There was a star…
Posted on August 8, 2010
I’m always carrying my camera around with me, snapping photos of interesting things. I’m started to get a little bored with single images, and I’ve always been interested composting and experimenting with blending modes and transparencies. (I switched to InDesign from Quark when I found out that it could do transparencies instead of having to do them in Photoshop). Now I’m finally taking the time to play around with different images.
The image above started with an image of a hole cut into metal siding on a warehouse in New Westminister. I added a dragonfly and changed the colour to a cooler palette, then an image of myself that a friend took last week went in the cutout of the hole. An image of Kingston city hall, weeds from a field near my parents house and a moon all from winter scenes in Ontario filled out the left hand side of the composition. A sprinkling of stary images and a Shakespeare quote, (along with a couple of hours of experimenting with blending modes, masks, and adjustments layers) and voila!
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Apologizing
Posted on July 22, 2010
My friend Shawn and I went out into the world (ok, it was just New West, a few blocks from his house) in search of great treasures in the form of static and moving images. I began to notice all kinds of shapes that would be good as frames, and I “collected” them in my SLR. While Stumbling tonight, I found a quote that seemed to be a little more true than not and I wanted to do something with it. Voila! What you see above is what I came up with.
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Experimenting with photography and textures
Posted on July 15, 2010
Sometimes I like being a girly girl. I love sundresses, pink, and high heels. I usually play with muted colours in my work, or brighter cleaner palettes. But I’ve always loved juxtaposition (both the word and the actual meaning) and I’ve always loved experimenting with multiple layers, transparencies, and blending modes with various textures to get a sense of depth and energy that’s hard to get with just a single image.
My good friend Shawn Hight and I went out to shoot some photos and footage the other day, and in true experimental form, I brought my findings home and experimented some more. Above you can see what I came up with. Click on the image to enlarge it in your browser.
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Africa: Not a Single Story
Posted on July 7, 2010
Even though I’ve graduated from VFS, I’m still involved in a few projects with current students. One of those people is current EBM student Bernat Manzano who also happens to be an aspiring documentary film producer. Right now I’m working on a poster for his final project, a documentary pitch package for a film called Africa: Not a Single Story. Above you can see the inspiration taken from an actual painting and some iterations for the poster underneath.
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A Good Old Fashioned Book Burning
Posted on June 21, 2010
This weekend, Ehab and I trucked a bunch of film equipment out to my place in Burnaby and shot the final scene for our Call of C’Thulhu project. You can read all about our experience on the official Space Squid blog.
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Shoot day
Posted on June 3, 2010
It’s here! We’ve worked together to write the story, storyboarded the motion and the interactive parts, created the shot list and today we’re shooting the entire motion piece in fronb of a green screen. We’ve got 14 people here on set, and only two ever appear in front of the camera. Project managers are here to make sure everything runs smoothly, motion designers to make sure we have the shots we need for motion, interactive designers to make sure we have the shots for the interactive parts, makeup, a sound guy, director, assistant director, camera operator, two people from marketing documenting the process along with a few other people popping in and out to check in. It’s a full crew and time is flying by.
We’ve already been here for three hours and we’ve got a maximum of nine left to get all of our shots. It’s a lot of work to get to this point, and it’s a great reward when the day is complete and we can see all of our planning come alive on screen.
Above, you can see photos of our actors in front of the green screen with orange markers to track the wall in post. You can see our setup in the second image with the screen that we’re all huddled around to see how the shot actually frames up. The last image is handiwork from our makeup artist did a super cool and crazy job at making our professor’s (who just happened to be her dad too) hand look severed.
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Brainstorming and interactive typography
Posted on May 25, 2010
We just got out of a very long (3 hours) but very productive brainstorming session for Call of C’Thulhu. We’ve decided to focus on bringing our story together in a storybook kind of style, all in a Necronomicon style of book. We’re focusing on breaking the motion piece into four different pages, with a layout that resembles something similar to the original Alice in Wonderland book. The first spread would include the starting scenes at the main gate as we follow Joseph up to the apartment door. The second takes place in the professor’s living room, and the third in his office. The last would include the scene where Joseph runs out of the office to …… (c’mon, really, did you think I was going to tell you the ending?!)
Similar to the hyped but flopped (or at least not living up to my expectations) Alice in Wonderland book for the iPad, the user will be able to flip through and turn the pages as if it was a real physical page. Unlike a physical book, the text will leave its static line and move to follow or repel (we haven’t decided yet) the touchpoints on the screen. The characters of the text will magically collect around the screen and in a flurry of magical particles and text, the underlying motion piece in a Sweeney Todd style will erupt out of the mix.
