Filed under: CGIA, Random Jibber Jabber | Tags: Alex Roman, architecture, CGI, design, film, photography, Realistic, The 3rd and the 7th, The Third and the Seventh
If you like photography, design, film, or architecture. You owe it to yourself to watch this short movie. Alex Roman is pure genius. The film is entirely CGI save for a few elements like birds and people, but everything is so well integrated and processed so thoroughly it’s easy to forget that it’s all fake. Obviously a few elements have to be CGI, like the floating water and books, but it blew my mind when I found out that everything was fake. I usually pick up on that sort of thing. It took a few viewings after that to pick out the clues that it was fake. They’re subtle, but they’re there.
The Third and the Seventh‘s site reveals more on this though process, and I highly recommend visitting it. To view the movie, click the image below. It’s best viewed in full screen HD. Anything less is a disservice to Roman’s work. 
Filed under: CGIA | Tags: book, cgia 215, colour correction, digital output centre, DOC, last project, photo, THANK YOU
The printed book looks great! No jpeg compression shows in any of the images and the blacks are nice and rich. Each page looks like a post card of sorts, with the full image on the front, and the close up with GPS co-ordinates on the back. Not only that, but the photo I had printed off at the same time also came out fantastically despite not being properly colour corrected for their printers. They bound the book in spite of it not fitting in the machine, so maybe they found some time to colour correct it before print? Either way I feel like I didn’t have a chance to thank them enough. They’re still quite busy so I only got a quick “thanks!” out before they moved one to the next people in line. I doubt they’ll read this, but thanks Carlos and Eduardo!
For those wondering, here’s the photo I had printed. It’s from a different class, but it’s what I’ll be putting in the Foundation Show in the non curated space. The original is 8″x24″.
Filed under: CGIA | Tags: acrobat, Adobe, analog, analogue, book, film grain, InDesign, pdf, photography
So here’s the final book, in PDF form. Sadly the “tribute” close ups of film grain, the whole idea of the book, come off more as tributes to jpeg compression. Even with the compression, the file is 35MB. Astounding. Acrobat is ridiculously easy to use, so combining the PDFs exported from InDesign was a “sinch.” I’ll most definitely be using this method in the future as it’s quick and effective. So here’s the link to the PDF of Film Grain. Use the “Right-click-save-as” method to download it or just click and it’ll open in your browser’s PDF reader plug-in (assuming it has one). If it’s the wrong formatting or anything, I’ll be re-uploading it tomorrow by 3pm. I can guarantee that!
Now the challenge tomorrow will be binding the printed copy myself.
Edit: Here is a smaller version for those with slow connections: Film Grain (for the bandwidth challenged)
Filed under: CGIA | Tags: Adobe, book, digital output centre, DOC, Illustrator, InDesign
Jumping a bit ahead from the last post, but the book is done. I went with the photo collection and I’m quite happy with it. It’s made up entirely of photos from the first roll of properly shot 35mm film I’ve done. I’d taken photos on film before, but this roll was for an online photo class I took this semester where we were taught to use fully manual SLRs. I was quite happy with the results and the resulting grain gave the images a feel you don’t get with digital photos. I can’t take full credit for the idea as the idea to focus on the texture of the photos was from the instructor of the course this blog is for, Suzi Webster.
Adobe InDesign was easier and more intuitive to work with than I find Illustrator to be, so the assembly of the book was quite stress free. The only odd thing I found was that images linked scale independently of their frames. When it looks like you’re about to resize the image, you’re only in fact resizing the frame. This means you have to use a set of buttons in the toolbar to choose how you want the image to fit inside the frame. It’s annoying at first, but once you play with it a bit it proves more powerful than Illustrator in some aspects. I like InDesign. Next year if I’m asked again to design the playbill for the theatre productions at my old high school, I’m going to use InDesign instead of Illustrator. That’s saying something as I’ve been using Illustrator to make it for the last 8 years.
My appointment at the DOC was far longer than the one for the panorama. The place is so busy this time of year that poor Carlos & Eduardo were being run ragged. In the end, after being there for almost 2 hours, my book was sent to print in pdf form with proper placement, crop-marks, etc. Unfortunately my book’s seem is too small for their saddle stitch machine. I’ll have to do the binding myself, but Eduardo told me how so it shouldn’t be an issue. Seeing as how long it took for them to get to me, Carlos also made a gracious exception in letting me print a photo for the Foundation Show even though the DOC was technically closing at that point.
Filed under: CGIA | Tags: book, creative block, info-graphic, infographic, inspiration, photo album
Got the latest assignment and it’s too make a book. 12 pages minimum. I’m not much of a writer as evident by my number of updates here. Inspiration for such things strikes few and far between. Nevertheless I need to content to put in said book and I’m wavering between a collection of photos I’ve taken (artsy, not family/documentary) and a collection of nicely designed info-graphics. The problems with both are these: With the photos it seems like too easy of a route. Granted if done right it could come out fantastic, but any idiot can make a photo album and I don’t want people thinking that when they see my book. With the info-graphic idea, I’d need to come up with enough to fill the book by Monday and nothings coming to mind. Ideally they’d be humorous but any joke I make is in the moment, not written down. It’s why I’ve never followed through with any web-comic idea that I’ve had.
