Professional Practice

This marks the last day of the Professional Practice project!

Please use the "d-and-a-d" filter, above, to isolate the posts from this brief.

Additional note:

For some reason, Blogger doesn't like the fact a category has 45 posts and breaks one of the buttons at the bottom. When viewing, please make sure you read backwards, instead of from the beginning as a whole section is skipped out if you use 'Newer Posts'.

Speakers: Carl and Ian

Due to my slip-up, I missed these talks. However, I still thought it best to research the names and write down what I could about them.

Carl

Carl is an Interactive Director for Kerb - an award winning games studio.

In the 15 years that Kerb have been developing online entertainment, we’ve established ourselves as one of the most innovative digital games agencies in the UK. We perpetually explore new technologies and platforms to extend the potential of casual games as entertainment, marketing and revenue generating tools.

Source: http://www.kerb.co.uk

I found Carl on twitter (@carlhodler) where he adds:

• He's a mountain bikers
• And likes football
• He's often in London and Brighton

From the look of Kerb's website, they're monetising web-based social and viral games, with huge player bases. They've had some impressive clients.

Ian

From one of my peers, I've learn that Ian was a freelancer who designs and develops for screen and has been in the web industry for around 20 years.

Speakers: Mish and Si from Liquid Light

Today, we visited Liquid Light and were spoken to by two designers, Mish and Si.

Liquid Light

Liquid Light has over ten years experience designing award winning websites for a wide range of businesses, from small partnerships to internationally recognised PLCs.

Source: http://www.liquidlight.co.uk

Mish's site can be found at http://mishfit.com.

Notes from the talk

Mish is a designer who specialises in illustration.
Si is a web designer who did a BA in graphic design in London.

Growth

• Get out of your comfort zone
• Get as much experience as you can
• Do stuff for friends; free stuff; say yes to everything

Jobs

• Empty portfolio is bad
• Your CV is worth "jack" early on
• But, how you present it is very important
• Be creative!

Other

• Work your way up
• Don't be taken advantage of
• Raising your value is very important
• Keep your ear to the ground
• Find a niche
• Development is the fastest moving industry, wheras design tends to stay the same

Clients

• Compromise
• Have thick skin, no ego
• Define boundaries
• Learn to network and project passion
• Manage clients
• Verbose design briefs are important

Social Media

• DBAD - Don't Be A Dick
• Think before you speak
• Read a lot, talk little
• Know your subject matter

Useful social media sites: Dribble, Flickr, Tiwtter, Pintrest, Behance, Creative Review.

This was a very thorough talk, thanks Mich and Si.

Done! Deliverables

Today was a slow process of submitting each file. DNAD's site finally let up after two days.

The Presentation



The Photographs


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The Writing

This has to be in image format for submission.


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Photo Manipulation and Writing

The Coutts brief asked for more deliverables.

Produce a minimum of 2 images
that provide a visual overview of your
installation.

This was a process of finding a suitable stock image and super imposing additional static installation designs. I used Photoshop to do this. I'll post both of these for viewing in a following post.

Please write a short explanation
(max 300 words) explaining the
thinking behind your installation
design and

I wrote this out in Word and refined it before using InDesign to ensure it was something the judges would want to read. This is one of the most important deliverables to a judge, as it clears up any questions about the piece.

Speaker: Ollie

Today, we had another speaker.

Ollie doesn't have an online presence, he's a true Graphic Designer!

Notes:

• He interned for over a year!
• Form Follows Function
• Draw inspiration from motion pieces

The company he works at usually presents 3 to 4 ideas to a client and doesn't initially spend solid amounts of time developing a single idea before it's seen.

Advice

• Make a list of your favourites studios
• Call up and get a name of someone and then email that person personally
• Send a small PDF of work and/or link to online portfolio

Ollie said, that the noticeable difference between being at university and in the industry was the pace.

• Make use of design blogs
• People will spend more on a white website than a black
• It's hard to find people who value design
• Always check your artwork before sending it to a printers!
• Digital printing is for small runs at low cost
• Traditional printing is cheaper for big runs

Added Polish - Colour Correction

I tweaked the colour of my piece to bring out more warmth in each scene using some of the techniques from the tutorial below. This really served to add finishing touches.

Editing

After some time, I managed to find a suitable royalty free audio track; I wanted to synchronise my edits with this for best effect, this made editing a real time sink!

Below is a screenshot of the complex main sequence, almost finished! All asset animation was done using Adobe Premiere, also.

Chroma-Keying

Keying

Even with better footage, this proved to be quite a time consuming process. I had to come up a custom workflow:

• Cut chosen footage into chunks (because for each scene, we did several takes and left the camera running)
• With each chunk, number them so that they could be played in order
• Import a chunk, one at a time, into After Effects for chroma-keying
• Export the chunk with the alpha channel intact ready for editing in Premiere

I made an animation preset, which would add the customised chroma-key settings to each project, which saved some time after initial tweaking.



Some footage required manual intervention using masks to clean up unweildy marks.



I combined the techniques of both of these tutorials:

• http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/basic_color_keying/

Post-Processing Itinerary

I'm much happier with the results this time around, it was definately worth it. Now I have to worry about getting it submit in time, here's what I have left to do:

Post Processing

• Green screen keying
• Colour correction
• Compositing
• Editing
• Audio
• Photo-manipulations
• Writing

Reshoot!

Today was a pretty energetic one; overnight, I adapated my storyboards and wrote a proper textual plan to reduce the chance of problems.

