Research & DesignDocument
Semester: AVI Course: AVID Docent: Cindy Vermeulen Student: Alexa van de Wall Studentennummer: 5123993 Date: 27.02.2015 Version: 2
Table of Content Introduction 3 Research 4
Topic 4 Target group 4 Design possibilities 4 Personal Vision 9 Moodboard 10
Design 11 Concept 11 Sketches 11 Storyboard 13 Use of colour 16 Use of Typography 18 Use of Audio 20 Conclusion 21
Realization 23 Reflection 24 References 27
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Introduction My name is Alexa van de Wall. I study Communication and Multimedia Design (CMD) at the Hogeschool Arnhem and Nijmegen (HAN). This year I have enrolled in the study AVI, one of the courses within this semester is AVI-D. My first assignment for this course is to design and realize a title sequence. Within this document I will be two main topics the ‘Research’ and the ‘Design’. The research portion of this document will describe the book I want to use to realize the title sequence, I will have to research the target group, and based on those two topics I will research design possibilities. As a conclusion I will add my personal vision on the topic and visualize this with a moodboard. In the design chapter I will describe the concept I have in mind. I will make sketches and draw out a storyboard to give a visual idea of my concept, I will then do some research of possible use of colour, typography and audio. In the end I will see which ones will work best with my concept and in my conclusion I will show some visual examples. I will also be writing a chapter on the realization of this assignment in terms of which programs will be needed to achieve this, what the expected hours will be and on estimation on the costs.
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Research Topic Genre: Fantasy/Historical Fantasy I want to base my title sequence on the book The Night Circus written by Erin Morgenstern. This story is set around a magical circus also known as the Circus of Dreams. Within this circus are tents full of extraordinary acts, gardens, and fun houses. The circus appears out of nowhere and opens at sundown then shuts it’s gates at sunrise. Within these astonishing gates there is something more sinister a foot. The magicians Prospero the Enchanter and the enigmatic Mr. A.H. adopt two children to became their protégés, Ceila and Marco, and surrogate their rivalry. Everything within the circus is a result of the children’s talents. Exhibits become more extravagant by the day. The children fall in love without knowing they are magically bound to a deadly competition.
Target group This book is written for Adults. The main target audience is interested in fantasy books with a light romantic story line.
Design and Possible Styles To be able to make a title sequence for this book I have chosen I will need to do research on how other title sequences have been made. I will do this to get inspiration and see how these title sequences are built up. I will use the Internet as my resource.
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Ping Pong Summer
Landekic, L., & Perkins, W. (2014, 10 juni). Ping Pong Summer [Foto]. Geraadpleegd op http://www.artofthetitle. com/title/ping-pong-summer/
Ping Pong Summer is movie about a family that goes on vacation and their son who becomes obsessed with Ping-Pong. The title sequence consists of animated drawings. Style is the 1990’s this is supported well with the music from the 90’s. There are a wide variety of animations never the same.
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Paranorman
Perkins, W. (2013, 12 februari). ParaNorman [Foto]. Geraadpleegd op http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/ paranorman/
ParaNorman is about a boy on an adventure to save his town from zombies, ghosts and other paranormal beings. The title sequence has a comic book style. There are minimal animations within the sequence you see the use of drawings in 3D layers to create depth of field and camera movements as to travel from scene to scene.
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United States of Tara
Ulloa, A. (2009, 06 april). United States of Tara [Foto]. Geraadpleegd op http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/unitedstates-of-tara/
United States of Tara is a television series about a woman with dissociative identity disorder trying to raise a dysfunctional family. The title sequence is in the style of a pop-up book.
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Conclusion After looking at these different title sequences I’ve come to the realization that there are many different ways to design one. All these title sequences may have different styles but they have one thing in common and that is they fit with their stories. They all have styles that have to do with the story being told. They also don’t reveal the whole story in the title sequence but give you a taste as to what to expect. What I need to do is look at my story and see what fits with what is being told in the book without revealing too much of its contents.
