Feels Finished

Anne managed to help with my website by finding a different transition without any glitches; it's a simple fade but I think it works beautifully and I'm very grateful.

I've attached my final creative CV to my 'About Me' page and I've updated my showreel on Vimeo and Youtube.

I've sent off my business cards to be printed, though I am concerned that the logo on the front of the business card is going to appear blurred which is a real shame. Unfortunately I had this problem very early in the module with InDesign. For some reason my crystal clear and very lage PNG images seems to export blurry. I only realised after I'd sent them off as the PDF must have been zoomed out when I checked them over.

I know how to solve it now, which is to bring in the raw Illustrator file straight into InDesign... but it's a bit late now. I can only see how they'll turn out. It might not be as bad as I'm expecting.

I feel I've finished everything required for this module and to a good standard; I care about how I am represented and hope that I gain interest for employment opportunities through my quite thorough development of my brand.

Improved Showreel

I've made some changes to my showreel to include newer material and to eliminate 3D animation that I didn't want to be included.

I asked a tutor about it and we both feel that this is now my finished showreel. Also, going on the advice of others about the business card that looked like a wedding organiser's, I decided to change my name plates for the showreel to reflect my business card design instead. I think this is a definite improvement.

Website Development

With the help of my tutor we've been able to add a transition to my website pages where everything slides down to reveal the content. I'm really happy with the appearance of this; it adds more of a professional feel. Unfortunately we've been having a few glitches with this where the page shows as normal, then flashes white and continues through the transition. Therefore we'll have to revisit this issue and alter it somehow.

I have change the social icons which is something I've wanted to do for a while to keep it consistent with all of my other branded materials.

And I've finally attached my own domain to the website!

I really like the icons as they're small but still catch the eye; they also rollover to grey which I think is a nice touch.

Business Card

I've had quite a large break from distribution methods to concentrate on my other modules and I've also had some personal family problems during Easter which has further delayed things.

I've decided on a design with Anne; I believe it is the most clear and uniformed with my website.

For the back I want a selection of my work and various projects to showcase my abilities.

I shall be printing them with Moo very soon.

Gallery on Website

Here I have change the layout of my 'Drawings' page and formed the gallery to be select-able and appear in a lightbox.

I also need to upgrade on Weebly in order to attach my own domain which I will want to do soon.

Feedback and Thoughts

From the presentation I found that people received my work well.

From the large choice of business cards it was difficult to decide on which design to go with and this is something I'm still having to consider. I have ruled out the business card with the 'MW' that appears as a watermark as some remarked it feels like a wedding organiser's card - which is fair enough.

I also found that on a different sized screen my drawings gallery did not work very well and it was difficult to navigate on a smaller screen than my own and so I was advised by one of the tutors to make it a light box selection instead so that people can clearly click through the images manually.

I also had some feedback about my CV and that it seems relatively complete; I just need to add an 'About Me' section.

Also, when I have completed my main project and motion graphics module I want to add more material to my showreel and replace pieces.

Presentation

I've been ill over the last weekend and so I requested to present this Friday instead of Tuesday to be better prepared.

I'm feeling quite confident with what I've achieved so far. From seeing others' work I feel the my website isn't as slick or stylish but I'm relatively happy with it's navigation and pretty much everything overall.

I've also started a written CV, the layout is a little odd at the moment though as the first page is full of text and the second is very scarce.

Will see in the presentation what my tutor thinks and what improvements I need to consider.

Business Cards

I've also made a few designs for my business cards. These are all the front design, the back will be of screenshots from my animations to showcase my work.

  I'm still unsure of which design is best.

New Website Design

I've spent a lot of time on Weebly and have tried my best to customise this particular theme to suit me through the Html coding. It's been slow but it is going well:

I've made quite a lot of progress. The main things left to do here is my Animations page, my Concept page and upload my CV to 'About me'.

I'm not quite happy with the drop down menu (it's an off white and I can't find how to alter this).

I'd also like a sweeping transition between pages.

I'd also like the words to be closer to the images on my Home page (Showreel, Work, Contact).

