Has Begun

In class we had to make a Kinetic Typography (Basically Animated Typography) To a 15-30 second clip of audio. I decided to make a Kinetic Typography video to one of my favourite songs; It Has Begun by the band Starset. I discovered the song about two months ago and it is like my life, haha.

The entire thing was made in After Effects, but I went off to Photoshop to edit some pictures included in the video (its just the walls that were used at the beginning of the actual video and the first part of the chorus.) Other than that, entirely After Effects. I did look around youtube and some other websites to find Overlays (Like Old Film Effects) that were all free to use don't worry. Some I had to use multiple times throughout the video.
Since the song "It Has Begun" is a pretty intense song, I thought that, of course it should have a pretty intense typography video to go along with it! if it was left up to someone actually good at this kind of stuff it probably would have looked way cooler, but I made what I had with the minimal knowledge of After Effects that I had (and the knowledge of people from the Internet...because I got stumped multiple times haha.)
The chorus I felt almost NEEDED to have a continuous theme of red, since I felt it fit a whole lot (mostly because I can only think of Tokyo Ghoul when I listen to it (since I discovered it through an AMV of it), and I also associate it with pretty intense drawings when I sketch to it) to the theme of the song. Also red is a pretty intense colour. Though actually in the end I think 99% of this video is RED, no other colours but RED. There IS some grey and blue thrown in there somewhere but you know...
This was really, really, REALLY hard to actually plan out and accomplish. Before when we started doing Kinetic Typography I had no prior knowledge of how to use After Effects and, even though I knew so little, I set SUPER high standards for myself (If you look at this compared to my storyboard, its actually nothing like it, haha.) and then left my brain going; "gurl wtf are you doing."
I struggled, A LOT. From making certain effects to synching up the words with the music, I. Struggled. My god. I think the absolute hardest part was synching the words with the music, especially near the end (I gave up halfway through the last part, so it looks really bad and unsynched, I'm sorry!).
The best part was looking up ways to do things, and then when I tried them I actually did it right! For example, when the text shatters I had no clue how to do that. I Looked it up, found out you use an effect called Pixel Prolly (I think that is what is called, its in the Simulation section of Animation Presets) I found it, used it, and it worked after a few minutes of fixing the timing. I was so satisfied! Also when the "Nothing could ever stop us from stealing our own" came along, even though the words, I agree, were pretty hard to read, it was so satisfying to see that the timing of the words when they moved (using a Null Object layer) was close to perfect! So happy! So happy...=w=

In the end, Believe it or not, I am SUPER proud of this Kinetic typography of mine! I feel its really good, considering its my first time ever making something like this. I love how it turned out, I love most of the synching, and i still most Definitely love It Has Begun, even though i had to listen to it nine-thousand times so I could complete this thing!


[Extra About Audio! :P...was it supposed to be in the general post? I dunno]

Literally the worst part of this (after the planning out and stuff and the synching) was actually snipping the audio to 30-something seconds and making sure it was actually a working audio file. It took me maybe two days to get my audio perfect? (I snipped it in Garage Band) But the worst part came when I actually tried putting it in my composition
First things first...MY. GOD. The audio was working horribly! the first time it played out, yeah, sure it played normally, but as soon as it replayed the audio's pitch became lower and slower and I definitely did not want that. After another day or so trying and trying again to fix it, nothing was working! I converted it to multiple different audio files (WAV, MP3, etc.) and still no change in how it was. One day I just got so severely frustrated that I stopped working altogether. My friend that day (before I went home) suggested that I open the song back up in Garage Band and just speed it up, so when it slows down in After Effects it'll be at the normal pitch I wanted. I went back Monday and tried to do that, but...
Garage Band didn't work. I was so unbelievably pissed. I tried for half an hour or so, gave up and just decided to use Audacity, even though I've never used it before. I managed to speed up the song, and I played around for a bit with the speed, moving it back and forth to and from After Effects until it was at the best I could have gotten it. In the end the audio is actually a bit too fast, but I needed to get going on the Actual Typography part before I fell even more behind than I already was.
What I learned from this experience? Garageband/After Effects doesn't like me, so I don't like them! unless its for Class, I won't be using those programs ever again! X(

Typography Exploration-Surrender

In class we had to choose a word from a list and make a sort of typography work somewhat describing the word- Unfortunately My previous file was nowhere to be found, but I managed to re-create it in some way; My word was SURRENDER.

