Computers need updating

Cant do my trailer

As you may guess by the heading and title, I was unable to do any after works or additional tweaking to my trailer because the software at university is out of date meaning I cannot open my project. So I took this opportunity to add the finishing touches to the DVD cover and DVD sleeve.

DVD cover

So the logo was done and all i needed to do was put it on a disc. I already had a basic template saved with the guides for the bleeding edge for both the inner and outer circle. My original plan was to leave the disc blank and have it as a solid fill background, but this would have been too plain and depending on the colour, could have made placing the logos difficult so I decided against it.

Instead, I selected an image that matched the theme of the trailer and sleeve. Form here, I created a circle to match the diameter of the outer most circle and used that as clipping mask. The original artwork was designed at a slight angle so I rotated the image slightly to make the appearance seem more straight in appearance.

The background of the DVD

The next thing was to add the text to the path of the disc on the inside of the bleed. I originally did this first so I had the path on a separate layer with the guides. I made the text a small white font that was easily readable as this is what all other DVD images had.

The small print text on the DVD

The final two pieces to do was add some logo's to the disc and the title of the movie. The first layer I did was the logo's where I found an age rating and DVD logo and placed these both on the left of the DVD, The reason for the right side is because most western region DVD's have them on the right as people read left to right, with the viewer likely to see the production company first. All that was left to do was copy my logo and scale it down so it would not cover too much of the artwork.

Once this was done I created a new layer and created a sub layer for each text. I used the same font style as the DVD sleeve for continuity as well as a similar shade of red. Once the text was positioned, the DVD cover was officially done.

The finished product

With that out of the way completely, it was time to finish of the DVD sleeve.

DVD sleeve

With the sleeve, there really wasn't much to do. I got the same logos from the DVD cover and re sized them and added them to the spine. I was going to add them to the front cover of the DVD too but after looking at other covers for reference, I decided against it as it seemed a bit too excessive. What I did notice though is that a lot of DVD sleeves have the logo on the spine as well as part of the front image. Unfortunately I could not do either as both the logo and image appear low quality and unrecognizable, so i opted to add the logo to the opposite side of the sleeve. With the logos in place, the sleeve was done.

The finished product for the sleeve

All that is left is the trailer. Oh the joy of after effects combined with a lack of experience.

Not quite there yet

Tweaked the movie a little more

Today was not much of an eventful day. It primarily consisted of watching tutorials and searching for special effects to use in the video. I did attempt to add an explosion to a couple of scenes but the appearance was off and will need more research to make the appearance match the footage. But I did add a speed blur sequence and here is how.

Running at super speed

The original plan was to make a shot where it looks like I teleport but I needed extra effects such as sounds and animations, which costs a lot of money. So the path I took was to mimic super speed. The first thing I did was re shoot some footage of me about to run and me arriving at my destination. I then took the footage and selected a short sequence with me about to run. I then cut three frames of the scene without me in it and added a clip of me arriving at the end point.

From here I copied one frame of me about to move and placed it above the original scene. I then added a 16 point garbage matt and placed it around myself. I then added another effect, directional blur. I changed the direction of the blur to horizontal, increased the blur length and positioned it to the point where I was about to run off. I then repeated the process for the exit shot and reduced the scale and positioned it to match the shot.

The sequence and effects add to the clip

The result was nowhere near as good as the tutorial I followed (seen below) but it wasn't a bad attempt.

Adding a cinematic effect

The last thing I did was add an adjustment layer to the whole movie, except the logo which I'll explain why in a second. I used a preset called cinema 2 to give the video a nice cinema look. But the footage I recorded had a wide angle and made some scenes look off. So I used another preset which can remove the wide angle lens effect from the go pro and did this to all of the recorded clips. And finally, the reason for not using the cinema adjustment layer was because it made the logo appear to dark and not as good as the export was.

Next task, adding a fireball to my hand, some explosions and replacing the background for a clip. All in a days work

Back to the drawing board..... literally

Still my own worst enemy

After thinking I was happy with my sequence so far last night, the plane was to continue watching tutorials of after effects as well as picking up a few tricks for premiere. This wasn't the case. While going through a tutorial, it was mentioned that after effects got its name because after all the footage was edited, that is when you add the special effects. So with that in mind I went back to premiere to finish editing the footage in premiere so it was ready for after effects.

But as I was going through the footage I realised that I was only happy with about a third of it so I pretty much started again. So here is what I did, again......