Website Development from Scratch

I've found that I can no longer make my website with Wix. Not only because I have to upgrade to attach my domain which costs a lot of money, I've also seen an overwhelming amount of negative reviews from customers of Wix. No customer service and problems with the sites in general (in some cases customers are paying £40 a month and suddenly their website has gone offline and they cannot contact anyone to help at Wix).

Therefore I've decided I'm going to have to develop my website elsewhere.

I'm looking into Weebly, although you still have to upgrade, it is much much cheaper and the reviews are a lot more positive. I also have some friends who use it.

Website Update

Unfortunately it seems that Anne and I have come a cross a bit of an issue concerning attaching a domain name to Wix; they charge a fee to do it which is a shame. We're going to see what I can do, in the cheapest way possible.

In the mean time, I do need to complete more of my website. Particularly as the presentations are very soon.

Pathways Event

Today was really good, I got the opportunity to speak with a few people relevant to my industry. Ideas Tap were extremely friendly and helpful; they're a creative network that help people find jobs, internships, advice and funding.

I spoke with The Children's Media Conference and I'm hoping to get involved in volunteering for them this summer. The woman on the stall was brilliant and very friendly and explained how I can get involved and what the voluntary work actually consists of.

I also spoke to Talenthouse a great deal as I'm working on a brief that they've given to the Motion Graphics module.

I also got the chance to have a chat with Tommy Robin, it was interesting to find out a little more about him.

Overall, it went really well and I feel I'll get a lot out of it!

CV Improvements

I've had some advice from my tutor and help in arrangement of layout and I think we've about cracked it.

It's feeling much more spacious and everything is nice and cohesive in appearance. I'm not 100% about my name and specialty at the top but I've tried playing around with the layout and nothing seems to work as well as this.

Also, I'm unsure about keeping everything in the Work Experience section, however the part-time work shows dedication, perseverance and the ability to work collaboratively. I may perhaps eliminate the 'student representative' as the role isn't that demanding so I won't have much to say about it...

I'll see tomorrow in class.

Website and CV Development

Here's what I've done so far

I'm quite happy with it at this point. The transition between the pages is a swipe to the left, which I thing brings more personality and looks the best.

I've also made a start on my CV design. I'm again having trouble deciding which looks the best.

I really like the first one but it doesn't really work/match with my style of circles. I like the combination of the second but I thing the circles will be a problem concerning layout as they take up a large amount of space. I tried the opposite compromise which I feel works quite nicely but I do prefer the grey box at the bottom. Unsure of how to approach it; I may have to look into an entirely different layout.

I'm finding InDesign quite nice to use but it can be somewhat temperamental. I found that importing my logo as an image file causes it's quality to lessen in certain parts of the logo when I export the document. A solution I found though, is that if I import my Illustrator file straight in I don't seem to encounter these problems.

Everything else seem relatively simple to figure out most of the time. I had to ask how to wrap text but everything is in there you just have to take time to find it. I like the use of grids and guides to help with alignment of layout. Resizing images seems pretty odd to me; I'm not sure why it isn't as straight forward as the other Adobe programmes.

I also made these to use in my CV, Website and business cards.

I've made a few more changes to my CV to see if I could get the design right. I'm still not sure about it though.

It's feeling a bit cluttered at the top. I'm not sure how to arrange everything to keep it feeling clean and light.

ISSUU

Today we looked at ways of developing our portfolio further by looking at ISSUU books that people have made.

It's basically a book filled with work; displayed in any way you wish and the ISSUU transforms the PDF pages into a virtual book.

It's a nice idea but I don't think I'll be considering making one until my main project is finished. Not only because of the workload but I'll have more finished pieces/shots to show at that time.

Inspiration for CV

I've been looking at some creative CVs to give me some ideas about layout and incorporating my own style. I want it to be clean clear to read the individual sections separately.

One that was shown in class really caught my eye as I really like her style:

I particularly like how she separates her 'About Me' section really obviously to make it feel more personal. The way she implemented her style of drawing works really well but I want to keep mine quite simple in comparison.

I also don't particularly want a 'Star rating' system as I don't feel that knowledge can be calculated very accurately in this way; it's all very subjective and I think it's a bit risky.

