Title Sequence: 'Kiss the Girls' Title Card

Experimenting with fonts and Title card design

Further title card development

One idea for a title card design

All photos are authors own

Moving forward to the last frame in my title sequence, I have started to develop/generate ideas for my title card. I am focusing on the visual idea of lip prints, to reflect the seductive nature of the film, overlaid with harsh, sharp typography to accentuate its brutality. In the film, the killer feels as though he is in love with each of the women he abducts and feels as though he treats them with love and tenderness. However, the reality of the situation is psychotic and violent, including rape and murder. 

I think the idea of the two opposing marks (one of tenderness and one of violence) works well. Although, this successful juxtaposition is muted some what by the images of women's faces. My initial intention was to take photos of girls that looked candid, as if taken secretly by the killer. When looking at the experimentation so far, I feel the girls take away the visual impact of the mark of the kiss against the sharp typography. Therefore, I won't be including the faces in my final outcome. 

Title Sequence: 'Kiss the Girls' Experimentation

Quick montage of my Kiss the Girls experimentation

Authors own

Experimenting with the style and medium of the title sequences was a great way of figuring out how to represent the mood and themes of the film visually, as all successful title sequences do. I found what worked well here was the chance to diversify not only the style of each experiment, but also the way the different typography worked or did not work. Some ideas I found weaker than others, because the text was not legible enough or it came across a little too erratic. 

Screen shot, working in Flash

Authors own

A made most of the arms using paper cut out or drawing and scanning them into flash. I then added the typography in on flash, either drawing it digitally or modifying existing fonts. If I were to redo this process I would have tried out more software, like After Effects, to see the advantages or extra effects it could have brought to the style of the title sequence. 

Day 4: Type Play

All authors own

Experimenting with fonts and layouts was an interesting process. I was able to be playful with words and strengthen the mean of each word by portraying it in a communicative way. "Busy" is situated amongst repetitions of itself, "thin" uses thin lines and narrow spacing between each letter and "pinched" is situated between two fingers that are pressing together against the P. I would have liked to have used more colour, but I feel it would be most appropriate when using adjectives that are emotions or temperatures. I was surprised to find that so much planning was put into the presentation of words e.g. colour, type face, size, layout and context. I have a new found respect for typography as it's own art form. 

'New' Poster

 This is a photo of my final poster.

This is a photo of the idea generation for my poster from my sketch book.

(All images are authors own)

I found the the generating of ideas for my poster very easy as I already had a concept set out from working with the film to work with. I decided to go with 3D type of the word 'New' that casted a shadow that shaped out the word 'Old'. I then pasted the word 'New' onto a music stave to represent the connection the film had with new things within music. The decision to make 'New' 3D was to represent the current 3D movement in film, bringing its font into present time, which then casts a shadow that spells 'old'. This is supposed to represent that everything that is new is foreshadowed by the old and, in turn, is some kind of reincarnation of the old. I felt as though this poster idea was the strongest in metaphorically communicating my ideas on the word new and what our film was about. However, because I did the poster by hand there were some problems with colour smudging and text not being level on the page. If I were to change anything about the poster I would make sure I gridded the page properly and to avoid smudging, perhaps used a program like illustrator to create the final outcome. 

The task to create a poster was one that I very much enjoyed. It started to make me think more about the audience and what may or may not work in trying to attract attention or effectively communicate something visually. I feel that the poster has strong visual communication, but I don't know if it would stand out in a high street for example. Although, the use of red for the word new, situated at the centre of the poster and dragging upwards to the top of the page, which is sat in a white space my work in turning a few heads.

Manifesto Project

This is a double page spread in my sketch book that contains things to do with my past/roots and a spider diagram of my hopes and aspirations, what I stand for. It was a helpful start to the making of my manifesto as it clarified to me what I could include within it.

I then looked at my blog on tumblr for some more inspiration and research into myself e.g. the things I like, my interests, views. I realised it was almost like an already made manifesto of images instead of text.

This was part of my idea generation that I started after looking at some manifestos and decided on concentrating on the concept of equality and acceptance. I found the idea generation process quite challenging because I initially went with an idea that I didn't feel as passionate about and therefore the ideas were lacking. However, was I reevaluated my direction I was able to come up with a few good ideas:

These were my four favourite ideas, which I looked into and analysed. In the end I decided that the 3rd idea was my favourite as it worked well with the 'Open your mind' slogan I had become attached to. The idea that the characters eyes are covered is symbolic of disallowing yourself to judge with your eyes and the literal translation of her open mind within the illustration works effectively I feel.

I decided to develop my final idea using illustrator in order to develop my computer skills. It was my first time using illustrator and I found it to be really easy to grasp and effective in making vivid images that aid the aesthetics of a design.

 Using illustrator, I decided to try out lots of different backgrounds to find one that worked well with my character. Some of them clashed, some took away the attention of the character and some weakened the colours that spouted out of her head. I found the space background to work the best as it related to an earlier idea I had about people being cosmic, such as the universe. Although, I did worry that the space background wasn't very innovative/over used, but it worked that best for me.
 

FINAL MANIFESTO

I feel this is an effective manifesto both in a metaphorical way and visual. However, I feel my type sizing does look a bit messy. If I were to rework anything in my manifesto it would be type size and placing. Apart from that though, it clearly depicts the ideas that are important to me and the mentality and strive to have/keep. When getting feed back most people enjoyed the manifesto, but some found the word strange staggered the flow a bit. I made the decision to keep the word strange in because it was important to me that attention was brought in some way to the idea that people/things can be strange, but they still deserve equality, acceptance and love from us all. Overall, I am happy with the resulting image and what I gain personally from this project, which was a clearly view of what I stand for, improved illustration skills and a sharper knowledge of what works/doesn't work when dealing with typography. 

Graphics: Typography

Initially, I made marks on a page in several different ways and then turned them into different letters/numbers, creating different fonts. This exercise, much like the idea generation exercise used in the 3DD project, opened my mind to more innovation. However, I did notice that some of the letters weren't very effective as they were too unconventional.

I then used existing font types and manipulated them in different ways to communicate different things. I didn't particularly like this exercise as it was quick tedious, tracing around each letter over and over again, but it did challenge me.