Narrative in Sound: Final Statement

Art21 redone opener from Jessica Meurer on Vimeo.

here is the final piece but the file got messed up while being uploaded so I'll try again after class to see if there is a difference.

My theme came from the show Art:21- Art in the 21st Century. I choose this opener to redo because the original showed less interest with just line and type. I kept a voice over to give the title of show, but changed the style so that it sounds like something epic is going to happen.The way I approached Art 21 scene is by giving each letter form that constructs different mediums of art.

So part of process was to cut out every image of each letter form and to fix the lighting in all of them so they would look similar. This process became a meditative part in the whole putting the opener together. When I went into flash I put each letter on their own layer. Doing so would showcase each form all together instead one at a time. I needed the letters to be shown all together otherwise a viewer would not understand what was going on as clear. From the original they showed words that made up Art 21, so I choose to keep that idea in mine but less so that there is a smaller story within it. The three words are learn, create, and grow. The thought that went into the three words were on the factor of when I was younger I had a teacher that would say those words to influence us to do more with our lives. One of the things that I learned through out this project that is harder than you think to come up with an idea and be able to present in the manner that you would like. I also learned that doing analog work is strong way to approach a project because in the end it doesn't look like the program you used.


Final Stills


So looking at my actual file the three words don't stick in the original. Overall I learned more little elements in flash that use to take me a long time to find last year. The one thing that I do enjoy in my opener is the transition with the voice over coming in that leaves the viewer to read the title and watch it introduce the three people being in the show.

Narrative in Sound: Storyboard for Show opener

I know it has been awhile since I last updated for Sound, but time has become a factor. My storyboard is helping to keep the drive in this opener. My plan is to recreate the Art:21 show that has a boring feel for the opening sequence, so I'm making it more lively. All the letterforms will be made out of something different to represent the different areas of art and structure. More to come :)

Narrative in Sound: Process for painting towards children

The purpose of the work. why does this piece of graphic design exist? what is it supposed to do?

The purpose of the work is to give more information or presenting the new concept about children's painting. This graphic Design exists because the corporation is trying have children show there point of view of how to save the planet and to get these children to get in action of how the planet should be in different narratives. It is supposed to get children to admit their work of art that explains a certain criteria of subject matter.

context for the work. what surrounds it? where or when does it appear? is it stand-alone or does it require a presenter, what else is on that channel? etc.

It surrounds the children. It can show as a commercial or also as a series if need be. It can be a stand-alone. On the channel itself can be a painting network like how they showed bob ross as an example.
audience description. who are they and why are they watching?

The audience can be a wide range because parents can help influence their kids in doing the competition or the kids would want to do it, but range of entry can only be between the ages of 6- 14. They are probably watching because they either were into the pervious show and this came up or they were flipping through shows and ran across it and were drawn by the colors.

Examples found of this kind of work

While looking out there I haven't come across any videos that call for these entries, so by doing this I think it would help the organization.

Here are actual examples of the kid's work:

Third Prize: Pornnatcha Wisitsorakai, 14 years, Thailand(below)
Third Prize: Hataiwan Thepmalee, 14 years, Thailand(below)
Lau Ching Fung, 12 years, China(below)
2008 Global Winner: Gloria Ip Tung, 14 years, China(below)
Second Prize: Laura Paulina Tercero Araiza, 9 years, Mexico(below)

Here is some information I pulled off their website to apply for these entries:

The 17th International Children’s Painting Competition on the Environment was organized jointly by Bayer and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). More than 15,400 children from almost 100 countries took part in the 17th International Children’s Painting Competition – a new record. The paintings all share one clear message that the children are keen to pass on to adults: Take care of our planet – it's the only one we have!

During a special ceremony, representatives of Bayer, UNEP and the New Zealand government honored the global winners and the six regional winners from North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, West Asia and Asia-Pacific. More than 190,000 children have taken part in this environmental painting competition since 1990. Since 2004, it has been part of the youth environment program that is run by Bayer and UNEP and implemented in numerous different ways around the globe. The theme for 2008 was: “Climate change: Actions we can take to reduce our negative impact”.

http://www.bayer.com/en/International-Childrens-Painting-Competition-17.aspx

It has been held since 1991 and has received more than 2.4 million entries from children in over 100 countries.

your chosen project and why. how will this project work better in your portfolio than the other option?

