Nyssa's Digital Media Design Blog

In today's lesson, we began learning about rotoscoping. We first of all looked at some examples of rotoscoping on Padlet, to give us some inspiration, and get us used to how it can look. We then got to start working on our own piece of work. To do this, we first had to download a video of a buggy driving along a road, to use as our base image. We then had to open this video in Photoshop, so that we could edit it. On this Photoshop document, we had to make sure to have the correct tabs open, including Timeline, Layers, Brushes, and Swatches, so that we could do everything that we needed to. We then began editing this video on the timeline, making sure that it was first at 25fps, by drawing some lines in the water and coming from the buggy itself, on a new video layer, in different colours, and doing this for each frame as the video went along. We also added in some other colourful spots on the buildings in the background, to add to the effect that we were trying to create. Later on ...

In today's lesson, we had to use the skills that we had learnt over the past couple of lessons, to create a new character of our choice, and animate their walking sequence using a Walk Cycle Guide that we found. This piece of work, would be called "Walking In Dreamland".  For my piece of work, I found and used the Walk Cycle Guide of a dinosaur, as I find their movements quite fascinating. I placed this image into a new Photoshop document, which was 16x9cm, 300ppi, and included the Timeline, Swatches, Brushes, and Layers options, the same as our last piece of work, and enlarged it to fit the length of the canvas. I then began to draw the different parts of my dinosaur's body, each being on a new layer, and shading them in, to how I wanted it to finally look. I then centered all of these layers on the page, and made sure that all of these layers were converted into smart objects, and used the Puppet Warp option, to add some pins to each different section, so that I cou...

In today's lesson, we created a new animated piece of work, of a person walking forward. We did this, by firstly opening a new Photoshop Document that was 16x7cm, and 300ppi. We then made sure that we had Timeline, Swatches, Brushes, and Layers open on our workspace once again. We then created a new timeline, changing the fps to 25, and zooming it out, copied in an image of a walking template, from the instructions we were following,  and  then pasted this image onto our Photoshop documents, transforming it, keeping the same proportions, to fill up the full size of our canvas. We then converted this image layer into a smart object. We then created a new layer, and on this layer used the paintbrush tool, to draw a head and face onto the first diagram on our guide, we named this layer 'Head'. We then created another new layer, and drew a body for our figure, following the same method as with the head, and named this layer 'Body'. We then repeated this process, for eac...

In today's lesson, we began by installing WordPress. We did this, by setting up our MySQL Usernames and Passwords, and then using FileZilla to connect our WordPress accounts to the school's host server We then entered these details into some code, to redirect what the website does when the URL is looked up on the internet. We then had to leave this, whilst some technical issues were worked out. We then opened Photoshop to begin our activity for the day. On Photoshop, we opened a new document, with a size of 9x6cm, and which was 300ppi , to be the base of our work. We also made sure that we had Timeline, Swatches, Brushes, and Layers opened on our workspace. We then copied an image of a bouncing ball's course of travel, from the instruction document that we were following, and pasted it onto our Photoshop document. We made sure to transform this image, making sure that it kept the same shapes, to fit the entire size of the page. We then set up our timelines, changing the fra...

In today's lesson, we first of all briefly went over how to solder wires together, and the differences between leads with 2 and 3 wires within them. After this, we  went outside in our groups, to film our videos. Our whole group was back today, which helped us a lot, and we decided to film in a new location, which had a lot less background noise. We spent most of the day filming for our videos, only going back to the classroom when we needed to replace the batteries in our microphone. Once we had finished filming everything we needed, we finally returned back to the classroom, where we moved our sounds and videos from the camera and microphone SD Cards, onto our computers, so that we could edit our footage, and connect the sounds and videos together, b y using the Synchronize option.  Whilst we were trying to synchronize our work, we realised that we did not have the same amount of videos, as we did sound recordings, which meant that  we  couldn't finish ou...

In today's lesson, we continued to design the storyboards that we began designing in our previous lesson, as well as finish off our scripts and synopsis'. This took up most of the day, as in my group, we decided to redo what we had come up with previously, and create a new storyline for our video. After this, we were able to go outside in our groups, and began filming our pieces Unfortunately, one of our group members was not in and could not help us with our filming. This was quite annoying as it meant that one of us had to both film and control the sound, whilst the others acted, instead of evenly sharing out the jobs. We also chose the wrong spot to film in, as the road was very loud in our recordings, which made the talking much quieter. Because of these things, we decided to re-shoot our videos the next day instead, as it was getting dark very quickly.

In today's lesson, we began our week of creating a video piece called Strangers In The Park. At the beginning of the day, we looked at some cameras, which we would later be using to film our videos, as well as some tripods, which we would also be using later in the day, as we had to connect the cameras to them. We also had a small recap on the sound equipment that we were using last week, as we were using all of it again this week. After this, we watched a clip of some previous students' Strangers In The Park work, to give us an idea of what we will be doing, and the level of quality we are expected to produce, after learning from our Tea Pieces. We then got to go outside and practiced using the cameras that we were looking at earlier on, to help us get used to how they worked and felt. Later on in the afternoon, we started to design a storyboard, script, and synopsis, for our Strangers In The Park videos, in our chosen groups.

In today's lesson, we got to go outside with the recording equipment once again, to record some more sounds, such as walking through leaves and footsteps. We went out in a few groups to do this, and my group managed to get quite a lot of new sounds, including a few recordings of us using a piano. Theses sounds, we collected, to add to our sounds from yesterday, so that we had more choices to use, when creating our sound creations. We then returned to our classroom, and began to edit together both days of the sound recordings, to create a new sound creation, in both Premier Pro and Audition once again. I much preferred my second sound to my first one which I created previously, as I had a wider range of sounds to work with, to create a sound that had a better base sound as well as including my main sounds from my other sound creation.

In today's lesson, we continued to work on our sound pieces. We opened up our Premier Pro files that we transferred our sound recordings into, and began to play around with them to create a sequence of sounds that we thought sounded like an interesting mashup. We were also able to add in some interesting sound effects and transitions to make these sequences sound better We then transferred this sequence of sounds into Adobe Audition, where we could look at our work through both Wave Forms, and Multitrack variants, which allowed us to tone down our sounds, to play at less than 100%, as well as allow us to add in some more sound changing effects, which allowed us to improve on our work. After class, we then watched Inception, we watched this to look at the scenes and camera angles, but also to listen to the background music, to understand how it was used to enhance the feelings and emotions within the scenes, as well as listening out for and Foley sound, that we learnt about in yeste...

In today's lesson, we began to learn about sound, and how it is used in media. We began the lesson by looking at some sound-creating equipment, including microphones and boom sticks. We learnt how these worked and were able to use them a little bit, to get more used to how they worked, as we would be using them later on in the lesson, to record some of our own sounds. We then went on to look at some  examples of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds in films and tv shows, as well as some of the different types of sound jobs, and what they do. Within this, we covered about Foley sound, which is the sounds that you hear within a film or tv show, that have actually been created in a studio in the post-production stages of creation. This type of sound was created by Jack Foley, who was the first person to use an effect like this. These sounds, are usually made by using different objects to create sounds, such as pouring water to sound like a waterfall, stepping on sand and corn flour ,...