Brand Me: Creating a Vimeo Account

I have recently made myself a Vimeo account with the same branding as the rest of my social media. I thought it would be beneficial for me to set up an account, so I could have a professional page where all my finished animations could be found. I upload all my videos to YouTube and my blogs anyway, but they can get lost among other work and test animations.

Vimeo Account

Brand Me: Making a Promo-Pack

As I already had made myself a business card and a creative CV, I thought it would be wise to make a promotional pack. I completed the pack by making a letterhead, as well as a mock-up of a CD/showreel case and stationary. 

I'm really pleased with how well my branding has gone and how professional it all looks. I like the consistency in style and colour, and the way I have presented it above makes it look like the blue hasn't been over-used. It's definitely beneficial to me that I have made this pack, and I think it would help me further to get a physical copy; not so much the letter head and stationary for now, but I should definitely have at least a showreel and business card to hand if I attend any events or festivals, so that I can get my name out there. 

Brand Me: Creating a Showreel

In order for me to put together a showreel, I first needed to create an ident. I wanted to incorporate my Logo, so I tried a quick animation in After Effects. 

First Ident Attempt

I liked the general motion of the ident, but I felt that there was something missing. It seemed a little too simple and it didn't scream 'animation student' to me, so I thought of how I could make it do this, and I thought "hey, animating the logo might do the trick". 

As my logo is just my face, I couldn't think of a great deal of things I could animate. I first thought of making the logo smile, but I didn't think this was much of an obvious motion/gesture, and it might be easily missed because of the size of the logo in the ident. Instead, I opted for a wink, because it was more obvious and required a bit more movement that would stand out more than the smile. I also thought it was a little corny which I thought suited me quite well. 

Final Ident

I really like how my ident turned out. Making it has restored some of my confidence at animating digitally, as I avoided cutting corners this time around. Some frames did take me quite a while to get right, but I found that using the pen tool for some of the features/the longer lines helped, and I have been able to make a nicely flowing motion. 

Icon Comparison

To animate my logo, I felt that I needed to tone down the level of detail, and at first I thought the difference in style between my logo and ident animation was going to be an issue. I thought about replacing my logo with a frame from the ident, so that there would be more consistency, but I was fond of my logo as it was. In the end, I decided that this wasn't going to be an issue. The characters are drawn and coloured in a similar manner, and the colour scheme is still consistent with the rest of my work, so therefore I think it's okay that there's a little variation between the logo and ident. 

Now that my ident was finished, I could move onto putting my showreel together. I started by trying to find a suitable soundtrack to accompany my work, and after hours of searching I found one that I liked. It was just a bit too long though at one and a half minutes, so I had to do my best to make the end of the clip flow with where I had trimmed the file, as I didn't want the music to just fade out mid song. It was a painful process but I think I did a good job and it wasn't all for nothing. Besides for being for my showreel - obviously - I have discovered that I don't want to pursue sound design and editing, meaning that I'm finally starting to narrow down on what it is I want to do, because as it stands, I still have (next to) no idea. 

Showreel First Draft

I thought I was on the right tracks with the first draft of my showreel, but I think I had made some of the clips too long; especially my infographic clip. I cut some of the scenes down, which meant I had to find a selection of little snippets to fill the gaps. I had to mix them up a bit so there wasn't scenes from the same animation too close together, whilst still trying to focus on starting and ending on a strong note. 

Final Showreel

My second attempt was much better, and I'm happy to declare this as my final showreel for 2016. I showed a couple of students my showreel to see if there were any changes I could make, but I actually didn't get criticized . Instead I was praised for how some of my scenes transitioned, which was great!

Brand Me: Designing a Business Card

Having no previous experience at designing business cards, I quickly did a google search of creative cards before I got started on my own.  I particularly like these designs as they are clean and professional. They don't use too many colours and they have a nice layout, which is what I would like to achieve with my own business card.

Business Card Research

I made a couple of different designs and layouts, and made sure to make the card consistent with the rest of my branding (same logo, font and colours). I have seen and been given cards before that have had a still from an animation or piece of art work on the front of the business card (or the back, depending on how you see it), and I thought it would be a good idea to do this with my logo instead. I experimented with whether text was going to accompany the logo, and if so, where it would sit and how big it was going to be. I did the same with my contact details.

Combinations of Front and Back

I was unsure which combination I preferred, so I asked others about their preferences to see whether this would help me decide which to go for. There wasn't a definite winner, though options 1,5 and 8 were selected the most frequently, so in the end I just went with my own instinct and combined the back of 1 with the front of 5.

Final Business Card Design

Now I have a design I am happy with, I will be able to get some cards printed for when I attend festivals or events so I can hand them out and get my name out there. 

Brand Me: Refining my Social Media

Ever since that it has been suggested to me that I should change my font on my channel art, I really don't like the 'O' in my username, so I have taken the advice and changed the font that I use.

Considering Fonts

I scrolled through all of the fonts that were available to me on Photoshop, and I didn't really like any of them, so I searched through a website called Dafont.com, to see if anything stood out to me. I didn't want anything too quirky, though I wanted it to be rather simple. Here I have tried out different fonts alongside my logo. I was looking at the thickness of the text and the letter spacing and in the end I opted for 'Giraffe' because I thought it wasn't too ordinary, yet was clean and worked better than my old font. 

Then came the task of remaking my art, and getting the positioning of the components correct so that they sat nicely on my sites. Making the Tumblr background was particularly annoying as the preview of the theme isn't the same as what is shown on your page. Though it took way longer that initially expected, I think the re-work was definitely worth it. 

New Channel Art

I have since removed the standing character of myself from the channel art. Despite being fond of the piece, I felt that the drawing that I produced for Onform was a better choice, as it was cleaner and much less pixelated when blown up to a different size as I had drawn it using vectors. I still have my original portrait though however, and shall continue to show the piece on my blogs. 

Regarding the "LaurensAnimations" in my YouTube URL/Username, there isn't anything I can do about that at this moment. In order for me to make a custom URL I now need to have 100 subscribers, and I had set up my old URL when this wasn't the case and when I used the account for my Art Foundation work. The "LaurensAnimations" doesn't seem to show up usually when you search for my name, instead the link is a bunch of random letters, but it will still work as it is still associated with my account. As I can't add "Laurenimations" to my URL, I'm going to make sure to tag all of my videos with this, so that you should still be able to find my work if you search for it. 

Brand Me: Existing Social Media

For our new PPP brief, we are required to develop a creative presence, and as part of this presence we are encouraged to have set up several social media pages with channel art that will identify ourselves. Now, I've already got multiple accounts for different sites, and have actually updated my look somewhat recently, but I thought I'd take this as an opportunity to review my style and see what people think.

My Social Media Pages

It was pointed out to me that my first consideration should be the text that I use. The text I am currently using is very 50s Art deco, which is fine, but I should consider what this could say about myself and whether this is what I want my image to be. I'd never really thought about this before, and chose the font simply because I liked the look of it, though looking back over it, it might be a good idea to change. Whilst I am doing this, I shall also have to visit my YouTube page, as the links to my other blogs and pages have since been removed so now my art isn't actually pointing to anything. 

Other than that nothing was really mentioned, other than it might be nice to design some more characters like the ones I produced for onform to have on my channel art, which maybe something I explore, not only for my portfolio but for my online identity too, though I don't think this is a necessity because I like the channel art I have currently. If it is not something I follow through with now, it is definitely something I will consider for the future.