Ever since I have had my pitch plus pitch feedback I have been working on my art work in Illustrator.  As I've said before in previous posts I wanted a stencil like theme to my art work.  However, ever since I have been playing around with my work looking at different shapes and forms I am having a slight change.  I am going to be heading towards a more detailed path.  I have created such parts to my animation like the globe and the plane.  Both taking me 2 days each to complete I got stuck in with the art work which is a bit more detailed.  Despite wanting to use a stencil like theme, I am still using simple shapes and converting them into different things.  By this I mean I could take the rectangle tool in Illustrator (M) and draw a simple rectangle.  From this I can delete anchor points and change and manoeuvre around to create the desired shape.  This is exactly what I did for designing my plane.

Below is my art work so far which I created:

Above here is my Globe.  I designed this in mind knowing I wanted it to be spherical.  I am going against my own rules in some ways as I originally said I wanted flat 2D simple shapes with simple colours and this looks everything but.  However,  It does work and I do like the way it has been finalised.  In a step by step process I started by grabbing a world map from Google which was flat and tracing it to produce my own vector based map.  Once I did this I coloured the countries and continents using a gradient.  This gradient here consists of 2 different greens, one lighter and one darker.  To get my globe spherical was surprisingly relatively easy.  I drew a circle with the circle tool (L) holding down shift and the option key to get a perfect circle.  I halved this circle and used the 3D effects - 3D - Revolve to create a sphere.  I then added my map to it by clicking map art and scale to fit.  This made everything look in proportion.  I then added 2 light intensity effects, one larger at the top and one smaller one at the bottom.  This was the final art work for the globe.  Back to the world map, I added that light to dark gradient in mind that I wanted to place light sources on my globe.  I attempted to put the darker green of the gradient where the light intensity is low and the lighter green where the light is.  

Moving onto my plane idea I wanted to use simple shapes as I didn't necessarily use them in my globe apart from the obvious which was a circle.  When I started designing my plane I was pretty stumped on how to start but I look at a photo of a plane and then knew the basic shapes around it.  In blue, this used to be a rectangle.  I added various anchor points around the shape and took some away to achieve the desired shape which you see above.  This is the fuselage of the aircraft.  I then moved onwards towards the wings which I made in a very similar way, adding and removing anchor points.  Moving onto the engines I did the same thing again using rectangles.  I purposely coloured coded each part so I knew which part was which and named them in my layers panel so they were easy to navigate through.  

Continuing with the structure of the plane, I added a tail fin in pink.  I also went over the fuselage shape which was in blue above and made it taller.  The fuselage (in blue) is actually attached to the fin in pink.  I drew out a shape and subtracted it from the plane structure.  I used the 'Minus front' button which is found in Pathfinder.

For me, this was the most difficult part of the structure.  I had to create a circle at the same angle of the shapes used for the other part of the plane.  Doing this, I originally set the shapes out completely flat and used a position tool to position everything at a certain angle in the air.  This was fairly complex and getting everything to fit together was very time consuming.  As you can see coming off the circles I had to join them up as the engine shapes were just a general guide. 

This is the finished template!  As you can see I added an extra fin on top of the pink one.  I coloured the top part of the fuselage yellow as this is a separate shape to the bottom blue part.  I placed all the simple shapes together to create the template for the plane as when I had it all mapped out flat as I said, I used a tool to angle everything in one direction.

Above here is the whole template drawn over with the pen tool.  Every different part of the plane's structure is again colour coded to differentiate between different parts.  Notice here I added small parts such as the yellow wing has a slight flick and the red wing has a slighting longer part to the fuselage to make it more life like.  I also added a very small fin on top of the pink one for realism.  I also connected the engines up. 

Here is my finished aircraft.  I roughly filled the above shapes in my drawn over template in greys and then added detailed gradients.  This was very complex getting the right colours and giving it that 3D feel to it.  I have used lots of greys, blues and whites.  I added a reflection on the right wing using different transparency levels and gradients over lapping each other to make this effect.  For the windows I created 2 of them and used the 'Blend' tool to create more specified steps.  There is 14 windows.  I then had to angle the windows in such a way that it matches the direction of the planes direction which was complicated.  I mirrored the windows and the door onto the wing and angled them in a specific way to create the illusion of of a reflection.  Overall this plane was a lot of trail and error.

