the demo reel. the final.

The reel begins with the logo that I created to represent me and a clip from the newest KMFDM (one of my favorite bands) song “Kunst.” As of now I refer to myself as a designer as A.De Sando. It’s a shortened identity of that which is me. The logo form itself is my handwriting…it’s one of my favorite parts that make up me, so I figured that would help describe me. As this demo reel is selling my work and me, I figured it was the best fit. The texture is from a brick wall that I took while I was at Redondo Beach. California in itself is and has been an inspiration for me over the last three years. The specific tie to Redondo Beach also brings in my love of music through the Morrissey song. I included all three animations that we did this semester to focus on different aspects of my skills: kinetic type, kinetic motion, & the combination.

The one line logotype made a nice transition to the kinetic type animation and all of the text falling, thus I felt it best to start the display of my skills slowly. All three animations that I included have slightly different visual themes and I wanted to make sure that the animations slide from serious to more emotional prone. Aesthetically based on my logo and the visual aspects of the three animations, I felt that it was best to transition from text to text and image to full-blown narrative story. Based on the connotation that many have from me and what I normally design, the order was also the best to leave the baby krakens at the end. I felt that of the three animations that I did this semester, the most successful was the narrative with the baby krakens so I figured that it was best to end the reel on that animation.  

logo(textured & non).

De Sando NA reel from Anna D on Vimeo.

the demo reel.

timeline. final animations.

Below are the final 5 videos for the 1950s. To keep consistency between the three chosen events(Korean War, Rosa Parks, Explorer 1), we went with a background consisting of: polka-dot pattern, solid blue color and a paper text; and the same typefaces: Egyptienne Italic & Univers Roman. My partners were Zacree Cobos & Jesse Selz.

10 second Zac - Korean War.

10 second Anna - Rosa Parks.

10 second Jesse - Explorer 1.

20 second group.

5 second bumper.

timeline. animation begins.

My rough animation of Rosa Parks.

Jesse's rough animation of Explorer 1.

Zac's rough animation of Korean War.

timeline. story boards.

my partners are Jesse Selz + Zac Cobos.

slides
1-3 Zac. Korean War.
4-6 Me. Rosa Parks.
7-9 Jesse. Explorer 1.


further work in class on beginning+middle of animation storyboard.

slide 1.

slide 2.

timeline. style boards.

Team 1 is my team and we received the 1950s decade. From that we selected three major iconic news stories that could represent the whole decade. We chose Rosa Parks, Explorer 1, and the Cold War.

style 1: yellow, pink/red tint, green, blue, polkadots, Univers.

my style 1.

jesse's style 1.

style 2: black+white imagery, blue for emphasis, Egyptienne.

my style 2.

jesse's style 2.

In class, the direction chosen by our liaison, Scott is Jesse's style 2. Our focus will be on the use of cut out black and white images, a blue+wrinkled paper looking texture for the background, Egyptienne italic for the typeface.

kinetic motion. the final video?

This is the final animation. It is not fully finished, but it is much closer than it was. I know there are still some moments that are too slow, but I really wanted to use the whole song...which is four minutes.

Long live baby krakens.

kinetic motion. some updates.

hey there.

new song choice for my animation. "Figure 8" by Ellie Goulding off her newest CD Halcyon.

the animation thus far...not nearly as far as I wanted to be, but it is as it is.

kinetic motion. the intense storyboard.

artist: Ellie Goulding
album: Lights (2011)
song: "This Love (Will Be Your Downfall)"

the intense storyboard.

When Graphic Plays Beyond Narrative/Logorama. the response.

response to: this article + Logorama(2009).

It was an interesting concept that the film used logos that are + have been seen everyday, everywhere for the whole piece. There was a lot of background that goes with each company, whether that be slogans, company motto, what they've tried to tell the public in the past and what we know about them. It adds a lot more to this piece because it brings in also our memories associated with that food, or other past memories in our life that were sparked upon seeing a logo. The overall set up of the whole film being set in Hollywood + LA really makes sense too, as that's where many people in the US want to be and where you go to be seen. Personally it brought back a lot of memories because I've been driven near LA and through "Hollywood" before...so the thought and memories of driving around and walking around there all popped in my head, which contrasted with the idea of the film, but it brought more of a connection for me to the film. So, I would say that graphic elements can really help the viewer get more involved in the piece, get a connection faster to the piece, which is really a helpful tool. If you can get a viewer emotionally involved in a piece, you can often get them to not look away; we're always looking for connections to people, places, things.

In the article it states that the video "is a carefully instigated scenario that took on challenging artistic as well as technical decisions." This is true, because they did bring in all of these different logos + companies, decisions had to be made that did not make the piece look as if it was thrown together. There is a nice fluid movement throughout the film that melds together easily recognizable logos, some that I've forgotten and some that I've never seen. The plot itself needed to have the small moments where there were confrontations or a notion made to competitive companies such as the various fast food restaurants. An interesting moment was when one of the Original Pringles man said to the other "They never want the original anymore." What an interesting moment; that could have been a direct reference to consumption in general. I mean look at technology, we are never happy with the first or old version, we always want the newer and supposedly better version. But in general, most companies change logos through the years; we're trying to find what is going to best strike someone's attention.

