rjcrouch's posterous

REFLECT

A feeling of relief comes over me just thinking about the hours I spent in this studio getting this all together. Not necessarily because it was an INTENSE amount of work, but because my time management was severely underestimated. For a couple days I was occupying the studio until a couple hours prior to class and once all the way through 48hrs. In the end I'm happy. Not the happiest I could be but happy. But that's how it seems to go with all my work, I'm never to a point of completion in my own head.

This semester was the hardest and most work intensive semester I have experienced to date and that will most likely stand through my college career. I don't know if I have too much to say at this point. I'm just relieved and happy it's over. I feel accomplished and I guess that's all that matters.

Process of a Process

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PROCESS_for_the_Process.pdf (280 KB)
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Above is a pdf of some of the process that was involved in developing my end of the semester process book. 

Entity Research: Reflection

Looking back on the project as a whole the most interesting part for me was learning what I could do with after effects. It's been a while since I was really inspired to learn new things to this extreme. I look back and see that I could have gone about using the program in a more effective manner but that's what comes with learning from our experiences. Unlike some of my other classmates I did not have any experience with video from last year so this was all a new experience for me when it came to the animation side. I have honestly been inspired to go back and redo the video regardless of the use for it. To me I find it important to keep myself polished on all my skills much like when we learned how to design and code websites, I think it's important to keep that in your list of skills. Overall I learned a lot from the project I just wish I had time to go back and revise it all.

Experience Piece: Final

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(This is a low quality version of the video rendered so it was small enough to upload.)

The final video was somewhat disappointing to me. I think the message was still there but the execution didn't come out the same way I envisioned it. I wanted it to really feel like the Gatorade commercials I was inspired by. Unfortunately The feeling was lost in the still images. If I could go back I would have seemed out footage I could use for the video rather than images. 

Another change I would look into would be extending the length of the video. Emphasizing the "it starts here" message with more repetition. I feel as thought the message was lost on the first time viewer. 

Entity Research: Video Inpiration

After doing some research and brainstorming companies I thought may have a mood I was looking for in video I stubbled upon Gatorade's "League of Clutch" campaign. Their commercials themselves seem to be created by slowing down actual footage and adding some visual elements. I thought a similar feel could be achieved by utilizing the 3D camera in After Effects and create the illusion of moving in a 3D area even if I was using a still image. This allowed me to access more material without having to seek out an extensive amount of lacrosse footage.

<p>Gatorade - League of Clutch from crissy cicco on Vimeo.</p>

Experience Piece: Story Board

My story board may look incomplete, and visually it is. But that's not to say I didn't think out what I was looking to make. I wanted a dramatic team building type of video. Something that would inspire the feeling of belonging to something important and the feeling of victory.  The overall concept is as follows right reading from the page.

1) There is a view of a lit field with a slow zoom outward. 
2) cuts to a close up on a player covered in sweat, under the lights. 
3) Shows the crowd cheating, in slow motion. Inspiring a school spirit. 
4) Cut of an action shot of players on the field [possibly repeating through a couple different shots] 
5) Flashes back to a practice or some sort of instruction. 
6) Flashes back further to a younger age of the player on the field. 
7) Comes back to the player scoring in the present day. 
8) Fades to the phrase "It all starts here"

Photo

Experience Piece: Mood Board

Empire_board_2_white
This mood board for Empire was rested with all the intentions of being a very structured mood board. I used the default colors of the company to build the whole board. At the bottom you can see a word cloud representing the company as a whole. A feeling of team sports and outdoors should be an overall feeling in the board. I think the idea of instruction and/or coaching is felt in the images on the left. My exploration of type really stuck with the Gotham type face, this was decided because of my own personal experience with past designs with the company the typeface really expressed the overall feel needed.

If I could go back with enough time I believe I would try and push the board in a more emotive direction rather than the structured board I produced. In all honestly it feels bland to me. 

 

Reflection

Looking back on my executive overview presentation I just keep thinking about how I, and many others missed the big point. The point that we were supposed to be presenting to our executive. Many of us got caught up in the environment of the classroom and the fact that our class mates would be in attendance. I feel as though this really changed the way we looked at our speech and how it was constructed. I myself feel as though much of my information was solid and sound but the way it was presented was regrettable. I even believe the organization of the speech would have worked. In the beginning I only had the logo presented as I explained who my organization was, I did this purposely so as to no have a slide talking about the basics of my organization. There are a few problems I foresee with getting away from this though.

 

I Don't like that I would be presenting to a class that has no knowledge of what my entity is about. It seems impractical and unfair that we would put presentations on that way. I feel like we would only end up confused with each presentation and it would be hard to captivate the class as an audience. I also see this being a problem when it comes to the Q&A stage where I feel like many of the questions would end up being about "what does your company do." This would really side track much of the valuable time we had for real learning questions. 

 

On the other side of things is, "Would they get it?" Meaning would the executive get all the terms we were using. Would my exec know what a SWOT analysis was or where I Was even going with it. Would that turn them off to the fact we are trying to help them, or could it possibly even cause them to lose interest in the presentation overall. I just feel as though I would have constructed my entire presentation differently around explaining the information in a way that someone who had no prior knowledge in the research we did would understand it. 

 

These are just some thoughts I feel should be taken into consideration next time the presentation is being constructed.

SKETCH BOOK

I thought I would give you a little insight to what my sketch book looks like. It's funny I feel as though in previous years my sketch books looked far more "designed" where as now I think much of it is thrown in there as fast as possible while the thoughts are there. This isn't the whole thing but at least a taste of some of the elements from this project.

 

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FULL SYSTEM MAP

I noticed I never posted an image of my System map all together so here it is.

Click here to download:
SYSTEM_5.pdf (540 KB)
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