Tweaking the first 18 seconds

So the first 20 seconds of the video were pretty much exactly what I wanted so far, and all that was left to do was tweak a few things. The first thing I had to do was to add a fade to a piece of audio so that another piece could play and it would seem like a transition of sorts. After searching under Audio Effects for a gradual fade, I had to settle for exponential fade under audio transitions. I didn't want to select this one as the fade was too quick but it was the closest I could get. All that was left for me to do was set the duration and position it correctly.

Editing the position of the fade

After that was done, all that was left was for me to speed up the duration of a clip I previously added to make it appear more fluid in the movement of the camera.

Increased the speed until I got my desired result

Once all that was done, it was a matter of selecting the clips again from the footage I shot.

Selecting the correct clips

When it came to selecting the right clips, I did things slightly differently. I selected the clips based on the audio. The reason behind it was because the first time I tried to place the audio over the video which did work to an extent but wasn't as good as I wanted it. So this time I decided to select the clips and base them around the audio which looked a lot better.

I trimmed the audio down to about 45 seconds because the whole track I selected was an hour long. Once I marked the in and out points of the audio, I dragged it down to the sequence just after the 18 second mark.

So the first thing I wanted was to showcase my logo at the start of the trailer, similar to what a lot of production companies do. So  I added the logo to the sequence and shortened it down to 2 seconds as any longer seemed a bit excessive. But I wanted to give the transition from the previous clip to the logo a professional look so I added a transition called Film Dissolve which gave it a nice transition slowly fading the previous clip while slowly revealing the logo clip. The one problem I had is that when the audio started there was a slight delay from when it actually started. So I shortened this in the clip. But I ran into another slight problem, the audio just started loud with no build up. So the way around this was to add another audio transition called Constant Power. This started the track softly and went to full volume.

The audio transition really helped the quality of the trailer

As you can see from the image above, I included another transition to go from the logo to the next clip in the sequence. Because of the short duration of the logo, I moved the majority of the transition to cover the clip . The clip itself I edited the speed of the clip and edited the size so that it would with all the other clips on the sequence.

Making a clip seem dramatic

The rest of the clips followed the same process of adding various transitions and editing the speed of the clip to give a slow motion effect or to speed them up so other clips could be added to the sequence.

There was one clip where I rose up from the ground and turned around looking. The part where I looked around happened a little too fast. So I played the clip to just before the point where I turned my head and moved forward a frame at a time until I got to my desired position. I then cut the clip in half and slowed down the clip and shortened it slightly. With the music playing, it gives a dramatic feel to it.

Creating the end

I had the clip to end the trailer on and added a fade to clack transition to give it a professional look. I also applied a fade to the audio as well but found it was too short. I selected the transition and opened the effect controls in the source window and extended the duration to match the transition of the video. But it still wasn't good enough. It didn't give the title of the movie and the last key bit I was missing was adding text to a clip. So I added a picture after the final clip and then when to create a dynamic link to After Effects. In after effects, I used adobe Bridge to browse the preset animations of text and selected one that seemed appropriate to the trailer called teleport. After changing the font, size and colour, I saved the project, closed after effects and moved it to the end of the sequence so that it appeared on top of the picture. I edited the duration so it matched the duration of the picture and then added a title that was 2 seconds long with the text "coming to DVD soon".

The end of the sequence is complete and so is the initial editing

The movie is very near complete at this stage. All that is left is to edit some clips in after effects, add some explosions with the use of chroma key, replace a background for a clip and then export it. Not too bad for two days work.

Its SHOWTIME!!

Yeah, lame title but you get the idea

After the surprising success of my DVD sleeve project, it is now time to to tackle the trailer. I have as much experience as everyone else but I always want to push myself to see how well I can do, such as the Illustrator and Photoshop tasks so this is no different. So here is want I have done so far:

Making the initial timeline

The very first thing I had to do was gather the material I wanted to use. Since I changed the sleeve from game to movie, it did make it slightly easier for the trailer. I recorded some of my own footage and downloaded various audio files to use. So after I had imported all of the files into separate bins, I dragged a video straight to the timeline and delete it. The reason for this was so that I could have all of the footage run at a consistent frame rate and so that I also had the correct settings for the footage I was using.

From there, it was just a matter of watching each video and dragging just the video only. There was a lot of initial editing with adjusting the length of the video and in some instances, speeding up clips to make sure the entire trailer was under 1 minute. From here, I laid a few audio tracks down and had a few overlapping to give me the effect I desired as seen below:

The sequence so far

With all the initial audio and video in place, the next step was to add special effects using after effects. So now would be a good time to quit the blog for today as I will have to continue reading books and watching tutorials.