I also saw this from another illustrator:

I'm not sure I'll take anything specifically from it but I like how loud it is and speaks volumes for her personality. I'm not sure it's particularly suitable for me as the information given is quite brief. At least from both, I feel that my name and specialty will probably end up on the top right of the page.

Tutorial

Today I had a tutorial with Anne to take a look at what I'd done so far.

I've also been looking into Wix and trying to choose a website template to use. I'm finding it really difficult to make a decision because there are so many that look nice. I've also made a drawing of myself that I could use to make it more personal and also it's something that can be transferable to my CV.

I know that I want my colour palette to be very simple; white, black, grey and purple. I tried various frames for this image.

I like both but again the square feels to rigid and sharp like my logo designs before. I think the circle works better for the style I'd like. Plus, a circle represents openness.

This was my first quick experiment with a template that I showed Anne. I like how simple and clean it is, but I felt that the template was very symmetrical which contrasted too much with my logo. That's when I remembered another I came across that contained circles. I spoke with Anne about my ideas for the style and she was very positive about the idea of basing things around circles and creating uniformity in that way.

We discussed how I could create all of my icons including buttons for my work; as circles.

Looking at Other Websites

I wanted to revisit the websites we had a quick exercise on in the first lesson. 

I wanted to clarify what I liked and hopefully it will help me further realise what design aspects I wanted in my own website.

Although the website is colourful and really shows off Bryony's talent and personality, I would prefer for mine to not appear like a blog, the way this does. I'd like it to be cleaner and something I would update periodically with complete pieces of work rather than regular updates - like a blog.

These examples are much more to my taste. Clean, lots of white and - in Jason Brobert's case - with an accent of colour. I want to do something similar to this as it appears very professional but simple. I also like the idea of panels which have a rollover image but I'm not sure I would have enough work to display in this way.

Again this is similar but with a lot more colour. It's really nice and uniformed to his brand - even in his showreel - which works really well. However, once again I would like less on mine.

This is an example of clean and professional but I feel a tad boring. But then again, it is all about the work and not the web design.

More Brand Development

Greys

There was mixed opinion about 'all purple' or purple and black. I tried it with various shades of grey but I think it weakened it so I abandoned that.

Stroke Styles

I then used Illustrator's vector tools to try various styles to the stroke. Again I got mixed opinions but I did agree with someone that the central style feels more like a logo rather than a handwritten piece of text. But I didn't want it so uniformed, I wanted it to have some 'written' quality, some personality.

Personality

I'd decided that separation with colour was what I wanted. I tried this stroke and I really like it. I think I'm very close to finalising now.

Almost there

This one is definitely my favourite so far. I've tampered with it repeatedly in Illustrator to try and make it more polished and I think I've about cracked it.

More Logo Ideas

From experimenting before, I know that I want my M and W to link.

I like the one I chose before but I thought it felt too corporate, too sharp.

Particularly when Animation is all about fluidity and movement.

Therefore I decided to experiment with my signature as it's very loopy and loose.

I'm quite liking the looks of this one.I made subtle changes for each one, like how scewed the MW is, what colour the dot of the 'i' should be. I also really quite like the MW standalone logo. I'm not sure whether to include the dot. It gives it a quirkiness but I'm not sure if it works. 

Weebly, Wordpress or Wix?

Today we were introduced to a couple of web-hosting providers.

I liked Weebly instantly

It seemed very simple to use in order to achieve a good, professional-looking website. Initially from appearances and the interface I thought I would prefer it.

However, I soon found that it was very limiting in design. A simple element like the ability to change colours of aspects of the website was either impossible on certain templates or had very restrictive palattes on others.

This frustrated me very quickly as I couldn't see how I would personalise it the way I wanted it. I didn't want to own a website that looked exactly the same as many others'.

Wordpress wasn't impressive enough

Although I could see that Wordpress had its uses; quite a range of nice tools and possible plugins if one was to pay the premium. However, I didn't want to have to go to all of the trouble in order to keep my website from looking like a blog. Every single section seemed to need to be 'unchecked' so as to keep everything appearing basic.

I wasn't feeling it.

Then, I visited Wix.

I couldn't believe the difference. Suddenly I had so many more choices (I could even personalise the social network icons with my own designs if I so wished!)

