Author: ali cowel

Creative Brief – Title Sequence Reimagined

avalanche

 

For my Title Sequence Reimagined project, I am going to recreate the title sequence for the movie Avalanche (1978). This is a film based in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and has a disaster theme to it. I want to create a title sequence that is very dramatic and sets the watchers up for a suspenseful movie. Fifteen minutes in the movie, one of the characters says the words “this slope is not stable” as he prepares to ski down it. I want to use that audio clip at the very beginning of my title sequence and follow it up with a long dramatic pause for the suspenseful effect. After the long dramatic pause I am going to incorporate the original music from the music during the scene of  the man skiing down the slope that eventually turns into an avalanche. My goal for this title sequence is to keep a consistent dramatic theme and rolling footage of the man skiing down the slope. The original film incorporates a lot of whitespace in this scene, which I really liked, so I was inspired by the white snow and sharpness of the slope. I want the credits to appear really fast from the sides as there is altered footage of the man skiing down the slope. The words will hang for a second and then fade out. I might incorporate a freeze frame of the skier when each of the names/credits appears. I want the altered footage of the skier to be stark black and white, with a medium thickness black line (rotoscoping) highlighting important elements. This black line can also be used as a bracket around my text. I want to emphasize the old-timeness of this, too, so I am going to try my best to create a film grain overlay and alter the voices of the people. The footage of the man skiing down the mountain will take the whole duration of the title sequence besides the end when I depict an avalanche with a completely white screen and a few seconds pause and then the word “Avalanche” will fade in as the audio fades out. The original movie title has the word “avalanche” incorporated into the mountain in an interesting way (pictured above). I want to recreate this typographic style for my title sequences final scene.

 

Response to Three Readings

Form follows function made sense before technology allowed different forms to fit into different functions. The iPod Shuffle is a perfect example laid out in the article The Demise of ‘Form Follows Function’ by Alice Rawsthorn. There is no intuition used when making the connection between observing the form of the Shuffle and actually using it for its purpose. There is no visual cue on the object to tell you its purpose. Form does not follow function in this case. It made me really notice how the slogan ‘form follows function’ means different things to different people and is confused with what people consider simplistic design. It also made me think about how it means different things to different people based on their understanding level. My dog, for example, would gladly chew up something expensive like the iPod Shuffle with the same satisfaction he gets out of chewing on one of his chew toys. Although a simple example, the function of objects can be totally separate of form in every category. Technology advances have made it possible to branch away from what designers were originally doing with their inventions, modeling new things like the keyboard after something familiar like the typewriter, even if it isn’t necessarily necessary! This ties in with the article on the Ten Principals of Good Design because if those things are met, familiarity with a past item doesn’t matter. This is what allows designers to branch into new ways of doing a same old thing, like using voice recognition software to make mobile devices adapt to a more “mobile” person’s life instead of the expected keyboard replica. I particularly liked the Startups, This is How Design Works article, by Wells Riley. His whole “guide” for new designers is really explicit and helpful. Some quotes I liked the most were “Design is a method of problem solving,” and “the best designs are notorious for seeming not designed at all – or ‘undesigned’.” Simple, but they spoke to me. I liked the category breakdowns he laid out in the article, I bookmarked the page!

Project 2 Inspiration

In general, visualizing 3D spaces is hard for me. I am very interested in designing 3D products and for this project I really wanted to explore the 3D objects that I particularly find interesting/beautiful and might want to learn how to design in 3D some day. I chose the mountains, which was an obvious choice because I have always wanted to create a cross section of the mountains in 3D. I decided to focus on a particular mountain range that I could try to replicate (as best as I can!), the Front Range in Colorado. My photos of inspiration capture the smoothness I want to achieve in my design, such as like that of the waves or skull image. I plan on using the cross sectional image of the Front Range (first image) to create a 3D design like the waves cardboard cross section (last image).

 

my sketch

my sketch

Assignment 3 – Typography Design

For project three I wanted to create a sign that said “silence” or “listen,” and I settled on “Om,” which is an onomatopoeia and reminder to always listen. I pictured this sign hanging in a place that you need to be reminded to live a ‘quiet existence’, such as in the car or grocery store. The sign is small enough to hang from the rearview mirror on a car, and has a small hole at the top to make this convenient. My goal for the sign was to create the outline of a shining sun with the negative space.

 

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Project One

click here to view Project One Presentation

I am very interested in contradiction. I love the contrast that exists between the organic world and our human created world. In high school, in photography, I focused specifically on ‘Urban Decay,’ capturing contrast between our crumbling world and the natural world trying to regain its space. My interest in geometric and organic shapes, textures and patterns reflects my personality, interests and comfortability in living simply. As opposed to adding clutter to the world, my role as a designer is to Design For Good and allow simplicity. I want to emphasize the beauty that exists to create something new– something that has a good feeling. For this project, I wanted to create an object that was functional, something that wouldn’t take up too much space on a counter but also add something new and exciting to the space. A while back, I saw a fish bowl that was designed beautifully. I loved this idea. Not only is it fun to look at, but adding plants and animals to my environment increases my happiness.Fish tanks have been the same for forever. Even the fish are getting bored of them– I want to change this space into something with a healthy and happy feeling. This is how I landed upon my idea of creating a fish bowl with analog flowers. It is non-obtrusive, natural and clean looking. The contrast between the tank, the flowers and the natural elements that will fill it up work together, not against each other.