Oh well. Come Monday I’ll have figured it out I’m sure.
Filed under: CGIA | Tags: ad, antismoking, antitobacco, bus stop, cancer, cgia 215, death, health, no smoking, poster, psa, rudeness, translink
It’s really hard to keep a blog updated when you don’t think like a blogger. I’ve never kept a journal of any sorts so it just doesn’t come naturally. Nevertheless, we have to put our assignments online so here goes:
The latest project was to do a poster of an issue that affects us locally, as in Vancouver. My first instinct when the project was assigned was Anti-Olympics. Then we had the Reading/Olympic break and frankly anybody who didn’t get swept up in the excitement either had their head buried in the sand or needs anger management because those were two fantastic weeks. I still believe the money could have been spent on better things (healthcare, homeless, education, etc) but it’s too late for that now. The money has been spent so we need to make the best of it and encourage any benefits the city will see from hosting the games.
After that, I searched the web for inspiration trying to get a new idea. I had forgotten that it was supposed to be a local issue and ended up too focused on doing a world war II era propaganda poster against zombies. Then of course classes started up again and I was reminded of the criteria. So here’s what I came up with, admittedly kind of last minute.
I’m allergic to tobacco, so I HATE it when people ignore no-smoking signs or walk down crowded sidewalks smoking away as if nobody else matters. This is particularly a problem at bus stops. Every shelter at the bus stops in SkyTrain stations have signs that say something to the effect of “Smoking on Translink stations and property is strictly prohibited” yet I could fill a scrapbook with the amount of times I’ve seen people (often Translink employees) ignore the signs. It’s disgusting, and just because they chose to fill their lungs with toxins doesn’t mean they can choose to fill everybody around them’s lungs as well.
Part of the assignment was to place the poster in reality, so a bus stop shelter seemed the natural fit. It was tricky to recreate the reflections, lens flare, and shadows that were on the original bus stop ad.
After the critiques, I decided I’d make a revised version that took into consideration the feedback I was given. One item being that the best message is lost in small text on the bottom. I wanted it to be fine print-ish that you’d notice after being drawn in by the WHMIS logos, but I agree with it more prominent the message would be better delivered. The other was that the logo element (SECOND HAND etc) was too much of a “block of text.” That’s what I intended, but to make the difference more noticeable I’ve added a gradient in behind the SECOND HAND elements and moved it down to where most PSA ads tend to have their logos etc.
Filed under: CGIA | Tags: colour, colour profiling, digital output centre, DOC, panorama, photoshop
pictures re-shot: Check
Images blended into seamless panorama: Check
Content “photoshopped” into said panorama: Check
Finished file brought to DOC to be printed: Check
Mind blown at just how meticulous the DOC is with colour profiling: Check
They’re sticklers at the DOC. Wow. Even my file-naming wasn’t good enough. Apparently it should formatted as such: AuthorsInitials_DescriptiveName_VersionNumber_ColourProfile_LayeredorNotandColourBitDepth. Mine ended up as DS_ECrowleyPondPan_v2_aRGB_lyr8.psd. Silly me had called it PanoramaFinal.psd.
Then there was properly profiling the image for the paper choice, and adjusting the curves to make it match my original intent. Until then I’d never learned how to use curves properly. The whole experience was quite enlightening. I just hope I can retain it all for next time.
Here’s a scaled down preview of the final result. Click for the full image.
Filed under: CGIA | Tags: digital output centure, DOC, failure, panorama, photo, photography, photoshop, retry, uninspiring
Yes there was no Take 1 here. It was never completed. Suffice it to say, the photos I took ended up being next to useless and totally uninspiring. Now I’ve got to take a new set of photos, stitch them, doctor them, and get it to the DOC in time to print. Fun times. At least I have no classes Thursday so I can dedicate my time to this. At least the new location is a little more inspiring. More to come…
Filed under: CGIA | Tags: aperture, lens, lenses, low light, mistakes, panorama, tripod
Shooting my panorama shots for the latest assignment in this class was a learning experience, that’s for sure. The time I was able to get out with my camera and tripod was in the late afternoon, and I was losing light rapidly. Even though the lens I chose was able to open up to 2.8 throughout its zoom range it still ended up too dark for the shutter speed necessary. I had a tripod, but the lens was so heavy that it would bounce a bit at the slightest bump. Very unfortunate. I suppose it would have been better to have a tripod collar, but they’re well over $100 and I can only seem to find them online. I guess it was a series of unfortunate choices, but the results seem usable in the end as I took far more than I’d need.
Mistakes made:
Way too long of a lens for panorama. Even at 80mm it seemed too “zoomed in”.
Too heavy a lens. As mentioned, it bounced. My 18-105mm had too small of an aperture and a polarizing filter, so that was out of the running. Thinking back I guess my 35mm wouldn’t have been too wide as I am dealing with a DX sensor. Oh well.
Too light-weight a tripod. When I bought it I didn’t have the 80-200mm heavy weight.
Time of day. Sort of unavoiable, but as the darkness crept in the lights out in the distance started to make the pictures pop. I guess that’s a positive and a negative.
I’ll post the results at a later date.