Projects done so far

In my previous post, I stated that all that was left to do was premiere, so What I thought I would do is put all of the projects I have done so far and put them in one handy to view post instead of going through the list looking for them.

Illustrator logo

The finished Illustrator logo

Photoshop sleeve

The (nearly) finished DVD sleeve

Two down, one to go

This is pretty much done

The DVD sleeve is about done

After slaving away at books and scouring the internet for the perfect pictures and watching multiple tutorials, the artwork is finished. Barr a few logos that need to be placed. So here is a comprehensive run down of what I did.

Credits and screen shots

The first thing I did was a bit of a short cut as I really didn't have time to type it all out myself. I cut the credits from the bottom of the DVD case of the shadow figures and pasted it at the bottom of the case. The images I did a little differently. On my very first update, I already had these in place and I did this by dragging the files in from a folder and resizing them against a black square. At the time, I did not know I could manipulate the shape and change the layer from a smart object. I kept the images in the same place as the concept as the plan was to have an image to the right of the bottom one and left of the top one. This has changed slightly and will detailed below shortly.

Rear character

The rear character was a little tricky for what I wanted to do and I followed a tutorial for the most part. The tutorial I followed is listed below but I will list exactly what I did.

The first thing I did was use the quick selection tool to select the character. I was being very careful to select all of the character except for his claws as I did not need those. I then duplicated the selection to a new layer, called it effect, added another new layer and placed it in between the previous layers and painted it white with the paint bucket tool.

I duplicated the effect layer and called it jackman, went back to the effect layer and selected liquify from the filters menu. In the liquify menu, I changed the brush width to 350 pixels initially and changed the brush density and pressure to 100. I then proceeded to stretch the image over to the right while constantly changing brush size to get the effect I wanted. Something similar to the tutorial, but not quite the same.

At this stage I selected the effect layer, created a mask and painted it black. I then selected the jackman layer and created a mask for that layer. From here, I made sure the mask was selected, I then selected the brush tool and changed it to a different tip to one that I downloaded. From here, I somewhat knew what to do and started to click different areas of the picture with different sized brushes and different angles so it didn't look like a pattern, like the video demonstrated.

After I was done making the white particle effect appear, I then selected the black mask on the effect layer and repeated the same process. To finish the image off, I added some CG fireballs and changed the opacity so the characters hands could be seen as if they were being conjured from his hands. This was the finished result:

The finished character which I am VERY happy with

There would have been screen shots as I was going along, but I got carried away with the tutorial and completed the image without taking shots in stages.

Adding text and that's pretty much it

The original plan was not to have text, but two pictures instead. It may have looked good in theory but looking at actual DVD cases, I decided against it as the text was a nice way to draw the viewers attention to the plot line and too many pictures could ruin the case. I made up a description but was very careful in the font used. I chose Arial Regular as this font is widely used among computers and would prove very easy to read to most viewers.

I chose to include a tag line as most movies seem to have a tag line which tries to hook the person viewing the DVD to buy it. So I used the same font as the title but made it smaller so it could fit on one line. I then used the same font with a slightly smaller size and placed this on the spine of the DVD ensuring there was even space from the edges and leaving enough space for logos at the top and bottom.

The last bit of text I added was at the last minute. I was left with some black space at the top and decided to include some very short reviews that I had seen on the back of DVD's before. I chose to use a large bold font with a red colour as this stood out very clearly from the background. What I also did was add another, smaller font underneath with a company name and changed the paragraph to a faux bold to make the smaller text a little easier to read. So after many hours and much typing, this is the finished result:

The (nearly) finished product 

As you can see, This has turned out very well in my opinion in the space of three days from having to learn how to use Photoshop 3 days ago. All that is left to do is add some logos and the sleeve is officially done. Next and final project, and possibly the most ambitious, the movie through premiere.

Over halfway done

The front is nearly done, yay!

So the front is nearly done at this stage and after that is completed, all is left to is finish the back and this part is completely done. So on with the next bit.

Shadows and fire and text, oh my!

So as you may have seen, I inadvertently included some screen shots with the flames behind and or in front of the tripod. This was the next phase. As you have seen in the concept drawings, I wanted the tripod to have its leg in a building. But as you can see from the last update, I wasn't able to do that so an idea to cover it to give the impression that it is in the building is to cover it up with fire. Now the only problem I saw with just one layer of fire is that when I put in front of the tripod, it didn't look like the leg was in the building.

