Progress/Pics

((Zodiac Cosmetics)). So basically this week I want to perfect and have the design for each zodiac palette top cover complete. I'm on the last stages of finishing the palette covers and need to start working on the designs for the back which wont be too difficult. Once these are done I need to start picking out colors for each sign which I've already started experimenting with but I really need to start researching. I think this will be the hardest for me, because I don't know much about color. But I've attached the last covers I've worked on which are Capricorn and Virgo. If anyone knows any books or anything about color, let me know! Thanks. -Ali

Slow But Steady Progress. Also, Broken Scanner >:(

I'm not very good at blogging, so that's why I have been erratic with my posts. I finished most of the background research and have begun sketching my ideas. Again, my concept is to create a poster series illustrating the evolution of major rock n' roll movements, incorporating the social and cultural influences they caused. Here are the movements I'm focusing on:

1. Foundations/origins of rock 'n roll: artists such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, etc. Era arrived during a time of technological change, rising out of post-WW2 economic frustration. The music broke racial and social boundaries and gave rise to an awakening in a teen subculture for the first time. I have sketches for this poster but my scanner is broken and I have to use the one at school. I will say this though: flaming piano is gonna happen.

2. British Invasion: Beatles, Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Who, etc. Helped internationalize the production of rock music. White British artists revived a genre that was originally rooted in African-American culture. Influenced the blues and garage rock movements. In the 60s, CBS quoted, "This time, the British Invasion goes by code name Beatlemania." I've got some fun military-themed ideas for this poster.

3. Blues Rock and Psychedelic Rock: a lot of the artists from this movement were part of the British Invasion, and since I want to do 5 posters max, I may merge #3 with #2. However, there's a lot I can do with this poster, but I've been mainly focusing on #1 and #2 sketches so I don't have anything concrete.

4. Folk Rock: the polarization around heavy social issues in the mid 60s had a HUGE effect on the music industry - it intellectualized rock music. Protest songs about politics, war, and social injustice by artists like Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, Joan Baezm etc used music as a rallying point with a new interest in subjects of more significance than straight-up romance. We're starting to get into the whole alienated generation thing now.

5. Punk Rock: my favorite. Fast, aggressive, anti-sentimental music that kicked sand in the face of the bombast of mainstream 70s rock. As stated above, I'm working chronologically through these posters so I haven't gotten to this guy yet.

6. Hard Rock/Heavy Metal: like #3, I think I might have to axe this one. It was a pretty big movement, and one that still is evolving today, but I don't think it had as much of a social impact as the other guys. Sorry Sabbath.

7. Heartland Rock: Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, etc. Another socially concerned movement, more working-class oriented, dealing mostly with issues of the midwest blue-collar worker - themes of unemployment, small-town decline, and bitter nostalgia, social disintegration and isolation. Also has a nice 50s rock n roll revivalism to it. This one's definitely got a lonely car on the open road feel to it, but who knows what'll it'll end up like.

I'm going to be focusing mainly on creating a narrative scene, including illustrations of some of the major artists, but also creating a scene that encompasses the major theme for each movement, with some allusions and references to icons/trends/memorabilia of the time. For example, poster #1 is going to showcase Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Elvis. I'm trying to come up with the right setup for the crowd, but it's going to represent the multiracial audience rock n roll catered too, as well as the breakthrough in sexual expression and rebellion teenagers created at the time. And like I said, flaming piano's gotta happen. Sketches and first round lineart will be up next week, as well as some drafts of poster #2.

If you guys have any ideas for the other posters, feel free to let me know. Outside perspectives always help and I can't make it to any of the group thesis meetings!

Liz

Feb 18th

OOOPS wrong blog!

Over the past week I have been working on my logo. I have come pretty close to finalizing it so this week I decided to bring it into print design.

I created my business card, letter head, and an envelope!

I'm still deciding if I like my logo font choice..

My style is vintage hip etc. and I dont think the font lo

oks to HIP

However, I used the font to type out my com

pany name and I think that came out pretty good.

Next I will be working on the book!

I want to use maps in my design almost as a background but still highlighting parts on the map.

So we will see how this starts to play out!

I will keep you updated

-W

3rd Post

Almost forgot to post for this week but luckily all of you, I remembered. :)

Anyways, what I have for this week are two more graphics for my shirts. The first one consists of a drawing and a type piece, while the other one is just a drawing. Hopefully I can print all three of the shirts for next week. If not, you will be looking at my sketches instead! Also, I am working on a new graphic logo along with the short abbreviated "cbw" logo.

