Animation Using Photoshop

In today's lesson we focused on creating animation, the software we used were Adobe Photoshop which we found out was the best software to use for animation creating.

The first step I did was create the shape of the circle which I was using for my animation and change the colour of it; I decided to colour it black and make the size medium to make it look easy to see the animation. Afterwards I added a new layout to create tabs on the timeline, I started with creating different tabs of the shape in different positions by using the duplicate selection frame. Finally to create the movement of the animation I used the tweens animation tool. Lastly I changed the loop time from once to forever.

The first step I did when creating this animation was again using Photoshop. I created a text box and wrote my name in the box as it was a different form of animation then the first one. I created 3 new tabs on the animation timeline and created it in different positions using the duplicate selection frame. Finally I used the tweens animation tool to merge the animation tool and also changed the loop time from once to forever.

The first step I did in the final animation creating task was create my name in three separate text boxes with my one box having 'ph', the second box having 'oe' and finally 'be' as I wanted to create an animation where the name was coming through in different sections. After that I added the individual text boxes on different 3 different tabs on the animation timeline. Finally I used the tweens animation tool to merge the animation tool and also changed the loop time from once to forever.



Interesting Facts

1. Lighters were invented before matches.
2. France was still executing people buy guillotine when star wars came out.
3. You replace every single particle in your body every seven years, which means that you are. literally not the same person you were seven years ago.
4. A mosquito has 47 teeth.
5. In the mid 1960's. slumber party barbie came with a book called 'How to Lose Weight' one of the tops was 'Don't Eat!'.
6. The jewellery store Tiffany & Co was founded before Italy was a country.
7. Babies can learn lullabies in the womb.
8. When elephants fall in love, they cause mini earthquakes.
9. Cupcakes can be as addicting as cocaine
10. Heroin was once used to treat children’s coughs.

Creating Animation Clip using Photoshop

The task for today's lesson was to create an animation clip through Adobe Photoshop based around an interesting fact we found. I decided to create my animation based around the fact 'A mosquito has 47 teeth', I found this fact interesting and thought I'd be able to create a visually exciting animation with it using fun images and good typography.

The first step with creating the animation was to set my page up under a 10 by 10, 72 dimension frame so it would fit my whole animation on it but also not be to small so its still visible. The next step I did was find all the images I wanted to use for my animation, I got a range of different images which I felt would make my animation look exciting. After I found all my images I pasted them onto one layer so I could arrange them easily into the animation, after I pasted all the images I used the magic wand tool and got rid of all the white background so only the outline on the image was visible.

The next step I did was start to create the animation through creating duplicate selected frames and adding different images to each frame, I arranged the images around the original layer to create the look of an animation with one frame having an image on one side of the page and then one frame having the same image on the different side of the page. After I did this with all my images and they were placed on the duplicate selected frames how I wanted them to be I continued to do some of the final steps.

After I completed this part of the task I used the tweens animation frame tool to actually create the animation as this tool creates multiple layers of the layer selected. After used the tweens animation frame tool on each layer I changed the amount of times the animation looped, I changed it from once to forever so the animation wouldn't stop after being played once.






Overall I'm pleased with my animation considering it was first try as I feel I have gained new photoshop skills which I didn't have before and now feel I can use these skills again when using the Photoshop software. If I was going to do this task again I would extend my idea further and create an animation which was more visually exciting as I feel I stuck with a basic idea because I wanted it to be executed to the best of my ability.

This is my final gif which I created in Photoshop.

Killer Coke Workshop

The task we were set in today's lesson was to create our own Killer Coke Campaign. The first half of the 2 hour lesson was to watch a documentary based around the dark side of the Coca Cola industry. The hour long documentary was called 'Dispatches - Mark Thomas on Coca Cola' and discussed multiple issues involved with the brand Coca Cola and the hidden secrets which the public may not be aware of. It was a controversial documentary which portrayed the popular and famous trademark in a completely new light. It was presented by journalist and political activist Mark Thomas, who travelled to many different countries including South America, India and parts of the US to investigate the ways in which Coca Cola suppliers operate and the extent to which they upholds ethical

and moral obligation. 