Doesn't look like the leg is breaking the building

So the only way around this that I could think of with time looming over me was to add another layer beneath the tripod and edit the levels again slightly. So I added another layer but after changing the levels, it didn't seem quite right. I reset the levels, changed the opacity of the flames in front and was left with the finished result:

Fire at the front and rear of the tripod

It doesn't match the image because the fire added is a CG quality picture and with a little more time and skill, I could have made it blend in a little better with the background.

Next job, the people

In the concept I had an image of two people standing in awe in front of the tripod and I still wanted that so there could be a sort of size comparison. I wanted to inspire viewer to really sympathise with the people in the movie (if it was real) how big the aliens were and to give them that sense of fear.

So early on, I saw a cover I wanted to use for inspiration and luckily enough, it had a shadow figure on the front. So the first task I needed to do was to cut the figures out of the image. This time I decided to use the magnetic lasso tool as this gave me a little more control over the edges and what I could and couldn't select. It wasn't ideal as there was not much contrast between the shadows and the rest of the image, but after placing them I was left with this:

The shadow figures but it caught the colours of the original image

Now the one problem you may notice as I did was that the cut also cut a part of the original image leaving a red outline around the shadows. Now an option for me was to delete the image, use the quick selection tool, create a mask and use the refinement tool to clean the picture up, but time is of the essence.

So from this stage I modified the Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation level which gave me this:

Finished shadow figures

If you look closely at the shadow figures, there is still a slight red outline round the edges of the figures which gives the illusion of the fire illuminating the front of them. So it actually worked out for the best.

Last bit for the front

As with all movies, they need a title. The title was already decided in the concept stage of the project. The biggest task for the text was making sure I chose the right font. I looked in Type Kit and Google fonts to see if there was any to choose from, but as you can imagine their selection is very large. So I looked through the list of installed fonts of Photoshop and found one I could work with and typed the title in a 60pt size. Here is what the finished front looks like;

The very nearly finished front

The choice behind the text was that I wanted something that was still readable to a wide range of audiences (Due to my interest in HCI) but I also wanted something that looked futuristic and alien like in appearance. The one thing I did change since the screen shot was taken was that I moved the text down slightly so that the picture of the lightning wasn't making the letter O of OUT hard to read. All that is left to do for the front is add the company logo and a few official ones to do with DVD Video and the front is officially done. Now to start with the back.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Not all bad...... yet

After facing possibility of potentially failing the degree in the first year, all does not seem too bad today. After a brief and very helpful chat with my lecturer, I was informed that I am on track with this assignment, just need to keep pushing, which I have to do anyway.

What has happened so far

So after a brief pep talk, it was time to get on with completing the assignment. So the first thing I wanted to do was give the impression that there was aliens walking in the backdrop of the city. So the first thing I did was copy the background for the front of the case and place it on a new layer. From here, I used the quick selection tool to remove a lot of the tall buildings and keep some of the smaller ones, which left me with this:

Remainder of the copy of the background

So from here I copied the aliens, moved the background aliens in between the complete background and the edited one, re-sized the aliens (Thanks for me showing me how to do that Jamie) and slightly tucked them under the layer as seen below:

Silhouettes of aliens ion the background

The reason they are silhouettes are because I already changed the opacity, but as soon as I add the original background again, this is the result:

Aliens walking in the background

I also changed the Hue/Saturation as well as the opacity as the background image is very green looking and the alien tripods were just black sketches, so changing the settings made it look like the aliens were part of the original picture.

Adding a foreground

The next plan was to add a foreground to give the picture some sort of definition. So I already had a picture chosen and proceeded to use the quick selection tool and deleted half of the image so I could still see the background. But the problem was that the foreground did not match the background above. So I decided to go through the colour effects until I found one suitable and decided to darken the picture. Below is the before and after:

Before picture effect

After picture effect

So I had the background and the foreground all done, the plane was to add some extra features to make sure that anyone viewing the cover, know that the movie was about an alien invasion. So the next plan was to add a large alien at the front of the picture. I found a suitable alien but the problem was that the alien stood out too much.

