18. Craig's Self-Portrait Part 2

So with the First Thing relaunch, Craig and I have decided to slightly alter the concept of how we are going to develop our ideas for this blog. Previously, the rule to our game was that we each had to create the "first thing" that we thought of upon seeing the previous design creation. Now, we are going to explore the idea of developing the previous creation by adding, altering or in some way taking the same idea to the next level. No plans yet for how far an idea will go before we need to start again with a new creation. We'll just have to see how it pans out.

So here is a little video that I have made using Craig's self-portrait the he made on his iPad. The video was created using Motion 5 and Final Cut Pro X on my iMac.

Now it's Craig's turn for everyone to be able to see what happens next.

2015 - A New Start

17. A Fresh Start

So its been along time since i've posted anything on here! 

So 2015 is going to be a new start, Rex and myself passed around a few ideas of what we could do next and decided on a continuous bit of artwork that would be passed back and forth between us until we decided it was complete. I don't have a clue on how this is going to turn out but should be fun!

 iPad Art

So out comes the iPad and I decided to do a random little sketch of myself!

Rex over to you and good luck! 

16. The Breakfast Brand

So when I saw Craig's design for an iPhone case, I thought that I should do a little product design as well. Which product though? That was the question. The answer came to me from the name first rather than the product however. I thought to myself, "What is The First Thing everyone does each day?" The answer was simple - breakfast, of course. Or at least having a good breakfast is how everyone ought to start their day.

The New Breakfast of Champions

Branding is a big thing in breakfast and I'm not about to topple the Kelloggs and Nestles of this world. My breakfast products would be more along the style of Innocent smoothies and other similar niche players with a focus on healthier, premium quality ingredients - exactly the kind of thing I, myself like to eat and drink anyway. I also think there is a good opportunity to market "The First Thing" drinks and cereals to all the busy commuters I see on the train on my way to work who look like the ambitious, go-get-'em types that could afford my premium product and would hopefully also identify with my logo playing on the idea of being 1st.

So go enjoy The First Thing smoothies, juices and granola for "when you have a thirst for first".

15. Lights Camera iPhone.....

So after seeings Rex's video he created I knew exactly what I was going to do. I loved the video but felt it was slightly lacking in audio so needed a soundtrack. So I thought about this for a few days but then realised someone had beaten me to it! 

Rex had posted a link to our blog on his Facebook wall and one of his friends Stu Who kindly added some music to the video for us.

Web less
So after I had decided what I was going to do I was all ready to upload it to the blog and......
Boom no internet. 

I'm currently in the process of moving house and cancelled my internet connection, with my current supplier I had to give 2 weeks notice that I wanted to cancel. I presumed at the end of the 2 weeks they would then disconnect the line. But I was wrong I kindly got informed on the phone that I could get disconnected at any time over those two weeks. Oh well i'm back online now, but it did make me wonder how certain friends of mine would cope if they didn't have access to the web.

I kinda think there are two types of people those that live with technology constantly in their face who will freak out when they're separated from their device, as if their arm has been cut off, and people who feel really chilled when their separated from their device.

Luckily I fell into the latter type of person and wasn't overly bothered by the lack of connectivity as I had a chance to catch up on a few good books and just relax.


The Second Thing

Now Rex's video made me think about TV Shows and how they always have branded products and gifts. So I decided to create a iPhone case. Now i've been trying to convince Rex to get an iPhone for the last year or so so hopefully this will make him change his mind.

14. The First Thing Ident

In his last post, Craig Osgood created his own hand-made font on an iPad to use as a header for his baking blog. This made me think that we needed some kind of possible header or logo for our blog, The First Thing.

Inspiration

I briefly thought about creating a font of my own for this project, but because of having made a complete working font in the past, I knew that it could potentially end up taking a very long time to do so. My font is called eerie. I created it as part of my coursework for my HNC in Graphic Design from North Oxfordshire College in Banbury. Each letter was hand-drawn, scanned and then turned into individual vectors using Photoshop and Fontographer. If you would like to be able to use my eerie font on your computer, just let me know by posting a comment in this blog and I will be happy to send you a free copy.

Rather than create my own font this time though, I decided to do a little browsing with the help of Google Image search to see what I could stumble upon for typographic inspiration. In my student days this sort of research would have required a trip to the library or the newsagents to browse through various printed publications. The internet of course puts an inconceivable mountain-full of inspiration within the reach of a few clicks.

