Brand development

Now that the Christmas holiday craziness is over for another year I can get back on track, I hope - What's that old saying, the best laid plans of mice and men.....

Okay so this is the plan, I want to create a video clip for a 30 second brand intro, more or less. Surprise, surprise, I've used the face of a lens as the background image for our 'P V Media Productions' brand. The scene starts with an orbiting earth which will morph into the lens face as the brand information begins to appear from a comet which morphs into the text as film strips. All of this unfolding in 3D giving the viewer the sense that they are witnessing the birth of a unique phenomenon. I've always wanted to do a little motion graphics the only fly in the ointment is that I have to learn how to use Ae (Adobe After Effects), so this could take a while but it will be done.

First step is to get all the text just the way I want it so I used Ai to create a film strip and I didn't want black or blue as the colour, too traditional so I opted for hot pink gradating to black. Next I needed to create a path to affix theses film-strips to, so I used 'Edwardian Script ITC' font for the wording 'P V Media'. BTW 'P V' are simply mine and my wife (Bonnie Ronnie is my nickname for her) Veronica's initials.

Once I had modified the path to present the film strips just the way I wanted them, I set about attaching them to the path and positioning them just right so that they flowed with the curves of the font, I then hid all layers except the group of 16 film strips.

I needed a background graphic, something simple that could be stylised in the future and it needed to be a strong association image. A camera is a little too complex and would date quickly, also the type of camera could limit association, as would a clapper-board. I thought yes a lens is a lot more associative depending on perspective so front on it would be! I photographed one of my lenses and modified it in photoshop altering the description from the original to LENS 10-1000mm 1:16-22 which is really quite meaningless but gives the illusion of a powerful lens for a powerful camera of whatever type.

The rest of the 'Brand' compilation was relatively easy, a little messing around with placement for sign production, business cards, stationary etc. Lastly I wanted to put this all on a colour background but not a standard flat colour - too boring! Gradated colours are nice, especially pastel shades so I started mucking about with a simple two colour gradation on a single layer in photoshop until I saw something I liked - simple is always best. This is the end result for all printed branding, the red border is simply my crop line.

Next step is to learn how to make a rotating earth with all the elements in Ae, stay tuned for more.

Till next time, God Bless.

My Digital Art

Ok it is time to start producing some art. I have learned enough to make the all important start, but more importantly I have the confidence to trust my creative instinct. Does this mean that I have arrived? .... hardly but it does mean that I am ready to start putting myself or rather my new digital art out there. I have been longing to try this for a very long time.

This is where I try to take excellent photographic images (still working on this part) and combine them with what some may call surreal art. This is not merely the blending of images but rather the creation of elements within an image to provide a blended effect and tell a story.

These images are displayed on 500px and can be viewed at a decent size without the watermark and logo blemishes. I will quickly step through my illustration "Molten Man".

A good friend is the model for the image and the concept for the image happens to be similarities in our lives. We all have our demons and we are frequently doing battle with the darker side of life, whether this be physical, physiological, moral or otherwise. We have both had some success to a degree in fairly recent times and whilst we may not be home and free we have certainly made progress along this long and often lonely road rather defiantly. We both derive a great deal of pleasure from riding our motorcycles and I speak for myself when I say that this gives my spirit a chance to gather strength through exhilaration without distraction. 

So the aim with this image is to visually convey this defiance, depicting the long road, the opposing sides and the small window of change along the way. This then is the image I see in my minds eye. 

 I have included the following description of the image:-

"In this image the man is defiantly returning from the darkness which tried to consume him and failed. I have created a 3D whorl hole as a portal between the light and dark sides to give the illusion of a man and machine half molten lava and half metal, flesh and blood the viewers eye is drawn to the gesture of the left hand."

These illustrations will take on different dimensions depending on the individual whose life I am attempting to capture and visualise or depict, in this instance a hard man living and working in a tough environment and so I have called the set of illustrations "Grit" as this is what I am illustrating, the man's grit and determination.

The images were all created from my own photography and I used Adobe's Lr5 to extract the best from the RAW photograph, Ps where I needed to create some custom brushes to achieve the lava look, Ai to create 3D objects which were then imported back into Ps to compile the various elements into the finished illustration.

I would love to receive some comments and welcome constructive criticism - tis the only way to improve.

Till next time - Take Care.

Ai Eagle Eye

The more I learn about Adobe Illustrator the more impressed I am at the phenomenal power that it has. Watching masters such as Deke McClelland and Justin Seeley make me realise that I have a very long way to go, but the journey is very exciting.

I took a (actually several) photograph of an Eagle whilst in Juneau, Alaska and was having a look at it the other day, not a great photo, a little soft I thought but a nice photo none the less. Unfortunately the photo was taken in .JPEG format and not RAW so there is not a lot that could be done to salvage it although I did manage to extract a little detail to make it sharper.

This was the end result. The background was very uninteresting to say the least and distracted from the photo so I replaced it with a black on grey background and included some brush strokes to add texture and move the focus to the eye and beak of the eagle.

This was a by product of what I was actually attempting - the tracing of the eagle's head in Adobe Illustrator. Just have a look at this vector image which I have rasterised back into a JPEG file and tell me that this is not amazing.

You would need to zoom in or enlarge the images considerably to see any difference. Amazing isn't it? No it's not perfect but it is sooooo close, I haven't counted but I would estimate that there are about 40 vector holes in total. There are almost a quarter million vectors prior to rasterising, it would take years to hand draw and colour this piece.

My only regret is that I waited this long to start using Adobe's software.

Till next time, capturing inspiration.