Good image but too bright

So the main step for this task was to make the alien a similar colour to the background so it didn't stand out too much. But another feature I wanted to do was to make it appear as if the alien tripod was walking from the background to the foreground. I did attempt to use puppet warp but I couldn't get the points to work. So the next best option was to select the image, tick the box for "show transform controls" and select the perspective warp from the options bar. All I had to do was change the points and make it appear the tripod alien climbing into the front. This was result:

The angle works fine, now just the appearance

So the position is fine, it is just the colour and contrast that needed changing. So I started to tweak the brightness and contrast on the adjustments tab until I got something that looked a little better:

Changed the levels to suit my needs

From the shot above there doesn't seem to be much change and looking at the picture in Photoshop there wasn't that much of a change either. A technique I learnt while very quickly reading the classroom book was to duplicate a layer and change the settings on the new layer. Adding the new layer looked great but I still wasn't happy with the appearance. So I changed the settings of the Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation levels and changed the appearance from normal to colour burn to the image changed from this:

Additional layer before changes

And changed it to this:

Additional layer with the levels changed

I stuck with this look because the colour burn levels gave the alien tripod a slight blue tinge with a metallic finish. Then to make sure the image fit with the background, I decreased the brightness and contrast levels and modified the hue saturation levels slightly.

So this post is getting quite long but more has been done so check the next post for what else I did to the front.

One day to do it all, not possible.......

In a bit of a sticky wicket old bean

After a brief break from designing and writing my blog due to other work needing completing, I am back.

Now I did have a plan which in hindsight, seems really, REALLY naive of me. Now, due to me having to miss the first 4/5 weeks of the second semester, that put me on a slight disadvantage to everyone else and got me in trouble regarding assignments due to lack of knowledge. So I bought loads off books and thought I would self teach what I had missed.

This worked for illustrator which turned out quite nicely as seen from my previous posts. So my thinking was after speaking to a few people that I should be able to get my Photoshop assignment done within one day, while also learning everything I would need to know to pass the assignment.

This did not happen.......

What actually happened

I already had a few concepts designed and had the ideas in my head of what I wanted to do as you can see below:

Apologies for the angle, couldn't be changed

So I had the basic layout and I was trying to decide what to do from there and it just hit me, alien invasion. So I updated the concept art:

Again, sorry about the angle

So I was quite happy with the artwork and put it to one side while dealing with the illustrator task. The original plan was to make it based on a game, but the major downfall for that was having to select pre recorded footage which meant I couldn't get exactly what I wanted. So the plan changed again and the whole assignment was going to be based on alien invasion movie, not game based.

Fast forward to today

Today I spent all day going through the first 6 chapters of Photoshop in a classroom, covering the basics of what would have been needed. But me thinking it could have been done in a day was laughable.

The first thing I did was set up some guidelines to the exact measurements of a DVD sleeve which was relatively easy. From here I made the background black and imported a picture I wanted to use as my background for the front cover. It was here where I encountered my first problem.

I was trying to cut the image in half and discard the other as I didn't need it, problem being that Photoshop was not letting me do it. After spending 30 minutes of constantly going through different options and through the book, I still cam to no avail and got extremely frustrated. After taking a short break, I decided to attempt it again, which still bought no joy. After a very brief search on the net, I discovered that I couldn't do it because the image was a smart object and I needed to rasterize the layer. So I rasterized the layer and discovered that the easiest way to separate each half was to cut the half I selected with marquee too to a new layer. Thankfully, it worked.

After that I decided to drag some pictures in to the document from a folder and resize those to be the images on the back of the case. That all worked fine too. I added a tag line, movie title and cut some text to paste on the back on the bottom. That all seemed to go quite well.

Then my lack of skill started to show. I inserted another image to act as another layer of background but the colours did not match. So I decided to leave it and tackle another small job. I used the quick selection tool on some more images such as alien tripods and a small outline of some people and positioned them appropriately, but had the same problem, the colour was off.

It was at this point where it started to dawn on me how out of my depth I truly am at trying to accomplish such a task in such a short amount of time. On top of this, I still have to learn adobe premiere and because I am never satisfied with anything less than my best, I also have to learn after effects in the space of 7 days, as well as completing the Photoshop assignment.

There are a few times I have been scared. First time I became a father, the one time I had to deliver a child. Going in for a biopsy for what I thought could have been cancer. 

The thought of failing the course and not being able to provide for my family is one of the moments that has me truly scared.

Nevertheless, here is what I have accomplished in one day:

The start of something 

Sound the fanfare, the logo is done!

Today is a good day

As I said in the previous post, I would create a new one on what I did for the text and background for the logo. My logo is complete, so that is one task out of the way.

First task, the backgrounds

The first thing I decided to tackle was the backgrounds as I thought trying to map the images onto the 3d cube was going to be difficult. It wasn't so much difficult as not possible from what I had learnt and researched. Creating a clipping mask based on the 3d cube only created a square clipping mask and not one that mapped the cube. The solution to this was simple, but a bit longer than what I had thought.

