Our return to University of Salford began the second semester of the term. In the first session of Animation context we would be taking a quick reminder of things that we learned over the course of last year and a moment to consider about the module that we would be studying and what to look at in response to it, the last element of the session would be a simple practical challenge. We reviewed over some power point slides that we were shown in week 12 of semester 1 regarding how to write our essays and that one of the most important elements would be to write the bulk of the essay and leave elements like the introduction to last and that there was a structure that we could follow on Blackboard along with the new timetable. In this we would be submitting work for four modules Intro to the making of, Story writing script to screen, Animation context, and Animation 101-102.
We were reminded that we would be having a longer break in the easter term and, one thing we needed to be sensible about is how we spend our time off and not just forget about the course since we're on break but we use the time productively to finish any tasks given to us over the Easter break. Upon finishing the first hour of the session we then proceeded to the practical exercise which was a one hour long Indesign challenge. We had been moved to the computer room where we would usually have Intro to the making of classes and we would possibly using this for our article writing or layout design for our magazine essays.
For the practical challenge itself we would be reproducing a magazine page from the Wallpaper magazines that we would find in the Animation base room, and using Indesign we would create our own versions of the magazine on a double page document. We would be using the internet to find images in response to the page then place them into indesign for our composition, they didn't need to be exactly the same just something to represent them. This seemed to me like the perfect time to get more acquainted with Indesign as I knew much already but was curious to see if todays session would give me more facts about the application.
The process began with me opening an InDesign document and creating a double page spread for the article. I went to the base room where Johny said there was some magazines in the room to look at and looking through the magazine I found a double paged article about best bar foods and given the composition and layout I decided to give it a try as I like a challenge. In this exercise it would be about using the words and pictures and emptying ideas from our heads into a final product of our work. I started by doing a background piece in Photoshop as I wasn't sure if google/the internet would have the necessary background image. However I would need to be mindful of the time as I would have only one hour to do this piece and editing an image/ illustrative background would take time.
I worked fast and applied some base colours of umber and gold yellow and I began to wonder about textures. Thankfully I remembered a little trick from work in my own time and the live brief, and so I looked up textured paper and wood images and placed them into Photoshop. These were changed into overlay layers which placed the texture over the colours/composition, replicating the background very well. The shadows were applied via a full black colour layer which had its opacity lowered slightly and areas erased using a soft eraser. The background was saved as a JPEG and then placed into Photoshop and I began my search for images for the article
Looking at the article I was studying from I would be looking for key elements such as bar snacks and wine/beer images. Once I found images that did in someway resemble the elements in the article they were imported into Photoshop for the next stage. From past experience when placing images into InDesign the white boarders would remain, so I needed to erase those sections so that they wouldn't appear in the finished article. Once placed in I tried as best I could to position the objects similar to the article that I was studying from. Over the remaining time limit I widened my google search to Japanese bar snacks after studying the article more closely and looked at elements such as the drinks and cups even looking up images of wine for the drinks element of the article.
There were however some complications when editing in Photoshop and that was using the magic wand tool to isolate the white areas of the image then erasing them as there were times it would take a part of the image with it. Thankfully I knew how to correct this using the quick selection tool to cut down some of the overlapping areas into the image. Nearing the end I worked on the typography of the article looking at the text then reflecting it into the reproduction. I used text such as Stencil std and Century gothic, which closely matched the text in the magazine. Johny mentioned that we could write out the whole article if we wanted but we could just put in place holder text. To do this it was a matter of selecting the type option then select fill with place holder text after creating a text box.
I repeated this method in the small text boxes in my article and soon I was finished and ready to show it to the group.
The rest of the group soon reconvened from the other computer rooms and we each showed our articles and what we reproduced them from in the magazine. Some articles like Adams were some what very well brought together but at the same time a little disturbing, whilst others like Elena Stuart and Chris had taken very landscape compositions which lacked any space which was what we would be looking for in our own magazine articles. One article that really caught my eye was the piece that Paige produced which used an illustration within the composition and the illustration itself was its most defining feature well drawn and defined. This could be an approach I may consider for my concept art magazine article in the future. Other article reproductions used the basic assortment of shapes and flat colours much like architecture magazines that I've looked at back in College 3D classes in art and design.