Construction

I knew right from the start that I was interested in making a typographic piece that would involve animation, something along the lines of the kind of thing that you see for the television network idents.  So, not only would Craig and I have our own blog, but now it would be growing into having a look, a logo and even a television station all of it's own. Imagine that, eh?

After collecting the individual images in a variety of styles of the letters that I needed, I was then ready to assemble and orchestrate the pieces together to create our title. I did this using a program called Motion which is made by Apple. Motion is unbelievably inexpensive for what it is in case anyone out there is interested in dabbling in this sort of work on a computer. It may look a bit complex and intimidating at first sight, but Motion is actually not so difficult once you break it down to understanding what the individual parts of the interface do and can focus on just looking at what you need for your task at hand. If you take the time to explore in Motion you'll find an incredible amount of power to create all manner of special effects and movements that you might want for a video project.

So here is my creation in response to Craig's last post. It's the first of what could conceivably become a series of motion graphics idents for The First Thing, which could of course also be used as intro pieces should we wish to make any video blog posts or that sort of thing in the future. Hopefully those ideas will spark even more ideas to come from Craig and myself as we continue our pass-the-baton game of blog posts.

13. ABC

Well after seeing Rex's last post, I really wanted to make Rex's digital design into a real life box (but thats for another day). 

What really caught my eye was the fonts that Rex had created by hand. I've always had a interest in typography and its amazing how many fonts are widely available online.


Creating my Own Font

As soon as I saw Rex's design I knew I had to attempt to make my own font. I'd never really thought about what sort of work went into creating a font. But after having a quick browse around the web I found a couple of options, which varied from a £800 bit of software, a website or a iPad application.

so I happily chose the £4.99 iPad application, which is called iFontmaker. The way the app works is quite simple you work your way through the alphabet drawing out your letters with a stylus.

Once you have finished designing your fonts you hit export and voila you have a font! Which is ready to use in any application from Word to Photoshop.

So after creating my font I needed to test it out. I'm currently planning a baking blog so created a little header to see what my font looked like.

12. Craig's Moon Pies

I have never eaten a Moon Pie, although the name is familiar to me. Additionally, I only just saw this old Moon Pie logo for the first time today after already finishing my own creation. I quite like that I didn't see their logo first, but I also quite like the similarities between them. My first impression of Craig's Moon Pie's was that they looked beautiful, yummy and were glowing with the love and tastiness that only homemade treats can have. The obvious quality of these creations needed somehow to be promoted to the world at large.

Snack Cakes

As a child, two of my favourite snack cakes were made by a company called Hostess. Fluffy, yellow ones called Twinkies and fluffy, chocolaty ones called Ding Dongs. They also had another amusingly named creation called Ho Ho's. I tend to not eat highly processed and packaged things like that anymore as an adult and my waistline is much the better because of it. I am however tempted by the look of Craig's homemade Moon Cakes, which I thought deserved an equally homemade and hand-crafted logo which could be used for advertising and packaging of these lovely treats. It came as a surprising coincidence to me to find out today while preparing this post, that my beloved Hostess Twinkies are no longer made as the Hostess company recently went out of business. What an interesting irony to discover the replacement offering called Cloud Cakes that have been dreamed up by another famous company from my childhood, Little Debbie's. I see that Craig is going to have some tough international competition when it comes time to market his Moon Pies.

Sketchbook

Without much planning or knowing what I wanted to come up, with I just sat down on my train journey and made some rough sketches of ideas. I did have an image in my head of the man in the moon from the famous Lumiere Brothers film from 1902 called "A Trip to the Moon". I loved watching these kinds of old clips on the television as a kid which provided a time-travellers look at the past while at the same time showing a whimsical world of imagination. Within a single train journey I had come up with an idea that I thought would suffice for my final presentation of a whimsical world of wonderful tasty treats.

Photoshop and a Wacom Tablet

After many, many years of thinking "Wouldn't it be fun to have one of those tablets that let you draw and paint on the computer?", I finally bought one last year. It was really my daughter Tabitha's interest in getting one that helped encourage me to finally buy one and indeed it was really bought as her birthday present, although she and I both have always known that I wanted to use it as much as her. So here was a perfect opportunity for a bit of computer painting. I sat down with my electronic pen and proceeded to  recreate and embellish my original sketches. And here is the result.