The Scrumptious Cake Company

Finally finished the assignment in Digital Graphics, which was to choose a project close to our hearts (I chose my own semi-imaginary cake business), research  similar businesses, come up with a brief, develop a specification, produce mood boards and concept development sketches before the final posters created in photoshop.

As I've previously blogged, all was going swimmingly until I stumbled over my own techno-inadequate toes.  But since then I've downloaded photoshop's free 30 day trial and worked really hard at grasping it.  I also take my laptop on the train every day which gives me nearly 2 hours to work.

Two of the finished posters have ended up pretty true to my original sketches, but the one on the right is the one which I believe is the most effective, the simplest design and it came from playing with photoshop and trying different ways of creating a flying cake.

The design which follows the original sketch most closely is probably my least favourite, and my original plans to use  photographs of my own home made cakes I quickly abandoned when I realised the quality of the images was not good enough.

















Our next project is to produce a full graphics package for a local company, or the marketing design for a board game or turning an old building into a night club or retail outlet.  Rather fancy the nightclub... but that's perhaps just because I rather fancy going to one!

Almost fond of Blender!

Yes,  I am learning to have a certain affection for that horribly complicated-seeming 3D modelling program - Blender.  We've spent the last 2 weeks of Dr Hughes' lessons imagining we work for a 3D animation company with responsibility for finishing the sets for the animators.

With a link to a basic untextured monochrome 3D kitchen, the assignment was to make it look like a real kitchen, adding colour, texture and shine to the room and all the pots, pans and crockery in it.  

Some of the textures I used were built in to Blender, while some came from google images. The floor is actually the tiles from the corridor outside our classroom which I photographed and uploaded onto the computer.  If you look closely you can see my toes appearing in the pattern of the floor!

I made the bottles transparent and added lights under the wall units.  Spent a lot of time tweaking the image, adding and reducing shine levels and I'm really pleased with the final result.  The only thing (apart from the toes which I really should have photoshopped out) is the bread.  I couldn't work out how to apply a brown crust to the outside, so it appears rather underbaked!


Next Assignment...


For our next assignment we've been given the task of building a set for a 3D animation company from scratch.  It must contain at least 2 rooms, be fully furnished and have windows with realistic views of the outside world beyond.

We were all randomly allocated a location and decade our sets must be styled on.  Mine is a 1920s Birmingham flat, and I'm going to start researching it over the bank holiday as the weather forecast has sadly  ended all plans of camping trips with my family. 

Argh! I'm a computer idiot!!!

Last week went a really long way to making me feel that I'm not as clever as I thought I was.  Not very clever at all, in fact, and shockingly computer illiterate.

The second task to be done in Blender was to create a puddle in a street.  We had a set of instructions to follow and tutor Chris Hughes showed us how easy it is (if you know what you're doing) by creating a perfectly authentic-looking puddle with fabulous reflections in about 10 minutes.  The thing is to get an image of a paved or cobbled street taken from above, then a nice reflective image of a street at night above to wrap around it, and finally to create the puddle in photoshop with black patches on the street, then to add reflectivity.   It was a bit of a torturous ordeal, but in the end I created this:

Not a perfect representation of a puddle, but I'm very proud of it considering the 

hard work that went in to creating it!

Meanwhile back in the graphics class, we'd reached the stage of actually getting our designs turned into posters via photoshop.  And once again my computer illiteracy let me down.

By the end of the day my fellow students were producing wonderful designs and I was struggling with the most basic photoshop commands and had so many confusing layers to my unfinished and messy-looking poster that I felt quite miserable.  I left the class promising tutor Chris Headleand that I would download 'gimp' a free graphics programme similar to photoshop.

Gimp proved to be just as nonsensical to me, but I battled on with my ten-year-old son advising me and was half-way to completing a poster when I lost my layers toolbar and was unable to get it back whatever I tried so in the end gave it up til the next lesson.  

The next week we had the fun task of turning images of ourselves taken in the TV studio against the green screen into classic fairy tale film posters.  Again I struggled, but stayed at college late, determined to at least accomplish this task.  At last I was getting the hang of photoshop, little by little.  When I discovered I could download a 30 day free trial there was no stopping me.  I was awake til 3am working on this:

Snow White starring Liz Hutchinson with a fabulous body - (are those silicon breasts?!)