Mock Up

Here's a mock up of my cover.....obviously I would take my own photograph.

IDEA

Just had a light bulb go off regarding my never ending search of a magazine name......

(little dreams)

petits dreams

petite dreams

petites dreams

I don't know the correct spelling. I am also not sure if that title seems a bit too innocent or young. But, I keep finding images that are dreamlike and like I said in my previous post, whimsical. I really like the soft and I suppose delicate sound to it. Let me know your thoughts- please and thank youz from NYC!!!!

Inspiration

Hey all..

I have quite a few pages built, but wanted to share with you some of the inspiration images I have collected for my design scheme. Ultra feminine with a touch of whimsy. I have also sent out interview questions via email and have received answers!!! I am still waiting on my favorite blogger and designer to respond. Let's hope they do soon so I can get my interview section taken care of. So far I have two personal stylists.

That's all for now!

Yeah, I'm blogging.

After much brainstorming names for my magazine I've come up with a few names.

To give you a bit of background my magazine is geared to college kids that are on the upper crust of things. They work hard and like to go out and experience different things other than the usual frat party. They're cultured but like to have a good time. They like to be on top of fashion and culture, they are deeply involved in art and culture in Boston. They're more into gallery openings than keg stands.
Ye
If you guys would like to give your input on titles that would be much appreciated:

Rush
Wave
Kick
Fête
Sharp
Edge
Link
Match
Fresh
Savy
Street
Zenith
Diem
Prime
Strand

stop motion begins

Hello everyone! So I have dedicated this past long weekend to shoot my stop motion thesis. I have about 1090 photos! I estimated 500...yikes. So I have a great deal of photos to organize and then start to build my project. I am using after effects and plan on tweaking some of the photos. The process itself was really fun and my possibilities were endless..except for the fact that people in boston do not like seeing a tri-pod. I had so many "authoritative figures" come up to me and ask me to move my "equipment" and this was in the most random of places like the underground T station at Kenmore or a foodcourt at park street. WEIRD! anyways I got a lot of filming and I have decided to create a "how its made" section following the film, I took videos, other fun pictures and interviewed my actors after I finished taking pictures. Stop motion is quite difficult though, and I felt like I was a director to the guys that were in my shoot. So far it has a very humorous quality to my stop motion piece, but also a cinematic adventure too!! I'm very excited to start edited what I have done.

Some feedback I would like is my Title which I want to sound like most Indiana Jones films like...Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark so I want mine to start out "Indie Jones..." because I wanted to play around with the wording of Indie or Indy like the genre of music. Any thoughts?

Hey Everyone...

Since last week, I have been doing some more sketching. Color/mood themes, ideas for a name for my magazine, and ideas for outfits for my models. I am pretty sure I want the name of my magazine to have something to do with dreams because the background images I will use will be surreal and have a dream-like quality. I have also began to shoot some images and manipulate them in photoshop for ideas for backgrounds for my models to be placed into. Things are starting to come together...

Thanks!

Emily

I have started building!

Flash website

Hey everyone.
I have been sketching out for idea for the motion part of my website that i am making. for the clothing section i was thinking about having a girl(s) running and playing on the beach with a brunch of balloons. I think that is cold be flirty and fun for a website. she would be dancing with the balloons and would be carefree. I also thought that for the shoe section of the website that i could use stop action photography and have the shoes come out of a closet and "walk" out of a room and spiral around. The jewelry section would be created more with flash where there will be a picture of an object and you could click to have that picture slide out and another one would slide in. I was also thinking that you could "shop the looks" by a similar sliding photo motion. These are just some ideas for now. I am going to start working on the actual website starting next week in flash so i can have the frame of the site set up. See you all next week during the meetings!

Film Stuff

So, last week I received a better camera from Professor Doubek. I began to play around with that, learning its specifics and the capabilities of the videocamera. During this time I began to shoot and get footage for my film. The footage that I took was at night - all of the footage was of areas around boston. I just captured some random shots of the city, people, stores, street signs and landmarks, etc. After uploading all of the footage that I had onto the computer, I had to decide which program I would be using to put this short together. Lately I have been trying to learn how to use Final Cut Pro. Some things I understand, but there is so much more that I have to learn and I do not want to spend the last two months learning a program and making a lackluster attempt to put together a short film. So, I have decided to use After Effects. It took a few hours of playing around on the computer (with the footage that uploaded) to figure out how use After Effects again.