The new greenscreen setup was great, it covered the area which I needed, and also the floor. Here's a photograph of the greenscreen before it was pulled tight; Jess' helping set the white balance!


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This time, we had two perfect angles - one close shot and one wide. I stacked the cameras so that the depth didn't change. This meant that the wide shot was taken on a tall tripod, whereas the close was taken on a smaller tripod which sat between the larger tripods legs. It was tricky to set them up, but we managed.

A big thanks to Jess and Sam for their time.

Monday: Reshoot Efforts

I ventured in on an off-day to see if I could pre-book the greenscreen room for a better quality reshoot. Thankfully, I found my lecturer upstairs who helped me organise it.

I will now be reshooting between 12 and 1pm on Monday.

Shooting Results

Arg! Well, the quality of the shoots could be better, I'm going to push for a reshoot using the greenscreen room, though I'm running out of time...

Filming

This morning, Sam helped me retrieve lights from Steve (I think that's his name), the technician from the other building. He was very helpful and gave us a dimmer and extension cables to go with it.

Harry and Kirsty took some photos while we were setting up and filming; this really documents the three hours!

Filming

Spotlights on stands, setup at 45% angles to the greenscreen.


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Dimmer to control lights independently.


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Greenscreen pulled into place with ducktape!


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Smiley Sam helping with whitebalance.


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Camera setup.


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Checking greenscreen coverage.


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First walkby!


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Sneaky Sue.


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Before Film-Day

Today, I managed to wrap up the camera borrowing from Harry and greenscreen from Marie. They're both bringing these items in tomorrow so I can shoot!

In today's lesson, I also went over the idea workings with Chris and how I'd shoot tomorrow. He gave me a run-down of how to light the greenscreen correctly. After checking my storyboards, he seemed happy with the idea. Looking forward to filming tomorrow!

Speaker: Jonty

Today, Jonty Sharples, a UX Designer visted us and gave a great talk. He is now a Technical Director at Albion London.

A UX practitioner (né graphic designer) with over 12 years experience in branding, user experience design, and look & feel across all digital channels.

Source: http://3tych.com

Albion is a creative agency for clients who want to create game-changing businesses, brands and communications.

Source: http://www.albionlondon.com

Jonty told us that Albion's clients are mainliy start-ups. They do:

• Advertising
• Business strategy
• Email marketing
• Social media
• Brand identity
• Comms strategy
• Naming
• Viral marketing
• Brand research
• Digital strategy
• Online marketing
• Web build & hosting
• Brand strategy
• Direct marketing
• Packaging design
• Web design

Questions to ask yourself:

• What do you love?
• What do you do best?
• What do you want to be doing in 18 months?

UX Unicorn

Mythical user interface design architect with an advanced adaptive skill range. Highly skilled in graphic design, prototyping wireframes, CSS3, HTML5, jQuery, multivariate testing, use case scenarios, marketing and branding.

Jonty was a great speaker, his advice was thorough and to the point. I think this was my favourite talk so far and I now follow him on Twitter.

DNAD Live Web-Panel Q&A

There was a streaming at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock, today. I was around for both, and the notes I made filled a couple of pages which I stuck into my sketchbook.

Asset Design in Photoshop

Today is the DNAD web-panel. DNAD judges will be interviewed with common questions for us all to see! I will also be working on designing interface assets for use in After Effects.

As the DNAD submission rules state, 1080p is what size all digital videos should be submit at. It makes sense for me to work on a 1080p Photoshop canvas, then!


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I am working on a grid split up into thirds.

I've decided the base typeface i'll be using is the Gill Sans family. It has modern geomtry, is perfect for digital formats and Coutts themselves use it.

Online Strategy - Portfolio and Social Media

I took a time-out on DNAD today and put some time into evaluating my online strategy. Below is a summary of the best content I found on using social media, personal branding and job-hunting on the web.

Social Media

"5 Rules for Professional Social Networking Success"

• Know Your Platforms
• Customize Everything
• Ask for Something Specific
• Take It Offline Whenever Possible
• Say “Thank You”

Source: http://mashable.com/2010/07/02/professional-social-networking/

"Using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to Job Search"

With the Internet buzzing with social media, there are similarly many ways to use social media in order to network, and eventually find a job.

Source: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/networking/a/socialmedia.htm

Top Social Networking Sites for Job Searching

Networking is one of the most important components of job searching. Use these top social and professional networking sites to enhance your career and boost your job search, and learn how to use social networking sites to job search.

Source: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/networkingsites/a/networkingsites.htm

How to Create a Professional Brand

There may not be much difference between personal and professional branding, but from my perspective, your professional brand is what matters to a potential employer, networking contact, or anyone who can help you find a job or grow your career.

http://jobsearch.about.com/od/careeradviceresources/a/profbrand.htm

10 Ways to Use Social Media to Get a Job

http://newgradlife.blogspot.com/2009/10/job-posting-careers-get-job.html

Job Hunting With Social Media 101

http://newgradlife.blogspot.com/2009/12/use-social-media-to-get-job.html

Twitter tips: how I used social media to find jobs

http://careers.guardian.co.uk/careers-blog/job-seeking-twitter-tips

Change in Presentation Strategy

Through a conversation I had with Sue, my lecturer, I've decided not to develop the technical-side of the Installation; instead, I will simulate it using After Effects and green-screen footages. This was a good call! Time's running out and I have to balance it alongside my dissertation.