When I hear the word surrender, or say the word surrender, I imagine a sort of powerful feeling with the first part of it, then it slowly goes down into some tiny little thing, as if someone was actually surrendering.
The meaning; "Cease Resistance to an enemy or opponent and submit to their authority." also adds to why I did this. What I mean about it going from powerful to basically nothing is because being in a battle, and in the end surrendering, in some cases it is a very honourable act, especially if its done to save others, but it can also be seen as an act of weakness; or the reality just sets in that they lost whatever battle they were in and had to declare being the losers and the ones ridiculed for times to come. Hence why the words are going from LARGE to small...

Surrender is one of my favourite words, for whatever reason (including nonchalant! :P) so I'm glad I was able to interpret it in some way!

CyberArts Culminating- Graphic design poster/Web Banner

Culminating Poster/Web Banner Assignment-GRAPHIC JAM

I decided to do my poster for the “event” called “Graphic Jam.” In my mind it looks like a convention of some-sort, strictly for Graphic and Digital Arts, and artists can showcase their work.  It would also probably be very Tech-Heavy, so not a lot of physical art pieces would actually be there, they would be projected onto a screen or something of that nature. An exception would be a nice gel-print of a Digital work.

…Honestly, I didn’t do a lot of research (I had too many things on my plate, I’m sorry.), I looked up some graphic design pictures, and got an idea on what a Web Banner was (because I wasn’t entirely sure) but other than that I went  basically straight into making my poster and Web Banner.

My poster shows a silhouetted person listening to music with large headphones. Why? Maybe he/she designed those headphones, and she’s “jamming out”…I also did it so there could be a pun involved, since the event is called “Graphic Jam.”

I also tried to make it pop with the colors. If you happen to see it while out on a nice stroll, it might catch your eye. “Oh? What’s on this poster?” You might think it’s a circus at first or something, but you’d probably check it out anyway, and next thing you know its some Graphic Design event. Seems pretty cool, right? I also made the letters pretty big so It’s easy to read even from a distance.

I also put a bunch of collages involving Technology and Graphic Design so it adds more to the fact that it is a Graphic Arts event, so if/when you go you know you’re going to be greeted with TECHNOLOGY.

For my banner I stayed with something simple, but not too simple. A web banner with too much going on is too overwhelming, and one that’s far too simple people are going to think the website is some spam thing that will send them e-mails every ten minutes and has viruses or whatever, so I had a plain blue background and used one of the previous collages to make the background a bit more intricate. I used the same text as the poster, so you can kind of relate them together in a way.

I kept the slightly vibrant colors so it was eye-catching, and the bold, big white text was so you could read it from afar, and it shows that “hey, this event is probably going to be cool!” There’s not a lot I can really justify, since I was in a hurry to get this done and there wasn’t 100% planning done, it was kind of all in my head. I kept the spirals open so they were more of the focal point.  It would either go from the silhouetted person to the individual spirals so you could read the info, or the other way around. Either way it works.

In the end, my satisfaction with it is kind of…eh. I wish I had more time to do it, but I only have so much time in my life to make sure all of my work is finished. If I had at least a week it probably would have been better than it actually is now. But at least I got it done. Actually, believe it or not, I like my web banner more than my poster. I don’t know why, I just like it more!

Modern Art style self portrait-Finished! :D

Look, its done! :D i don't really have anything to say about it, but I'm pretty glad on how it turned out!