Everything seemed to appear much more professional and I suddenly felt really happy that I could create a website that I really loved from another really easy and clear interface. Furthermore, I would be able to make future changes to it easily. I believe the reason it appears more professional than Weebly, is that it uses Html5 customisable coding; so this leads me to believe that the designed templates are somewhat more complex.

Wix is definitely the one I'll be choosing to create my site.

Thoughts on Html coding

I'm not keen. The main reasons are that I don't have Dreamweaver so that would make things difficult and I hate the idea of having to 1) Purchase a template 2) Have to go to so much trouble to change and customise your website when Wix has a great interface where it changes it all for you. And from what I've seen, both achieve a very similar standard of professionalism in appearance.

Showreel

We' had Melvyn for a few lessons to learn how to make decent showreels in the minimum time needed.

We looked for various showreels online to find what worked well and what didn't. I found that on showreels that weren't as successful either went on too long, weren't critical of their own work and showed a lower quality of work or didn't have any contact information within the actual video to clearly indicate who it was made for.

A showreel that I chose to be one of the best was by a company I really like called Giant Ant:

Although longer than what we're aiming to produce, it is full of varied and interesting work showing a vast range of skills. I believe it could actually be shorter and work just as well but they are clearly a company that produces a lot of work and so wishes to show as much as possible.

I'm happy with what I made in this time; it really taught us to be disciplined with our own work.
The main structure we all used was Begin with best work and End with best work.

I can't wait to clean it up and ask for permissions for the music.

It's great to be able to display your best work presented in a quick video. It creates impact.

Logo Ideas

I thought I'd put these up:

I was just experimenting with my 'brand'. I actually have been thinking that my name is too complex to remember. So many people do not pronounce my name correctly and certainly can't spell it so I'm wondering if this will be a problem for me.

On the other hand; there won't be many Micky Woznys out there.

I'm considering using purple; I tend to change my hair colour a lot but I always end up going back to purple after a while and it's quite a gender neutral colour so I thought it would make sense for me.

I've also generated my own font - using my handwriting. I believe this is quite a nice personal touch. I asked some friends which logo they preferred and they immediately picked one that was in my handwriting. They didn't know it was my handwriting. I asked why they chose it and they said 'It just feels like you'. Therefore I think I might incorporate my own font in my brand. Perhaps.

I like the third down on the right. The 'MW' would be nice to use as a stand-alone logo. Still got a lot of development to go though; I'm not happy with any of these.

Presentations

We presented today. It went quite well.

I happened to create a 'rough' showreel for it which I was relatively happy with. I'm looking forward to next week when we learn how to properly make one; it will hopefully appear much more professional.

Personal Statement

Today we each had to answer a mini questionnaire in order to sort of 'discover' ourselves. Think about things we probably wouldn't normally think about.

After answering these we then asked our friends some similar questions like: What are my strengths? What are my most differentiated and valuable skills? What personality traits make me interesting?

And then from all of this information we wrote a personal statement about ourselves.

Here's mine:

I am a highly driven and creative individual and I always strive to achieve my best. I'm passionate about becoming lost in stories and meeting new characters. I believe in bringing emotion into my work to bring unique strength through meaning and personality. I am currently developing my skills in 2D animation and have completed client projects to a high standard in this medium; I am constantly aiming to increase my expertise in drawing and the observation of movement.

I wanted to emphasise how much I strive to bring perfection and emotion into my pieces and I wanted to mention that I've done some client work; showing that I've had some successful work experience.

Unfortunately I did find that mine sounded very similar to everyone else's. Perhaps I can improve it further when I revisit it at a later stage.

Introduction

So today we were told about everything we'll be doing in the weeks to come.
I'm looking forward to branding myself and creating a clear identity. I've always worried about this because the possibilities are endless and it'll be something I'll have to like for years to come so I need to get it right.

Hopefully, this module will really help me in finding this. We'll be presenting ourselves next week and exploring what it is about ourselves that make us unique - something we can hone in on for our logos, websites, CVs and showreels.

Exciting stuff!

I want to look into some website layouts that I like and have a look at other animators/illustrators' online presence.