Procrastination Studios

Click on the image above to check out the video we saw in class. There are several more examples of creative work using Adobe programs at the Adobe Design Achievement Award winners.

Some of you have been using Adobe Photoshop to design your logos and posters. A couple groups have even tried using Adobe Illustrator to animate some of their work. I have located so great resources for these programs and used them to create a retro version of the Bearcat logo.

Here are the links to the tips and tutorials.

Photoshop Actions – Actions in photoshops can be used to complete a complex series of tasks with one click. You will have to download the shortcut to a folder in your Program folders. I used an Action to create the box above in one click.

Texture to Images – I used this tutorial to give my image a grainy look. Adding a textured layer with varying levels of opacity can do some interesting things to your image. You can also edit

Illustrator Tips – There are some great samples of the many things that you can do with Adobe Illustrator at this link. This includes making customized backgrounds and drawings, this could be very useful for designing your movie posters.

Here are two great links to have a look at. Please share your thoughts after you watch them.

J.J. Abrams on TED Talks

Abrams is a director of film and tv. His resume includes Lost, Alias and Mission Impossible 3 to name a few. In this entertaining presentation he discusses the source of his creativity and points out some great examples of mystery in other films.

Life After People

The teaser trailer for this show includes an explanation of the planning and storyboarding. Interesting to see how they came up with the ideas and the visuals for this show.

We will start shooting our music videos when we get back. In the meantime, here is a creative video from an Argentinian site. The quality is better here.

Here are some ideas that I have found creative:

Flags as graphs

This graphic was compiled using statistics. It was originally created for a Portuguese magazine but someone has translated the various images here. I thought it was a very original idea to use the colors of a country’s flag to represent data about that country.

Innovative Architecture

This is a conceptual design for a possible building in Dubai. The idea is that the structures at the top of the towers would be covered by condensation emitted from the building itself creating an artificial cloud around the building. You can read more about it at the New York Times.

Internet Geography

A web design firm in Japan are designing a Web 2.0 map based on the Tokyo subway. This is actually the plans for the latest version which will have different layers of information about the sites on the map.

Image source: www.nowsourcing.com

For today’s class, we will start by answering these questions on your blog:

What is creativity?

What part of the brain focuses on creativity?

What are some examples of something you find creative?

How does your group come up with ideas? (e.g. discussing, drawing, showing each other examples on the web)

After answering these questions, we are going to try and re-examine our storyboards with a hands on approach. We will need scissors, marker, paper and some imagination.