Here is a very simple mock up of my first scene for my animation which is in the first scene of my animatic.  The only part I will change is the angle of the plane as I plan on having this flying around the globe effectively. 

 

Pitch Review

On Monday the 14th November Our pitch was due to present to the class.

Feedback:

The overall feedback from my pitch was positive and people seemed to like the effect of simplicity I plan to use.  My animation is going to be stencil style.  This also adds to my simplicity rule to my animation.  People thought that my animatic was encouraging and positive without lecturing too much.

The improvements people suggested were to have a slogan or general message at the end that makes more of an impact such as 'Save our Planet'.  They also said that an instrumental of my song choice which is New Soul by Yael Naim was also benefit.

I am very happy with my feedback as everyone seemed to like the idea of planes, cars and buses circling the planet.  This is my main theme.

Since, I have been researching different animations with different visual approaches.  Below I am going to show a screenshot of a few which I found may help me find the right path I want to go down with my own.

Above here is a screenshot of a short cartoon animation called Casa Mecanica.  It's set in an enchanted land with fantasy calming music sets the scene.  I found this helpful listening and looking at this one because I found out that the music or an introduction to the music can really change the atmosphere.  This is great because as I'm producing an animation on Co2 emissions (pathway is transport) I can then get ideas from that.  The colour in this is very colourful.  So what I am guessing is that the target audience is for children.  You can also get this idea through the drastic movements, emotions and impressions from the characters.  I think it is important you're target audience so you can then determine  you're art style.

Above here again we have the same short animation called Casa Mecanica.  This animation is actually very cartoon like and lively and looks like It would have taken a very long time to make.  This animation was made by students. 

http://vimeo.com/groups/194402/videos/67055086

This is an animation specifically focusing on Co2 emissions.  This is one of the most effective animations to persuade to be more environmental friendly.  This is a good find because part of the brief criteria is to persuade but not lecture.  This animation is extremely effective.  The simplicity is incredible  but works at the same time.  Simple is better sometimes as I think it creates a sense of a clean look and feels pure and true.  You can see here that the aspects of the video look like stencils.  i love this look and this may be something to take into my own work.  

Again here, the stencil look is very impressive.  I like the way how the Co2 particles are coming out of the car as emissions.  I can defiantly take this animation with me as a positive.  The colour scheme is great as when there is Co2 present, everything is very dull.  

Above here we can see a power plant, a car, broken down trees and a Co2 graph.  This is probably the only part of the video I wouldn't want to take inspiration from.  The brief says to not lecture but persuade and be positive and encouraging.  I would avoid using graphs and the more boring side of the campaign.  The music in this is very appealing.  And this would relate to my animation too.  It sounds encouraging and positive instead of the 'we have ruined the planet from Co2' kind of approach.  The video shows how cycling and being healthy can help you and you're community.

The whole video focuses on keeping the Co2 emissions at 350ppm or less.  Ppm is parts per Million.  The whole campagin is actually called 350.  This is a very clever way of keeping the figure in your head without forgetting it.  Its very creative.  We are currently at 450ppm globally.  Another feature of this animation I didn't actually pick up on.  No words are used verbally which is just the way how to promote '350' to the whole world.  In the animation It shows all these people working hard to achieve 350.  When the man is cycling it shows in the background different land marks around the world such as Paris - Eiffel tower , Egypt - pyramids and U.S - Empire State Building.  This lets the viewer know its for everyone and the Co2 problem is global.  

Overall, these animations I have analysed have given me a more defined thought into my approach.  I am thinking about my artwork and have a few ideas which I think would work.  The only aspect I'm struggling with is the music.  Weather to actually use a music track or sound clips I am not too sure yet.  Further re-search will hopefully solve this problem.  

http://350.org

In my last post I have outlined the brief into the most important parts that I need to focus on to achieve a successful outcome.

I have been researching into the 3 main aspects of the Co2 emissions campaign, food, transport and consumption/lifestyle.

For me I think transport will be the way to go as It seems the most influential towards having a large carbon foot print.  This is from using your car, planes etc a lot when you may not need to.  You can help the community by using public transport such as buses and trains.  Or even better walk.

I will be producing most of, if not all my artwork in Adobe Illustrator.

I will be focusing on:
Transportation, cars, planes, trains and buses
Air pollution
Carbon dioxide
Energy Efficiency
Climate Change
Emissions
Carbon Footprint
Other ways to travel

My next step is to re-search more in-depth into animations for inspire me.