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personal Vision The book is written in a way that when you’re done reading it feels like you just stepped out of a dream. A title sequence is the introduction to the contents of the book so it needs to be as if the user is stepping into a dream like state. I suggest the use of drawing out images. In our minds we create our own dreams and build our own stories. The images are drawn out before us but disappear before our eyes before we even realize it. To bring depth into the sequence I would create a sort of pop-up book affect as to give a field of depth but also to give the user the experience of truly being in the moment. I also recommend the use black and white because of the story accents this in the book. These colours/shades play an important role in the book, as does small amount of red. The music I recommend for the title sequence is dreamy. To enrich the users experience of a dream state.
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Moodboard
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Design concept As I wrote in the chapter about personal vision I want to create a dream like title sequence. The user must feel like he/she is stepping into a dream. To accomplish this I will use drawings that will eventually materialize into somewhat reality. (pop-ups/3Dlayers) I will not be showing too much of the story in the title sequence, but I will show enough to give the user a look and feel of the book.
Sketches In this chapter I will show some sketches of the objects I would like to use in title sequence. This will also give an impression of the drawing style I might be using. Mushrooms I drew this to see how white would look on a black background. In comparison with my other sketches this gives more contrast to the drawing and it makes the drawing more dynamic. Ice garden objects I want to make a small ice garden in the title sequence and with these sketches I wanted to try different drawing styles.
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Grandfather Clock Because time plays a big role in the book I want work it into to the title sequence.
The Night Circus. Well you can’t have a circus with out a big top. I used white on black again because I really like the contrast that it creates.
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storyboard
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Use of Color For inspiration I used the Internet to find pictures. So that I could find images in the genre of the book I used the following search terms; Fantasy and Night. The pictures that I found are usually in the same colour scheme. Dark-blue, red and green are the colours that where mostly used. I chose two pictures to make a colour scheme.
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This is the color scheme I made myself. I want to use these colors because the book is very clear on these colors being used during the story. Using these colors will fit the title sequence the most because of it being such an important part of the book.
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Use of Typography To find the right font to use I searched the Internet for various fonts that I felt would work well with the genre. I want to use two different fonts in the title sequence so that there will be some contrast between the main title and the sub-titles. The main title will be written with script type styles and the font used for the sub-titles will be (sans) serif type styles.
The Night Circus Made by
The Night Circus Made by
The Night Circus Made by
The Night Circus Made by
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The Night Circus Made by
The Night Circus Made by
Fonts used: 1. Sofia & Ever After 2. LittleLordFontleroy & FoglihtenNo06 3. Sacramento & Aaargh 4. Motion Picture Personal Use & Ostrich Sans 5. Quickier Demo & Bentham 6. Intrique Script Personal Use & OptimusPrinceps
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USe of audio Because I need to use audio that is royalty free I will use two websites where I know the audio has a creative commons license; www.freemusicarchive.org and www.freeplaymusic.com After searching through both of the sites databases I found four songs I feel could potentially fit the title sequence genre. Farsical Pieces - Blue Dot Sessions Piano song - Plusplus Until the bitter end - Squire Tuck In a dream - Johnny Ripper
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Conclusion Colour: After looking at the different colour palettes I’ve decided to go with the third colour palette. I want to use this colour palette because I feel it fits the story the best. Throughout the book they keep bringing these three colours back so I feel it’s important to bring them into the title sequence.
Font: I’ve decided to use the fonts Sofia & Ever After. Compared to the other fonts I feel like they fit the genre the best but most importantly they are easy to read. This is important because the text won’t be on the screen very long so users need to be able to read it.
The Night Circus Made by Audio: After listening to the four songs and comparing them with my chosen colours & fonts I’ve chosen In a dream - Johnny Ripper. I feel that this song will compliment footage and message I want to bring across. End Concept: On the next page I will combine a sketch I made with the colours and fonts I want to use. This will give you a better idea of how the end result will turn out.
