DB.3.0 Crit.

The person of our group that had to present last week was Ramy. We did not have the chance to see the work before the other students because the computers did not have the oldest version of the windows media (or was it quicktime ?) . Anyhow, when he did his presentation I was very impressed with what he have done with the openning title of memento. His work was very professionnal & it would have really enhance the movie, more than the real sequence.

His DB3.3 consisted of a sequetion of the movie where the main character narate his thoughts, so it already had audio & visual. What Ramy did is that he hadded some animated handwriting as the opening credits and sometimes some letters would be overlined and others written over with another letter, so it gave a very dynamic & unpredictable feel to the text. As part of the audience, I found that this manner of revealing one letter at a time really draw me quickly into the movie , just trying to dechipher what were the name of the actors or of the crew members. Some mentionned that the narration was an element that distracted from reading the credits, to me it felt more like a background noise than a distraction , an good idea might be to lower the volume of the narrated sound so that it takes less space.

The reason why this opening credits really enhance the work is the the subject of this movie is memory or lack of it. And creating animated handwriting gives a feeling that the character is writing a diary where he tries to remember his past.

Again this D.B3.3 was of professional level, a superb work.

Design Brief 3.0

Here follows a link to DB3
http://www.hybrid.concordia.ca/~e_carp/db3.htm

I could not find any still images for 3.1, but if you really want to see the opening of this movie, I strongly recommend this movie, it is very entertaining and witty. So are the opening credits too ^_^.

For 3.2, even if I didn't like the font they used for their main title, I absolutly worship the project itself as a whole. It is not made to be seen by everyone, it is a very long (over 12 hours) psycological/phylosophical illustrated fiction.

http://bs.brokensaints.com/dvd/#
scrool down and click on classic flash site and series, since a DVD of this work as been release they try to hide their old website where the content is showed free.

3.4 Couldn't resist from talking about the matrix universe, but I find that with the animatrix, they had a chance of showing a new way of presenting this universe, that is what the short animations did, but the opening credits does not do that.

Design Brief 2.0

Here follows a link to DB2

http://www.hybrid.concordia.ca/~e_carp/db2.htm

In 2.2 I tried to experiment by filling empty space and see if the letter "o" was still legible. Later I realized that other letters could be formed out of this singular shape of an "o". Letter A, E, D, P and C are the one I came up with but there are many more hidden in this shape.

For 2.3a, at first I had no idea with to do with this poem "the art of clay". I tried to represent the repetition of the same 2 phrases, but I fell like there is too much information and that the results are ambiguous.
For 2.3b and c, I worked with a simpler visual effect to try and represent the shadow upon us in 2.3b and the decaying of the text compares to the decaying of the body in 2.3c. In "C" the text becomes voluntarily illegible. A better way to develop it would be to make the text gradually erode.

Finally, I made a circus announcement with the font Jokerman.

2.2 and 2.4 were my favorite exercises they are very good for a beginner like myself. I fell there was too much information to handle with 2.3, when there are so many words that can express so many things individually, it is hard to make everyone of them stand out or at least take the place it deserve. And since it is poetry and interpretations are very open, it is also delicate to represent the entire text as a whole.

Etymology of a Word

For this exercise we had to work with the etymology of a word and represent it visually.

I wanted to clearly show the origins of this word, but also all the possible way it could have been assemble. Why did it became "Gauntlet" instead of "Gauntle"or "Auntlet".
The colors also show to witch language it came from. We can see here that the "W" from the Germans did not stay in the English version.

Finally, the gauntlet is mostly known as a piece of armor, so I tried to represent the other definition with the 2 original words some kind of confrontation between the 2 languages, just like a gauntlet.

Emotional Fonts

Maybe I can discuss a little bit about the Bringhurst chapters. He believes that typography should be used to enhance the experience given while reading the content of a text, while staying true to it's original content. I thought the reasons he gave to why typography should enhance a text where very biased by his obvious admiration of the written medium.

Expressions like "honoring content" are subjective, simply because the definition of honor is very subjective itself, it may vary depending on cultures, contries and individuals.

During the lab part of thuesday's class, we had to attach a certain font to pictures we had taken of ourselves. Look at the results for yourself.

For the Reflection font, I wanted a sober and straith forward font, it was not very hard to find one, many applied for this image.

I knew that the "surprised" font needed motion, my original idea was to find a font with some kind of 3D effect, where the letters would be larger over the x-height than the part under the x-height. I did not find the font I desired so I had to opt for a liquid/squeashy font.

I wanted an unstable font for the "doubtful" font and I found exactly what I was looking for a water/wavy font, representing moving ideas and uncertain representation.











Big Crazy Font For Happy !!! Yay !!!

I tried to make a melancolia face here, but it turned out to look more liek a was "drowsy" ... I do not know what I would have used for melancolia, but I am pretty happy of my "drowsy" font. The letters looks tired, falling on each others or going downwards like the "y", also stylised preparing the dream state.

The is the best "angry" face I can make, I rarely get angry and when I do it is not that intense, so this small but dynamic/spiky font fits best my experience as "angry".

Link to a small flash using those images.

Love/Hate Fonts

Yesterday in class we discussed in group of 3 wich font we favored and wich one we hated the most. My choices were :







I Generally love highly stylized light fonts like Papyrus, Parchement and Tempus Sans ITC.
Those types of fonts can rarely be used intelligently, but I feel they are always interresting to read.

I hate the Jokerman for being plain ugly and being conceptually bad. Even if I wanted to make my text look prankster or funny, I would never use this font.

Can't say muh about Arial, well because I'm indifferent to it.

Then after every individual of the group had choosen their most and least favorites, we choose wich one we liked and hated most as a group.




We Hated Typewriter because of the bad spacing, also because of the nostalgic feel of an old typewriting machine.

We liked Verdana for its versatillity, its simplicity, its good readability and design uses.

The Next Text Introduction

This will be my weekly blog for my CART 355c course.

I must precise that I never had a typography class before and therefore my views on the subject may be limited... for now !