I hid all the layers of the artwork apart from the cube and created squares based on the sides of the cube. This involved using direct selection tool again and manipulating the squares to the shapes I wanted. I grouped the shapes together, put them on top of the picture and created a clipping mask which in turn created another problem. The clipping mask took the shape of the last item created in the layer.

So after a short amount of research, I found that I needed to create a compound path of the shapes first so that they were all one shape and then create a clipping mask. Voilà, it worked! All that was left to do is repeat the process for the other two logos and they were done.

Second task, company name

The company name was simple, the company name was called Olympus and all I wanted to do was put a clipping mask of some clouds with a few rays of sunshine. The extra thing I did was add a drop shadow and and adjust the x and y axis to position the shadow to the left and at the bottom slightly so the shadow would mirror the images.

And here is the final product:

My masterpiece

Overall I am happy with the finished product, I just wish my artistic skills and knowledge of illustrator was better, but you do what you can with the time you have.

A little more detail

Best to give a decent description

After the post I did yesterday, it did occur to me that it may be a bit hard to understand exactly what I did. So I thought I would go into a bit more detail on how I did it with the next figures in the logo.

Step 1: Creating the shadow

So the first thing I did was create a sub layer with a black box and carefully position it over the side that needed the shadow. With the box still selected, I changed the opacity to 15% as seen below:

Box for shadow effect

It was at this point where I selected the knife tool and with the aid of my graphics tablet, cut around the shape I wanted to be darker. Here is the result of me cutting:

Result of the knife tool

The one problem I thought I was going to have was getting a straight line down the cube to split the sides. A workaround was to make all the layers invisible except for the shadow and cube layer. This allowed me to see the lines of the cube and I straightened them up as best as I could free hand.

After the line was straightened, I made all the layers visible again and proceeded to adjust the anchor points and paths. But a problem was the position and the amount of anchors around the shape. There was too few and wouldn't allow me to get the curves I desired.

Not enough anchors to get the desired curves

Step 2: Manipulating the shape

The only way around this that I know was to do the following:

Select direct selection tool, click on the desired area where you would like an anchor.

then go to object > path > add anchor points.

More anchor points

As you can see, this gives me a few more anchors so I can adjust the shade to the shape I want. Now comes the very exciting point of spending what feels like an eternity adjusting the anchors and paths. Oh happy days......

So after adding more anchor points and spending some time relatively being careful arranging them, I am left with this:

Finished result of manipulating the shadow

And if I zoom out and deselect the object, it looks like this:

The half way point of adding shade

Step 3: Adding the top layer of shade

As you can see the left side is looking pretty good but it continues up to high and ruins the illusion that the picture is part of the cube. So the only method I know is to create a black square on a new layer, select the layer with original shade and cut around the square and the shape. The result for me was this:

The result of cutting around the shape and square

I did this very quickly and was left with a few bits that needed deleting with the selection tool which gave me the following result:

Nearly there, just one more step

So all that is left to do is make the created square visible, make sure the colour is white and change the opacity to 20% which gives us the following:

The finished result

So that is my method for adding shade to the characters to make it appear they are part of the cube. Once I get around to the background and lettering, i'll make a new post to explain how I did that.

No free house and that has cost me

What the title said

Well as I thought, I did not have a free house today so I did not get as much done as I would have liked to, but I did make some really good headway and learnt a few little tricks that have made my logo look the way I envisioned.

Adding the shade

No the way I saw someone add the shade was to create live paint, expand the appearance in live paint and use the knife to chop sections out and add a darker shade depending on the part of the picture.

This method did not work for me as I had multiple objects on multiple layers so I had to do it a little different.

I decided to create a black box and change the opacity to about 15%. But the problem is that part of the cube was slighter darker compared to the original shade of grey. The only way around this was to use the knife tool and my graphics tablet and draw around the half of the image I wanted to be darker. The problem with that was that not all the anchors were following the shape of the image. So from here, I had to use the direct selection tool and move anchors around, add anchors and move the paths so I could get the curves I desired. This process took a while.

Some time later...

After making the shade the correct shape I needed, I wasn't happy with the way the top of the image was appearing. I had the the difference in shade on the left and right of the cube but not the top. So I tried to make another square but it did not appear at the same angle as the top of the cube. So I used the direct selection tool to manipulate the corners and create the shape I needed. I changed the opacity and was struck with a new problem. The half that I had created the shade on which overlapped the top part of the cube, was a different colour. So essentially, I had the shades of the left and right side of the cube at top, even thought it was meant to be one colour.

Sounds confusing but we're nearly there.