After dicussing my project with Professor Jacobs, he suggested that I go see the oscar-nominated short films of the year to see how well these shorts are put together and to analyze how I can consolidate and have valuable and effective information in a short amount of video time. So the next thing I am going to do is go to Kendall Square to watch the film.

development

Hey Everyone!

Here is my finalized logo. I ended up choosing the one that looks more modern.

Also in my post as well is my semi-final proof of my business card (front and back) and my gift cards from winter and valentines day. (feedback is welcomed)

I am continuing to work on more gift cards as well as the Letterhead and envelop.

I also asked Carissa to help with the screen printing of the logo onto Tee-shirts. Brian is showing her how to screen print so she said she would help me. I will contact Brian to see how to screen print onto a bowl. Thats all for now. Back to creating!

T shirt Thesis

hey!

so to remind everyone I am creating a t shirt company that lets the customers design their own shirts by either loading their own images or being able to pick and choose elements/images from the shirts I design. ( if they liked a sun image on one of my shirts and a dog image from another shirt then they would be able to put that together). I want the customer to have a fun, creative, self expressive time/feel when using my website (it is directed toward girls.)

Im also thinking of renaming my company, it currently is "Vanessa Vee" but i dont like it as much as i did before. I was thinking naming it something like "zip and button" but then it sounded like someone putting on pants and not about actions a shirt would do. So the naming is in progress.

The website planning has come together once i decided i wanted to go with a twitter site set up, It allows me to have a crazy backroung(if i wanted) and still have all the information in one area and have it able to read well.

I have also been thinking of t shirt ideas/images/elements this week, 1) a mouse with a mustache, calling it mousestach. 2) glitter snow flakes, 3) Cutasaurus, 4)rockets and 5) ballons. Just jogging my brain.

I have also been planing a commerical for my comapany and I have come up with a few story boards all having the concept that the images on the shirts come alive while someone is wearing them and that they tell a story. I wanted to use Neon Trees, Animal for the music and use stop animation. Having the shirts tell their own stories is a great way to say that at my website you can create a story all your own that you can wear and express yourself!

I've always believed that what you wear tells someone else a little bit about your personality and desiging your own shirts gives you the ultimate opportunity to express who you are!

Hey! So reminding all of you my thesis is a cosmetics line called Zodiac Cosmetics which customizes eye shadow color to your zodiac sign. I attached some palette designs of a few zodiac signs; Gemini, Sagittarius, Cancer, Leo and Aries. These are my favorite so far. The colors are temporary. I have to seriously study each sign and chose the color depending on what it has to say. I also have to read up on color and choosing palette colors. I have also attached the logo for Zodiac Cosmetics but that is also semi- temporary. I just want to get all of the designs for each sign done. I am looking forward to learning more about choosing eye shadow colors and about the actual process. (This is random) but this morning I was watching Lady Gaga on Good Morning America and she just came out with a new lipstick for MAC. She was talking about how she came about picking this beige/nude color. While I was watching this I was actually thinking about how these colors are actually chosen and the process they had to go through. Anyway, let me know what you think! Thanks.

-Ali

Logo progression

Hey guys!

As of lately, I've been flooding my dorm room with TGAs music, watching them perform live, reading their blogs, anything I can find for inspiration. I want to completely finish the logo before I move onto the other aspects of this project, so it's taking me longer than normal to finalize just one. I've come up with a few different ideas. I'm liking the idea of connecting the letters somehow, as well as giving it a ''stamped'' effect. Here's some of my drafts:

I'm liking the top left (inside the circle) the most right now. The others seem a bit too clean/neat for the band. I was considering putting an actual gaslight somewhere in the logo, but now I think it'd be too tacky. Any thoughts?

