Major Project - My Creative Process

My creative process consists of getting in the right frame of mind for writing.

Although I could sit down at a desk with the best intentions if I wasn't in the right mindset I would get nothing done and feel bad about it. I found that pressure was my enemy, even though it does help motivate me to do work it can also be my undoing.

Here is what I did to maximise my chances of getting in the right mindset.

1) I deleted all the game applications off my phone, its too easy to be distracted by

2) Watching programs and films that inspire me allowed for ideas to flow better in my mind.

3) Saying out loud to myself what I wanted to achieve today. It sounds silly but saying it out loud seemed to cement it in my mind.

4) Using a paper and pad took away a key source of distractions.

5) Telling people I would be doing a task.

6) Finding the right location to work, where I can't easily escape from the task.

7) Having frequent short breaks, although it may sound counter-productive to have lots of breaks. being able to cut up the work into manageable chunks makes it a lot less daunting.

8) Avoid negatives, instead of telling myself of the work I hadn't done or needed to do, I would try to encourage myself with the work I had done.

These "Tricks" didn't always work but they did help, I found that the process of writing on paper was key, it helped me focus away from distractions and gave me better control on how I wanted the emphasize certain actions. The ability to quickly go through and add notes was extremley helpful and then making a digital version of the script allowed me to polish it off quite nicely.

The Last Breath - Final Year Project - Evaluation

Evaluation

For my final year project I wanted to create a Anime styled tv show called "The Last Breath". In this story people can give a person a piece of their soul by "Pledging their last breath" to them, this last breath the person breaths contains a piece of their soul, which transfers knowledge, power and strength to the recipient.

This concept was fun to conceptualise, but quite difficult to manage in a long form script. I spent a lot of time working out the limits and capabilities of those with lots of breaths compared to those without. I didn't want to fall in the same trap of constantly revealing new and amazing ground breaking abilities. 

I found coming up with the base story line rather easy, since I had already had this idea a while before. What I found diffiuclt however was putting my thoughts into words.

Motivation was my biggest drawback on this project, since I was working by myself I had no one to help manage my time, or solid deadlines to finish work by. I was constantly pushing back my own work schedule in favour of other activities. 

To help manage this I researched several ways of managing time effectively, some methods did work, but I found the best way for me to sit and focus was to work outside of my home. To this extent I began to work in Cafe's and parks, writing my scripts down on a pen and pad first then typing them up into Final Draft after. 

This method really helped me focus as it took away my biggest distraction. The internet.

Other than time management and organisation something else that I struggled with was the dialogue. 

One of the staples of anime is the long winded and over dramatic speeches the majority of shows contain, mine was no different, however the dialogue I wrote seemed wooden and forced and did not fit with the tone, or characters I had created. 

I tried to tone down the speeches for the key moments in the story, avoiding using dialogue as a means of exposition and simply a method for driving the story and at worse clarification on the intricate special powers system I had created.

I also struggled with creating unique character dialogue, there were several times during the script where two characters would speak in almost the same tone and voice. I found it difficult to have clear differences between the two main characters Arthur and James. 

I wanted James to sound slighty more refined than Arthur, indicating a higher level of schooling or perhaps higher status in life . I did this by mainly having Arthur often using contractions , such as Don't, Isn't and couldn't etc. Whereas James uses Do not, is not and could not.

I also struggled to find a way to explain the concept of the story without outright telling the audience, after getting feedback on my first script I came to realise that to someone who did not now the concept of "The Last Breath" it was a bit confusing. 

To rectify this I created a short two minute script which would serve as a title sequence or a prologue before the first episode. This gives an overview of the concept of the Last Breath and allows the viewer to understand more in the first episode.

I am quite happy with how the first episode came out and the last two, I felt like I learnt from the process of writing and the last scripts are better and more interesting.

My take aways from this project is to work on my organisational skills and self-discipline for the project, setting myself targets and sticking to them rather than pushing them back. I know I could have done a lot better for this project but I am proud of how much I got done.

The Last Breath - Final Project - Episode 1 Storyboard

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Major Project - Poster design

For the poster I wanted to go for a simple and easy to achieve effect, the first thing I did was photograph the silhouette of the face.

I wanted it to appear as if the blue mist leaving their lips was actually illuminating their face, yet I didn't want to get too much detail.

To achieve this effect I lit the subject's face and purposely underexposed the image.

I then added the image to Photoshop and changed to color temperature to a much more cold blue.

Then I masked out the face and separated it from the light.

Once the image was masked I created a new layer and added a gradient to the image, I wanted it to look like the only source of light in this darkness was the glowing mist, or "Breath"

To add the breath I found a free to use image of "smoke" online, I chose this one as I liked the definition of the swirls. The fact it was black and white was also helpful as I was able to simple change the blending mode to Divide, which changed the image in relation to the background as well.

 

The next thing to do was the text, I spoke to Jemma in regards to the font type for the bottom font, which was called Movie Poster SU.

I went through several different fonts for the title, I wanted an elegant "Medieval" type font, but many made the feel of the poster feel like a romance, especially when the "a" in "Last" looked like an "o" or a "u" 

Since the "Lust" Breath would denote a completely different type of story I settled for a font called "Infiltrace"

I first created the title, centered on the screen.

To create the glow behind the letters I duplicated the title and changed the text color to white, then adding a gaussian blur to the text and layering them on top of each other results in this look.

I am quite pleased with how the poster came out and feel like it suits the feel of the anime and accentuates how I envisioned a breath in my head.