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Starting to implement the fading and fading out of the words and sentence

This was where I was starting to get used to the keys of After effects on how to fade in and fade out the sound and the word Eastern Beach.

I made sure to fade out the music as I do not want the video to end harshly with a sudden stop of motion. Instead this was where I made it more natural to the viewers as it fades quickly but more subtlel instead of a big "bang."

This is where I continue to edit the words Eastern Beach as it needed to be the exact font from the Utopia font family, (same one form the cut out of the words in the stop motion). I had also made sure that the words were centered which made it look better.

When centering the Eastern Beach words, it was the most difficult for me to do as I could not recall how to do it.

However as you can see from below I had used the grid to guide me on how I can centre the words.

Then I proceeded to add in the sentence "Where family gatherings take place" down below the Eastern Beach.

I then proceeded to add the fading effect onto the sentence.

I had later on continued the effect of bringing forth the sentence Where family gatherings take place, which is shown below.

After doing this I had decided there was no point to make the words disappear like the sound had faded into the background, as I wanted the words and sentence to stand out to the audience, bringing forward the emphasis of my pepeha.

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My thinking process of how I want the "final product" to be shown at the end of my kinetic type motion

To have the same font I had used when cutting out the letters I had placed on the sand (stop motion I made via taking photographs)

To allow the Eastern Beach words appear by fading in and the sentence "Where family gatherings take place" by sliding to the right underneath the Eastern beach words.

Then the Eastern beach words will move to the right off of the page and the sentence of "where family gatherings take place" with move off of the page towards the left hand side.

This is so I am able to add the extra seconds I have left, to make sure it is the right amount of time in consideration of what is expected of us from the animatic.

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Class work I had started to work towards (23/5/23)

This was where I was adding all of the pictures of the stop motion I had taken on my Grandmothers phone and uploaded it here. Although something had went wrong when doing so which was then to why I had asked David for help on why it was not working properly.

After getting this fixed I had asked him on how you could add you own sound to the video instead of a sound you could gather from youtube. Once he had shown me the steps, I had added my own sound I had recorded from the Eastern Beach, onto the stop motion.

This is shown below:

When playing the video I had noticed that the sentence of "Where family gatherings taken place" has been cut-off within the video due to the sizing of the format they want our type kinetic to look like. I was annoyed about this as it had taken me over an all nighter to make the stop motion and during the following day I had to pack it up due to family concerns.

This was where I had decided to ask Daniel on how you can cut it off and add a black screen on top of it as I would like to add the sentence and the eastern beach words there, to show it as the "final product" on display.

I had also asked him a number of questions about fading in and fading out the words and how you would move them from left to right again, as my memory was quite foggy from the last lessons due to many wrong things happening and at those times he had to show me quite quickly.

Through the knowledge and demonstrations I had gained from this I was able to start to think on how I wanted my type kinetic motion to turn out like.

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The feedback I need to work towards (3)

You could explore more contrast of scale – not all small text on the page

Unfortunately I was unable to do this due to the time consumption of working on my Kinetic type motion (stop motion) I was in the process of making and learning how to use the tools of After effects.

If you can bring the focus a little more to the text than to the decoration you will be in a much better place.

I had started to implement the idea I had in mind to do which was to re-do the scale of the Character Map page, but I was unable to make a difference of the page as it did not look right no matter how many times I had tried to adjust it.

Unfortunately when trying to make it I forgot to take screenshots of it due to not liking it when making it other ways and I just kept scrapping the idea.

This was where I decided that it was best to continue the work I was doing on my kinetic type motion.

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The feedback I need to work towards (2)

Decoration could be toned back a little - For the decorative spreads, try toning back the amount of accessorising you do with the drop shadows and overlapping text

This was where I started to cut back the amount of letters, numbers and punctuation I had included in the bloodline tree in order to make the visible white letters, numbers and punctuation stand out compared to the red.

This is in order to use the red as a symbolism to it being the bloodline history of my family tree compared to the white colour that stands out, as if they were the people who grew the tree from an original spot, to where my family are now.

