When I first heard that we were going to be doing a motion graphics project, I was really worried I dreaded the thought of working on computers for lengthy times. I hated working with computers and did not think that I would do very well in this particular project. However over the last couple of weeks I have learnt a tremendous amount of thing that is I knew nothing about 4 weeks ago. I know feel that I have a sustainable knowledge of motion and can take this skill to a future job.
After getting over the thought of working in computers for several weeks, I started to look forward to creating a E4 sting. E4 stings where something that I was familiar with and I wanted to see how far I could push myself to create something on motion with absolutely no knowledge of how motion worked. I started to write down all my ideas for my E4 sting I either wrote them down while I was at college of if I was at home and an Idea came to me I would jot it down, overall I had around 13 ideas some I liked more than others. When we then told to whittle our ideas to just three, I initially found it quite hard I liked all my ideas but as I started to look at my ideas properly seeing if they were realistic, matching the brief and the simplicity. I was easier to pick out the three looking through the three I picked; I knew which one I really wanted to create. It was going to be a homemade video of a dog sneezing and just as the dog sneezing the E4 will come flying out of his nostrils and hit the screen will the sound of slap as hits the screen, then the E4 will slide of the screen like a oozy bogey. I really loved this idea simply because I thought it hit the E4 brief criteria so well and in so many ways, I also loved the simplicity of it and how I could tweak it to make it even more defined more realistic. I started searching for videos of dogs sneezing on YouTube luckily there were quite a few but once I started to watch these videos either the video was just really bad quality the dogs was sneezing with their head right down, or the dog was moving too much. However after much searching I found a video that matched my criteria exactly, the video was of a corgi puppy sneezing repeatedly , I was really fond of this video but my tutor asked me to get another video of a dog sneezing just as back up. Luckily I found a bicheon fries puppy sneezing which was a brilliant piece of video and just like my other video fitted the criteria perfectly. I went home and converted the files to MP4 and then downloaded it onto my usb. I brang it in the next day and wanted to see what I could do on motion I had no idea what I was doing I didn’t even know how to drag the video into canvas. However before we started working on our video we had to learn how to turn the E4 from 2D to 3D, we were shown by our tutor and then were given a sheet which gave us instructions on how to create the 3D E4. After several attempts I just couldn’t turn my E4 3D and I started to get really frustrated I think it was because I thought if I can do the first simple stage turn my E4 3D then how am I going to create a E4 sting using motion. I asked a few people in my class how they were getting their E4’s 3D and a lot of people where very helpful and after a short while I was able to turn my E4 3D. Our tutor showed us a video which he had made, it was a video of an E4 moving around in busy New York this lead to us learning about motion paths each of us were asked to create our own motion paths, and surprisingly I found this section quite easily I liked the freedom that you had when creating a motion path how you could move the E4 where ever you wanted. After learning about several things we could do on motion EG lights, key frame editor and sound. We were now able to work on our own E4 stings, I decided to pick the video with the bicheon fries puppy, as the corgi puppy was to erratic to fast I couldn’t see how I was going to use it the video so I didn’t use the corgi puppy sneeze video. I knew how I wanted my video to look but I just couldn’t make it happened. Anthony a member of the media staff came in to our class and I asked him for some help, he went through a lot with me and practically completed my video in less than 5 minutes. I was so happy at how it looked my video of the dog sneezing was completed or so I thought. When I showed my tutor he was not as pleased as I was and understandably too, the video was none of my work I had no idea how Anthony had done it I just sat there nodding my head. My tutor asked me to erase everything that Anthony had done and for me to complete the work myself. I was a bit upset that everything Anthony had done had gone to waste and more upset that I had no clue how Anthony had done what he had done. As I backspaced all of Anthony’s worked I slowly realised that what he had done wasn’t overly complicated, I had the main ingredients the E4 and the video of the dog sneezing all I had to do was put them together create my E4 dog sneeze. Over the next few days I experimented made a few mistakes but at the end I had my finished product I had my E4 dog sneeze