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Realization Programs To be able to make this assignment the following programs are needed. Adobe Illustrator Adobe After Effects Adobe Premiere Pro
Estimated Hours Design Animation Montage
48 hours 48 hours 12 hours
Total
108 hours
Price Program use €24,Designer per hour €25,- per hour Estimated price for assignment €2.724,- excl. btw
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Reflection Research To be able to design a title seqeunce for the book ‘The Night Circus’ I needed to know more about the book. So I started my research by envistigating the books topic and it’s target group. It was fairly easy to find information on the book. The target group was a diffrent story though. I searched the internet useing google and the search words ‘target group’ and ‘The Night Circus’. The websites I came across were not very clear on the subject. So I decided to make an educated guess. Seeing as I myslef read the book I knew that it wasn’t a childs book. Also looking at the genre ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Romance’ I could conclude that the target group was adults with intrest for fantasy. After researching the book it was time to research title sequences. I did this because I myself have never made a title seqeunce and by researching others I could analyse how these were made. I analysed three diffrent seqeunces and learned a lot about the structure. In retrospect I should of looked for title sequences that were in the same genre as the one I was making. This way I could see I if there was a diffrence in design and construction compared to other sequences. Once I was done with this segment of the research I wrote my personal vision on the subject and supported it with a moodboard for visual underpinning. I feel that my research went well. I got a good idea for my final design.
Design Writing the design document was pretty straightforward. Thanks to the research document I had a very clear design in mind. I started by writing a concept; I made a couple of sketches that gave me an idea on which elements I wanted to place in my sequence. Once I was done with that I needed to make a storyboard. This was convenient to have during the execution of the assignment because it gave me a visual of the steps I wanted to take. But of course I needed more information before I could start on the title sequence. First off I needed to know what kind of colors I was going to use and which typography. I used Google Images to find illustrations that were within the genre of my book. I noticed that these illustrations usually had the same colors: dark reds, blues, and greens.
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Although most of these images had the same color I decided to go with the color pallet I made myself. I did this because I really felt it was important to use the colors described in the book. To fins the right typography I used Pintrest as my search engine and used the words ‘free’ ‘fonts’ ‘combination’ I found a lot of examples I could use. After picking a few out that I liked I asked a couple of people (designers and non-designers) what their opinion was, I specifically asked them to chose a font combination they thought was pretty but to keep in mind that it needed to be legible. This really helped me chose the right typography. Not an unimportant subject was the music. I needed to find the right song to support the images. For me this was a very difficult part of the process. I had something in my head that I truly wanted but finding it seemed to be a problem. I needed music that could be used online. So I needed to find music with certain Creative Commons. It took me two days to find the right song. In retrospect I could have gone with other songs that where also acceptable, but because I was being stubborn I wasted a lot of time searching for the “perfect” song. In the end I’m very happy with the results I got out of the design document, it really helped me carry out the assignment.
Realization Process Outside of school I work as a ZZP’er video editor. For me it’s not too hard to set up an invoice. The only difference now is that I had to make an invoice for an animator and not an editor. I know the prices for the programs I use and the amount I would ask per hour. But these where knew programs for me and I wasn’t quite sure hoe much an animator would ask per hour. So I looked it up on the Internet and combined the prices I found with my own asking price. The total seemed to me to be fair enough.
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Outcome As a result of my research and design document I feel like I was able to create a befitting title sequence in contrast to the book. I realize now though that if I had more time I could have made the title sequence better then it is now but I feel like that about all my work so I don’t really know how much that says about it now. I did learn a lot from the assignment such as writing a proper research a design document. I also learned a lot about the structure of title sequences. Such as there are many different ways to design one. But even though they all have different styles they do have one thing in common and that is they fit with their stories. They all have styles that have to do with the story being told. They also don’t reveal the whole story in the title sequence but give you a taste as to what to expect. I feel like I accomplished this with my own title sequence.
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Sources The Night Circus https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9361589-the-night-circus?from_search=true Ping Pong Summer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2402985/ http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/ping-pong-summer/ ParaNorman http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1623288/?ref_=nv_sr_3 http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/paranorman/ United States of Tara http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1001482/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/united-states-of-tara/ Typography: http://www.dafont.com/ Audio: http://www.freeplaymusic.com/
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