These are some of the notes I got from the documentary:

• Around the world 1.7 billion bottles of coke are drunk daily. 
• In the original recipe of coca cola actual cocaine was used as a key ingredient. 
• The same person who invented Coca Cola (John Pemberton) went on to create Dr Pepper. 
• Coca-Cola had a controversial relationship with Germany before and during World War II.
• In 1936, Coca-Cola was deemed unsuitable for children due to its sugar content and additives.
• Several of Coke's top executives in Germany were public members of the NSDAP.
• When the United States entered World War II, Coke began to represent its product in the US as a patriotic drink by providing free drinks for soldiers of the United States Army.
• Fanta, a product developed in Germany due to shortages of supplies to make Coca-Cola, was merged into the Coca Cola brand line following the end of the war.
• The brand Coca Cola supported the 1936 nazi olympics by advertising itself along with nazi's. 
• In Martin Luther King's last speech 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' he requested people to not buy Coca Cola 'We are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis'. 
• Around 1960 a lot of Coca Cola company's refused to employ black people or would only give them the most physically hardest jobs. 
• Controversially Coca Cola has continually created ad campaigns to celebrate black history which goes against its unemployment of black people. 
• On Jan. 18, 2004, more than 500 protesters, including about 150 residents who live near Coke's bottling facilities were beaten for rioting after a large majority of villages water wells were being used up for. 
• One litre of Coca Cola using two and half litres of water.
• Coca Cola use around 290 billion litres of water a year. 
• When the documentary was created (around 2004 to 2007) Coca Cola were planning to become 'water neutral'. Which means only using water which they can give back. 
• Pestersides found in coke bottles around Indian. 
• Indian won the Golden Peacock award (3 years running), the award is sponsored by Coca Cola. 
• FEMSA owns 53.7% of the world's second largest bottler of Coca Cola. 
• Coca Cola employers are in grave danger after being threatened by the Black Eagles. 
• The Black Eagles are responsible for 9 murders in Columbia. 
• In El Salvador employers are forcing underage family members to help burn, cut and collect sugar cane for the sugar in Coca Cola. 
•  Coca Cola factory accused on contaminating whole villages rivers and turning the water black, making fish die and causing skin rashes on people who have contact with the river water.

Killer Coke Campaigns

Killer Coke Draft Drawings

These are a few draft idea's for my Killer Coke campaign, I really liked the idea of making a can of coke look dark and meaningful with the issues raised in the documentary. I wanted to change the name of the famous Coca Cola logo into 'Killer Coke' but keep the recognized handwriting. I want to add symbols which represent the bad side of the popular business like a gravestone printed on the can and a pool of blood at the bottom to show the Colombian deaths. I also want add a illustration of a peacock and eagle to represent the contrast of positive and negative. The peacock is a symbol of the Golden Peacock award and the eagle is a symbol for the Black Eagles.

Creating Killer Coke Campaign

The first task of creating the coca cola campaign was to choose a good software to use. I decided to use adobe illustrator as I wanted to produce a cartoon style campaign which didn't look like a silhouette or a photograph. My aim was to make the campaign look more like an animation then anything else.






After I created a new template on Illustrator I found images from Google which I wanted to use in my campaign. The images I decided to use all had relation to the dispatches documentary from the cocaine which related to the drug being a main ingredient in the original coca cola recipe to the eagle which symbolizes the black eagle.

After the preparation I started creating my campaign. My main image was a cup of coke, previously I planned on using a can as that's the most traditional and well known form of the drink but then I thought I could work better with this image and extend my original idea. The next step was to make my images have a cartoon effect, I started by transforming the colour quality from normal to one of the other options. To create the animation style there was multiple options I could choose. The one I used for the coca cola cups was '6 colour' and it created a cartoon look to the image, then I clicked the the expand button to finish the effect. I did this on all of the images but some I used different effects on some of them. For example the image of the eagle was originally in very high contrast black & white so I used a different effect to make sure all the images had the same cartoon effect.