and I was proud that I did it myself. My tutor decided to call a meeting in which him and a fellow class member would analyse criticise and give helpful feedback to each E4 sting we created, I was really proud of my work so I was happy to go up and I didn’t really think there was anything wrong with it. However after I watched it with my tutor and a class member I started to see a floor and this floor was confirmed but my tutor, the dog in my video was sneezing down so when the E4 came flying out of his nose it did not look right, the dog was sneezing down and the E4 came flying up my tutor and I agreed it was very realistic it didn’t look as though it was coming out of his nose. A class mate and my tutor tried to give me ideas of how I could continue to use the dog sneezing video but in a different way, but by the end of the meeting we all decided that because dogs sneeze down it was be very unreality to have something fly out of their noses and hit the screen so I decided to look for a new video. I was extremely disappointed and upset I thought my E4 sting was a good idea but I had to realise that it was not going to work. I went back to the drawing board and looked at my original ideas scanning through them, I only really like one it was to have a rocket fly to a purple planet and when the camera pans out the rocket is actually on top of the E4 sign, so it stating that E4 is out of this world E4 is big and grand and is a world of its own. I loved this idea but it was very complicated something that I knew I would not be able to do on my own. I had just about made an E4 fly out of a dog’s nose I do not think I could create an E4 planet. I left that idea behind and while scanning videos on YouTube while in college I started to think about the theme grandness, boldness and then I thought what’s bold and strong. The wonders of the world all these ancient historical wonders have withstood the length of time and are still in tacked what is more grand than that. I looked through videos of the Great Wall of China, Christ the redeemer in Brazil and the coliseum in Rome but none matched what I was looking for. As I was typing wonders of the world the great pyramids of Giza came up and after clicking on various videos I came across: link: It was exactly what I was looking for. Seeing a video of a tourist travelling to see the Egyptian pyramids, I knew that I wanted to use it for my E4 sting but after downloading the video I had no idea what or how I was going to use this video to create a cool E4 sting. My first idea was to have the 3D E4 come down from the top of the video and land right on the top of the pyramid I wanted to have it wobble and then fall of. Once I got the E4 to land on top of pyramid I thought that if the E4 just falls of not only will that make my E4 sting boring but it doesn’t communicate the brand identity at all. I wanted to create a E4 sting that really reflected the brand identity of E4, so I started to think about what words came to mind when I thought about E4 and one word that kept coming up was addictive, I feel that E4 is very addictive the shows that they put on really relate to their target audience and I know on first account how easy it is to sit down and just watch show after show on E4. The word addictive kept coming up and so I decided to use the E4 colour purple in my E4 sting, I wanted to have the pyramids turn purple as soon as the E4 touched the top of it. In my E4 sting, E4 is like a big invader coming down to take over the world and turn everything it touches purple , in my E4 string once E4 touches something it turns purple therefore making it part of the E4 brand, part of the E4 family. I also wanted to communicate the grandness of E4. By comparing it to the great pyramids of Egypt, I am showing how big E4 is. The pyramids are ancient they are a massive part of history they are part of one of the wonders of the world. I feel that comparing that with the cheekiness and fun of E4 brings certain boldness to my E4 sting. I feel that having a low fi video makes the E4 look more prominent and strong and therefore reinforces the grandness of the E4. As I was getting carried away making my E4 sting, I started experimenting after I had successfully made my E4 come down onto the top of the pyramid and turn it purple I decided I wanted to make it jump to the next pyramid and turn that pyramid purple too, while having two mini E4s jumping at the forefront of the video. Doing all of that was going to be a challenge I had to create a motion path, replicate the motion path and an affect so that when the E4 landed it had a cloud of smoke, change the points to linear or bizear so that he jump from one pyramid to the next looked realistic. However with the help from peers in my class, experimenting and help from my tutor I completed my finished E4 sting. Looking back now I’m glad that I didn’t just finish with the dog sneezing, it was too easy and I didn’t push myself, I look at pyramid E4 sting and it has so much going and I am happy that I pushed myself to create the best E4 sting that I could produce.