Within each of the motion pieces, we’ll have three different interactive components that the user will have to prod around for on their own and can interact with. We want to make it as intuitive as possible and leave it up to the user to figure out what elements are interactive, kind of like the game Windosill. Without giving away all of our secrets, three of the underlying themes seen throughout the story are bugs with tentacle like legs and feelers, worn out faces and souls, and bringing light to some of the chants traditionally associated with the story. Of course, if it’s the first time you’ve ever encountered the story, and you just want to watch it all from start to finish, you’ll be able to do that too.
The part that I’m the most excited about is actually the transitions from the storybook page to the playback of the motion piece. On first glance, the page will look like a regular paper copy of a storybook, only with a bit of old style charm, complete with a fancy dropcap and other embellishments on the page. But as soon as the iPad begins to tilt, or the user touches the screen, the characters will move. They’ll jump around the screen, either being drawn to the touch points on the screen or being repelled from them. The user will be able to play with the particles and smoosh them around the screen to create a bit of a magical soup where the motion piece will expand to utilize more of the available screen, and emerge from the deep magical depths to continue the story. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a thing for typography. I’m glad that we were able to incorporate and base typography both visually and with interactions. Check back in a few days; I hope to have a test done by week’s end.
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Project Space Squid
Posted on May 24, 2010
I graduated from the Digital Design program on the 28th of April, but I’ve managed to keep my fingers in the pot by working with other VFS students and alumni on a high quality interactive/motion magazine for mobile devices. It’s called Project Space Squid, and it’s broken down into 6 different project teams that will each be working on their own story over a course of four months. I have the pleasure of using my development skills to collaborate with EBM (Entertainment and Business Management) students Sandra Rojas González and Patsy Tomkins, motion designers Ehab Kamal and Nida Khan, graphic designer Celia Chung, interaction designer Nick Lenko, and flash developer Vincent van Haaff on a project based on the story Call of C’Thulhu by H.P. Lovecraft. For those of you not familiar with H.P. Lovecraft’s famed stories of the early 20th century, because I certainly was not before committing to this project, he is famous for writing horror, fantasy, and science fiction.
We are working with a shortened adapted version of the film Call of C’Thulhu, which will be a combination of a 3 minute motion piece with interactive components overlaid into the film. The story begins with a 20 something man named Joseph running through debris in a chaotic city in the 1920’s. He’s in a hurry to get to a professor with urgent news, but when he arrives at his office, he finds a mess of papers and the professor dead. His hand cut off and the words “I am your servant” are printed on the ceiling in his own blood. Joseph runs to the roof knocking over candles as he goes, erupting the office into flames, and finds a large mythical creature on the rooftop of the building.
We’re still in the conceptual stages of the project and pitch our ideas with a proof on concept on Wednesday this week. You can follow our progress both on my blog and the official one for the entire Project Space Squid.
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In the Beginning Interactive storybook now online!
Posted on April 26, 2010
Taura and I are proud to present to you our final project in a 4 minute short film. Don’t be confused, it is an interactive project, not a motion piece, but we felt it was best to present it this way to reach the masses in it’s whole interactive entity.
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Looking back and saying goodbye
Posted on April 23, 2010
If you would have told me that I would be capable of thinking , doing, and being the things I am when I started the digital design program a year ago I would have called your bluff. Unbelievably, I’ve crammed more knowledge into my head than I ever thought possible, sometimes to the point that I literally had a headache from thinking (usually in OOP class, I’ll ‘blame’ that one on the instructor). But just like conditioning your body to run in a marathon, VFS, by it’s instructors, course content, and way of cramming it all into a year-long program, has conditioned me to be a better designer, better developer, better communicator, and even better person.
The instructors love what they do at VFS; so much that I wouldn’t say they love their jobs, because it’s not their job, it’s getting paid for their passion. The curriculum is constantly being tweaked. Each class has an opportunity to give feedback a the end of every term and many of he suggestions are implemented four months later when the next class comes through.
Now comes the bittersweet graduation event that we’ve all had our eye on since we entered into this VFS family a year ago. Like a small bird leaving the nest for the first time, I have overwhelming mixed feelings about that date. It’s not that I’m not sure if I’m ready, mom and pop VFS has done their job and is sending me out into the world well prepared. Our class of 19 has become a family to me over the year, and now we’re being split up as some of us move back to where we came from, some move to bigger cities in the US. I plan on staying in Vancouver and working in the interactive area of design. How many people will I keep in contact with? Will I return to VFS to audit classes?
The real question in the back of everyone’s mind is how long will it take to find paying work and where will it be? I’ve already set up three informational interviews to meet with companies that I’m interested in working for and I’ll be making more in the coming weeks. Even if a company isn’t hiring, I think it’s valuable to meet with them and see how they run their business and get to know them as people, not just a brand. Keep your eyes and ears open for an email or phone call, you may be on my list 
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