New Blog Header v.2

On thursday we had our initial team meeting, met the lads from dls, brainstormed some ideas for the general direction of the project and Adam shot some blue screen footage of basic parkour vaults. Very productive day!

I took some photographs both outside and in the blue screen studio to enable Dave and Jen to start photoshopping some storyboard ideas, I set up a flickr account so the team can access and add to the set of images.

This was a summary by Dave on the main blog...

The Concept A post-apocalyptic chase within an environment devastated through a nuclear war. The Narrative The freerunning lads need to devise a story. Think beginning, middle and end. Use the photos that Jo and Matt are going to upload here to piece together to make a simple storyboard. The Environment Jenny, Dave and Matt to start PhotoShopping visuals together to begin the conceptualizing the look and feel of the virtual environment. I'll help art direct you. Post your ideas to the blog as you do them for feedback.

Over the coming weeks I am going to start experimenting a lot more with visual styles to tie in with the environmental imagery and narrative concepts. For now I have revised the initial blog header to start incorporating some more grunge and add more movement and fluidity...



I think it looks cleaner, more vibrant. I'm still not sure on the type, ('Death of a Hero' It's a free font downloaded from dafont.com) but it integrates the decaying aspect of the proposed environment and certainly works better than the initial hand drawn type.

Motion Graphics

Because a lot of my skills will only be required later on in the project for presentation and promotion I had the idea of perhaps creating a title sequence for the film using after effects, which I have recently learned how to use. I recently completed a typography project mixing photography and type animation to communicate a Shakespeare sonnet and I was really pleased with the result, hopefully I can use the skills and experience to add something else to the project.

My initial thoughts are to create a fairly simple 'calm before the storm' piece, as the vision I have of the actual film is high speed, high adrenaline action through an exciting 3D world; the beginning should contrast this to build anticipation and make the main feature seem even more exciting.

The stylised fluid lines featured in the new header were created in Illustrator and could be a feature of the motion graphics, with some subtle flowing backgrounds and simple typography to explain what parkour is, perhaps an introduction to the narrative and the performers' credits.

I have also volunteered to do any other typography that may be needed (e.g the end credits) to hopefully take a bit of pressure off Adam who will be doing the video editing and therefore most of the laborious work.