sketches/ideas

So I am not very good at sketching, but I did write out a slightly detailed description of what I want to be happening in each beginning scene. Here I have little pictures of what I want to be happening in the beginning, and if you can't read the notes, its mostly just first; a pan up of "indiana" and then a quick cut to his headphones being whipped back and forth (I WHIP MY HAIR BACK AND FORTH) anyways..as soon as the end of the headphones go into an ipod which with stop motion i can easily manipulate, the music comes into the piece. I recently had a new hard drive put into my computer and lost ALL OF MY MUSIC, which is basically my life so I lost the song I wanted to upload so you could hear what I thought I wanted to use, but I'll research it again. (thankfully all my design work is backed up in multiple locations) Next I am going to have Indie do the famous switch-a-roo with the idol, which I have decided to be a Japanese Buddah statue that you can drink out of, naturally. This I think is humorous, relevant, and modern. He will switch it out with a bag of sand, or something...then I am going to shoot photos that make it look like the ground is shaking, cut to a traffic light from red to green and then have a car chase after Indie instead of the bolder. After he dodges traffic, he runs (hopefully) onto the T which then he finds his enemies who want that buddah statue for drinking vodka redbulls. FIGHT SCENE: the bro's will look super awesome while they try to steal the statue from Indie, which they successfully do. Next scene: we find Indie at a bar with Short Round, his small asian buddy from the 2nd movie. They have some drinks, play some cards, the famous YOU CHEAT DR. JONES line might possibly be kinetically inserted once the scene takes place. After this fun and games, Indie searches for the bros who are caught with the Buddah idol in some sort of Bro-ish environment, basketball court, abacrombie, or another bro location (THOUGHTS?) if you were a bro, where would you hang out the most? Indie then defeats the bro's and returns the idol to the MFA in its proper place. One thing I did go back and forth on was Indiana's hat, and although the whole piece will be modern, I have decided to keep the original leather hat, which I actually have because I love indiana jones that much. (nerd) ANYWAYS. more sketches to show initially what I want to achieve.

-LD

Progress..

OK:

Here is where I was initially headed (no pun intended) during my "Self Portrait" Making it more literal. I built my face in Illustrator, then added in my token PJ's I wear...They have dogs on them..Kind of embarrassing. Anyway, I'm steering clear of making my self portrait literal, and making it more abstract. Like I said before, I'm leaning toward a simple Action Script piece that breaks out into separate animations that all will come together. However, I'm still planning on building in Illustrator since I'm looking to make a clean design. I really liked where this was going initially but now it kinda creeps me out.. I really love the Mad Men opening credits and I'd like to sort of go down that road design wise.

-Kristen

Potential name idea

Hey-

So for my company, I'm seriously considering using the name "elements". The components of my site would involve, earth/water/wind/fire. A tagline I'm thinking of using is "quench. extinguish. breathe. revive" (water. fire. wind. earth....you get the idea), which leans towards the idea of my company "giving back" through such charities as http://www.charitywater.org/ (to "quench" thirst), etc. I'm still playing with it. For the home page of my site, I want something like a circle split into four parts for each element but somehow intertwined- still sketching this idea out.

I could have somewhat of a clothing line for each 'element', involving all activities like running, yoga, hiking, etc. I want my style to be pretty minimalist, with a fun yet organic feel.

The logo is going to be relatively simple, too. I found a font I like on dafont.com (www.dafont.com/organic-elements.font) that I feel would go with my site quite well. Will post mock-ups of site/logo ideas soon. Any comments, questions, or suggestions would be helpful!

Thanks,
Carissa

Frustrated.

Hello Everyone!!

So I am having a serious mental break down about this thesis bologna.

I've been looking at a lot of tutorials lately just because I am feeling totally lost but this is making everything worse. I feel like there is an entire world of graphic design I've never even seen before! Tools in photoshop/illustrator I couldn't even begin to use. AHhh frustration is completely taking over.

But in thesis blogging news... this week I've been really working on my Logo!

So far, my idea is to use M and R with a key some how?

Also! I was juggling with the idea of using some kind of brick pattern with vines over it. Long story short this is what my Grandparents house looks like and they started the entire real estate business for my family.

I have some sketches of the bricks but they look crappy on my computer and not worth the upload but here is what I have so far with the key and M R. (VERY ROUGH DRAFT -- still working on it.)

Does anyone know how to draw with photoshop or illustrator?? I want to make my own key but am struggling. I need to get away from using images from gooogle!!! HELP!

-- Whitney --

Week of 2/14

Hi-

Right now I've been reworking my storyboards for my Flash self portrait.

Initially, I wanted to make one long animation but now I'm playing with the idea of making it an interactive piece that will break off into 3 different animation pieces. I want to start off my piece with sort of a map of the brain that highlights each section, and if you click on certain parts brings you to a specific part of the animation. As far as the design, I'd like to keep it more modern and simple, working probably completely in AI before bringing elements into Flash. My "brain" concept may sound a little strange right now, but I'm trying to keep my portrait more abstract and creative.

I'm still reworking my storyboards and also starting to build in Illustrator, and will show some more work later this week.