This welcome back lesson was very enjoyable as it gave us a chance to experiment with ideas that we may consider in our magazine essays in the module and I may look at this further for independent study time in my time table and do further research into how artists layout their magazines. We were reminded that we should consider the hierarchy of the essay and how we may structure its production such as producing the cover pages first then the title stand and then writing the essay itself into the pages. I will need to look over my previous research to see how I may wish to rewrite it into something new.
We were reminded that we would be having a longer break in the easter term and, one thing we needed to be sensible about is how we spend our time off and not just forget about the course since we're on break but we use the time productively to finish any tasks given to us over the Easter break. Upon finishing the first hour of the session we then proceeded to the practical exercise which was a one hour long Indesign challenge. We had been moved to the computer room where we would usually have Intro to the making of classes and we would possibly using this for our article writing or layout design for our magazine essays.
For the practical challenge itself we would be reproducing a magazine page from the Wallpaper magazines that we would find in the Animation base room, and using Indesign we would create our own versions of the magazine on a double page document. We would be using the internet to find images in response to the page then place them into indesign for our composition, they didn't need to be exactly the same just something to represent them. This seemed to me like the perfect time to get more acquainted with Indesign as I knew much already but was curious to see if todays session would give me more facts about the application.
The process began with me opening an InDesign document and creating a double page spread for the article. I went to the base room where Johny said there was some magazines in the room to look at and looking through the magazine I found a double paged article about best bar foods and given the composition and layout I decided to give it a try as I like a challenge. In this exercise it would be about using the words and pictures and emptying ideas from our heads into a final product of our work. I started by doing a background piece in Photoshop as I wasn't sure if google/the internet would have the necessary background image. However I would need to be mindful of the time as I would have only one hour to do this piece and editing an image/ illustrative background would take time.
I worked fast and applied some base colours of umber and gold yellow and I began to wonder about textures. Thankfully I remembered a little trick from work in my own time and the live brief, and so I looked up textured paper and wood images and placed them into Photoshop. These were changed into overlay layers which placed the texture over the colours/composition, replicating the background very well. The shadows were applied via a full black colour layer which had its opacity lowered slightly and areas erased using a soft eraser. The background was saved as a JPEG and then placed into Photoshop and I began my search for images for the article
Looking at the article I was studying from I would be looking for key elements such as bar snacks and wine/beer images. Once I found images that did in someway resemble the elements in the article they were imported into Photoshop for the next stage. From past experience when placing images into InDesign the white boarders would remain, so I needed to erase those sections so that they wouldn't appear in the finished article. Once placed in I tried as best I could to position the objects similar to the article that I was studying from. Over the remaining time limit I widened my google search to Japanese bar snacks after studying the article more closely and looked at elements such as the drinks and cups even looking up images of wine for the drinks element of the article.
There were however some complications when editing in Photoshop and that was using the magic wand tool to isolate the white areas of the image then erasing them as there were times it would take a part of the image with it. Thankfully I knew how to correct this using the quick selection tool to cut down some of the overlapping areas into the image. Nearing the end I worked on the typography of the article looking at the text then reflecting it into the reproduction. I used text such as Stencil std and Century gothic, which closely matched the text in the magazine. Johny mentioned that we could write out the whole article if we wanted but we could just put in place holder text. To do this it was a matter of selecting the type option then select fill with place holder text after creating a text box.
I repeated this method in the small text boxes in my article and soon I was finished and ready to show it to the group.
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| Finished reproduction. |
This welcome back lesson was very enjoyable as it gave us a chance to experiment with ideas that we may consider in our magazine essays in the module and I may look at this further for independent study time in my time table and do further research into how artists layout their magazines. We were reminded that we should consider the hierarchy of the essay and how we may structure its production such as producing the cover pages first then the title stand and then writing the essay itself into the pages. I will need to look over my previous research to see how I may wish to rewrite it into something new.
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