Considering briefs - notes - Digital Cinema Media

D&DA New Blood competition - DCM Show the emotion of film

Creative Challenge - Create a 25 second ident for Digital Cinema Media.

+ Visually show 'how film feels', an impact on the audience before they view the film, 'Something that illustrates and celebrates the emotion we all feel when we take our seats and enter the magical world of the movies', 'Turn your ideas into screen icons'. Able to use a broad range of ideas and media.

+ Practice for working in different measurements, creating an ident which suits all audiences, needs to be suitable for a younger and older audience - a challenge through the shape of the ident, animate through the logo shape or animate around the shape?

+ Initial Ideas - animate different stereotypical emotions through the logo, show someone jump from seat with popcorn flying everywhere, someone holding anothers hand, someone making 'kung-fu' gestures, someone crying with laughter etc. Show character designs and possible narratives through storyboards.
-  A character puts on some 3D glasses in the shape of DCM logo, and see stereotypical scenes of genres through these glasses.
- Represent emotions through the use of the logo being a character with expressions.

Brief analysis - Questions

MacMillans Children's Books - create new illustrations for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland's 150th anniversary year.

5 most important words:
Iconic
Lewis Carroll/John Tenniel
Children
International
Fantasy

Reasoning: When I think of Alice in Wonderland, I immediately picture John Tenniel's prints, the detail and simple layout, dip pen/ wood print quality and this to me is iconic. The books narrative is fantasy based with the bizarre world and creatures that Alice encounters, and is aimed at a children target market internationally.

5 most important considerations:
Target Audience
Iconic Image - Needs to be recognizable
Media
Form of animation
150 years promotion

Reasoning: It is vital that the illustrations can be recognized as Alice in Wonderland without even reading the title, meaning the illustrative style needs to take the iconic designs and make them into something new, using different forms of media and hit the target audience that the brief wants with in the consumer market. The form of animation that I could use needs to be considered as it is aimed at a specific audience, for example a sketchy experimental animation would not appeal to the target market that MacMillan want.

5 related products or items:Tea
Hats
Cards
Forest
Cat


5 related places:
Book shops
Disney Stores
Whittards Stores
Costume Shops
Gardens/Mazes

Who is the audience?
Brief aims at 5-9 year olds and gift givers such as grandparents, parents etc.

Who should the audience be?
In my opinion the audience needs to be one which would attract a young audience yet appeal more to an older audience, mums and dads who would buy the books for their children.

Who could the audience be?
Art students, collectors, older generation, teenagers.

What do they do?
Based in school work, everyday jobs, people who buy for their children or simply for themselves or as gifts.

What do they want to be?
Read to children, collecting books, gift giving.

Think about the consequences of having the same ideas as others - pros and cons:
Two sides - Panic - Your ideas could be the same as someone else's that could already be on the market, meaning more competition and possible copyright issues, will your ideas be seen from the rest of the crowd?
Relief - Your ideas are on the right track, you know your ideas are valid to the brief and can work on them more to get your ideas seen from the rest.

Considering briefs - notes - Syfy

YCN - Syfy Competition

Proposal - Open brief - Advertise the Syfy brand, not just the program content, attracting a wider audience.

+ As much as I love the sound of this brief, the brief even states its increase in competition, it wants to stand out from the other high market channels, this in itself isn't a problem, however the addition of the open brief suggests that they don't know what they specifically want. I can interpret this in my own way - create idents, character designs, storyboards for possible narratives - however one final thing would not help them promote their brand that well, they need market design - posters, billboards, magazine advert, bus banners etc.

+ Previous idents - minimalistic - use of one tonal colour and white, I found these quite plain and not that relevant to the programming content or what the brand are - Film and 3D - film idents are quite busy - alot happening in each frame with the use of VFX.

+ What they want - reading the brief they are out of date, not many viewers are regulars - needs promotion -animation - ident can be used across channels - needs to be something that promotes the brand, not just the content - content changes all the time, need to be generic imagery associated with typical sci-fi themes and the Syfy brand. - If an ident, being 5-10 seconds, would have to create more than one? Create a narrative through these - have a character(s) resemble the audience watching the Syfy channel? Walking through each stereotypical scene with sci-fi themes, supernatural, horror, extraterrestrial, superheros etc. Show four characters watching the show in their own homes, have them stereotypically show sides of sci fi from their appearance and look of the room, each character could then turn on tv, tablet, mobile, computer to watch the channel - show off the logo in the screen.

Considering briefs - Notes - Alice in Wonderland

YCN competition briefs - Alice and Wonderland book illustrations

Proposal - create new illustrations Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for the 150 year anniversary for MacMillan Children's Books.  Create a book cover and up to two illustrations of your choice from the book. - Target Market - Family audience - aimed at children but also at collectors.

+ Looking at the majority of illustrations associated with Alice and Wonderland, they are quite detailed - dip pen quality, crosshatch and use of pastel/desaturated coloured illustrations. John Tenniel prints.

+ Making it different - simplistic shapes? merged with detail to refer to the old prints? could also create cut out illustrations, much like the PS3 game 'Madness Returns'. Consideration of typography - serif or script?  Use of one colour - tonal or gradient, limited colour scheme? The use of less colours could refer to the old original prints.

