More Cinemagraphs....

 

I found a site with more interesting cinemagraphs:

http://graphicriver.net/forums/thread/cool-cinemagraph-/53129

Assigment #4: Music CD Packaging

 

(image via)

Assignment: design packaging for a music CD.

Front Cover
Booklet
Back Cover
Strange nd interesting packaging ideas

Designing CDs and CD Packaging -- boilerplate conventions:

The packaging of a music CD must persuade customers to buy/download the music -- the visual brand or style should reflect if not visually define something of the music recorded. The CD and its packaging must communicate a variety of information.


Specifications for designing the packaging for each CD:

CDs can be packaged in any of a wide variety of containers, but most popular by far is the jewel CD case. More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_packaging

The front lid contains tabs to keep the liner notes in place. The liner notes typically will be a 120 mm × 120 mm (4.72 in x 4.72 in) booklet, or a single 242 mm × 120 mm (9.53 in x 4.72 in) leaf folded in half. In addition, there is usually a back card, 150 mm × 118 mm (5.9 in x 4.65 in), underneath the media tray and visible through the clear back, often listing the track names, studio, copyright data and other information.

FRONT Cover:

1 - The paper for the front cover must be 120mm or 4.72 inches wide as well as high.

2 - The music publishing company's logo, name, copyright statement, location, and catalogue number must appear. You may use any of the recording company logos posted on this page.

3 - The name of the recording artist and the title of the album must be prominent texts.

4 - Other: misc. logos; compact disc symbol; etc.


BACK Cover:

1 - The paper for the back cover must be 135mm (5.3 inches) wide and 120mm (4.72 inches) high.

1 - The music publishing company's logo, name, copyright statement, location, and catalogue number must appear.

2 - The name of the recording artist and the title of the album.

3 - The playlist -- the list of separately recorded pieces of music -- must include titles, their order and duration (minutes:seconds).


4 - Other: barcodes; logos; etc.


Your assignment is to design the CD's brand and packaging and to post your designs on your blog.

Your assignment also stresses creativity: innovative ideas, imaginative attempts are all more important than keeping to the boring old conventions (even if you fail!)

Here are some sites with CD designs that you may find useful or inspiring:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/03/35-beautiful-music-album-covers/

http://bestdesignoptions.com/?p=7947

http://www.touchey.com/post/15395825342/15-creative-music-cd-cover-designs


http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2010/03/the-30-most-impressive-cd-and-dvd-packaging-ive-seen-in-a-while/

http://asideproject.com/music/

http://cvhsdesign.edublogs.org/assignments-2/assignments/cd-album-cover-art/

The 'Cinemagraph'

Here is the history and definition of the cinemagraph, from http://cinemagraphs.com/about/ :

A Cinemagraph is an image that contains within itself a living moment that allows a glimpse of time to be experienced and preserved endlessly.

Visual Graphics Artist Kevin Burg began experimenting with the .gif format in this style in 2009 but it wasn't until he partnered with photographer Jamie Beck to cover NYFW that Cinemagraphs were born. Marrying original content photography with the desire to communicate more to the viewer birthed the cinemagraph process. Starting in-camera, the artists take a traditional photograph and combine a living moment into the image through the isolated animation of multiple frames. To quote supermodel Coco Rocha "it's more than a photo but not quite a video".

Beck and Burg named the process "Cinemagraphs" for their cinematic quality while maintaining at its soul the principles of traditional photography. Launched virally through social media platforms Twitter and Tumblr, both the style of imagery and terminology has become a class of its own. The creative duo are looking forward to exploring future display technologies for gallery settings as well as pushing this new art form and communication process as the best way to capture a moment in time or create a true living portrait in our digital age while embracing our need to communicate visually and share instantly.

 

via http://cinemagraphs.com

 

 

 

Assignment #3: Animated gifs

For Assignment #3 we will be using Photoshop to create animated gifs and "cinemagraphs."

First we will focus on animated gifs: produce two separated animated gif projects:

Project #1: Create a humorous or "happy" animation (in keeping with the tradition of animated gifs; see examples); 

Project #2: Create a serious or "sad" animation (going against the grain of the typical animated gif).

While creating your animations, keep in mind the following:

•  You can use anything: found imagery, create texts that tell a story, shoot your own images; but remember to reduce your frames to 72dpi BEFORE you import them into Photoshop to animate them.
• Do your research: look at other animated gifs online before you start your projects. This will give you ideas.

Consider these projects as a contrast or counterpoint to your billboard project, which was all about Public Art or Advertizing. Consider these animations to be more personal.