What I had to do AGAIN, was use the knife tool, cut the shape of the top of the cube but make sure it was following the same lines as the cube. So I created another square, cut the shape, deleted the the cut so that the art on the top of the cube was the same colour, arranged the layers so the the square appeared on top of the artwork, changed the opacity and bobs your uncle! Here is the result:

Start of the shading process

As you can see from the Zeus figure, adding the squares and changing the opacity gives the illusion that the image is mapped onto the cube which looks AWESOME!!!!

All I need to do is repeat the painstakingly long process of cutting and positioning anchors for the other pictures and I'm very nearly done.

That......dragged on far too long

There was a quote about best laid plans

I remember hearing a while ago and hearing it again intermittently about even the best laid plans never as they should, or something like that.

Well that happened multiple times over to me.

Painful lesson was learnt

The first thing I did which cost me three hours of wasted work was expanding the appearance and expanding it again in live paint. Every time I did this, illustrator kept grouping all of the objects together in the layer that was selected. For a few hours I kept undoing and redoing the process because I needed everything to be on their separate layers so I could rearrange them near the end. After an hour or so of repeating the process and reverting the work to its previous save over and over again, I bit the bullet and decided to try and rearrange the objects manually.

It did not go well.

After an hour of banging my head against my desk, I went back to the book, YouTube videos I was watching and the forums I was frantically searching to finally have it kick me in the face. The way to cut off the extra lines and use live paint bucket to fill was to do it one layer at a time. It was at this point where I threw my hands in the air and said "screw it, I'm done".

Plans didn't go according to plan

The next day I was intent on getting on with the assignment and trying to get the logo completed. I had zero motivation after the waste of a whole day trying to work around a simple problem and spent my time on different pursuits. 

The next day I was determined to get on with it due to me having a day to myself, but I had my other secret weapon delivered for the movie part of the assignment, my drone. So for the best part of the day between school runs, I was setting the drone up, watching videos and testing it out.

(On a side note, do not wear shorts when flying it close to yourself and make sure you definitely don't wear shorts while trying to fly it in a small space).

Finally nailed it, Virtual high five!

So after that break and nearly destroying the drone, that brings us to today. The first thing I noticed when I zoomed in to some of the drawings is that not all of the paths were adjoining which meant the live paint bucket would not have worked, so I had to go round and connect all the paths that were not due to be removed. I focused on the Zeus drawing first as I wanted to get one done at a time.

After all the paths were connected, I went and removed all the pieces of over hang by first selecting the sub layer of the part I was editing, selecting expand appearance from the object menu, then selecting live pain > make from the object menu and then finally selecting object > live paint > expand appearance. What this allowed me to was remove all of the over hanging lines.

Once that was done, I moved onto live paint bucket and was about to start filling the drawing in when I ran into another problem. Live paint bucket only works in objects that are connected in the same layer. So when trying to fill the hair for Zeus above the leaf crown (no idea of it proper name), it wouldn't let me. So the only solution was to copy and past in place, and then drag the selection from the layer it was pasted in and paste it into a brand new layer and call it colour fill. After the fill on the copy was done, I moved the layer behind the other layers and locked it so it could not be edited.

I repeated the same process until it was all done. But there was still more to do. I wasn't happy with the appearance of the crown or the lightning bolt, I wanted to give it a sort of shine. 

The first thing I decided to do was make the lightning bolts look more alive, and I found the best way to do that was to select the layer and change the graphic style from the graphic style panel. Luckily enough there was a neon library and after selecting that and editing the stroke slightly, the graphic looked a little better. I then selected the jewel on the crown of Poseidon and gave that a gradient that worked for it.

It was at this point I decided to call it quits as trying to do work with a house full of children is nigh impossible, but what I did manage to achieve was good as you can see for yourself:

Stage 2: ready for final touches

So all that is left to do is to add some shadow onto the characters to give them some sort of definition, add a background which is relevant to each character and then add the text to the bottom. Doesn't sound like much but will take me most the day to research and complete unless I have a free house.

Time to deploy the secret weapon

Finally ready to draw

Today I received my graphics tablet and it allows me the opportunity to trace the image I drew instead of having to copy it by eye. And in classical me style, I'm skipping the chapter that teaches me how to draw art work in illustrator and just crack on.

First image, Poseidon

The first Image I have decided to trace is Poseidon (the bottom left image) so I could practice tracing with the pen. First thing I did select a different type of brush from the library and selected artistic calligraphic and chose a 5 point oval brush.

From there, I had to change the setting of the brush and changed the roundness of the brush to 75% to make the brush more round.

