Digipak Design Update #1

Front Cover

Back Cover

Interior (left side)

Back (L) and front (R) covers

Above are the designs for the backgrounds I am planning to use for three of the sides of the Digipak design. Like the poster, I recreated images from the music video on the computer, to make it look less like a plain still image from the video itself.

Poster Design Update #1

Today I worked further on creating the poster for the music video. I will be keeping the design featuring the man waiting for a bus, but instead of using paper cutouts, it was suggested to me that I use the computer to recreate the image. The reason for this was so that the poster seemed more original than simply using a still, plus giving the poster itself a greater effect and impact on the spectator.

I created the first of the images in MS Paint, based on the second image, and will later be importing the man as a paper cutout onto the first image to create the poster.

Choosing the Final Look of my Music Video

Following on from my latest post, I asked around my class and close friends and family for the most popular form of animation which I would use for my music video. I decided to ask to find out what people would most like to see, giving people the following choices:

• Cutout animation using black and white paper cutouts - the cutouts would be easy as I would just be copying out the designs from my storyboards again, and the black and white would add to the main character's feeling of isolation, a key theme in the song. This method would be effective and take up a decent amount of time.
• Cutout animation in colour - this was a recent idea which came about after seeing the film opening to 'Juno' which was forwarded to me. It would match my vision very well because there are areas of block colour which tie in well with my art style, and the colours would add more interest and be better to look at as an animation. The movements are also very similar to how my final product would probably look, so this method would look the most effective but probably be the most time consuming.
• Traditional 2D computer animation - using images created in Gimp or Photoshop. This would be the easiest method to work with, given that I would create all my images on the computer including each individual frame of animation, so if any errors are made these would be easy to correct, whereas with other methods the whole shot would need to be filmed again.

After asking my class, family and friends, it was decided to go for the second option as had been planned all along. I would agree this is a good decision because it would be best for my music video - computer animation and stop-motion are formats I am experienced with, so whilst cutout animations would follow similar principles, it is something I have not done before and therefore a challenge to look forward to. It also gives the video itself a unique feel and much more independent and artistic tones, whilst suiting the song very well.

Storyboards - #2

I recently did this design using very basic MS Paint to visualise how the music video could look if done using colour or part-colour. As well as this, I have been looking at the possibility of animating the music video digitally, using cutout animation on the computer as per the entire (except for its pilot) South Park series.

Shooting my music video in this way would reduce the problem of lighting, which is something I have had to control with traditional paper cutout animation because the shots I have done were filmed at different times during the day. It may also speed up the production process because I have had experience on this kind of animation before and I am familiar with the process.

However, I am enthusiastic about the idea of trying a new challenge using traditional drawings, so I am strongly leaning towards using paper cutout animation for the final production.