First Years Fifth Project - 30 Second Movies

For this brief we asked the students to research basic film making techniques, then study a specific movie genre (pulled at random from a hat) and then finally create a 30 second visual 'distillation' in film of said genre. Oh; they also had to produce a detailed storyboard before they started shooting any live footage. We generously allowed them two whole weeks in which to complete this massive challenge.

But hold on a minute we hear you shout (N.B. we don't really)... Graphic Designers and Illustrators making films? Are we mad?

No, quite the opposite. As technologies merge (these films were all made in Photoshop by the way!?) and, as TV and streaming media expand exponentially, who will be there at the cutting edge, producing well designed, intelligent content? Designers and Illustrators, of course

This project marks the start of a journey for those students who have a strong interest in exploiting video, film and animation as their chosen media. We'll be exploring further aspects after Christmas so stay tuned.

In the meantime; put you feet up, turn down the house lights, open a carton of Kia-Ora and smear Nachos down your front as you enjoy the fruits of their labour...

Maddison and Peter give you their take on the Spaghetti Western format.


Vincent and Sarah produce a 30 second tribute to the 'Swashbuckler' genre set in our Design & Illustration studio.


Mollie and Ben produce a 30 second tribute to Pathe News


Nathan and Laura give us 30 seconds of German Expressionism.


Rebecca and Zac proudly present a short Action Movie


Tanya and Iinu produce a 30 second tribute to 'Film Noir'

How Do You Design a Great Book Jacket?

Well, a good place to start would be by listening to the greatest book jacket designer of his generation, Mr Chip Kidd...

an american werewolf in london in cumbria

Second year illustrators have been busy illustrating film posters but instead of using traditional 2D methods the brief asked them to work in 3D using lighting, projection, paper construction and camera. Here's some of Jenny Read's work for An American Werewolf in London (a film which incidentally caused this grillustrator to live in a sleepless state from Autumn 1986 until sometime in 1991). We were looking for atmosphere and mood thought that Jenny had done a bang on job of showing just that.

Resolution problems?

Enlarged an image to make it fit the page? Stretched it in photoshop? Is it blurred?



Original image and enlarged image (one minute portrait by Damien Florebert Cuypers beautiful drawings all over his site BTW). See the difference?
 
Here's what going wrong.


9 pixels


Enlarge the image and the pixels are moved apart, leaving gaps that contain no information


Software such as photoshop calculates a best guess, using the existing pixels to create new ones, filling the gaps. The more you enlarge the more the software has to create. In this example there is more calculated information than original. Leading to loss in fidelity. This is what makes images blurry and poor quality.



Always make sure you image is big enough for your needs.

One to watch :-)

CYCLIQUE (version courte) from NOhista on Vimeo.

constructed illustration

Year 2 illustrators are currently working on film posters. Nothing special about that we hear you grumble. But you’re wrong. They’re not illustrating them in a traditional sense. Instead, they’re building illustrations using paper, lighting and projection; the end result to be photographed. No photoshoppery allowed, all effects to be captured ‘in camera’. The results have yet to be seen but activity in our top secret bunker looks promising.

Still Life Still Fun

As part of their Visual Literacy module year zeros undertake a series of drawing exercises. This week they tackled still life. As old fashioned as it comes but still a valuable activity and still good fun. Encouraged to experiment with materials and approach they turned in some less than dull results – the Grillust ethos being that any chance to draw must be a good thing.

This is what happens when you draw whilst listening to Radiohead

Six strings, one line