The way I want to go for is the information side because it would help promote the competition and help the kids in the long run when they are older to have that to talked about.

Narrative in Sound: statement for nonlinear project

This is the part I almost forgot to have, but here is a bit of a repeat.

My final direction I went with looks very clean but conceptually there of paint program updated. I changed my icons into bitmap which made them look more pleasing and then I got away with the color view idea.


In this first scene you can hover over anything at the bottom and things either move up or down. Click on an icon to get a video with sound or no sound to play.

This is what it would look like if playing.
If you go to the color palette, you are able to see the buttons move and then by clicking on any of the bottom colors are sound effects and then the top colors have some images and some more sounds included. When the image comes up it is the same size as the video.
Here are a close up of the icons bitmap. I had the idea of having different colors of paint to identify them as different videos and have sound, where the spray paint doesn't have any paint coming out to indicate that there is no sound.

Through this whole process of coming up with an interface help me understand how different components as a whole work together, how to control items as a designer, and make it entertaining. I also realized on how important each and every key part in actionscript needs to be spelled correcting and names need to be simple for remembering became so important to make everything work. When I first looked at this project, I was a bit confused on how everything was going to be compiled together into flash, but I seemed to understand it well enough.

What music, voice, and sound effects bring to a narrative that is different from visual communication channels?

The way I interpreted it was with the different sounds provided can either give a clearer meaning to certain part, or a deeper meaning of emotion towards the medium and/or enhance the experience.

The different communicative qualities of music, voice, and sound effects (compare and contrast)

There are many different layers towards music, voice, and sound effects. Music can perceive an emotion as well as speed towards a video, like my kinetic type video has a fast pace to it. With sound effects, you can perceive different parts by how it portrays the action of an object, as well as, giving an image clarity. When it comes to voice to image or video, voice can be different things. Voice can give the right meaning of clarity by actually saying what it is, or give a reaction to certain point, or tone of the voice can change everything. I felt that voice was something that was difficult for the factor of either speaking to fast, or to high, or stumbling over words to be a problem.

The differences between simultaneous and sequential communication

Simultaneous is where you are given the ability to do have multiple plots to a story or no certain direction to follow. With sequential communication, the viewer has a path that they have to follow for it to make sense. I feel that my nonlinear project has a bit of both, for when you click on the spray paint you can have the ability to have a song or sound effects with it by clicking on them. I did give the other videos sound to give the sequential feel, but added the factor that you can click on a sound effect. This ability of using both can altered the meanings.

user vs designer control of your project

As designers, we want to say something through our designs, but to have the visually appealing to the user, the interface needs to convey user feeling accessibility. With the interface being easily read by viewer, that opens up the door as to what the viewer wants to reveal. Overall user has so called 'the right way' or 'the costumer is never wrong' concept, meaning the designer can't always control everything, so noise may come into play, with either concept or design.

participants’ ability to discover relationships through interactive play

Even when we were young, our minds want to explore what ever comes are way. Our brain is link to many important things, like reasoning. Discovering opportunities just opens the mind more to see what it can consume. With the discovery of one song of 'I'm Bouncing off the walls again....' is thought of how monkeys might feel when stared at, but also getting at the childlike feature of the color pencils and the paint program itself.

Narrative in Sound: Final

Sketches of initial visual directions

From this state I was looking at the idea of the paint program and how it looked, but wanting to upgrade it a bit to be more conceptual to the idea of painting a picture in many different levels. Through this thought process, I was considering one button being the delete button or in this case clean the paint brush until I realized I wouldn't necessarily need them since in actionscript we were using the actual buttons themselves as the turn on and off. Also in this state I was thinking different types of icons ranging from the original buttons they used to a common paint item used.

Semi final direction

My semi final state was considering how color would be played out as well as the icons being illustrated digitally. From here I was told to take in under some consideration to "bitmap my icons" for the final, so in my final it could add more character to them since the illustrations weren't really working yet.