Looking back on the things I have produced this week it doesn't seem so bad, but I've been in tears of frustration because of my own inadequacies, and I've felt like throwing in the towel and abandoning ship more than ever before. It seems I'm an awfully slow learner.  I'm not sure if that's my maturity or the fact that I've never been really fast at learning new things, and not getting my head around the technology has been so very frustrating. 

 But I haven't given up, and I'm trying really hard not to get stressed or upset , because getting emotional is definitely a hindrance to learning,

Moving on with web design

Well, I can report that I'm still almost as confused by the language behind websites, but - importantly - NOT QUITE!  We've now got to the stage of creating the home page of our chosen sites.  I'm using a really great picture taken by a professional photographer a few weeks ago, and this will form the basis of my index page.  As usual I'm struggling to learn another new bit of software - Hype http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xys5JDb2CBw, but I have managed to produce this so far and I haven't torn all  my hair out yet...

Aaron at the helm with the Creative Tech class of 2012 behind in the new TV studio

Meanwhile in Radio Branwen we've been out on the streets and around the college collecting peoples' views on what they'd like to hear on the radio when Radio Harlech officially gets it's license this summer.  I really enjoyed doing this, even though it took a while for me to realise which was the correct button to record and which to pause - (hence a lot of us chatting and not many vox pops!).  It's just a case of having the balls to walk up to people and ask the question in a friendly way and recording the replies.

We've also been brushing up on interviews.  We paired off and wrote 10 or so questions to ask each other in a recorded interview which should be 5 minutes long after editing.  I was lucky enough to get Laura who had plenty to say in reply to my questions which I based around her interest in animation films, and I look forward to editing the recording.

Trying to love Web Design....

Well, one thing I've definitely learned from this module is that I don't want to be a web designer.  I was happier before I had any understanding of the language of the internet and HTML was just a mistake incurred when I occasionally clicked in the wrong spot on a page and the page was replaced with reams of nonsensical code involving lots of pointy brackets.

 And as for CSS or cascading style sheets as I now know them... more complicated code telling the HTML how to look, where to be, what colour to be and generally how to look pretty, this time in curly brackets with a whole new set of rules.  It all adds up to a bit of a brain-ache for me, but slowly I'm starting to understand a bit of the 'behind the scenes' stuff of web pages.

I've chosen to make my website on the new TV studio at Coleg Harlech.  It is an exciting project and I would like to get involved and use the facility for filming and editing stuff for broadcasting.  I've looked at other local TV stations' websites and assessed what I like and am not so keen on.  I've roughly sketched out how I'd like the site, which will contain 5 pages, to look.  I've devised a questionnaire which I've handed out to Chris Headleand and Ian McNeil, and from their replies I'll write the brief.

Luckily we've got til the end of term to complete this, so hopefully it will become clearer to me as we carry on.

Well into the new term, and I've been feeling quite awash with new, difficult, technical stuff that I'm having to manfully grapple with.  To begin with... good old photoshop!  Will I ever get the hang?

The Digital Graphic Design module has so far been a real pleasure.

I've chosen to focus on my own home-made cake company (which doesn't actually exist).  By asking myself a number of questions using a design brief sheet, I have come up with quite a comprehensive brief, done lots of research to arrive at my design specification, had the enormous treat of creating my first ever mood board, and am now at the stage of concept development, ie sketching ideas of how I would like the final piece to look.



The Joy of moodboards...




My initial sketches took place at 2.30am on Monday morning, not being able to sleep I found myself thinking about the project, so grabbed a pencil and paper and sat up in bed sketching my thoughts out because I knew I'd never remember them in the morning!

To counteract this rather pleasurable module there are the horrors of Blender, a 3D modelling programme which is almost certainly not as bad as I think it is.  I'm finding it really hard to get my head around, in spite of the endless patience of Chris Hughes, our tutor.  I will be surprised if I manage to get a grip of this in one term, but it's possible I suppose.  It feels a bit like maths and I seem to have a brain blockage to anything that is too mathematical-seeming but I will persevere and do my best to get it.

My wonky wind turbine created in Blender

And on to the radio module....

Radio work is always fun.  So far we've written, recorded and edited some news, and today wrote and transmitted a live 20 minute programme.  This went really well for everyone.  It was great to have Tutor Trevor there to support us and make sure no one made any major cock-ups.