Mike mosedale- Illustrator

Michael Mosedale is a famouse british illustartor and cartoonist who's cartoonic 'rushed' style can be seen in Newspapers and books all over the UK. His most noted work would have to be in the book collection of Harry Oliver; the most noted of these books is titled March Hares And Monkey's Uncles.

Podcast.com

Podcast.com is a website with the biggest collection of podcasts on the internet. All the podcasts are grouped repeatedly in categories, and are often shown on the front page whenever they are the most popular.

My view on the Jabberwocky nouns

One of my ideas for the storytelling project is to create a digital story based on the poem Jabberwocky. I thought it'd be a good idea to base the poem on MY views of the strange nouns and verbs used in the poem; even if I don't use the poem, It could go for a good grade.

Verse 1

Brillig: To me, this sounds like a foggy day, when the clouds are far low on the ground, yet you could actually see the puffy clouds.

Slithy Toves: Slithy seems slimier to slimy, except with a dry feeling to it as well, much like reptilian. Toves would be part badger, part parrot on my point of view. So a Slithy Tove would be a Badger with parrot claws and head, and lizard like skin.

gyre and gimble: To gyre and to gimble sounds rather cheerful, enough to dance to, even. So to gyre would be to twirl, and to gimble could be to jump (or vice verse, doesn't matter much)

Wabe: When I think of this word, I think of a mid-large spacing of a forest, formed by a flattened willow tree.

mimsy: That sounds very small and timid, almost shaking. So to be mimsy would be to shiver almost.

Borogoves: This will be an odd one; a large vole- like mammal with frog's legs and a large pointed nose. I never said this was going to make sense.

Mome Raths: Mome would possibly be large and fluffy, and a rath would be like a turtle. A big fluffy turtle? Who'd have thunk it?

Outgrabe: To Outgrabe would be to search in the trees for fruits and berries. So if a Mome Rath Outgrabes, you might wanna move back a bit.

Verse 2

Jabberwock: To be truthful, this mythical menace has to be a dragon, but what would it look like. I suppose most of the top half of John Tenniel's illustration would remain,

except my version would only have one buck tooth, it's head would be slightly pointed and the arms and hands would be shortened. The bottom half, on the other hand, would be more T-Rex like, big sturdy legs with a thick tail. At least that's what I reckon it'd be like.

Jubjub bird: Obviously, it'd have to be a bird; but what kind? I'm thinking a crow-shaped body with a extremely large beak and long-ish legs.

Shun the frumious Bandersnatch!: To shun would sound like as if you were to look up to something.
Frumious sounds like a very sneaky personality, to be frumious would be very conniving and be two-faced, and always leaning forward. Imagine Quasimodo impersonating Dick Dasterdly.
Finally, a Bandersnatch; sounds very mischievous indeed. It could well be a giant polecat that hides in the shadows. A combo like a frumious Bandersnatch sounds even scarier than the Jabberwock.

Verse 3

Vorpal: To be vorpal would be trusting and bright, like a superhero.

Manxome: I have a feeling this might mean mysterious in an mythical sense. You know of something manxome because you've only heard of it.

Tumtum tree: A tree, obviously, but what would be it's characteristics? I'm imagining a rubbery texture with a somewhat tribal look to it. Like a totem pole made of erasers and full of leaves.

Verse 4

Uffish: To be in an Uffish thought, could be in a foolish one. You'd space out as you think.

Whiffling through the tulgey wood: If you were whiffling through some bushes, you would be blowing them away (rather than pushing them).
A Tulgey wood wood perhaps be a very bushy one, filled with leaves form top to bottom.

Burbled: when you burble, you would be gurgling quietly to yourself.

Verse 5

Snicker-Snack!: The hero's vorpal blade probably clashed with the creatures claws and thus created a loud clanging sound.

Galumphing: This has a very low-tone feel to it. To Galumph would be to tread on mud with a heavy object

Beamish, Frabjous, Callooh and Callay will all be sounds of relief and joy.

Beatrix Potter- Illustrator

Helen Beatrix Potter was a very popular illustrator during the 17th-18th century, with her most noted work being the tales of Peter Rabbit. Her traditional illustration is, in a sense, realistic, but also very colourful. The anthromorphic charcter in her stories are only fictional, but you can tell that she used real animals as models for her works.

E.H. Shepard - illustrator

Edward Shepard was a well-known illustrator from the 19th-20th century. His most popular work is that from Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh.