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At first, I wanted to create a more geometric looking flower garden, but my flowers lost all organic sense to them. So, I crafted a bunch of different little leaves that I warped by bending them along different spines. I also used cage edit to warp the bottoms to form a spiral-ish shape.
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The material I chose for the outside of the fish tank is glass, the flowers are a white material

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The Matrimony

I chose the song The Matrimony by one of my favorite rappers, Wale (feat. Usher). I have always loved the beginning of the song, because there is a segment from an interview between Seinfeld and Wale. The 50 seconds I chose is mostly Seinfeld’s words on the topic of marriage. Every time I listen to the song, I admire how well the beginning “talk show” sounding part of the song fit so well into the overall theme of the song. The song itself starts off as a slow hip hop song, but Wale’s rapping that happens as the song goes on perfectly compliments the words Seinfeld says in the beginning of the song. The reason I though it was so cool, and would work so well for this Kinetic Type project, is because of his use of metaphors. The 50 seconds is short and sweet, but contains a lot of powerful metaphors that I am building on in my animation, mainly his rollercoaster analogy. He compares marriage to a rollercoaster and as Seinfeld’s portion of the song comes to a close, he builds up the energy and emotion to start the song.

 

As far as my personal style goes, this audio track fit perfectly. I have some issues with some of the Kinetic Typography projects I’ve seen recently, mostly because the speed, noise level and intensity sometimes makes me nervous! I am a fan of quieter music and overall less aggressive melodies, and I want my project to not come off as rushed or in-your-face but rather something that emphasizes the metaphor Seinfeld created between marriage and a rollercoaster, pleasantly. This is why I chose a softer topic. I want to create graphics out of different elements in his speech, such as words making up a rollercoaster, a word turning into a train car, words turning into a ring. I wanted to take a literal approach to this project to compliment Seinfeld’s intricate metaphor. As I am starting this animation, I am trying to focus on the consistency of my design. The first part that I have completed combines both a basic style of kinetic type, where I just animate one word at a time while filling up the sentence, and also a more elaborate animation of words plopping down to form the shape of a rollercoaster. I am unsure if this is going to look inconsistent as the piece goes on, but I wanted to create two different ‘feels’ within my typography. The first sentence of Seinfeld’s speech is very mild and it sets the mood for the piece. But, some of his sentences are more loud, assertive, etc, and I chose a different font face for those sentences. My struggle is going to be finding consistency in my piece and animating my Times New Roman sentences seamlessly into my Futura Extra Bold sentences.

Response to video and reading

Response to video Why Design Works and reading Introduction to Product Design
The man in the video spoke a lot about the effect design has on human interaction, psychology and happiness. He did a really good job of walking through many different types of design, specifically product design and architecture, and their effect on human behavior. One example I thought was very interesting was his study of church design and what it has to do with different religions. Catholics believe that design is very sacred in churches, and actually has an effect on the way people communicate with God. The belief on Catholic churches is that being close to god is correlated with ceiling height. The protestants, on the other hand, have never been concerned with aesthetics. Their places of worship boast white walls, bland exteriors and ornament-less and color-less interiors. Their thought behind this is that the connection between worshippers and God has nothing to do with the height of the ceiling or beauty of the room. Design doesn’t interfere with the way they celebrate faith in the church. Or does it? The speaker provided great examples of instances where the design does interfere with the way people view or interact with the space. He brought up Berlin, Germany, and their immense effort to portray democracy and openness with the consistent architecture and design in the city. The modern and “useable for everyone” buildings are working to rebuild the “feel” of Berlin. The design is trying to put forth Berlin’s “best version,” which, the speaker said, is what good design should do.
I also found his pineapple analogy very interesting. Royalty and wealth was once associated with a fruit that now embodies the characteristics of a “poor man’s fruit.” While the nutrition, appearance and taste of the pineapple has not changed since pineapple was considered luxury, the way society views it has. This is a counter-point to him saying good design makes you feel good, because if that were the case, pineapple would be just as highly regarded as it was before the refrigerator. The factor that confuses this example is price. Pineapple is now cheap and is no longer an element of design to be observed for beauty or class. The speaker said, artists and children are good at resisting this move of ‘only expensive matters’ because it doesn’t factor into their appreciation, which makes sense to me. Appreciating beauty, or, as the speaker put it, being in love with beauty, shuts yourself off from other beings or disturbances to your beauty, like children putting their dirty hands on things. Price isn’t important— it’s a feeling. This relates to the reading, too, which main premise was “good products make us feel good.” This doesn’t involve price, it involves how it works, the thought, the organization, the process and the manufacture.

monopoly piece

I had no ideas going into this project. I played with shapes for a while before deciding to make a tube with holes in it. I was going off of the idea of the thimble monopoly piece, and how it was textured. I used Boolean Difference to create different sized cylinder cut-outs in the tube.

Final monopoly piece:

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In the works…

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3x3x3 object – creepy dog

I wanted to create a geometric looking dog, and just played around with combining shapes until I came up with something I liked… I used a lot of Boolean Union for this object.

 

creepy dog 3d printer file

I forgot to take pictures during the process of making this guy. My idea to make a dog came from browsing a website called Pinshape, for inspiration. This dog was funny looking and awkward, so I wanted to make an even more awkward dog.

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second post

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