Creating our Fourth Ident: Orchid

Due to the failure of our first two idents, Emelia and I had to come up with a new idea. Ideally, we wanted to do at least one ident as an animation because this would show more skill and would give our film opening a variety. Our previous idea of a dandelion did not work as it was too hard to draw and so this time around we had to think of something more simple. By using an animated and a non-animated ident, Emelia and I are displaying skill across the graphic side to the project. It was clear to us, however, that this ident would be more challenging for us to create as the software, Motion, was completely new to us and had a reputation as a tricky software anyway! Firstly, Emelia and I had to come up with a completely new idea for an ident. We wanted to stick to something simple and similar to the delicate and nature of the dandelion. Emelia and I found it fairly challenging to come up with something that would be both easy to draw yet aesthetically pleasing and delicate. When sat in my living room thinking about what we could do, I looked across the room and had an idea. This is what I saw…

It was from here that Emelia and I decided to base our second and last ident upon an orchid. We felt as though an orchid is aesthetically pleasing and although may not be quite as simple to draw as we had originally hoped, would be possible when tracing. Our next step was to find an orchid photograph that we could trace. After a brief search on Google Images, Emelia and I found this image…

Emelia and I decided to go with this image as we liked the shape and layout of the orchid. However, we would not need to also trace the dotted background and writing. Once we had downloaded the image, we imported it into Pixelmatr. We used Pixelmatr at GCSE and so things came back to us fairly quickly as we used the software. In attempt to make the tracing of the orchid an easier and more efficient process, Emelia and I were given a graphic tablet to trace over the orchid. This, at first, proved to be a whole lot easier than using the mouse as it allowed you to move freely. However, for the thicker lines on the orchid it, surprisingly, proved to be easier for us to simply zoom in and use the mouse to trace over. We then added colour to our orchid. We chose to go with a fairly simple, yet elegant colour scheme and decided to keep it fresh and simple. After we had completed our own version of the orchid drawing, Emelia and I exported the drawing into Motion.

Now that our drawing was in Motion, Emelia and I could start animating our ident. Our ultimate aim was to keep it simple and so we wanted to add a glow or blur to the drawing. We sampled both of these and felt as though the glow fit in better with what we were trying to achieve. We decided to have this glow in a fairly bright pink colour. Although this may seem fairly random, the colour matches the inside parts of the orchid and so draws the whole thing together. The pink colour is also fairly striking and so may capture the attention of the audience. By using keynotes, we were able to alter when the glow came in, left and the intensity of it throughout. Emelia and I played around with this for a while but settled on the glow coming in and leaving fairly quickly as we felt it brought the ident to life. Next, Emelia and I had to think of a name and feature it in our ident. Ideally, we wanted a name that links directly to the ident alike other famous idents such as Universal and Lionsgate. The name “Orchid Productions” seemed a bit too short and plain and so Emelia and I settled on “Orchid House Productions” for the name of our second ident. We also thought that an elegant font would best suit the nature of the ident. Emelia and I thought that it looked best for our title to come in with the glowing to leave with it also. In order to achieve this, we had to use keynotes once again. These were the most difficult aspects to the software in my opinion. Once again, Emelia and I have decided to use the soundtrack from the opening over the top of the ident in order to bring it all together. Here is our second and last ident…

Considering how difficult Emelia and I found the Motion software and the tight time limit we had, I am happy with our animated ident. If we had more time, Emelia and I have agreed that the glow should be more subtle and the timings of the glow and titles would need more attention, but overall I am happy with the two idents.

 

Creating our First Ident: Dandelion

Emelia and I planned to find an image of a dandelion off of the internet and trace it in order to get a realistic drawing for our first animated ident. After a brief search on Google Images, we had found the perfect image…

We downloaded this image onto the desktop and then moved it into Motion. After a brief practise using the tools on Motion, we traced the image. After careful tracing, Emelia and I had our finished outline. However, we were not happy with how it looked and so tried a new approach. We then moved the image into Pixelmatr and coloured out the background and turned it black. Although we felt this version looked better than before, we were still not happy with it as some parts of green were still visible and it was clear that we had just coloured the original background…

Emelia and I decided to drop the idea of a dandelion after we wasted a considerable amount of time trying to make it work. We decided to move on onto the ident of the flickering eyes…