Book Cover Update (again!)

So right now I’m sitting here feeling really annoyed. And stupid.

For a whole day (since 8:30 this morning) I have been trying to sort out PDFs for my new design for the One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest book cover and it kept going wrong time and time again. Outlines were not coming out right. Colour wasn’t going right. Files were big (although big enough for file size restriction). Basically everything was not going well.

The cover looked fine on Illustrator, but Adobe Acrobat Reader wanted to play games with me >:E

And take forever to load the files when I did the PDF printing thing.

Then it was only 10 minutes ago I found out that I could do a “Save As” for a PDF file……… >_<

And everything worked out fine.

So in the end it has gone well, but it’s almost 6:20pm and almost a day has been missed for other plans to do Professional Practice!!!!

>__________<   *note that the expression now is in “more annoying mode”.

This is the new cover which I’m most likely going to enter into the Penguin Competition. Doubt I’ll win, but hey, it’s all fun:

If you can see, one of the rabbit people is in a slight different posture (arms crossed). This is McMurphy (it’s I believe one of the arm postures he tends to do — but also represents his strength and domineering appearance) and him looking towards the wolf eyes. Basically confronting Nurse Ratched (the wolf).

Dark gradient to show confrontation and the dark void the men are in, trapped in the mental ward for all their life, but with light at ‘the end of the tunnel‘ representing hope and freedom for them, which of course, if you have seen the film or read the book, it happens to two of the characters (although one is more darker as to how they get their freedom).

If you don’t know the reason as to why I have done rabbit people and wolf eyes, you can find out in a previous post.

And if this cover miraculously goes through to the next round there will be more feedback given for improvement and sent for the final entry. But as said, I doubt that will happen.

And that’s it. Now I’m off to do my other work until my boyfriend comes over for the weekend (although I’ll still be doing work!) ^__^

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Next Week is Spring Break! YAY!

Nice to have two weeks off of uni.

Not nice to still have to do work. That’s life for ya.

Small tweaks have to be made on the headline posters, and a few more modifications to book cover. Seems to go on a bit, huh? :p

And I managed to count almost everything in my anime/manga collection for my info graphics assignment:

• 147 mangas (not including ones I’m planning on selling!)
• 92 DVDs
• 19 Videos
• 51+ Figures (haven’t bothered looking for my Pokemon figures yet)
• 12 Dolls
• 14 Keyrings
• 3 CD Soundtracks
• 6+ Plushies (can’t get hold of my Pokemon ones — in baskets on top of my wardrobe!)
• 7 Posters
• 1 Bag
• 1 Purse
• 3 Pin badges
• 23 Video Games
• ?? Other Merchandise (i.e. magazines, trading cards, t-shirts, necklace…)

Some of the stuff is at my boyfriend’s so I can play it (games) or watch it (DVDs). And no, it’s not cos I have too much in the house already!

I do wonder how much I have spent on all of this over the years…… Oh well.

A Day of Bean’s

Max is a Cat.

A black and white Cat.

My neighbour’s Cat.

He likes to come to our house in the warmer days.

 As summer is approaching, he has once again started inviting himself to our abode.

And what does he usually do in our house, you wonder?

Annoy the hell out of me when I try to do my work.

But I love him to bits

=^_^=

Book Cover and Headline Posters ~ Almost Final

I have done the next stage of my book cover design, where I was told to add colour. I went through a number of steps, and finally came out with this:

There’s also a pdf file of the whole process from beginning until now. (Just a note, this may not be the final. We have given in our work which will be given “forward feedback” for any development) PDF file here of the process.

I have also done posters for the newspaper headline poster assignment, with PDF file here of the stages I went through as I feel it is too long to explain, therefore hoping my sketchbook will do all the talk! Again, this may get given “forward feedback” so it may not be exact finals. But these are the posters.

Also, for some reason the green on the second poster has come out really bright on my blog, which is incredibly weird as this has never happened before, and is originally a more so toned-down green. Apologies for the unsightly thing. I’ll try to sort it out asap. Although, when you click it for the other view it goes back to its original green…. =/

Things that will change with the posters is the size of the headline. Although it has to be small, I think it’s a bit too small. And the hair outlines of the children in the second poster don’t seem to work. The winner really out of them both is the Japan poster.

That’s about it. Still working on logo designs and coming up well now. So sooner or later I’ll post them up along with talking about the case study we have to do based on talking to a professional from our chosen career path (e.g. since mine is illustration, I’ll have to talk to a professional illustrator by asking them particular questions relating to that career).

Anyways, off to do last bit of practicing for my animation presentation tomorrow. Bye bye! ^^

Stop-Motion Animation Narrative Presentation

I have done my presentation for Week 7 of Digital Narratives. If you remember from my last post I was mentioning how I was planning on focusing on stop-motion animation. For this presentation I had to look more into stop-motion and explain the narrative forms of particular animations, which can be found in these notes.

There’s also an experiment I did based on Object Animation. It’s not at all fantastic like the ones from the professionals, but it was my first try in trying it out (and I do know that I need a flat surface to keep the camera steady! So apologies for the shakiness of it). In case you wonder what the doll was from the animation, it is a Kokeshi Doll which I bought a couple of weeks back from London’s Chinatown (although technically Kokeshi Dolls are Japanese!). I haven’t given her a name yet, though…

This is the animation if you can’t view it on the Power Point. As I said, quality is not great so don’t expect any “WOWS!”

The animations that I looked at were:

• The Tale of the Fox (1937 by Wladyslaw Starewicz (or Ladislas Starevitch)) — Puppet Animation
• Cinderella (1922 by Lotte Reiniger) — Silhouette Animation
• Tulips Shall Grow (1942 by George Pal) — Puppetoon Animation
• Morph shorts (1970s by Aardman Animations) — Claymation
• The Magic Portal (1985 by Lindsay Fleay) — Brickfilm/Object Animation
• Robot Chicken (2005-Present by Seth Green, Matthew Senreich, Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root) — Object Animation

I really enjoyed watching the old stop-motion animations. Something about them was ever so innocent. I wish I found them sooner though, but I guess it’s better late than never! And watching the Morph shorts really brought back some good memories of watching it as a kid ^_^

I really fell in love with Lotte Reiniger’s Cinderella. The intricate details, beauty, and simplicity of the animation is truly astounding.

But the effort that went into these animations is remarkable. Dedication and patience is truly needed and it played out well for all of them.

Very amazing works of art.