Thanks,

Kristen

Rework of logo

So I choose a new design for my ice cream shop. I felt limited with my other logo color pallet wise and I feel my rework of my design of incorporating a penguin my favorite animal gives me more options as to color pallets and design element. I posted a preliminary design for my ice cream shop a couple weeks ago. At thesis meeting last week Erich suggest to clean up the edges of my penguin design which I did as you will see. I also did a second design for my logo and wanted to hear everyones thought's on what looks better. One is very shape like and modern while the other is cute. I sort of like the second one I did but wanted to put it out to the group before I start putting my logo on the rest of my work. The one on top is #1 (the original that I fixed) and the one underneath that is the second one I did this past weekend.

Thanks

Lisa

Post #2

So as of right now, I have one t-shirt design created, and two more coming. They should be printed by the end of the week as well. I haven't decided if I wanted to go with a drawn feeling for all the t-shirts or just some yet. Also, the logo has changed from Cardboard Wings graphic that I presented for my thesis proposal to a shortened and cursive "cbw".

Here's a picture of a print for the first t-shirt that I did on paper. I wanted to remind me people what is really important in life. Sometimes we get so carried away with things that we always forget what our main focus is, such as in war. So ... Peace!

Liz's Thesis Mumbles

Hey everybody!

First off, how weird is it that we're not all in class together every week? I miss that.

Anyway... just like all you guys, school/work/life has delayed the blogging of my thesis idea. It took me forever to decide what to do... but I ended up going with my gut reaction. Let's be serious - the two things my life revolves around are music and art, so my thesis is going to be a series of three to five posters illustrating the evolution of early rock 'n roll (50s-70s). I've been researching like crazy to gather information on social, political, and cultural aspects of each era that influenced the style of music. Once I've got all this info organized - articles, ads, song lyrics, album covers, imagery, etc, I'm hoping to have a more concrete idea of what these posters are actually going to entail.

I've been sketching certain types of imagery that just come to mind when I think of rock n' roll - universal ideas that everyone can identify with. I stumbled across an interesting thought while doing some reading - quite a few classic rock bands are named after birds and cars, which are symbols of freedom. Rock n' roll was a response to people's frustration with the world around them - it was music about late nights, the open highway, and free action. I'm going to chase this idea and incorporate imagery as such into my thesis.

The style in which I plan on drawing and illustrating these posters is going to be a mix of vintage and modern style. Fairey is a huge influence of mine, but I also love old-school rock posters by artists like Stanley Mouse and Wes Wilson. We'll find out who influences me more once I get down with that pencil.

By next week I hope to have completed/organized the greater part of my research and thus start my sketches so I have something concrete to develop. Right now I'm still torn between the idea of focusing on quintessential bands of each era or composing a narrative that just communicates an idea. Ideas/opinions are appreciated!

Kthxbye.

Blog #1: Idea

My blogging has also been delayed- I changed my idea completely: from a motion piece about the stereotypical hero, to an athletic company website/catalog. This athletic company is nameless as of yet (I kind of like the name quench...playing around right now). My company is going to rival brands like Adidas, Nike, etc. because a certain percentage of all my company's sales will go to charity, as opposed to the name brands, where the money is directly pocketed. I want the style of my company to be simplistic and organic-looking, yet fun at the same time. One company that I am specifically rivaling is Life is Good, Inc. who's mission is to spread the power of optimism. Life is Good also has a charitable non-profit foundation that raises money to help kids all over the world, and I want to do something similar within my company as well. (it's also ironic that I'm doing this, because I just applied for a job here a couple days ago- fingers crossed!). As of right now, I've just been researching, writing, and sketching. I also need to refamiliarize myself with Dreamweaver- I'll probably do some light (heavy) reading so I can make my site that much more awesome.

Stay tuned!
-Carissa

Cason's Thesis Project

Cason’s thesis project.

So errr I’m a little delayed in getting my thesis Idea posted on this blog. My internship has been quite intensive. My work hours are 10am – 7 pm every weekday. However, I should be getting Wednesdays off now which is good. Coming to Tokyo has been pretty awesome/crazy. The initial jetlag and culture shock was quite an interesting experience, but I think I’m a lot more settled in now after a few weeks.

I’ve been thinking about my thesis project for quite some time and have had a lot of different ideas. Starting my internship and moving here has definitely changed those, and sort of my idea of what direction I want to go in and what is feasible and what isn’t. Initially I was thinking I wanted to do a cycling guide of Tokyo with maps and bicycle terms in English and Japanese and such. I was also thinking about doing sort of a travel cookbook of recipes I gather while I’m here.

