Holiday

What I did on my Holidays

My final project is based on the experience I feel while working. When we finally get good weather in Manchester I don’t get the opportunity to enjoy it as I'm always working. I gaze out of my window at work watching everybody enjoying themselves and it ticks me off.

For this project I opted to do an animation. This gave me an opportunity to use After effects and my other skills in Photoshop, Illustrator and editing software.

For research I looked at graphic styles and colours we associate with summer. My inspiration for the animation came from the Diet Coke Plus advert. I’ve always wanted to make a video animation using compositing software. I first used illustrator to draw different scenes
for the animation. This was a long winded process that requires a lot of problem solving of how graphic images would animate on screen. Storyboarding can only give a rough guide so I had to rely on a lot of improvisation to make the animation as fun and interesting as possible. I then had to transfer all my vector images in to after effects and teach myself how to use the software finally adding a complementary music track.

I really enjoyed doing this project I was given free range on content. This was an opportunity for me to develop new skills with software I’ve never used before and I personally think it was a good animation for a first attempt with after effects.

George Lucas Flash Site

Flash Interactive movie

This project was a love and hate relationship for me. I chose to do an interactive site on the director and producer George Lucas. This was a good opportunity for me to talk learn about a director whose films have influenced the film industry. These films have given me the inspiration to get involved in visual effects software.

I knew from the start of this project what I wanted to showcase. The design of the interface was the challenging part of the brief. I did a lot of research on flash websites for usability and design. After series of ideas I settled for a storyboard layout for the interface design. I got this idea from watching the behind the scenes documentary of Star Wars and caught a glimpse of an old storyboard scene which was a perfect layout for the flash movie.

Now that I have all the elements that I needed. It was learning how to use the flash software to covey the information. This was difficult for me as I only have a basic understanding of flash, but complexity of this movie required a lot of action scripting which I don’t understand.

For this project I’ve have had to study flash for myself, studying many late nights till the early hours of the morning to get this project completed. Due to this project I have learnt how to do basic action scripting and extended my previous knowledge of the flash software. Although i struggled with the programming side of the project i was really impressed in what i acheived with the final product.

Doritos

Doritos advertisement

To be honest the product does not fill me with any excitement. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any memorable Doritos ads since the late 90’s. They must be desperate resorting to college students coming up with ideas. Doritos have never really had a memorable ad campaign. I have never liked the taste of Doritos which makes it harder to gain inspiration. I found this project really boring and did not want to it.

The challenge with projects like these is that college projects are always limited with inadequate resources where as advertising companies have a lot of money and access to professional equipment that opens up thousands of possibilities. So to compete with the professionals you have to come up with really clever ideas that do not require big budget props. For these reasons I have had to hold back on many of my ideas.

Of the five ideas I generated I settled on one that enabled be not have actors or big effects. The idea consists of two sock puppets. The concept was two socks would both fart and smell each others fart realising the flavour of the Doritos they were eating.

Now because I am doing this project on my own and not working in a group. I’ve had to rely on friends with no skills in filming or acting. This was my second challenge, because I knew what I wanted, my friends had no experience in the creative field it was difficult to get them to understand the concept.

I had drawn storyboards and written a screenplay to help me and my friends play out the scene. We occasionally improvised which really worked well. But when it came to editing the shoot I found the filming was not as I hoped.

The editing of the film was really tricky as I did not have many shots and the time to reshoot. As we were acting with sock puppets the cameraman managed to catch our heads in the shot which he was supposed to just focus on the socks. So I skilfully edited film to get away with the mistakes. I really enjoyed the editing and felt a real achievement in the final cut.

My next challenged was the dubbing. Our Manchester accents did not work well with our sock puppets so I had to record myself with a high pitched voice that work out better for my sock characters.

Towards the end of this project i felt that it was the best brief ive work on this year. I thought overall advertisement was a success and it was a good opportunity to work on a live industry brief. Due to this experience I have found a love for the editing profession.

There is a link to the Doritos advert in the video bar above.

Code Computer love

Code Computer love is a digital design company based in Manchester’s city centre. It is one of the leading digital design agencies in the UK and the number one agency outside of London. Their fresh contemporary and innovative style has gathered over forty awards in the last five years and has acquired an impressive portfolio of clients such as HMV, Umbro, Waterstones, and Huggies.

Code continues to define the digital industry here in Manchester and offers a wide range of services such as online marketing, web development, interactive technologies and TV and animation, making them the only full service digital agency in Manchester. Code is proud of its heritage and collaborates with the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), Manchester Digital and E-Consultancy to raise the digital profile of the region.

Code has a team of 46 designers and marketing specialists priding itself on the work they produce, this means that they recruit knowledgeable people with extraordinary skills. Code is always recruiting the ‘very best’ talent around and has a tough recruitment process where only the right person gets through. In 2006 they head hunted an award winning freelance interactive designer ‘Stewart Hamilton’ so they could offer his skills in the latest technology to clients. They insist and thrive on experimenting in new and exciting ways of presenting clients with innovative ideas in order to connect with their consumers, offering them a service beyond the norm.

The company established itself in 1999 and started off small, in a rented room above a hairdresser’s shop in Stockport. Tony Foggett, Wini Tse and Louis Georgiou are the founding directors of Code. Tony and Louis first crossed paths whilst studying an educational media design degree at the MMU and coincidentally they met again working at the same design company, Mainstream. This is where they met their third partner, Wini Tse and became friends.

As the three colleagues worked with each other they realised that there was a potential market for multimedia at a time when design was predominately paper based. This was a perfect business opportunity to be taken advantage of; as people did not realise. As Foggett recalls: “For us it’s the specialism that’s always been the key, and that’s why we decided to jump ship”.(1)“There’s a huge difference between a specialist agency and a full service advertising agency that offers digital as just one of those services. When digital’s a ‘bolt on’ you may get a nice integrated approach, but digital in its own right needs to have a much more on-going, focused and long term strategy”.(2)

“It surprises me that there aren’t larger agencies with the capabilities of us around. In fact I’d argue that we’re now emerging as the only real full service digital agency (in Manchester) – in that there are other design and build, or advertising based agencies, but nobody that’s actually integrating creative, media and planning like we are.”(3)

In April 1999 they started their business with a mere £3000 and bought a new computer with basic equipment in order to setup their first office. They financed their office space by trading five months of rent for a website! The team then planned a strategy to attract cliental by teaming with the same traditional design agencies that undervalued digital so they could build their client base. Traditional design companies agreed with this and would bring Code on board to develop digital solutions as they could not offer such services themselves. This allowed Code to have access to renowned brand names and media exposure.

Over the years they took on many projects; however, one in particular positively changed their future and cemented the company reputation. The website commissioned by ‘Doctor Martens’ the shoe company’s. This was a breakthrough for them as their work on the website was impressionable and instrumental in securing them a permanent place with the massive corporation KCC Kimberley Clark Corporation (Huggies).

Tony Foggart: “We put an awful lot of love and attention into that website, really demonstrating how well we could get to grips with a brand, and it paid off. We got a lot of great jobs off the back of it and secured a great relationship with DM. It was a real turning point.”(4)

The managing director of Code has well established the company and has acquired a great achievement by attracting big brand names that opted for them over their competitors in London. “We love sticking it up the south”. (5) “We’re Manchester people and we love it here. I think that fact makes us more determined - gives us an extra yard in preparing for pitches – and that usually pays dividends.”(6)

http://www.how-do.co.uk/north-west-media-features/special-features/deciphering-code-20070814801/ (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)