His style of illustration is very artistic, with a slight sense of comic. His outlines are somewhat sketchy, and he uses several strokes of lines to determin light form shading.

Photo Manipulation: Zink-PoGo from Frenky on Vimeo.

This is an online tutorial on how to create advanced photo manipulation. I absolutely love the 'dirty film' look of the sequence. Not only does it have a sense of nostalgia, but it uses a variety of colours that differ greatly and yet somehow still manage to work together. The film is done in speed-motion, meaning the recordings are sped up to reduce time wasted and leaves a nice style that seems similar to stop-motion.

The sound used also has a sign of nostalgia. The digital trumpets and other instruments remind me somewhat of an old video game.

Stories from kill on Vimeo.

This is a music video portraying a story about a girl who had her heart broken. The rain and the ripples on the water represent the sadness in which she has gone through. The seasons and the moment of the event is displayed by the mentions of the vegetation that dropped off the trees. The dull blue colour alsoexpresses the depression in this sequence.

Digital Stories from Stephen Ng on Vimeo.

This is a story told by two old ladies, imported to visuals with the help of magazine scans. You can hardly hear the ladies talking, but you don't need to. Every image found in this video reflects on what the old ladies are saying. The magazine scans also reflect a sense of nostalgia, because many of these scans are from very old images that date back as far as 1950s, perhaps even further.

wikis from tarantela on Vimeo.

This video uses toy robots and flat images cut out to describe the use of Wikipedia. The robots represent the average person who would spend most of their day on the computer, forever functioning with hardly any sign of emotion. The film is done in stop-motion in a presentation format, as if it is presenting itself. It's also displayed somewhat in 2D, to show it's simplicity.

digital storytelling from tarantela on Vimeo.

This clip shows what seems to be three university students using cut out drawn replicas of equipment vital for filming. The outlined drawn equipment reflect on the vitality of their usage and that they can be pursed just as simply as buying paper. The colour scheme used is very bright and colourful, which says that filming can be fun at times.

Page Master- Dr. Jeckle lighting

This is a screenshot taken from a scene in the movie PageMaster (1994). In this scene, the heroes of the plot come across the iconic Dr. Jeckle, and has a drink with them (the drink then transforms him to Mr. Hyde). The lighting of this particular moment adds tension to the moment as he consumes the toxic drink.

In one of the finals for my project, I imported the lighting from the same moment in the movie, to create the same tension portrayed in the animation.

I created the lighting itself by creating a new layer and going over the lighting areas (taking note of the tips taken from the itchy animation website, to make the lighting seem coming from the right) and filling the path with a bright blue, the same colour scheme used the tense moment of Dr. Jeckle in PageMaster. I finished the lighting off by adding a stroke blend with a darker blue, to add more luminosity.

Design process- scanning in textures

This is currently the last piece of the six-sheet final for the project I am currently finishing. It looks good so far, but I want it to have even more detail, more texture. So what I've done is scan unique textures from a scrunched up tissue.

Not only does it have a soft near invisible texture to start, but the dark lines give a nice mix of contrast.

I dragged this image onto the final and re sized it so the texture is the main focus.

What I did here was alter the layer properties of the layer so it forms into the image further. Here, i experimented by altering the layer property to 'Overlay'. However, this made the background too bright; as a result the character doesn't stand out as much.

Here is the same image with the same layer, this time it is set to 'Multiply'. This makes the character stand out more, but still keep the hard lines that differ in contrast.

For the final touch, I desaturated the tissue image and increased the contrast by 100. Desaturating the image removed the unnecessary colors; the base green of the tissue itself and the blue line that collided with the textured lines. Increasing the contrast strengthened the lines so they stand out more.

What is RSS?

RSS, or "really simple syndication", is a large group of web feeds that is the key in updating and publishing material online. The basic objective to create the RSS states back to 1995, when computers, and especially the internet, was still at an early age. The format itself didn't go up online until 1999, and then in 2005-6 it finally became a public format.

Trivial pursuit -interactive website

This is the official website for the Trivial pursuit experiment. The experiment simply examining which of the following two genders are more intellectual. The interactivity is superb. However while playing the game, animated and everything, I was completely oblivious at the fact that I was actually playing against others online. I think to improve this would be to make it seem more obvious to the player that he/she is online with other competitors.