The next step was do remove any white background on the images so it looks more professional and stands out. I did this by using the direct selection tool, using this tool I simply clicked on the white background then clicked on a random place on the page and finally deleted the background. I found this step easy to do after I learnt how to do it properly and could do it again in the future. After I did this I arranged the images around my main image to create a 3D effect. I got inspiration for this idea from the 'Colombian Coke Float' and 'Don't Drink Killer Coke' campaigns (top of the page).

Overall I'm pleased with the final outcome as I feel I've improved my graphics skills and have learnt new skills which I could use again in future tasks. I enjoyed this task as I felt the topic was interesting and thought-provoking.

Final Piece

Creating 'Guess Who' Characters

My Version Of 'Guess Who'

The task I was set to complete over a two lesson period was creating a digital cartoon character version of ourselves which would be used in a South Downs version of 'Guess Who'. 

The first step I did for creating my own 'Guess Who' was finding an image of myself which was suitable to be used, it had to a photo which wasn't overly pixelated and had to be small enough to be cropped. The software we were told to use was adobe illustrator. 

The photos I decided to use was two photos connected due to this I had to crop half of it whilst actually creating it so it looked similar to the 'Guess Who' version as the traditional characters in the game have only one picture used. 

  

 The second step I did was crop the original image into a second layer to start the character creating process. I cropped the image 30 width to 80 length to get the correct size for the 'Guess Who' character. I found this task not so difficult whilst I knew what I was doing, but I had to make sure the whole image I wanted to use was cropped correctly into the second layer. The next step was finally starting to create my 'Guess Who' character. I started with creating the eyebrows as I wanted to start with something not to overly complicated, I used the ellipse tool and made the eyebrow shape onto of the original eyebrow. This was a simple task but near the end of the character creating process I will fix the rest of the eyebrow so none of the original eyebrow is on show. 

The next step was creating the eyes; one of the most difficult tasks as I wanted to make sure it looked as realistic as possible but still looking like a cartoon at the same time. I did the same process with the eyebrows creating a shape on the ellipse tool. But adding more details like eyelashes, pupils and the iris. First I started with the eye shape, creating a white oval, I tried to make this as similar to my original eye shape so it would have similarities to the original photo. I think created the iris with the same process, this time changing the colour on the colour to a dark brown. Next I made a small reflection mark on the eye to make it look as realistic as a cartoon can be. Last step was creating the eyelashes, I started by making eyelashes shapes on the ellipse tool, slightly hard but easier to do whilst getting used to it. Whilst I've created the whole cartoon face I will touch up any mistakes.

After finishing the eyebrows and eyes I decided to create the lips, again using the same shape creating process on the ellipse tool. What I found difficult about creating the lips was forming the correct curved shape as I didn't want them to look to animated or have a block effect. To make the lips more realistic I added defined curves around the edges and added effects onto the lip colour. The next element I did was bringing the cartoon to life with face, I did a similar process to the other steps, I created a face shape with the ellipse tool and brought the face back making the eyes, eyebrows, lips come forward. I then matched a similar skin tone to the original photo.

One of the last steps I did was creating the hair, one of the tasks which I felt was most challenging. I used the ellipse tool to create the outline and shape of my hair but had to make sure I got the correct shape and  it didn't look to bold. I used a colour which most matched my own hair so it looked as similar to the original photo as possible.






Finally I just had finishing touches like the shape of my nose and also my nose ring which would make it look more relate-able to me. I also created a blue square and copied the Guess Who onto of it and added my name onto the bottom of it so it actually looked like a Guess Who character.

This is my finished version of the Guess Who creating task, overall I feel pleased with the results as I feel I have learnt more graphic skills and created it better then I first expected to.









Final Piece