Gif Brief

My client:

So far in my project, my briefs have all been intended to work best on/as physical products whether that being the event posters or the vector logos. The gifs therefore pose a new edge to graphic design I have yet to explore that seeks to make sole use of digital art, a theme becoming increasingly relevant in the modern day. When thinking of the digitalisation of advertising therefore, social media and the rise of the instagram format is what I believe best utilises the possibilities of the gif. For this reason I have chosen my client to be a social media team working to firstly advertise Loyle Carner's new album and secondly Steve Lacy's tour, using the gif format to my full advantage in drawing the audience into the advert in a unique though subtle manner. It is this notion of subtlety that I hope to bring to the forefront of this brief, as whilst I want the gif to standout, as a designer I hope to remain aware that my main target is to communicate information instead of confusing viewers. Moreover, it isn't only social media I envision these promotional gifs could end up, but also on digital bill boards seen increasingly at modernised bus stops and town centres, once more seeking to take advantage of technology provided in the modern day.

My Gifs:

Adobe after effects gif.

For my first gif I was determined to develop my previous vector after being inspired by the range of possibilities illustrator had opened up.

As my client was Loyle Carner, I turned directly to his music to find inspiration, in particular his lyric "small man cast a big shadow" from his recent album HUGO. I became determined to find a way to create a shadow that represented the iconic lyric, landing on the idea of a transformative gif that alters between a literal shadow and the line itself.

Though advised to use photoshop as the software to carry out the gif, my research exposed how adobe after effects would be able to provide a far more interesting albeit complex gif. I also recognised my vector would have to be slightly redisgned to be his full body in order have a full shadow.

Loyle Carner first hand images

To begin, I uploaded my vector of Loyle Carner from my previous brief onto photoshop. As I had only made his torso and head and I had to make his legs. I did this by alligning the vector onto my orginal image and used the pen tool to outline his bottom half.

I then had to make my shadow. I did this by creating a silhouette of the vector I now had and cutting off the bottom from his knee. I then used the pen tool to continue his legs at an angle so It looked as if the shadow was against a wall. This took me a long time to figure out the angle that looked best.

On after effects, I used the text tool to write the lyrics and keyed the text at 1 second with 100% opacity. I then keyed the same text at 3 seconds with 0% opacity. Therefore the text would fade into nothing within 2 seconds.

I then uploaded the shadow made in photshop and followed the same process as the text, however this time it started at 0% and ended at 100%, so as the text faded out, the shadow faded in.

I then created a new adjustment layer over the top of my dissolving animation between the shadow and text.

I added a gaussian blur at 2 seconds, set it at 100% so that during the middle of the cross fade between the text and shadow, it was completly blurred. I had to set the blur at 0% at both 1 second and 3 seconds too, so that it wasnt blurry throughout the gif.

I then added a levels effect onto the adjustment layer. I changed the channel from rgb to alpha so it would only effect to transparency of the compositon. I brought the two triangles on the slider closer together so that it would crunch the transparent values.

Photoshop gif No.2

For my second gif I became heavily inspired by the rise of tour poster gifs found throughout social media, that provide an eye catching medium to sell concert tickets.

As I had recently seen a concert from musician Steve Lacey featuring signer Foushee, I decided he would be my new client, determined to use first hand images as done with my Loyle Carner gif and vector.

His recent album "Gemini Rights" has a unique aesthetic to the promotion surrounding the music, something I sought to replicate through my own gif. Primarily, the use of red, yellow and black reflects the astral imagery throughout his music with songs like "amber", "sunshine", "mercury" and "dark red" tying into the colour scheme. The use of flames is also another central motif in his work, thus like my Loyle Carner gif the poster takes direct influence from the client, reflecting how primarily my focus for the gifs was developing my skills at communicating as much as it was about learning technical skills.

Steve Lacy first hand images

To begin I created the layout of my poster. I decided to use a yellow, cream and red colour scheme with black highlights as they match the colour scheme of his new album.

I then used a photo I had taken from a Steve Lacy concert to use as the basis of my gif. I opened up the effects panel and added a halftone pattern, film grain, and torn edges effects, and adjusted them settings to my style.

I then duplicated the image and cut out the face of one layer. I then readjusted the effects to that it would bring out more details on his face. I also added two stroke effects one black and one white around his face.

Next I uploaded the halftone design of Steve Lacy to the poster layout. I cut out his body and set a gradient map to change the white to yellow, along with a black stroke in the effects panel. I also did the same previous steps on an image of his supporting act foushee. I put her in a yellow circle with a black stroke around it, and changed her whites to red under the gradient map.

I added my heading to the poster, "give you the world tour" being the name of Steve Lacy's 2022 tour. I used the fat frank font and adjusted the width and distance between the letters. I added two strokes, one black and one yellow to the text in order to make it match with my colour scheme and pop out.

To add some extra details, I began by adding text to the top of the poster which added more information on the tour, and the venues, dates and locations at the bottom. I also added two logos at the bottom left, one of his record label, "RCA" and the other the logo on the front of his 2022 album.

For the moving part of my gif, I decided to create a flame effect. To begin, I downloaded an mp3 of a flame, making sure it had a black background, to ensure I could remove it later. I opened the video on photshop using the video panel.

To begin, I added a gradient map to my flame which inverted the colours and made the video black and white. I did this because I knew I had to make the flame all one colour eventually as it had to match the colour scheme and simplistic style of my poster.

To create the style halftone vintage style I was trying to achieve, I opened up the filter panel. Similar to the photo of steve lacy I made before, I added a halftone pattern, torn edges and film grain. The combination of these effects allowed me to have a one colour flame which had used a halftone effect to add depth and edges to it.

I now needed to turn my video into a gif. I used the save for web panel to do this, but before saving the file I had to make some adjustments in the panel. I knew it would be impossible to remove the white background of the video without creating a messy edge around the flame, and I wasn't willing to spend hours keying out the flames, frame by frame. After a very long time, I discovered I could remove specific colours in the save for web panel which would then make them transparent. This was fairly easy as it was a black and white video, however there was 256 different tones and shades in total that I had to remove.

I opened my gif version of the video into photoshop, I discovered I had 182 frames. I quickly realised it would be impossible to edit each individual frame, so had to find a way to do them all together. I selected all of the frames and grouped them under one group. This way I could edit the group as a whole, then ungroup them once I finished editing.

I opened up the fx panel and added a yellow stroke of 3 pixels around the flame, along with a black stroke of 6 pixels. This way I had a yellow highlight around the flame which matched my colour scheme. To finish I used the inner glow tool to add a grainy yellow glow around the inside of my flame.

The flame was now complete, but I had to add it to my poster. This was difficult to do as the flame's size was hard to adjust due to the lagginess of the computer.

Once I was eventually happy with the placement I had reorganise the layers in order to have the flame set behind Steve Lacy and the outline of the box.

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