I’ve definitely settled on doing a sort of book. I really like bookbinding, and I think making a book would be a good way to combine that and photography and graphic design. I sort of realized that doing a bicycle guide to a city I just moved to was a silly idea. So instead I’m still going to do a guide, but it’s going to be from the perpective, of myself, someone who’s lost and confused most of the time. The book will consist of a bunch of rides I will go on (hopefully starting this Wednesday) and will be a documentation, via maps photos and such, of these excursions and comments on those as well. So basically I’m going to go on a lot of rides and get lost and then try to find my way back to Ikebukuro (that’s where I live)…

Basically this is my starting point. I’ve found it a little difficult to cull all my ideas into a cohesive thing. I think it’s important that I get started on something. My idea might and probably will change but that’s it for now.

I’d also really like to have this be one project among a few other small projects. So basically have a few different projects and my collective thesis project. The recipe thing idea might still be in the mix. I just need to get some content generated. Refining and presenting that content in an aesthetically interesting and cohesive format will be the next step.

That’s all for now, again my blog is www.casonlatimer.com/blog

Progress (or lack thereof): Post #2

Hello all,

Hope all your projects are coming along well. I thought I'd share some sketches with those of you that weren't in my meeting this past week.



My plans as of right now include doing some revised sketches (mainly for Fantastic Mr. Fox and George's Marvellous Medicine) to give them a more gothic feel. For George's Marvellous Medicine I want to make the smoke creepier since it comes off as bubbly at the moment. Not too sure where I want to go with Fantastic Mr. Fox but I think I'm going to explore some of Erich's suggestions to make a sunset background and create a silhouetted figure in the foreground. I think I want to edit the tree as well to make it more impending. I'm pretty happy with the James and the Giant Peach sketch so I think I'm going to start experimenting with live trace in Illustrator (another one of Erich's brilliant suggestions). I think this may eliminate my idea to explore pen illustrations all together.

So overall I have nothing more to show since this past week's thesis meeting but I have plenty ideas to work with. So now I just need to find sometime to execute these plans. I ideally will have some more sketches by next weekend. According to my schedule I should have one rough draft of a poster this week but I'm running a little behind schedule. I think I may try to convert the James and the Giant Peach sketch into a draft as soon as possible since it is the most realized concept so far. That's it for now.

Becky

BLog #2 Senior Thesis

So as my process begins for my thesis I've been story boarding like crazy and getting every detail I need for my first scheduled shoot date this weekend. I have two days scheduled with all my characters to shoot at the least 90% of my photographs. Thankfully the weather looks like its going to cooperate, making my scenery look its best. I'm extremely excited to have something fresh to start my editing. I'm not exactly sure how many photos I'll be taking but I'm going to try to keep the scenes in order to help the organization of the photos easy to deal with. I have not yet decided on my music overlay so I do need a little help with that aspect, I found a sort of 'techno, video game feel' indiana jones theme song, but I'm not sure if I should use the same one. If I can figure out how to upload it to this blog I will (help). But I'm more focused on the photography itself and the flow of the piece. With all the scenes I want to do accomplish I may just add kinetic type into the piece instead of creating a "how it was made" portion. Or I may create both. I have specific place sin Boston I know I am going to film at such as the Commons, the MFA, a bar (not really which yet, but one that is not classy, more pub status) and a side street with little to no traffic. After I shoot this weekend, I'm going to spend most of my time putting my photos into after effects and organizing them in order of appearance. I find this will be challenging because eah picture is crucial to making the motion flow correctly. I'm not exactly sure how long this piece will be the more and more I think about it, I definitely want it to be longer than 1:50 but no longer than 3:00. I feel that everything is going well and my actors are very cooperative!!

-Lauren!

Thesis

Hey Everyone,

My senior thesis will stem off of a piece I did for motion class. For the last project in motion class, I took several of the jungle paintings of Henri Rousseau and combined them into one panorama. I then made parts of the painting come alive using the puppet tool in After Effects. For my thesis I want to take this general idea and expand on it. But instead of using After Effects, this time I will be creating it in Flash. I want the piece to be interactive, so that the viewer can click on different aspects of the jungle world, and depending on where they click and what the do different things will happen.

I am having trouble deciding whether I want this piece to just be a continuous narrative that the viewer explores, or if I want it to be more like a video game, where what the viewer decides to do determines the outcome. I am not sure if I want this to be something where the viewer can fail, or just an animated jungle world that they can explore. If anyone had any suggestions I would be glad to hear them.