Final Direction in process

My final direction I went with looks very clean but conceptually there of paint program updated. I changed my icons into bitmap which made them look more pleasing and then I got away with the color view idea.


In this first scene you can hover over anything at the bottom and things either move up or down. Click on an icon to get a video with sound or no sound to play.

This is what it would look like if playing.
If you go to the color palette, you are able to see the buttons move and then by clicking on any of the bottom colors are sound effects and then the top colors have some images and some more sounds included. When the image comes up it is the same size as the video.
Here are a close up of the icons bitmap. I had the idea of having different colors of paint to identify them as different videos and have sound, where the spray paint doesn't have any paint coming out to indicate that there is no sound.

Through this whole process of coming up with an interface help me understand how different components as a whole work together, how to control items as a designer, and make it entertaining. I also realized on how important each and every key part in actionscript needs to be spelled correcting and names need to be simple for remembering became so important to make everything work. When I first looked at this project, I was a bit confused on how everything was going to be compiled together into flash, but I seemed to understand it well enough.

Narrative in Sound: some of the audio files

Sorry for the delay for redoing the post for sounds but here you go. I ended up using audiofarm as well which seemed to work better after I realized I exported my files wrong.



Click HERE to listen to the files!!!

Narrative in Sound: More iterations

With this approach, having an image with the icons within acting the same as usual. Clicking on them once will play the first sound and then click again you get the second sound. With in this image if you click on certain things something will either move or complete the original animations.
This idea was with having a hover and then buttons to click on doing the same with my other iterations. Then it becomes a full screen for videos but for images it will be within the color palettes that lay across the top and bottom.
This idea of having the icons hanging like a painting being hung gets it personality. With that clicking on an icon will then pop up to the top of the screen to then drop down the choices and then the rest pop up so the animation can then play. Then clicking on x they will go back to the original spots as before and act the same.

Narrative in Sound: compositions of approaches for interactive

These two ideas give different way of looking at layout but do the same thing of adding one image plus a sound effect to get whatever and then clicking on the 'x' then it will go back to a blank screen.

This idea is about clicking on one of the icons that you get to choose either song 1 or song 2 which plays with the animations.
Icons made into digital and add color to give the sense of usage. I'm playing with the idea of having the paint brush and the paint roller angled a bit to give another personality to them, this way they won't be static buttons.


Overall a nice idea would be able to try to get another icon where the viewer can just have fun drawing there own picture, which will make this more successful as a interactive piece and give someone a surprise. I know that would be the cherry on the pie, but first things first I have to master the beginning pieces before adding the cherry. We will see how it goes.

Narrative in Sound: sketch ideas for interactive

So the idea of paint program but updated, these two drawings show the direction of the layout of the interactive site. My ideas were to be able to click one of the icons to choose between the different song, lyric, voice over, and then the color squares will be sound effects on one side and then the other side will be images to try to match up the sound effects. This effect will represent the idea of fill color and line color that is in every program we use. Below this image I want to use this type of icons because they would be easier to click on with the mouse, and these give the idea of the different types of paint ideas, like brush, roller, paint bucket, and spray paint. This will give a good direction I think. The direction I want to go with rendering could include color pencil, marker, or digital. The digital rendering when done will probably be a solution to communication being clarified where color pencil and marker can lose the information given.

Narraative in Sound: sound tests

So it has taken me awhile to find an actual website to host my mp3s for free but it worked and here they are. I also found an embedding code to place my sounds into so they would work just like cloudnine.

The Shins


Rossini The Thieving Magpie


Ghosts 21


Into the Ocean


Bouncing off the Walls


Fun, fun, fun


cleaning brush


drawing effect2


drawing effect


dry paint brush


monkeyattempt- this will be redone


opening paint effect


squeezing2 effect



squeezing1 effect



squeezing3 effect


water effect

Narrative in Sound: Final Kentic Type

kentic type: towel from Jessica Meurer on Vimeo.