I'll demonstrate how to construct an animated gif step-by-step. Take notes if you feel the need, as there are some essential details you may forget. I will show you how I made this gif:

from this image of a series of die-cut book covers by NY-based (famous) graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister:

Check out this blog post about Stefan, which is where I found the images so I could play with them for you!

Watch this brief video of Stefan's:

THE ASSIGNMENT (#3): ANIMATED GIFS

You have the next two weeks to play and experiment, and to upload your various animated gifs to your blogs.

Make an animated gif using at least ten layers. Use images that you make or images that you find. Make one animation or make more for extra credit! Have fun!

Here are a few sites that contain animated gifs, which you might find inspiring (I did!) especially this one from the New York Public Library:

Create and share animated GIFs and 3D anaglyphs using more than 40,000 stereographs from The New York Public Library.

http://stereo.nypl.org/

Also:  

Tom Moody's blog. Tom is sortof the Animated Gif King of the art blogosphere:
http://www.tommoody.us/
http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2012/02/20/various-gifs/
http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2010/11/03/animated-gif-q-and-a/
http://www.tommoody.us/archives/2009/09/16/the-affect-of-animated-gifs/


These are fun: Eyekhan's gifs, and remixes of Tom Moody's gifs:
http://eyekhan.com/eyekhan/EYEKHANLABS-WEB.html
http://eyekhan.com/eyekhan/EYEKHANLABS-WEB-EE_MIX.html

The following artist duo makes animations that are not animated gifs, but they may give you an idea of how to animate texts (also, they are worth looking at):

THE NEW AND IMPR0VED
Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
PRESENTS
http://www.yhchang.com/ 
This one is funny:
http://www.yhchang.com/PERFECT_ARTISTIC_WEB_SITE.html

+++++++++

I came across these on twitter and thought I should share them with you all:
http://illusion.scene360.com/art/27877/awesome-animated-gifs/

Here's the original post that led me to these gifs by Dain Fagerholm:

Via BoingBoing:

Dain Fagerholm's incredible animated GIFs

By Rob Beschizza at 7:59 am Wednesday, Mar 28

Dain Fagerholm creates animated GIF art similar to traditional stereo 3D photos.
Pictured here is Daydreamer. Other favorites of mine include Four creatures in a room and "Seven Headed Creature".

Dain's latest, Creature in Cube with Gem looks anagyphic as well as stereoscopic (but I'm not sure if it is)! [via Illusion 360]

Next: Animated gifs

Dear class,

Our next weeks after the break will take us into an early form of digital animation called 'animated gifs':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animated_GIFs

Please read the Wikipedia entry above so that you are well-versed in the history of this form. Animated gifs existed long before Photoshop and the Web. Culturally, they are usually employed humorously, but many other uses have developed in both digital/new media art and in advertising. We will get into more elaborate examples of animated gif art as well as advertising in the coming weeks.

During our break, go online and search 'animated gifs'. Save links to your favorite examples and post them to your blog as a list. We will look at some of these and discuss them briefly next time we meet.

In the meantime, here are some examples and some ideas, as well as instructions for how to construct an animated gif in Photoshop:

via tom moody: http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/date/2004/12/21/

via tom moody: http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/date/2003/12/29/

Article: from Rhizome.org

GIFABILITY

GIAMPAOLO BIANCONI | Tue Nov 20th, 2012 9:12 a.m. LINK

[EXCERPTED]

Last winter, Dan Harmon, who was then the executive producer of the television sitcom Community, shared that he tried, “many times a season” to put star Alison Brie “in a situation, wardrobe-wise, that I know is going to end up as an animated GIF file!”[1] Those GIFs, which circulate on Tumblr and other social media networks that traffic in images, are frame-capture GIFs. Unlike other GIF types, frame-capture GIFs plainly collect and endlessly repeat a single pop cultural moment from movies, TV shows, sporting events, political occasions, newscasts, cartoons, or even video games. As GIFs are silent, text is used to share dialogue or help shepherd the meaning of a GIF. Frame-grab GIFs are low-quality, incessantly mobile things, they can be awkwardly cropped and their focus is always obviously legible. Somewhat counter to this are what Daniel Rourke has termed art GIFs,[2]which, while also frequently sourced from movies or television, contain higher resolutions and have a self-consciously highbrow pretension, usually focusing on subtler, “artistic” moments. [read in full]

              Angelus Novus GIF by Garrett Rosenblum © Garrett, Inc. 2012

INSTRUCTIONS:

Create a folder full of images that you want to sequence together as frames in an animated GIF. You can find special programs online to do this, but we're going to do this in Photoshop:

1. Put the images you want to animate into one folder.
2. Click File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack. When the “Load Layers” window pops up, click Browse to select & open your image files, and then click OK. This should import the files you selected as individual layers in your document. Rearrange the layers into the correct order, if necessary.
3. Open the Animation palette (Window > Animation) if you have CS5. In Photoshop CS6, this is now known as the Timeline palette. So, go to (Window > Timeline) instead.
4. In the Animation/Timeline palette menu (found at the top right corner of the palette), click Make Frames From Layers. You can also click Reverse Frames if needed. This will take each layer in your document and set it as an individual frame in the animation.
5. Now we will change the duration of each frame. Make sure you are in frame view, not timeline view. If you do not see thumbnail icons of all your layers in the Animation/Timeline palette, click the icon in the lower right corner (the hover text will say “Convert to Frame Animation”). Now, back in the Animation/Timeline palette menu, click Select All Frames.
6. Click the drop down button just underneath each frame image (circled in red in the image below). This will bring up a menu where you can set a duration. Since all frames are selected, all frames will be set to the same time. Each frame can be changed individually, if desired.
7. 
   
8. The drop down button circled in black in the image above will change how many times the animation will loop; either a fixed number of times, or forever.
9. Once the frame order and timing as been set up, it is time to save the image! Click File > Save for Web & Devices, make sure the file format is set to GIF, change any other options if needed, and save the image!

You will now have an animated GIF taken from a folder full of the individual frames. In fact, as long as each frame exists as a separate layer in Photoshop, the Animation/Timeline palette can be used to create the GIF. 

(adapted from http://www.briandalessandro.com/blog/create-an-animated-gif-in-photoshop-cs5/)

Assignment #2: Billboard // Context

Image via


For the next two classes you will get to present your billboards. Upping the ante, in addition to showing us your finished billboard(s) and the several steps (including dead ends) that you took to get there, you'll also get to show us your finished billboard in a context or environment. Think about who your targeted audience is, and where your image belongs, whether it is public art, advertising, or a political message (etc).

In addition: write down the problems you have with certain tools so we can address them in class. Anything that frustrated your goals; also, if you found solutions to specific problems please feel free to share!

Also, here are several very short Photoshop tutorial videos, including one that covers the content-aware tool, puppet warp, and a few more things:

• Using the mixer brush (video 7:19)
• Working with the new bristle brush tips (video 9:11)
• Content-aware filling and healing (video 1:36)
• Puppet warp (video 7:33)

Assignment #2: Billboard

CREATE A BILLBOARD

Starting today and for the next TWO (2) weeks, we will work to produce a billboard using several images, working with masking, merging and text layers.

IDEAS: Your "advertizement" can be for ANYTHING YOU WANT. 

GOAL: to make a convincing case for something (anything) through a visually striking, clever design. You may incorporate text elements or leave them out. You may use found images if you transform them.

EXAMPLES / THEMES: 

- a philosophical concept (World Peace)
- your own artwork or business
- a real product (selling used laptops; publication of a cookbook with your grandmother's recipes)
- a fake, made-up product (robotic goldfish pets; super-peanut butter that makes you smarter....)
- a political cause (Ban Fracking; Promote Internet Freedom; etc, etc)
- something not listed here....

RESEARCH: before embarking on creating your billboard, spend some time looking at both conceptual/public art billboards and actual advertizing billboards online and in the city. Consider their use of text, size, proportions, message, pitch, and methods of manipulating the viewer or subverting conventions. Think about comfort zones and pushing past them. Think about the differences between advertizing, political activism and art.

Here are some sites with examples that you may find invigorating:

CONCEPTUAL / PUBLIC ART
How Many Billboards? Exhibition at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture
Check out the artists' billboards:
http://www.howmanybillboards.org/artists.html

The Absent Body: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, AIDS, Homosexuality and Representation (The Great Within: desire nostalgia art film photography mass culture)

Takin’ It To The Streets. An Interview With Susan Silton (artpulse)

High Line Art (commissions and produces public art projects on and around the High Line)
http://www.thehighline.org/about/public-art

Article: Billboard Art (Theory Now)

STRAIGHT ADVERTIZING
40 Conceptual Print Ads

25 Inspiring and creative print ads

eyeballnyc



HELP:
If you are feeling stuck, here are a few more [CS5] tutorials that may help:
https://www.adobe.com/support/photoshop/gettingstarted/