So far I have started to teach myself flash coding. That is what is scaring me the most. I have gotten a tutorial book and have been working my way through the chapters, making notes of things that I think would be useful towards my project. I am still unsure as to where to exactly start with the building of my project, but that is something I hope to work through in the next week. I feel once I have an idea of where to start, the whole piece will start to come together.

If any of you have any suggestions or ideas for me, I am always eager to hear them!
Best of luck to you all,
Katie

Hello everyone,

I am going to make a fictional short film. The film will only encompass segments of the fictional character's life. The focus of film will be to express the emotional adventure that the protagonist goes through while simulteaneously living out two separate lives. From my perspective a person's life is not one whole experience - or atleast that is not how a life is remembered. To me life story is percieved through a recollection of prior distinctive events - I would say it is like the mind is a chamber that just host intervals of time, not necessarily in chronological order, but in order of relevance. With that being said I am going to make the short a combination of smaller shorts.

Outside of portraying the life of a fictional character, my intention advance to bringing attention to real-life human conflicts. There will be two types of conflicts that the shorts will focus on. The two types of conflict are: man vs. self and man vs. society. The conflict that arises from man vs. society is the fact that the protagonist feels like he is the only one in the world in his social and psychological situation. He was born with a burden and has to take the backroad in order to be equal to everyone else. The man vs. self conflict comes from him having to live two different lives, one publicly and one secretively. The purpose of this portrayal is to express a reality that some people experience - while giving attention to the fact that the conflict of interest is a human problem as opposed to it being a problem solely based upon race, age or gender, etc.

Thesis Idea

Hey everyone,

Hope everyone's having a good week so far!

After looking at everything I've worked on since I came to Emmanuel, I came to the conclusion that whether required or not, I always designed something related to music. I didn't realize it as much until it came time to figure out a thesis idea, but it's become my favorite area to work with. I also love branding, logo design, and all that comes with it. SO, I decided to re-brand the band The Gaslight Anthem.

Whether you've heard of them or not, they're a really great band with a really boring visual identity. What they have as a representation for themselves visually doesn't match who they are musically, so I'm going to fix that. I'm designing for them a new logo, album covers, posters/flyers, web ads, tour merchandise..everything that they already have, but in my opinion, better. My goal is change their look entirely to fit their level of talent.

Their current look is plain, boring, and generic; yet their music is the opposite. Therefore, the look I'm going for is clean, vintage and unique. I'm starting with the logo, and once I have that finalized, I'll start the rest of the branding process. As part of my presentation, I'm even thinking of advertising around the admin bldg the day of, with mock flyers & posters promoting the band (that I'll be presenting upstairs during thesis presentations.) ..but, we'll see!

Help!

A^ B^

(It's a screen shot- the lines on top and

bottom are from the indesign background

- it's supposed to be white!)

I am not sure which direction to go in after creating two totally different designs for my cosmetic line. They are obviously not done at all, but you should get the general concept. Let me know what you think! I will name on "a" and the other "b". Would you guys mind voting on which one you like better? Or if you have any other comments, those would be awesome too.

Thanks, guys!

Thesis Ideas...

Hey everybody :)

I’ve decided to do a fashion magazine for my thesis. The reason I chose a magazine for my thesis is because I really enjoy designing layouts and would love to work for a magazine someday. I am very passionate and would like to eventually work in fashion as well and would like to fuse together my various fashion and graphic design skills in this project. I want to photograph my models and backgrounds separately, rework the images in Photoshop and integrate them for a unique and interesting layout. I still have a lot of brainstorming to do in terms of coming up with a concrete theme and name for my magazine that can convey my idea of an overall interesting fashion magazine. I want to have more meaning behind the basic idea and add personal touches throughout. I will use mostly my own clothing and have asked a few good friends to model for me. A lot of my inspiration is coming from Urban Outfitters style and magazine. The photos and layouts are always creative and different than most generic catalogues out there. Over break I have started to work on a few images in Photoshop, came up with ideas for different scenes/merchandise that I will showcase and gathered inspiration from other fashion magazines and collage pieces. I’m starting to get excited about putting this all together.

clothing web site

Hello everybody.

For my thesis I was thinking about making a wed site geared around women’s clothing. I will design a logo for the company as well as a web site that will have a homepages and 4-5 other pages that have categories such as clothing, shoes, accessories, ect. The contents of the website will be from short video clips and photographs that I will take of clothing and friends wearing them. I am planning on editing the videos using flash and after effects. I want the videos to be interactive so the view has a chance to choose what they want to see.