Although it appears to still be a little bit busy I am going to edit it and refine it a little bit more so that it doesn't seem "claustrophobic" or "clustered" together.

This is further shown below:

I believe this one is the best due to it being less complex and identifying every punctuation, numbers and letters easily due to them not being clustered on top of each other a lot compared to before.

This was where I had taken away the shadows behind the tree in order to show a strong, striking contrast of the alphabetical letters. This is so the letters are more focused upon as they form a unique shape of a tree. The left hand side is the reflection of the right hand side of the tree.

This is where I decided to take away the striking linked letters and numbers that had a strong shadow behind them as it was too distracting and powerful for the eye to comprehend, due to not being focused on one particular area.

I do believe and understand the feedback that was given to me as I too have now realised that the letters, and words were not focused on from before compared to now.

Overall, at this point it shows me playing around with the letters and numbers, in order for their placement to not be too much or distracting compared to before.

This is where I play around with the layout more and decide that this one is better compared to the other implications I had done, due to liking this one without taking it out of my work and discarding it.

However, later on I decided that the top area seemed to still be too clustered. Then I started to edit and refine it more until I was a 99% sure that I liked it.

The final product of it is shown below:

I quite liked this one as it shows how attatched the bottom letters and numbers are until they start to break apart as they float their way up to the top and vice versa.

This gives me and the viewer a sense of clarity and exposure to how family members can grow apart with time as they have their own lives to live.

but because I was 99% sure about it I edited it again and added an O for the replacement of the i and b.

Overall, I am satisfied with this edited page as there are areas where the viewers eye can rest upon compared to the areas of where the letters and numbers are most busy.

Red text on black background a little hard to read

This was where I had changed the letters t, e, r and the word 'map' in white in order for it to be better read due to the comment from before about how hard it is for the viewer to read the dark red letters and words against the balck background.

I believe that this is better compared to before due to the words being more visible and having a good contrast, as the viewer is able to be attracted to where they are meant to start to read to where their eye starts to read further down from UPPERCASE to PUNCTUATION, to LOWERCASE to LETTERS.

I had changed the word Utopia and the letters F and o, to the colour white instead of dark red.

However the more I tend to look at it the more I start to dislike it which is to why I decided to edit it more.

Although I did dislike the font being originally in that colour from above I was unable to like the other ways I had tried to do such as changing the colour of the background then the font and patterns on the side of the layout.

Therefore, I decided to keep it the way it is as it is more appealing compared to the other times I had tried to edit it.

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The feedback I need to work towards (1)

Typos

This was where I made sure to fix the typos of the miss-spelt words, height due to missing the letter 't.'

This is where I added the letter 's' to the word NUMBER as it is more accurate to say numbers rather than number due to there being more than one number shown in the Character Map.

Inclusion more of your Pepeha

This is where I included more of my Pepeha through the use of words I have added as it shows the different ways through the inclusion of more about me, my family and overall about my Pepeha.

So far I am going to show David this in order to get his feedback as I remember last time he wanted to see the implication from my edited work.

I will also re-discuss what I can do in order to show more of the font in different ways as I do remember him saying that I do not need to include the creator of the typeface, Utopia, and to instead do something else.

Discussion will be shown in the following post (29/5/23)

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What I am going to do next

Refer back to the notes I had taken during class on Monday the 15th of May in order to start making the type moving image on After effects.

To order the photographs by renaming the photographs to Eastern Beach 1.jpg and so on to Eastern Beach 126.jpg, in order to add the file in the After effects when making the stop motion.

To figure out how to add the music I recorded at the Eastern Beach onto the After effects stop motion I will be making.

Start to edit my Type Specimen booklet based off of the criticism I received from my formative.

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Music inclusion I could consider using

This music is calm, relaxing and takes your headspace somewhere else compared to where you are now. I personally quite like it because of those following factors I had stated.

The artist of this relaxing music and rain sounds is Peder B. Helland who strives to create a place where people can visit in order to "relax and feel inspired with relaxing music and beautiful nature."

