Design Production for Digital//Top 10//Ident 3 Experiments & Outcome.

More development from today's work on Ident #3 (sadly not the third one that's been made...), 'The diet'. Deciding to take away the beginning 'title sequence' text of my motion designs, I felt that the background (still) looked a little bare- and went on to look for more textures that I could possibly incorporate into my own designs- with a grungy/speckled look or water/ice themed, to suit my content.

Just a quick test- looking quite flat and bland- something more is definitely needed.

After experimenting with several layers, I found nothing was quite right- though I did really like the vignette effect of the royal blue "shatter" texture (second image from the top of the post)- but the colour would be too dark for my chosen scheme- so I went on to create my own vignette background in Photoshop to import as a separate layer in After Effects.

Really happy with the change in the background- as stated in a previous post, the radial gradient on the previous design (the lighter blue background, above) looked far too convex- and I wanted the layer to look far more inclosed and dark so that the other coloured features would stand out more effectively against it (such as the bright green of the CBBC logo)- but now, again, the fish looked too light so I changed them back to their original black colour.

To add further depth, I imported a new solid black layer at a low opacity to dull the blue slightly (to give it more of an appearance of being underwater- as opposed to a 'sky blue' it could possibly be confused for).



Much more atmospheric and interesting now- could still potentially be a little dull if I weren't to have so much movement and motion in my assets throughout the ten seconds- any more detail could potentially be overkill. Started experimenting with the logo too- originally I had considered making the penguin "eat" the logo like the fish- but at the current scale it wouldn't be a very informative and legible size- and I didn't want to alter the penguin scale as I felt this suited the scale of the frame well- so decided to come up with a different option, and, in general, played around with different assets a little more to see what this would bring to the design- whether minimalism was more effective, etc.

Playing around with different audio and sound effects- as inspired by some of the idents research from existing CBBC designs (which can be found on my Design Context blog). I liked the idea of the penguin burping after his substantial meal (representing the fact that penguins can eat up to half of their own body weight in one sitting...something we have in common...) of fish, though, trying to keep a balance between light- hearted fun and informative facts and statistics, as originally proposed for my programme, wouldn't be easy to maintain- though it still does make me laugh every time I listen to it.
Searched for sound sources here and here.

Originally, I had planned for the logo to be in the centre, but it looked a little awkward and ill-placed- moving it to the left hand side with the text information seemed to balance out the frame a lot more- I also wanted to incorporate the penguin in some way- so simply had the character auto-orientated to a position path in a curved shape- to add more interest to the design, and repeat the similar position motion as show previously in the sequence. For this ident, I kept the logo and text simple as there is a lot going on previously- slight concerns that the logo/channel/info doesn't get enough "screen time" within the sequence- 2.5 seconds out of 10, though something to discuss in the final crit tomorrow.
Also bought the fish on in separate lines at the start to add a bit more interest and making the sequence look slightly less awkward and static- the fish opacity increasing with the decreased opacity of the black solid layer at the start.



Playing around with motion blur- with concerns that the sequence may already be too fast, this was only adding too it- completely unnecessary, but an interesting experiment. 

The final design- slowed the penguin down a little- with new trimmed track ending- lower auto-orient on the position path so that the penguin doesn't intercept the CBBC logo- I decided to change the ending, as suggested by a friend, not to change the volume too much, but to add a little more of a crescendo, to build up to the end and suggest that the logo and text information is particularly important (which, of course, in terms of visual communication and informing, it is). I'd never trimmed audio before, but found it was surprisingly easy in Quick Time, and would be confident using it any time.

Other edits made through the experiments include: 

- Drop shadow for the penguin (stands out better, adds depth against the background).

- Drop shadow logo (see info above).

- Audio edit.

- Motion blur for end of sequence penguin.

Reasonably happy with the outcome, still a little fast and many things I could change, though I have developed my ideas a lot over a short space of time- just wish I'd started sooner to allow for more experimentation and design development(!). Will look forward to hearing feedback in the crit session tomorrow to see what changes can be made before a rather busy few days of designing ahead of me!

Quite pleased with my timing in particular- Lorraine's hint of Ctrl + 8 has worked wonders.