The one thing that the movie really had going for it that involved the graphics/logos was all of the connotation that we as consumers had with each company going into the movie. Even as I laughed along at moments with the film, or a bit horrifically looked on in some moments, the actions and gestures of the "characters" did not fully shock me. It was almost as if I had already associated those characteristics with the companies prior to seeing them be morphed into characters. Putting Ronald McDonald as the villain in the piece really makes sense; I'm not sure there is another company that has such a bright logo that is supposed to make you happy with it's bright colors, but has really taken over the whole world. I read an article a few weeks ago that McDonald's is opening a vegan fast food place in India and I think that someone recently told me that McDonald's is branching out into another fast food place. So it really made sense to me that Ronald McDonald was the villain  It was a bit ironic that he got knocked off his bike by Weight Watchers and all of the interactions with other fast food restaurants, such as Big Boy who bites McDonald's arm to get away.

kinetic motion. story+main characters.

the first plot idea.

baby krakens are alone + get more of their kind to come together + they all jump up on a pirate ship + sink it + one of the 2 original krakens die.

*the exact colors of these baby krakens are to be decided later. 

kinetic type. final version.

This is my final video for the kinetic type project. My interpretation for Mark Twain's poem "Those Annual Bills" was focused around the idea of bills piling up. I added in the feeling of overwhelming, overpowering and the idea of being consumed through the visual rendition of the word placement on the screen. I portrayed the idea of when you start to lose your mind, become disoriented or start to freak out and hear a ton of people talking at once, but only snippets in the use of audio. I chose an interlude to a song that had a couple different people talking about various things, thus only hearing one word or a couple word phrases in each conversation.


De Sando NA report from Anna D on Vimeo.

kinetic type. half step progression.

kinetic type. the firsts.

This concept is being further defined since my last post.

the concept.

This is all basically the same. I am still going with the lines of text dropping like bombs. I want each statement to be impactful and thus believe this can be accomplished through the hard drop of each line. My thoughts are to currently drop the first line in the stanza in two different drops, because it is the repetitive and most important line of "These annual bills." 

the typeface.

Helvetica Neue LT Std. Specifically the type when it first falls in will be 27 ultra light condensed and become 95 black. Based on the screen size and initial testing I think the light condensed type will drop in at 12px and grow to black to be 146px.

color scheme.

I really just want to stay with the contrast of black + white. I want to play off the fact that he was a writer, and thus the two most common colors related to writers is black + white.

the music.

checking out some instrumentals that I found recently, seeing if I think any will work well.

the first test in AE.

This is really bad + not even where I fully wanted it to go, but my first solo attempt at After Effects. That Ultra Light is so light, you can't even see it here. 

mock up/storyboard.

first shot/blank.

first movement/drop down of first line. 

first line dropped+stuck. 2nd line drops.

1-2 lines dropped+stuck. 3rd line falling.

1-3 lines dropped+stuck. 4th line falling.

all lines dropped+stuck, then drops the title.

close to end. all lines of poem drop down + poem starts over+continues dropping.

end image?

The Gift. the response.

The Gift from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.

“The Gift” is a short sci-fi film that takes place in a futuristic looking Russia.  This is a future in which technology is heavily rooted in the everyday life; where your identification can be taken from a machine that reads your saliva. I still don’t fully know how to feel about the whole film being centered on an upper ranking man in society wanting to see a unicorn; the unicorn, which is miniaturized and hidden in a box that opens with some special piece of hair. Then again, the viewer never gets to see the miniature unicorn, so it really could be anything that is in the box. And then it is odd for me that the higher-ranking man then is killed.

The theme that I get from this film is knowledge is deadly; put more simply, this film could be visually representing the story/proverb of curiosity killed the cat. This then would teach people to just accept what they have and is given, not hoping for something more.  This message could be further seen through the depiction of Russia being similar to how it may have been during the Cold War, or at least how I think security and all was similar to. There were not many people out in general; police looking forces mainly guarded the town/city.

The main emotions that I received from this piece was fear/the fear of a higher-ranking people or organization to be watching your every move. This was shown in every scene, as the film camera and we were always looking down/centered on the gift deliverer. It was interesting for me and I was not expecting the dead man’s robotic servant to take the box and run away with it; it is almost a major disconnected moment for me and I don’t know how to interpret it. Did the robot actually know what his boss has been up to? Was this moment to show again that knowledge is powerful and can get those close to you killed?

kinetic type. the concept.