Information gathered is shown below:

This music is relaxing and beautiful to listen to as it makes you feel comforted and light. I am not sure whether I want to include this type of music or if I want to go for something that is a mix of relation and water. This is where I had grabbed both feelings from the same artist Ferenc Hegedus who is a Hungarian composer and videographer.

He strives to present his music to those around the world who need to heal or use this music to their advantage for when doing relaxing activities such as yoga, studying or sleeping etc.

Information gathered is shown below:

Another one of his music I quite liked is shown below:

This music would be a great combination with the Beach noise I had gathered from Eastern Beach. I believe these two would be a great combination due to the different inclusions of the water as they would harmoniously work together due to the mix of calm and realism of the sounds of the beach, when under and above water.

My thinking process is shown below:

Although my beach noise is quite harsh and thrashing, what I could do to include the soft melodies such as the type of music's I have found above, is where I could lower the harshness of the beach noise and slowly introduce the soft melodies music. With both of the chosen musics combined it will create a thrilling and happy moment as I can only hope that memories will flood in the viewers heads when watching my type motion due to the consideration of the words and sentence that will be shown within the video.

I have also taken into consideration of how I want the music to end which is to not be cut off and to instead fade into the background so that it won't end abruptly.

#Youtube

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Notes I had taken during class (15/5/23)

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The stop motion pictures of the words, Eastern Beach, & sentence, where family gatherings take place, (5)

These are the last of the photographs I had taken of the stop motion image of the words and sentence in relation to the family gatherings that take place at the Eastern Beach.

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The stop motion pictures of the words, Eastern Beach, & sentence, where family gatherings take place, (4)

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The stop motion pictures of the words, Eastern Beach, & sentence, where family gatherings take place, (3)

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The stop motion pictures of the words, Eastern Beach, & sentence, where family gatherings take place, (2)

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The stop motion pictures of the words, Eastern Beach, & sentence, where family gatherings take place, (1)

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The solutions I had made in order to overcome the challenges I had faced over the weekend (before and during the making)

Solutions before the making:

I decided to make the stop motion (type moving image) indoors within the garage due to the terrible weather outside. This was where I found I had more control within indoors due to not having to rely on weather, and lighting as I will be able to choose my own light source. Overall, I was not able to do it at Eastern Beach as the letters of my words would have flown away in the wind, gotten damaged by the damp and wet area.

The weather was no longer an issue because I had started and completed the type motion indoors. Although I had relied on the sun's bright light which I was able to have in the prototypes I made in week 9, I started to find a light source I was going to use. This was where I had to further on buy 2 bags of sand and bring forth the shells I personally gathered when spending time with my family at the beach, in order to bring forth the realism of the Eastern Beach. Even though the sand is brown it is still bringing fourth the idea of being there.

The first idea I had come across when choosing a light source was to use mine and my Grandma's makeup mirror, to place on the right and left side of the sand then place the lamp in the front middle area of the sand. (The mirrors will not be seen in the photographs). However, this was not able to happen due to the makeup mirrors were not bright enough. With this my Grandma gave me the idea to use the white lights within the garage, which I had taken on board but used it as my last resort. This is because I had explored different ways on how to include one light only. Overall, this was the lamp as it had a strong bright light and did not create any shadows of the sand due to using at least 14 cyclopedia books. It had allowed the light to exceed over the sand to not create shadow and to be evenly be spread out across the sand. Although it was more so brighter where the lamp's light first spreads across the sand it does not effect the letters majorly. On the plus side it brings the viewers attention towards the area. In the end I used Grandma's idea and the lamp.

Solutions during the making:

Starting to create the different scales of the words, Eastern Beach, and the sentence, Where family gatherings take place, in order to print it off and prepare myself before taking photographs of the type motion. This was where I had to make this digitally on InDesign and to see how many stages of scales I want to use.

The amount of scales I wanted to use was in total three in order to show a successful scale when introducing the words and sentence. In order to do this I had to figure out how I could do this successfully due to needing to make two more scales showing the contrast from big to small. I managed to do this through looking back at the biggest scale I had already printed out and refer back to it when making the next two scales, smaller to smallest. I believe I did this successfully due to printing out the sizes of the words and sentences in the correct sizes I wanted them to be. This is because they came out in the exact sizes which ultimately shows the difference in scale. Although it was a long process it was worth it!