+ Animation, make a book advertisement or Qr codes? Qr codes - use app on phone to view animation from the illustration on the book cover - How popular are Qr codes? possibly a dying trend, narrowing the audience, cost, how easy can these be made? - Could have a password hidden in the illustration which the audience can type into the MacMillan website and enter the code to view the animation - an embedded vimeo link? - the password idea is more realistic compared to the Qr code as then the audience wont be narrowed down.

Alice in Wonderland - Madness Returns

+ Quickly sketched directly in ink, the character 'Alice', using simple shapes and slight detail - felt too boring and simple - not aesthetically pleasing - doesnt catch the viewers eyes. Consider more detail - use of silhouettes and possibly a detailed/ornate vignette frame? Consider background in which the character is situated in - The iconic scene of Alice talking to the Cheshire Cat in the forest, have the QR or password hidden among the branches?

 

Quick sketches - making Alice a child figure

Quick initial sketches

Responsive - picking apart a brief

After we had made lists with the whole group in which we understood what we aim to achieve from this module, we moved to looking at previous briefs that had been entered into a student competition, we were given three different briefs to look at, in my case the Morrison brief. We were asked to find the problems with this brief.

The Morrison brief asked for a new shopping experience that would introduce new technology to draw in the new generation, aimed at teens and students, but also keeping in mind not to alienate the target audience that they already have. Already the problem with this brief was the introduction of new technology to bring in a whole new target audience, the problem with this new technology is that it will alienate the target consumers that they already have.

From the three different briefs the whole group were given we made general points that affected each of the briefs:

Proposal - what does the brief want you to do?
+ Produce a Product
+ Visual Concept
+ Persuade through a campaign

Achieve - what the outcome need to be able to do
+ Publicise their Brand
+ Expand their audience
+ Return Customers
+ Attract Kids
+Edge over competition
+ More customers

Problem - What is wrong with the brief?
+ People don't know about us!
+ Multiple Audiences (we don't know who they are)
+ Fun not serious
+ We don't know what we want!
+ Pretty but Pragmatic
+ We are dull and out of date
+ Adding value

When analyzing briefs, these points will help me to understand what the brief specifically wants, be aware of any problems in the brief and create an outcome that would work well for the client and their audiences.  For example in the Morrison brief, they wanted to attract a new generation of consumers, in hopes of this generation they want new technology to attract them, however the constant audience for Morrisons will not want a complicated shopping trip that involves the state of the art technology to help their shopping experience. This will most likely result in losing this target market. The brief also states that it wants to be fun and not serious, however when you do go shopping you just want to buy the food you need, you don't go there for fun.

Responsive - How to choose a brief

Analysing the brief is crucial as the brief needs to be able to complement your discipline and bring the best out of your individual skill set. There is no point in choosing a brief that asks for something that is not challenging or creative which can help you gain experience towards what professional practice you want to achieve in the future.

Individually we created 10 points in which we want from the brief, my main points that I want out this module briefs are:

+ Time management
+ Experience against narrow and live deadlines (absolute)
+ To be able to animate to a fast yet good quality of work
+ Working with a clients specific criteria
+ Develop my skill set towards storyboarding and character design
+ Use different/merge styles of animation to create the final product
+ Complete a competition brief that will suit and advance my skill set
+ Try to take a different approach to the specifications given (think outside the box)
+ Networking
+ Working towards professional work in industry

After we created our own individual lists, we then went into groups of four and created another list with the other groups collectively:

+ Broaden your approaches - think about media, narrative and atmosphere of the piece.
+ Win Stuff!
+ Professional Feedback - A good opportunity to improve your practice through experienced professionals, gain tips and knowledge in the industry and towards your own work.
+ Networking opportunities - A chance to build early bonds in your practice industry, help towards obtaining more client work or even getting recognition by specific studios. 
+ Confidence - Gaining confidence in your own work, confidence in approaches of work and towards networking skills.
+ Workload Management - Early practice in juggling multiple client based/ live briefs, ensuring that everything is handed in on time and organised.+ Working to deadlines - Practice for absolute deadlines
+ Experience - The more competitions/briefs that you take on, you gain experience from any mistakes or from feedback. Always room for growth in your practice.
+ Locating your practice - Understand what you want to do in practice, a taste in different practices with in industry.

Looking at the brief that the whole group created it made me realise how much the brief that I would soon choose can aid my work and improve as an animator, the experience I would gain from live clients would help me in the future, with any mistakes or even how to handle clients specifications.
In this whole list the networking and locating your practice points stand out to me the most through how I know myself that these are points that I immediately need to improve and gain experience of, to be able to survive in the practice that I want to be able to work in when I leave university. The practices that I want to aim for are character designing, storyboarding and game animation with in cut scenes. In my opinion, I feel like these points can easily be merged together with in a single practice, and each can compliment the other.

From this, in our individual groups, we created another list responding to the whole group list:

+ Draw or Animate faster
+ You Can Win
+ Will get feedback that will help us improve our work
+ At awards can meet other students and business clients - networking
+ Absolute deadlines
+ Live briefs force us to converse with clients
+ Forces us to be organised
+ Gain experience from just doing the work
+ Confirming the industry practice in which you want to do
+ Gain confidence from submitting work and with networking

I felt like this list was more of what we will get out of this brief by the end of the module, in which I believe are all valuable points and experience for the third year and also after university/with in a working practice.