Finished?

Hey! I finally finished my DVD menu. Everything is completely finished now. Guess I should go write that evaluation! (Btw I hid an easter egg somewhere :) :) )

Lesson X

Today I have learnt or "relearnt" about the use of Jpeg, Raster and Vector images (among others) when it comes to graphic image making and dvd menu design. Usually I take these for granted and often forget about them even though i use them all the time, but as i have discovered it is important to know what most of these things mean, and how they impact on graphic image making. Now you may be wondering why I havent actually said what these things do- HEY LOOK OVER THERE!!! (runs off into the distance)

DVD Menu Work 12 - Rollover Image Problems

 A new problem has arisen, this time involving my rollover images. I wanted to put a wizards head next to the highlighted button, but for whatever reason Encore won't allow a fully coloured image to be used as a rollover effect. So instead I have decided to use a simple highlight on the buttons instead. At this stage I am just nit picking so it doesnt really matter anyways.

Above: The buttons I'm going to use for my Menu.

DVD Menu Work 11 - AVI does work after all ¬_¬'

I just discovered that it actually was possible to use AVI files in encore after all. I don't know why i was told otherwise but it seems to have worked. I have started to link up all my menus and after tinkering with the aspect ratios I managed to make the menu look presentable. All that remains is for me to link up each screen and work some bugs out, but overall things seem to be going great.

DVD Menu Work 10 - Overlaying Buttons onto footage

I finally managed to overlay the buttons over a video clip! This means if i can import my finished movie file into encore i should be able to peice together my animated menu.

DVD Menu Work 9 - Problems importing into Encore

I'm having trouble importing the video clips into encore and overlaying the menu buttons. The main problem is that my video files apparently need to be in “.mov” format, which is annoying because I can’t seem to play these files on my computer. I'm following the tutorials but to no avail! I will continue to tinker until i have exhausted all possibilities.

DVD Menu Work 8 - Animating in Adobe Premier

I have decided to animate my menu in adobe premiere instead of photoshop because i feel there is more control over what the animation can do. I will then import the animation into encore and there I plan to overlay the menu buttons on top of the video clip. If everything goes correctly I should be able to make the video clips mesh together.

In the pictures below I have documented the process of creating the animations in Adobe Premier:

Premier is great for creating animations because it gives you complete control over almost every aspect of the animation. There are multiple layers to use so it doesn't get confusing when trying to animate something really ambitious, and the timeline ensures that you can make the clips last as long as you want. 

I found this a lot better to use than Photoshops animation feature which is far worse because there is only one layer and things can get confusing when trying to animate more than one object. However it does have the advantage of not requiring me to add the menu buttons latter on in encore.

MUSIC


Another bonus of animating in Premier, is that I can also couple the music with the video clip so I don't have to add it later in Encore! Problem Solved before it was even a problem!


As you can see here, Premier gives you complete control over the animating process and once you know how to use it, it becomes relatively simple to create some great animations:

I am aware that if I didn't have Premier installed on my laptop, then creating an animation of this quality probably wouldn't have been possible for me but seeing as I did, I felt I may as well use it.
The only problem that remains now, is importing the video files into encore and overlaying the menu buttons on top of the video clips. If that goes well I should have a great looking DVD menu!

DVD Menu Work 7 - Finished Menus

I have created my menu in photoshop and now It's on to the tricky part of animating it in Adobe Premier...

My film is called "WIZARD PEAKS" As you can see I have yet to create the Menu buttons in Encore.

Above is what will happen when the user presses the "Play" button. The scene will change as the castle rises out of the ground and then fade to black as the movie begins.

DVD Menu Work 6 - Moodboard and Characters

Having finished my Moodboard for a childrens animated film, I have moved on to planning how i want my dvd menu to look. I've started designing characters and brainstorming what kind of animations i will use for my menu.

Here's my moodboard for a childrens animated film:

As you can see here, I have selected a wide range of characters to use on my moodboard.

The type of person the animation is aimed at greatly effects the style of the animation itself. Here I have chosen two characters that I feel shows this. Zoro (left) looks a lot darker and accentuated then Patrick (right) this is because Zoro is from an animation aimed at a teenage-Adult audience, where as Patrick's audience is primarily young children. The shading and detail on Zoro is high because the audience is more developed, whereas Patrick has no shading and looks rather 2D in comparison.

After taking this into account I created some characters in Photoshop:

I like how this came out, but it doesn't seem to really fit the style of my menu so I tried again to make something a bit less serious and I came up with this Wizard here:

Now that I have my characters created It's on to making the menu itself!

DVD Menu Work 5 - Encore Excersises

I have been fiddling around in Encore and Have managed to complete some of the set tasks in the booklet. I forgot to screen capture anything though so I can't show ya what I did!

DVD Menu Work 4 - Designing the Menu

I have chosen a design for my Animated DVD menu. Below I have annotated the design and left comments on how I want the finished menu to look.

After studying some animated films, I created some characters for my film. (yes I'm aware I'm spewing off on a tangent now) The films I looked at for inspiration seemed to have ridiculous plots so I guess I'll make my film about Wizards!

The Wiz kids I drew ;)

DVD Menu Work 3 - Animation and Photoshop?!

In this lesson I was introduced to photoshops animation feature. I worked on making animations that could possibly be used in a DVD Menu however I found the animation feature rather unsophisticated and it soon became difficult to animate more than one object because of a lack of layers within the animating window. This has made me determined to use adobe premier when animating my menu because I feel it gives you much more control over your animation.

DVD Menu Work 2 - Children's Animation

I have decided to design a Menu for a children's animated film. After creating a power point presentation proposing my ideas I concluded that an animated film would be best for me to work on because if i had chosen to do a live action film, I would've had to take all the pictures for my menu myself, and as I'm a poor photographer I felt drawing the images straight on photoshop would play to my strengths better.

Below are some interesting animated films and tv shows that I looked at to get a better idea of what kind of menu I should produce.

As you can see they are quite varied, the tone of each of the images are very different and the styles range from traditional 2d animation, to stop-motion and even 3D animation.

DVD Menu Work 1 - Picking a Genre

The task is to create a Menu for a DVD. We were given 4 genres to choose from:

I chose to design a menu for either a Sci-Fi film or Childrens Animation and I created some designs:

I think these designs are a good start toward creating a decent DVD menu. I will do some more research into my selected genres and then I will be able to make a choice between either a Sci-Fi menu or a Childrens Animated menu.

Skillz Profile: Stuff I'm Good At ;)

Yo! Before I start this Blog I better clarify the things I can do already:

PHOTOSHOP

Well sir, I started using Photoshop back when I was in year 10 and we had to create an interactive game in Macromedia DreamWeaver. Ever since then I have used Photoshop so much in my daily life that it has almost become second nature to me. (I'm not trying to sound big headed here) However there is still much I have yet to learn and I realise I have developed some bad traits as I have learnt more recently in my I-media lessons.

I still have my project from year 10 so I'll upload a few pictures here.

I took Media Studies for GCSE so Photoshop was an invaluable companion for that course. I'll post some Pictures of my media work here as well.

I also enjoy film making and I use Adobe Premier to make most of my films. I have a feeling that my knowledge of Premier will be very useful. I took film studies at A level and I actually won some awards for films that I made.

I enjoy art and like painting whenever I get the chance so while i'm tooting my own horn I may as well upload some pics I drew:

So that's pretty much my interests. I think they will come in use for this course, and now onto the blog!