I then changed size to 3 point as the brush was a little too thick, changed the option to pressure instead of fixed so I could make use of the pen and changed the variation to 2 point, so the harder I pressed the pen on the tablet, the thicker the stroke.

After doing the outline of the crown, I added a new sub layer to the layer for Poseidon and started to draw the outline of his hair. The reason for doing this was so that when it comes down to touching up the images and editing the paths, I could layer the images in an appropriate order.

After I had finished with Poseidon, I decided to quickly outline the main images for Zeus and Hades. After all of the objects had been drawn onto their relevant layers, it was time to edit the outlines.

A lot of fine tuning was needed

The main problem with trying to draw free hand or with a mouse is that if you are quite new or not very artistic (both in my case), you cant get the lines you want and will see little bits hanging over and corners not looking as sharp or as rounded as you would like them.

So the first thing I had to do was copy and paste all of the art work into a separate layer as the technique I am about to use would not make the original an editable brush stroke.

I selected all the artwork and expanded the appearance, selected live make and then expanded the appearance from live make so I could remove the extra lines and edit the paths that needed editing. So at this stage before the editing I was at this point:

After tracing the image, before editing phase

Seeing as the editing phase for the paths is going to take a very long time, it is best to call it a day and start fresh again in the morning. Hopefully tomorrow, I will be able to fill the images in with colour and creat some sort of drop shadow and shine to the relevant pieces.

My biggest problem in this project is me

More doodles.....

One of my biggest flaws is that I am never happy and another of many is that I have a tendency to run before I can crawl. Both have happened while working on the project.

I have spent hours looking at negative design logos, searching YouTube and searching the web for inspiration, I came up with nothing which ultimately annoyed me after hours of research. So it was at this point where I started to go through the Adobe Illustrator classroom in a book.

A lot of the information in the first few chapters were covering basics and bored me easily, which caused me to lose interest quickly and try to get on with the project with minimal knowledge. That didn't go well either.

So after sitting in my comfy recliner for days mulling over how little time there was and how I had no idea what to do, I decided to start doodling ideas for the logo, which was a nightmare in itself.

Concepts, concepts and...... oh yeah, more concepts

I still intended to work with the 3 cube idea and mask something on top to go with the perspective of the cube. So the first idea was to use text as in theory that is what would have been the easiest to map to the cubes sides.

First design

As you can see, I was trying for an 8-bit text with each side having a letter and potentially removing the cube so the letters are free floating. But my drawing skills are poor and it didn't tick enough boxes for the minimum requirements for the assignment.

Second design

The second design I was trying to create a pattern that could be 3-d without the cubes but give a clever optical illusion of going behind itself. Unfortunately, my drawing skills were not up to scratch and ultimately made me pass on this design.

Third design

With this design I was still wanting to try and use letters for the logo with some text below the logo with the company name, but this design was dependant on the letters and their ability to be wrapped around the cube. But alas, I was still not happy.

Fourth design

This design was an epiphany of sorts. I was trying to think an object or a thing that could easily be put on to three cubes. Luckily, I have been playing Disney infinity 2.0 with my eldest daughter and saw Captain America, thought of Hydra and then thought of the Greek variation of it.

It could work, the hydra had three heads which could easily be put onto each cube and I could make a fake company name with the word Hydra in it and make the letter y look like a hydra. It was perfect except for one fatal flaw, me. There is no way I could draw a Hydra head similar to the picture below.

Yeah.....no

So as a result this was a resounding no, but I was on the right path.

Fifth design

The next idea was Cerberus the three headed dog from Greek mythology. It looked more like a damn bat than a dog so I knocked this one on the head too.

Sixth design

Sound the fan-fair, for I finally decided on a logo. The logo was going to be based on the 3 most powerful gods of Greek mythology, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades.
The faces wouldn't require a massive amount of details like the Hydra or Cerberus designs. The figures were instantly recognisable to pretty much anyone and the company logo could just be the word Olympus in a golden colour with clouds in appearing in the word with some sort of sun rays/glare.
The only thing I had to make sure was that all of the figures were proportionate to each other as Hades seemed smaller that the other two figures.

I can finally start using illustrator again

So I decided earlier that it would be easier to trace the image than try to free style the figures onto the cubes. So what I had to was place an image in the document and then make it a trace image and make sure I selected outlines with source image otherwise the cubes could not bee seen. With the image placed I had to resize the image to get it perfectly laying over the three cubes. This took a little while to resize as best I could which is when the kids walked back in from their day out.

Hopefully I can continue tonight but that depends on bedtime which is always great fun.