Matching Colors

Here is my attempt at the PMS to CMYK color matching, it was pretty tough! The first set of colors are the printed ones, and the second set are the color-aid colors. It seems like the cmyk colors are all a lot more saturated than the ones I'm trying to match them too, so I need to work on toning down the brightness. And of course, there is some color tweaking that needs to be done too.
And these colors are my attempt at an RGB match-up. It's not as easy as I thought it would be, although it was easier than the CMYK version. Using the color chooser, it was nice to be able to change each variable ever-so-slightly. Nudging saturation or value or hue, one little digit at a time. It was also a nice way to see how the hexadecimal color-coding system works.

Line-Shape-Tone-Texture

Line Shape Tone Texture

For the colors, I used the opposites blue-green and blue-green and red, and then for the final section I used Munsell's vertical score. I particularly like the gradients and textures. They were the most time consuming to make, but they also came out as the most visually appealing.

Animation Progress

Edited: it's up finally! :)

Haiku Progression from Kelsey Anderson on Vimeo.

But anyway, I feel like I'm making good process. I've sped up the whole thing, so it's not nearly as slow. Still haven't quite fixed the conveyor belt. Um yea, still working on it. But! The crumbling bridge transition is quite nice, and now I'm starting on phasing the last transition back out, so it can loop back to the first cleanly! :)

Fill in the Missing Pieces

Here's what I've got for the color study photographs (click for a larger, clearer image.) Now it's just a matter of filling in the blanks! Triad shouldn't be too difficult to find, and then I just have to choose one more Itten color contrast, and a few Munsells. I imagine the color scores will prove to be the most difficult, given that my subject matter typically has high-chroma colors only (who wants to eat gray candy, blech.) I'm doing one last sweep through the candy-saavy places around here, then I'll finish this up while I'm on the (kind of) break! :)

Delineation: LSTT

Line

Shape
ToneTexture

Final storyboard and text stills

Here are my final transitions for the haiku animation storyboard:
The arrows are not part of it, they're just to help see the movement of the little man across the page.

New Attempts at Web Layouts

So after not being happy with the layouts that I made Wednesday, I tossed everything and started from scratched, trying to make some new ones.

Color Photographs

Here's this week's batch of color photos!

Monochromatic

Munsell's color circle

Harmonious hue, value, and chroma

Extension of color: R & G

Bitmap vs. Vectors

Bitmaps

Bitmap images are pixel based, and can support hundreds and thousands of colors per image. This allows for a great amount of detail and tonal quality to be achieved. The millions of pixels create a very rich image, and cannot be detected unless you zoom in.

Pros:

• more colors available for each image
• details are greater
• each pixel can be manipulated, allowing for a lot of freedom when editing/altering an image.

Cons:

• an image cannot be enlarged past its original size, or the computer attempts to create the missing data where there are no pixels, resulting in a fuzzy/blurry image.
• pixelation of an image also occurs when you try to manipulate or warp it

Vectors

Vectors are shapes that consist of points, lines, and curves. They are mathematical images, allowing for more manipulations. These images are made in computer programs.

Pros:

• retains its quality, no matter how much the image is enlarged
• can be filled with solid colors, gradients, and even patterns
• ideal for things that need to be represented in multiple colors and sizes, such as logos
  

Cons:

• typically very simple in comparison to bitmaps
  
• look rather flat
  

*In their defense though, vectors have become increasingly photo-realistic lately. As it becomes easier and easier to make vectors with such high amounts of detail, artists can take the liberty of being hyper-realistic, and eliminating elements not wanted in the bitmap version while adding their own details. Not sure if this is a good thing, as it would make it hard to distinguish what is real and what is not, but the idea that artists can improve upon reality (ex: a bitmap photography) is not a new one, but now we can just scale it to fit any size we want.*

Final Marking Selection

Here are the two final versions that I am considering for my haiku:


Currently, I'm leaning toward the one on the right side. I feel like it's got more texture and completes a more cohesive set of images than the dense "nighttime" symbol on the left. I'll continue on with this second set of images for the animation storyboard.

Time and Motion notes

The most basic differences between having a flat image and having an animation is that animation allows a time-dependent exploration on changes in scale, transparency, color, and layering. Backgrounds and images can each move or remain fixed, allowing for different changes and interactions in the environment in the different layers over a given period of time.

The production of an animation begins with a storyboard, where the most important parts of the animation are laid out. This includes notes on the camera angles, soundtrack, movement, and transitions. Style frames are another essential element to the production or the animation, and contains information on the typography, colors, patterns, illustrations, and photographs to be used, along with the aesthetic tone and other formal elements.

Animation works due to the term "persistence of vision," which describes how the brain retains an image longer than it is actually shown, so when many images are shown in rapid succession, it appears to be moving. When making an animation, "key-frames" are the important frames that define the sequence, often located at the beginning and end. All of the in-between frames are called "tweens." Tweens can be automated by the computer programs, but doing tweens by hand allow for cleaner edges, better quality of motion, more accurate details, and greater control of the subtle elements.