I am relying on some friend that wouldn’t mind having some fun and being photographed for my senior thesis, so if anyone is interested, please let me know!!! Thanks!

new direction

I've been thinking about my senior thesis for a while and although I want to do a sports store i figured I should view from of the places on my list. after visiting some of them in my town needham and newton i realized a lot of these places have a mascot or animal that brand their company. A few places of polar bears, moose, or even cows... My favorite animal is a penguin and I've never really seen a penguin as a mascot to a ice cream store before or really anywhere in massachusetts, so I decided that this is my new logo design.

Thesis Tshirt company

Hi Every one!

So to begin, My thesis idea was to create designs for t shirts. I became interested in the idea of t shirts from the website Threadless .They sells shirts created by everyday people. I started thinking of recording my process of designing for this company and too see if I could be published through them.

This original idea turned into becoming my own company which I named Vanessa Vee. From here I began to think about what will make my company sucessful and different from the other t shirt companies! I looked at companies like Busted tees, threadless and ubertees to see why they were sucessful.

I found that ubertees lets their customers customize their t shirts by uploading their own images or by mixing and matching uber tees desgins, all for a low price! I wanted to include this sales idea to my company because i think its a great way for the customers to be creative and wear what they have created!

I was also thinking of the idea to have reversible shirts that allows two different designs on one shirt. Don't know if this will be sucessful but I haven't seen something like it before. It would have to be one color for the shirt with designs the customer chooses on both sides.

could be something interesting!

Thesis

Hey everyone hope the beginning of the semester has been off to a good start and everyone is enjoying this snow day. I am personally sick of the snow and can't wait for spring. I hope that groundhog is right and spring will come early.

Lately, I've been working lot on researching small ice cream shop in the suburbs of Boston and how they market their company. A few have news paper adds and buy space that way in the local towns newspaper, a few have facebook pages. As far as design wise I think that I would prefer to make a facebook page for the social marketing side of my project rather than a full blown website.

I have also been working on refining the designs for the winter/holiday gift cards as well as working on valentines day and the normal ones as well. The letter head and envelop is pretty much finalized and the business cards are almost done as well.

This weekend I am going home and I plan to visit one or two of the shops in my town and others near me. they following places I plan to look at are below..

http://www.lizzysicecream.com/
http://www.cabots.com/
http://www.iscreamworks.com/
http://wallyswickedgood.com/

I hope to get inspiration and some information to see what they have done...

As Stephan mentioned during my presentation he said to sell some products as a marketing tool. So I plan to dive into figuring out how to brand my logo onto a bowl or cup or one of those glass ice cream bowls or even a spoon possibly a tee shirt even. That is my next thing to do research on after i figure out how those places above have branded their company.

That's all for now!

Thesising

My senior thesis idea is to create a magazine geared toward college students in the Boston area. It will contain ideas for things to do on a budget, advertise the various discounts/ free admission we get to the museums. It will also talk about local events like BC football, or the local music scene. There will also be a fashion spread which will show different looks for internship interviews.

The magazine will be 20-30 pages and teen vogue sized, so that girls can fit the magazine in their handbags when riding the t to class/work etc.

I got the idea from looking through the Improper Bostonian magazine. And combined with the fact that there were certain things I felt completely in the dark about as a college student.

For the interactive component I will also design a blog that will showcase and review some of the events weekly.

Thesis.

Finally after coming up with so many ideas for my thesis I decided it would be creative to do a Flash self portrait.

I'm sure we're all experts at doing self portraits by now as we've all done in drawing class.

I thought taking this concept and pushing it in Flash would be something that would be really fun and also a project that will be really personal. Flash is definitely growing in our industry and I'd also like to develop this as an interactive piece as well.

My self portrait will focus on my personal experience at Emmanuel and how design has become my passion over the last few years.

In particular I really enjoy motion design and see it more and more. I'd like to combine that passion with a self reflection since I've never done anything like it before.

This portrait will abstractly and subtly tell the story of how despite personal struggles I've always found stability in my work and show what it's done for me.

Sound/song will accompany my animation. The piece will run around 2-3.5 minutes.

Since I've grown such an interest in flash and interactive design through some networking yesterday I had the opportunity to meet the CEO of a creative agency called Proximity lab, who also consults with Adobe. He showed me some of his work including interactive web design he's done for..Bill Nye the Science Guy! http://www.proximity-lab.com/workDetail_billnye.php

It was really cool to get some career advice and see how far design can really be pushed, so I thought I'd share.

I hope everyone is staying warm and out of the blizzard!

-Kristen