Fred Frap's imaginary home page- worst website designs

This is the 'Official' website for Fred Frap and his imaginary friends. It is absolutely horrible. This wouldn't even make a pass criteria in a college session. The text is too small and complex to understand, and even so, it's too hard to see with he background colour. The photography is in grayscale; and therefore just don't mix with the colours used in this website, which is a lot. I would highly doubt there would be any animation in this website, at least any necessary.

Save the turtles- Interactive website

this is the official website for the game Save the Turtles. The game is only available on the DSi via the DSi ware system. This website is very colorful and bright, which explains that the art style of the game itself is aimed at a young audience. It's very interactive and it animates stupendously. Even if you scroll your mouse cursor over an image and not click it, it will still animate. The website consists of a homepage, and pages individually for information on the game itself, images and videos, 'downloads' and even a website detailing how to purchase this game.

Design process- creating the Greenhouse page.

I will show you how I have progressed to a page used for my interactive survival guide.

Using a black background layer, I started with a pen tool and used it to create a path that would later represent the frames of the green house. The black layer will not be part of the final design. It's sole purpose is to let the white of the greenhouse stand out only temporarily.

Once I was happy with the path made by the pen tool, I went onto the paths window and added 'stroke path', ensuring the brush tip was a thick white.

On a new layer, I started creating the soil. This brush tip shape is very convenient for this task, because it has a nice textured feel to it.

This is the 'prototype' snow layer. I made the snow by using a large brush tip shape as shown. It won't be used in the final, but it proves a useful asset in this stage.

This is a plant photo I found on the internet. I used a soft-tip eraser tool to remove the exterior around the bush. I then used a magic wand tool to select the plants, so I can drag it to the greenhouse image in a new layer.

This what the image currently looks after the plant has been pulled in. The next step was to alter the perspective of the bush to fit it by the wall of the greenhouse.

To do this I used a variety of transform techniques, found in the edit tab. These included 'skew', 'distort' and 'perspective'.

After adding a blue-to-white gradient (with white being at the bottom), I went back to the Greenhouse frame layer and used the 'blending options' to make the frames blend in.

I simply used a stroke, made it slightly big with a 100% opacity and set the type to 'Overlay. This ensured the greenhouse frames were part of the image, and that it also had smooth sides to it as well.

This is not what the finished piece looks like. This is merely a process through the centre of production. The final version has more detailed snow, and plant bushes on both sides.

Design process- the shadow

On one of my outcomes I had to figure out how to create a shadow on the floor. One technique I used included duplicating the layer of the object in which the shadow is casting from.

With the duplicated layer, I then rotated it 90 degrees counter-clockwise. Now I need to make it seem like its casted from the light and the previous layer.

Here I've stretched the shadow to make the light behind the previous layer seem pretty strong. But the shadow still doesn't look anything like it's casted from the light and the object.

If you go onto edit-transform, you will notice there are a variety of tools to further distort such image. For the most part I used the skew tool and the distort tool. This shadow really helps this image stand out even further.

Itchy animation website

Itchy animation website

This website was recommended by my tutor after he first reviewed my work in progress. It's a portfolio website, meaning it contains work from a single artist. This website also had a lighting tutorial, which proved very helpful in my project.

The website itself is very well presented, with clear buttons and a simple gallery layout.

Design process- beginning of the end of sanity

Here I'll show you the progression from the 3rd of the 6 final outcomes I made.

This is currently the design of the 3rd outcome. I'm now gonna show you through the process of the exotic scent.

I start with a rectangular marquee tool on a new layer. I want to use a new layer, so whatever i do inside that section wont affect any other pat of this work.

Then I take out the gradient tool and created a linear gradient, ensuring that I have black and white in the palette. If you create a gradient inside a selection, you'll find that the gradient is only made in the selection, and not all over the page. Now I needed to distort the gradient so it looks more free-moving.

For this, I went to filter-Distort-Twirl. The twirl technique makes the gradient image seem less inanimate. But now I want the bottom part to align to the hole in the vase and make the black of the gradient disappear.

To remove the black, I simply set the gradient layer to screen, and the gradient itself was good to move to the hole of the vase. But after then, the gradient seems cut. So I extended the right of the gradient, selected it with the rectangular marquee tool and rotate the gradient in the new selection just slightly.

A little bit more stretching for the selected gradient, and a bit of clone stamp and healing brush, and the extensions good. But it now looks too blocky.

