End Of Module Evaluation

I just want to say that this brief is by far the most challenging thing I have ever done in terms of planning, organising, producing and building. I kept myself on very strict personal deadlines during the last two weeks of this brief. This is not to say I didnt enjoy it, far from it! I think this has been one of my favourite modules so far on the course. I also feel that through the course of this module I have matured alot as a designer and understand my own head more than I did before and also know what I am capable of when I really push myself to voice ideas and develop them. I know for a fact that the new skills I have learned along the course of this module are definitely going to be very relevant for me and used regularly in modules to come, for example, promotional cv's can now be dropped into after effects and dvd studio pro as a digital edition of my cv to enclose within printed packaging and a dry printed cv!

Throughout this module I have learnt what it really is to think sequencially in terms of design and interacting with software that is new to me. This type of thinking is really useful for a module like this. I tackled the module by planning for an end result and being able to visualise what what necessery to get there but also immerse myself in the task at hand, like a mental design omnipresence! Without this I wouldnt have been able to complete this module to a self satisfacory way.

I feel that my idents were planned well and I storyboarded them (after alot of playing on aftereffects) in a way which was actually possible to produce. Because my initial storyboards would make for exciting idents, but aot of the content of the storyboards just wasnt possible to fit into a ten second time period. after all, ten seconds is not a long time when actually producing a motion graphic - but this feels untrue when in the initial storyboarding process. I definately would have benefitted from some in depth design development for my idents like sketches and timelining because on looking back at them, the content seems a bit busy in places and I think that space is a neccesary part of motion graphics, just like white space on a page in print. That said I have impressed myself with what I was able to actually do because I was initially not very successful with using after effects.

I was looking at after effects as if it were music production and this is why I think the sound on my idents and how the visual content responds knit together really well and have a good sense of depth and velocity. I really enjoyed cutting sound to what I had produced and when I was storyboarding I was aware of the fact sound could really add something to my visuals, as I said in my rationale - sound is easily 40% of the impression left on a viewer post ident.

The biggest thing I struggled to do well was keep all my files in the same place, because In the production stages, I was rapidly generating files and at one point had 6gb worth of files. I handled this by buying an external 250gb hard drive (which I wouldnt have got by without) and worked from there in production stages in after effects. This almost set me up for a massive fall when it came to building the project in dvd studio pro,A, because i wasnt sure if it would actually fit onto a disk and B, When I had linked everything into DVDSP, and clicked build, notifications where appearing telling me files were missing. I would link them back in and click build, and ten other files were missing - I honestly nearly had a breakdown there and then!! Luckily it was just a case of taking everything off the hard drive and into user work and then this was all fine.

When it came to dvd studio pro, I got very interested in producing things for it and I think I'm most proud of the moving backgrounds on my dvd menus. I had gathered alot of assets and I wanted to display them on my menu aside from just a slideshow of assets and the videos themselves. So I put together a composition in afterefects and dropped my menu type over the top and looped it for 20 seconds. The overlay files were literally just illustrator files of the same type used in the video so this was easy to do. I think it makes for a nice effect and enhances the menus really nicely, as do my intermittant cut scenes. I was conscious of keeping a design uniformity throughout the whole process and also keeping my context relevant for my audience of psychogeeks. This was a case of using the same colour schemes, type and imagery for everything I produced. I think in doing this I was able to produce what feels to me like a complete product, case to content. The sticker set was also a gimmick that I thought my fellow sci fi geeks would find pretty amusing and was product of having a few days spare before the module deadline. I did want sound on my menus but aparantly it's not actually possible so I was pushing the boat out a bit far there.

The downside to this module for me was the fact that I almost left it too late because I put the module on the backburner at the beginning, unwittingly not realising its absolute vastness and how much has to be done to get everything coherent and succint and also justified. I think because of this I am definitely missing kay research and development work that could have made this module more successful, for example I didnt document alot of my technical ability in after effects and hardly have anything to show in terms of planning and design development for dvd studio pro. I should have done some storyboards for how the interface actually transitions from one menu to the next and I think I could have improved the interface as a whole for doing so.