Through the start of this process of choosing a noun to represent three verbs, I began to struggle to pick actions. After finally deciding what verbs were going to be represented, I was happy to explore the different ways to treat the motion. This gave me a clear way to approach the fluidity of action to action through the storybroad, as well as working analog gave me an understanding of how many different approaches to verbs. My process of creating the type was made of towel with marker drawn on top to clearly state what the viewer is looking at. My issue that came up was to think through was how to incorporate either one of the previous animations, and within this animation to give more context. By the time I was ready to go digital, I had a semi clear approach to combine the two, but I didn't know for sure how well. Hopefully the length of each verb is expressed equally and hand-generated text is capturing the actions clearly.

Narrative in Sound: Kentic type take 1: towel

Kentic type: rough from Jessica Meurer on Vimeo.

Narrative in Sound: Process

So my process of getting towards the actual animation is by this having an image then cutting it out from the background, so then it can tangible.

Narrative in Sound: Storyboard for Kentic Type

So for my storyboard, I decided to start by doing everything analog by getting actual paper towel and drawing out the typeface I wanted with I went off of Clarendon typeface. From there I cut out the form and colored it in with a brown marker, so went I got to the scene of soaking, you actually got to see the color spreading throughout the page. I thought I should end my animation by wiping itself away, so it could start all over again smoothly. I choose to go with stop motion movement, so the activity of the piece(noun) representing the verbs wouldn't be in a chaotic mess. This also determined that I making my object constant across the whole animation feel like there is an unity of the three verbs. I'm still deciding how I am going to represent the previous animation before into this one, but I'll soon figure out a good way.

Narrative in Sound: Sketches and Idea Approach

This is the main approach I want to take my animation with. My idea towards each verb are different where I'm going to use analog mainly. One way for wipe I was thinking of using a dry erase board, then for soak i was thinking of actually cutting out the word in a towel and showing the effect of the water soaking in/expanding, and then last but least with the soaked towel, I was going to show the twist of the word by the same object and then slowly the text shrinking to dry out(per say). With the flash of the my first animation I didn't want it to interrupt with this new project, but also I wanted it to support it over all, so if I have to I might end up having a few more frames towards the twist and soaking stages of the animation to represent the previous animation made.

Here are the 10 different ideas towards each verb (wipe, soak, and twist)

Narrative in Sound: Nouns and verbs

So through this beginning process(stage) I decided to explore some of the possibilities I could have with painting a picture, so I have a list of nouns with verbs but also a sub category. the list goes:

Noun:Verbs
Sub verbs

paint: blend, compose, squezze
collide, design, splash

brush: drip, crawl, gesture
scrape, stroke, swipe

water: soak, pour, drip
dribble, splash, spin(b/c of cleaning a brush)

paper towel: wipe, dry, twist
soak up, rip

pencil: sketch, scribble, layer
draft, undo

Narrative in Sound: Final thoughts

When I was planning out how I wanted the perception(view) to be straight forward for the 1st person animation, as for the third person the point of view is of observing the artist at work. The conveying of movement from frame to frame where either portraying moment to moment, scene to scene to give the ability of how a painting is done. Also the timing of frames gave the sense of the actual speed in life on how fast someone can put paint on a palette for example. The medium of color pencil was chosen at the beginning for the contrasting of the 2 mediums already going to be used. This also helped with blocking out extra information, but I guess in the end I should have kept the backgrounds both white to give a better viewing and combining situation after going through the critique on Wednesday. Overall the learning experience of dealing with time, two different point of views, and just the process to get to an animation took some time, but I'm still please with what I turned in.

Narrative in Sound: Final animations

1st person revised: painting a picture from Jessica Meurer on Vimeo.

first person pov ^

3rd person revised : painting a picture from Jessica Meurer on Vimeo.

3rd person pov ^

Combined 1st and 3rd person pov from Jessica Meurer on Vimeo.

combined 1st and 3rd pov ^

Narrative in Sound: Spreads

Narrative in Sound: 1st and 3rd person videos

stop motion 3rd person study from Jessica Meurer on Vimeo.

stop motion 1st person study from Jessica Meurer on Vimeo.