I was able to save the individual letters of the words and sentence, to my Grandparents old computer due to saving the files as pdf, in order for them to be printed out. Although the computer is quite old I am glad it all worked out as I would have not been able to do it anywhere else since I live far away from AUT in Auckland City.

There were some complications when printing off the letters such as paper jams and changing the sizes of the letters. However, I persevered and overcame those barriers by re-sizing the letters digitally and printing off the individual letters that were ruined.

When cutting out the individual letters of Eastern Beach, and cutting out the sentence words individually, it had taken me a long time to do, to the point I was ready to give up. However, I played one of my favourite series to listen to which helped me to keep moving forward in order to complete the task at hand.

When choosing a light source I had found it to be difficult due to originally wanting a white light source that covered the entire length of the sand I had spreaded out on a blue sheet. Through lots of trials and errors with different light sources I had found the one and only, lamp, that was originally on my bed side table. It's light source is so powerful it spreads across the entire sand area.

All I had to do to make the light source work was to use 14 cyclopedia books for the lamp to sit directly on top of them in order to not create shadow.

Through asking my brother for his assistance when taking photographs of the sand in mid-air, I was able to find out where to spread the sand out so the blue sheet wouldn't be seen when taking photographs of the type motion.

When figuring out how to implement the idea of motion with the letters and how to take the photographs with a great precision, I was able to start taking photographs randomly in order to find out how I was going to take the photographs accurately. Through these trials I had noticed there was a common denominator which was lining up the camera with two shells. One shell was to measure the gap around the left hand side boarder, (orange shell), and the other shell was to measure with the top boarder, (pointed edge shell). Overall, this helped me to make sure that all of the photographs were precise and accurate.

Unfortunately, in the process of making, I had forgotten I was going to include scaling in the making of the type motion (stop motion). I didn't want to restart which was then I was going to include the scaling but by taking a different approach which was to show it effectively when shrinking or increasing the sizes of the letters as they move across the sand to complete the words.

When placing the shells on the letters it was quite time consuming but it did not disappoint in the end due to the shells not changing the form/shape of the letters or words. This was because I had taken my time to place every individual shell and rock on the shape of the letters without allowing the shells to cross over the black outline of the letter over onto the white outline of the letter.

Although towards the end of the making of the stop motion where my body physically started to shake profusely, I was able to keep a steady camera as the final product of the photos do not show any movement/blur motion. (However, there was only one photo which showed this but I believe it is okay as it adds a special touch when the camera zooms in and out of the words Eastern Beach).

Overall, I am proud of how far along I have come so far due to the persevereness I had in order to complete the necessary stop motion making as I was able to show the photos I had taken to Daniel who was quite pleased with the work I had done so far.

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The challenges I had faced over the weekend (before and during the making)

Challenges before the making:

The decision on whether or not if I am doing it inside or if I am going to do it out doors at the destination, Eastern Beach. This was where I had decided I was going to do it outside at Eastern Beach.

The weather. This hindered me from being able to go to Eastern Beach to record the type motion image. This is because the weather was full of grey clouds, (no sun in sight), raining, and windy. Therefore, I had waited it out until Sunday. Unfortunately, it was the same outcome which was where I had to further come up with solutions to overcome this challenge.

The lighting. This is because there was no sunlight during the days of the week I was free to make my work due to the weather.

Challenges during the making:

Not preparing myself fully during the week in regards to making the scaling of font. For example, the words of Eastern Beach, and the sentence, Where family gatherings take place.

Figuring out how to show a successful scale when in the process of making it on InDesign in order to print off the words and sentences individually.

When sending the words and sentences individually to my Grandparents computer. It was quite time consuming due to the computer being quite old and therefore running slow.

Printing out the letters. There was a paper jam within the printer due to the machine sucking up the paper that it had already printed out.