So I just trimmed the sides using the pen tool. The extension is now done and clean. Now the next problem, the bottom part of the gradient is too thick to get in to the vase.

A bit of squashing, and the problem is sorted. Now to colour the gradient and add a more interesting background.

To colour a black and white gradient, I went to hue/saturation and ticked the colorize box, and with that I made a very saturated, very pink gradient. For the background, I simply used the difference clouds, which can be found in filter-render-difference clouds.

There is a brush tip shape in photoshop which has a unique star style to it. I used that brush tip to add a more magical feel to the scent. But the image itself doesn't seem thrilling enough.

Returning to the gradients, I made a black white radial gradient (reversed) on a new layer with the layer's properties set to multiply. I also added some sparkle on the vase using the same brushes used for the stars in the scent.

From here I wanted to make the scent stand out the most. I merely pushed the scent layer above the multiplied gradient layer.

This is not the completed version of this outcome. The completed version will have more detail and will have more effort put to it.

design process- detailing the door.

The first of my outcomes included a door with a narrow opening. I was fortunate to get a photo of a door with the right characteristics necessary. However, it included objects and details that I did not want to include in my final.

So I started manipulating this photo by first removing the exterior that can be seen in the gap of the door. For this I used the pen tool to create a path in the gap, and simply covered it in black using the fill path option.

So now the door looks like it has something dark and mysterious at the other side of it.

For here, I now want to remove the unnecessary details such as the fire signs. To do this, I simply used the clone stamp tool to replicate the blank walls over the signs, and the healing brush tool to blend the replicated areas to the rest of the photo.

This is the end result of this process. Compared to the final outcome in which this is included in, this door is all of just one layer.

Beginning of the end of Sanity- Outcome process

On this post, I will show you the techniquies I used to make the effects and etail of one of my outcomes for a college project.
So Currently I have three layers, the character, the black blocks on each side, and the grey background.

As you see, I've made a rectangula select tool. With that selection still valid, I go ahead and make a new layer.

On my new layer, I make a line gradient in the selction. For now I just make it black and white to reduce complication.

On the layer properties section, i set the layer to screen so the black becomes invisible and leaves a transparent white.

I then rotate the gradient to get it to a position ready for the twirl tool, found in the filter tab under distort.

As the preview shows, the result will leave a shape which I don't want, but this can be sorted later on inthe process.

The twirled gradient still isnt the finished effect I wanted. First off, it's too thin, and doesn't pose as the main attraction to the outcome.

So what I've done here is expland the effect lengthways. But it's still not right, any thicker and it would look horrible. I have to find a way to extend the top right end and remove the excess on the top left.

to exend the end on the top right, I simply selected that part with a rectangular select tool. I also rotate it to make it fit to the whole effect. But there is still the question of the excess parts aorund the sides.

for that I used a pen tool to make a path and made sure at least one side is curved for the effect. then going around the excess, I turned the path into a selection and delecting everything on that layer in that selection.

I'm now left with a nice, clean curved gradient that tickens on one side, and has an extra transparent area near the charcter's nose.

I am now hapy and willing to colour the gradient effect. To do this I go onto the Adjustments tab under image and select hue/saturation. Then before I do anything else, I click the colorize button on, so it fully colours the image, and not just try to change it. I then continue to toggle with the hue, saturation and lightness until I have the right colour mix for an 'exotic scent'.

For extra detail, I erase any of this scent on the charcter's nose, and smudge it on both sides, to give the sense that he is smelling the thick aroma.

Finally for the final touch I added white stars which I happened to find on the paint shape tab in the arrow next to the brush size indicator.

Now the exotic scent is finished but this page isn't quite done yet. It needs more depth and feeling of dark to it.

So what I've done here is make a new layer, create a radial gradient, still in black to white only this time it's in reverse. I've also set the layer to multiply, so the whith becomes invisible, leaving a blurry black ring. But now we have a new problem, this layer has effected ALL layers behind it, especially the exotic scent. As I mentioned before I wanted it to stand out the most.

The black gradient was a very minor problem however, as I only had to push the layer containing the scent above the black gradient.

And there you have it. This is how I created an exotic scentusing only Adobe Photoshop 7. The best part of this outcome was looking back at that sparkly scent after working so hard on it.

Next time, I'll show you how to do the same thing but coming from a object as a source.