My personal taste in poetry would not have selected this poem, so I started with a lot of difficulty in figuring how to portray this piece. So, I looked at this assignment as of assigned by an employer/client. As I just about always start out, I went searching on the Internet. From that I gained some more background information on Mark Twain, and what little information there was on the poem itself.

the poem itself.

-focuses on the debt+paying bills

-no deeper/hidden message

-full of humor

-poem could be about the growth of children to adults, which often develops somewhere between college/debt age with and the

the author.

-not known for his poems at all

-Twain got into some really horrible debt because he was bad with money
-he was able to pay it back through his friend connections for a job
-he had friends in many high places+throughout the world

-he was a american author+humor writer

the concept.

I want to drop the words of the poem onto the stage/screen like bombs from above. My focus is for each word to cause an impact, just as each bill does, adding one on top of the other. I am not sure if it would cause more impact for each line of text to nestle slightly on top of the line before or if each line should start to crush or stack on the line before them. The words will drop from the top really small, but by the time they reach the page/surface they will be larger to cause impact. This all following along the reality of bills piling up and becoming massive.

typeface wise.
I am thinking maybe a shift in weight from when the text first appears to when it hits the bottom of the stage or a shift in weight after the night before it finishes falling on it. I don't know at this point if it should be a serif or san serif. Initial thoughts were to have a serif and be similar to a typewriter, as Twain was a journalist+writer, but, I feel a san serif would cause more impact and be easier to read. I want to add music, but am currently nervous to even think what would be the best to use, due to my previous bad experience with choosing.

similar video?
There is one video that I keep thinking of. It uses repetitive image on the stage to reinforce the video message. I want to do that, but use only type. It is simple, yet impactful.

kinetic type. the basics.

what is it.
the movement/animation of type to effectively express the information. basically this is the way to put the emphasis where it needs to be for the most impact.

what i think about it.
There was brief work with this concept last year and that is where I started to see the importance of using animated text. It really is a good tool to use to help move the focus of the text where you think it should be for the audience to get the most out of what you or the text is trying to say. Instead of only being able to vocally show emphasis on a particular word or phrase, you can also do that by making the text larger, or having that text spend a larger amount of time on the screen.

The examples below are ways that I hope that I will be able to use kinetic text in the future. I not only want to bring emphasis to spoken words, but also create images with text that help to further explain the message. Kinetic type allows the words to make a larger impact by often visually illustrating the message.

examples of it.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.
I was sent this video last year. The video is alright, it could be better, but I'm not totally sure how that could be done and work well. This was the first video that I thought of when I read about kinetic type. It is a pretty much how I think spoken word poetry/quotes should be like when visual represented. The progression of the words appearing on the screen tries to follow in the rhythm of the speaker.



78RPM - MP3 | 70 Years of Revolutionary Protest Music from Dan Flynn on Vimeo.
I thought this video was pretty effective. It combined the music and lyrics connotation with the visual connotation of the lyrics. I think the transitions could have been run a bit smoother or more rough; it was a bit of an odd transition between songs. But it was cool how the lyrics were presented, especially in the first song.



Typography in Motion from ilovetypography.com on Vimeo.
The most exciting part for me was that this piece highly educational. I really enjoyed how some parts of the video had the exact lines that the narrator was reading, as well as other times when using depth or other images help build up to a quote. What I loved the most was the end composition based off of the whole set up of the statements during the video. I feel that in general that is how typography should work, each line should help build the composition, but it is the overall view of the product that is most important.



My favorite video that I found. I had heard the song/words before on the Tom Waits' CD. But I felt that the visuals really went with what I had thought of a bit when I heard it. When there was the key moment of noise or a phrase, it was nice to see that the type movement corresponded with it.

MK12. the presentation.

I actually had heard of and done some look into MK12 before I was assigned them. It was actually an interesting moment for me, because I had not heard of too many studios in Kansas City; so I was excited to receive one that I knew a little about. After I went more in-depth in the studio, I realized that they have had quite a few well-known clients or commercial pieces. The Common video that they directed was actually one of the few videos that I remember from growing up. I remember the video not fulling making sense to me, but I thought it was a interesting concept. I understood the video better later, but still find it interesting that it made such an impact on me in the past; could have been the world's way of telling me that one day I would work in the design field.

MK12 is "a design and filmmaking collective with acclaim in both commercial and artistic arenas." They enjoy testing the barriers "between narrative structure and experimental storytelling though juxtapositions of live action, graphic design, nostalgic influence and new technologies." Their work has won awards in different categories. They were established in 2000 and are currently, based out of Kansas City, MO. They teamed up with The Ebeling Group, a Los Angeles based production company in 2003 and still continue to do work in their name. MK12 has done work for the film industry with Quantum of Solace(2008),The Kite Runner(2007), and Stranger Than Fiction(2006). They have also done with with international film festivals, exhibitions, and music videos for Hot Hot Heat, Common, Jack White and Alicia Keys.


the links.
home
the about+ CV
demo reel
honda
most recent video
common go
quantum of solace
the ebeling group