Cutting out the individual letters of Eastern Beach, and cutting out the sentence words individually. It had taken me nearly the entire day to cut them out due to printing out the three fonts in order for me to show scale. Another reason why it was quite time consuming was because I had to cut them out evenly with the right amount of gap for each letter, especially the negative space between the letter.

Figuring out how to choose a light source in order to have a consistent light source throughout the type motion. This was extremely hard as I originally wanted a white light source that was coming from both ends of the sand (left and right side). However, this did not happen due to not having two consistent and powerful light sources.

Once light source was chosen I had struggled to get the right position of the light source in order for it to cover the entirety of the sand evenly.

Spreading out the sand on the blue sheet. This is because the sand needed to be spreaded out in order to be able to not show the blue sheet within the frame when taking photographs of the type motion.

Figuring out how to implement the idea of motion with the letters and how to take the photographs with a great precision. This was a challenge as I had a previous idea I was going to implement which was to zoom in and zoom out of the already placed letters and show how over time the letters with be covered with shells. However, I decided to take a different approach which was to allow the letters to move in, in their own different ways after each other in order to complete the two words Eastern Beach then later on figure out what I was going to do in regards to adding the shells on the letters then bringing fourth the sentence, (where family gatherings take place). This was quite time consuming due to implementing it in the way I stated above, due to needing to take multiple pictures in order to show movement.

How I was going to add scaling within the letters as I had already started taking pictures and I couldn't afford to restart due to how far I was already in.

Placing the shells on the letters. I found this hard to do as I wanted to make sure that the letters of the font was not disoriented/changed from its original form, which was why I wanted it to not go over the black outline of the letter onto the white outer line of the letter. Towards the end I was starting to panic due to running out of shells, especially the fact that I had used all of the shells that was originally on the sand and only having some small pretty rocks and half of a small clear sealed bag of shells left.

Zooming in and out of the words Eastern Beach X2. The first time is by itself and the second time is when the sentence appears. This was hard as my body was physically tired and my ankles started to cause my entire legs to shake, making it harder for me to have control and precision when taking the photographs.

Overall, it had taken me a whole day to create the type motion which I had done within the garage in my Grandparents home.

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Inspiration from artist models and what I can further take on board

This is where I had found some information about Ray Harryhausen who used his imagination in order to create creatures and to bring them to life through different materials. The creatures were brought to life through the technique known as stop motion.

I have learnt quite a bit about stop motion as it is shows the creatures in a realistic and non-realistic way. What I mean by this is that the creatures move in an old-like way as they are seen to be moving in a non-fluid way into their positions. This is because the creators who do this manipulate the objects physically in order for them to move.

About Ray Harryhausen:

He was born on June 29, 1920 and passed away on May 7, 2013.

He was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation".

"During his life, his innovative style of special effects in films inspired numerous filmmakers."

Through the research I have gathered about Ray Harryhausen, he has inspired many people around the world and still to this day, like me, through his creative techniques and knowledge about stop motion.

However, in particular for me he has inspired me to keep moving forward and to implement the ideas I have come up with through the use of my imagination, as nothing is quite impossible to do as long as you have the right equipment/necessities.

This is where I had found information about Mark Gee who is an photographer who captures a series of images in order to make a time-lapse of the particular surroundings he is in through the use of high tech equipment.

This is seen in one of the videos I had seen shown below:

He has inspired me through the use of how effectively he uses the fluent motion of the camera work when capturing a time-lapse of the scenery before him. Not only this but how he uses two different sounds to capture the viewers attention. He does this through using the water sound by increasing and decreasing the volume in certain parts of the film representing the important parts. To fill in the gaps he fades the water sounds in the background and brings forth a piano melody to get the viewer sucked into what we are watching.

This has ultimately given me an idea on how I could fade in and fade out the music due to how powerful the effect of music holds on the viewers.

I could do this effectively by using some of the techniques Mark Gee has used such as fading in and out, with a type of music that is similar to the water to add a calm and upbeat feel/emotion, due to my video going to be recorded during the day rather than the night.

The music I could take on board are the laughter of families and a melody that is a mix of the emotions, happy, upbeat and calm as it would be a mixture of the tides and families on the beach.

#Youtube