Change in position, rotation, scale, shape, color, depth, and transparency over time are all elements of an animation that can be altered, and it's often some combination of those that make a successful sequence. It's important to note that when animating text, it is especially important that these elements to not remove the legibility or change the reading order of the text.

F+S Project 3

This is a cover for the album Sounds from the Alps made by Rudolph DeHarak in 1961. The three strokes signify the Swiss Alps, but they also have the dual purpose of representing sound waves. It's a pretty straightforward comparison to our mark making process, and a good example of using symbols as universally understood shapes.

Taxonomy Proposal

For my book of marks, I would like to do a Japanese binding to mirror the haiku, which I would like to incorporate into my book. For the dementions, I am kinda still stuck; I like the idea of having a smaller (more pocket-sized) book, like 6x6. But I'm afraid that with such a small format, the book would become rather thick, so maybe a large 9x9 size would be better?

As for the organizations, I would like to sort them first by the tool they were made with, in relation to the line of the haiku they're from.

Line 1: Crossing it Alone

• footprint
• eye dropper

Line 2: in cold moonlight...the brittle bridge

• ice
• wood
• lantern
• glass

Line 3: echoes my footsteps

• shoe 1
• shoe 2

In addition to sorting them by line, then by tool, I would like to arrange each section of marks in order of mark weight. I'd like to create some sort of flow or gradation on each page So it would go haiku line>tool used>density of mark.


The white outlines would not be in the actual book though, those were just to help me remember to stay away from the edge where it would be bound, since you tend to lose a lot of the page in Japanese page binding.

Here are a few things I'm not sure about; things I'd like to jot down so I don't forget them:

• Is 12 marks to a page too many?
• black background or white? I did the thumbnail in black but now I'm leaning towards white/ @_@
• still considering other book formats, perhaps O-binding that would allow for two-sided pages?
• paper weight thick vs thin
  

Denotative

1. density
2. dark
3. light
4. large
   
5. tiny
6. geometric shape (circular, box, triangle)
7. cleanliness
   
8. movement
   
9. tool used
10. clarity of tool
    

Connotative

1. haiku line mark corresponds with
2. loneliness
3. cold
4. brittle
5. movement
6. traveling
7. sadness
8. noise
9. strength
10. weathered
    

F+S for CDF

Pantone Color Rainbow

It's a tangible raaaaainbow!

Color Correcting

Thank goodness for photoshop, it's like my backup set of eyeballs. As we learn color correcting tools like the Hue/Saturation box, Selective Colors, and Levels/Curves, it's crazy how much nicer my colors can look. I tried to make some gif animations to show the changes in a few (although they are a bit subtle).



Like my penguins looked a little red, but with selective colors I was able to get rid of it!



And these M&Ms were supposed to be gray, but the looked rather green.

Not Quite

The element layouts are really coming together nicely! Comparing them to my first set of tries, the improvement is exponential.


This is the overall favorite of other people:
This is my personal fave (fir the first one is slowly growing on me):


Other one:
They all still need some tweaking, but they're definitely closer to being acceptable. :)

Color Color Color

Here's what I've got so far for the color photography! It's pretty easy to see which color combination each is (I hope). Initially, my theme was candy. But as I continue to take photography, I'm considered the idea of broadening the theme to something like sweets? I'll sit on the thought a bit longer though before I decide.

Triad

Achromatic

Color Vibration

By the way, I don't expect to eat all this candy, so once I'm done with it, it's a FFA for whoever wants some. :)

Urge to Make

The article "The Urge To Make Things" was a refreshing and interesting read, and I found myself agreeing with everything that Leo Lionni was saying in it. The simplicity of being able to use our hands to make something is a wonderful thing, and Lionni says it perfectly when he calls it "that magic moment of pure making, when suddenly all interface vanish, leaving the hands free to perform their assigned task swiftly, lightly..."

While working on the mark makings this week, I've been reminded of the line project a lot because of how we are looking for connections between our marks and our symbols the same way we tried to match our lines with photographs. But personally, the haiku project is more fun. Using unorthodox tools to make our stamps and smears and spots is an almost therapeutic process. Just allowing the tool to do it's own thing, then discovering serendipitous markings that are similar to our symbols is a "magical moment." I think I prefer the more hand-made projects over the ones where we have to spend lots of time in front of the computer.

CDF update

So this week we finished up with Itten's colors, and now we are moving on to Albers. I don't have any good photos of my work for this post, because my camera recently broke, and I was too dumb to remember that there is a scanner in studio that I could have used. Anyway, Albers.

Working on the Albers color relations is like working with color maaaagic. Turning 3 colors into 4 colors, or 4 colors into 3, it's interesting to see the effect that colors have on each other. Scanned examples to come later today, or tomorrow morning.