Evaluation

During this module I have learnt alot of new skills that have become quite useful to me. I have looked at Design in a new light that I had never looked at before I have now become more interested in idents and adverts that I see on television and always think to myself howon earth did someone do that? But what I have realised is that if you put your mind to it you can do anything. Overall I think I have done rather well considering I have never touched animation or web design before and always said to myself I wouldnt.

From the research I collected over Christmas I found it quite difficult at first to think how was I going to make this into an animation but in the end I found that my animation and designs fitted quite well with my subject and what I was trying to communicate. I have developed more skills in After Effects since creating the Silent Movie which I think sometime in the future I may what to develop my skills on After effects.

I think I preferred the Silent Movie animation as I found it easier to work with as there were more boundaries and it wasent to open but I suppose its all about development and experimentation which I have learnt alot in this brief its not always going to be right the first time.

IWEB I found very easy to learn and enjoyied creating my site alot this was my favourite part of the brief as it was something personal to me, even though it does have its faults and I was always worrying about it not working or losing work, my site turnd out to be quite successful in the end. I will definetly be using IWEB again alot to document my work, and also sending to other designers for work placements as I think its very professional way of working and easy to use.

If I was to improve anything it would have to be my Hair Animation because I think I could have experimented a little more with different images and type but the problem I had with this was that my first idea on paper didnt look right then once I had come up with my other idea I stuck to it, which I have been trying hard not to but I think why I did it was because I wasent to familiar with the software so I wanted to keep it quite simple. Which in a way is a good thing for me because it suited me.

I did try and push myself with it and try things I hadnt done before like the growing of the hair that was what nearly made me go mad it took me weeks to figure out how to do it but in the end it was all worth it, but I can say that I probably wont use after effects that much maybe from time to time because I would like to try out stop motion because that is something that looks more for me, but I will definetly be using IWEB again and I am looking forward to developing my skills on Dreamweaver, my options are open at the momement as I have become very interested in web design as well as typography but we will see what happens in the future.

The Best of Hair Styles....

For the Christmas Research brief, I kind of knew what I wanted to work on already but wasent sure if there was enough to go on. I have chosen to look at the best hair styles on Women looking from the 60s to today, because the style has changed rapidly and the styles in the 60s where very traditional and today which is quite abstract. I have chosen Women because they seem to do alot more with there style of there hair which gives me alot to work on.

I will be looking at the products you use to create a good hair style and the enviroment of where to get you hair done, I will start of with internet research then progress into primary research where I will be taken photographs. This will then lead onto hand drawings of hairstyles from the 60s and today so I will have a different range to look at. I will look at the simple outline of hair and working with this on the computer so I will have the different medias to look at and compare with each other.
I will also look at the different hair colours which also create a good style to the hair by using colour swatches.

Hair Styles today

Women today often look at celebrity inspiration or other women such as friends or family. I found out that a large percentage of women take a photograph of a celebrities hair style and request the hair style in the hair salon. I do think this is a good idea but I think this sometimes puts pressure on the stylist to get it look exactly right when half the time it looks similar but not perfect.

I looked at this website on L'oreal Inspiration Gallery:

Where you can get inspiration from models this is where you can search for different styles using a menu selecting whether you want blonde, brown, red etc from what hair salon and what hair stylist. This is quick and easy way to choose what hairstyle you are looking for.



I also looked at this website called Virtual Hairstyle Gallery:

This website is quite funny but I think people actually use it seriously to see if they wanted to go for a different hair style or colour they can look at how it looks like on their face shape.



This website hair style zone:

This where you can upload a photo of yourself to see how different hair styles and colours would look right for you which I think is a good to try out before you have it done even though I'm not sure it would like perfectly right but fairly similar I would expect.

Hair Cuts for 2009

The Bob



Long Hair



Long Hair is in for 2009 cropped and layered

The Cropped Bob



The Pixie Cut



Pixie started off as trend in 2008 but will be expected to see it more in 2009 spring/summer.

Hair Colour for 2009

Peroxide Platinum Blonde

Hair Styles for 2009

Milkmaid Braids


Mermaid Wave


Straight Sleek



Flowing Long



Haveing heavily volumed hair is a look for 2009.

Primary Research - Nero Hair Salon

For Primary research I went and took some photos in my Mums salon of the enviroment and products that create a good hair style.

Hair Illustrations

Here are a few illustrations that I created for my research of Hair Styles, I want to develop by doing more of these of the lastest hair styles of 2009 so that I can include them in my I web and animation.

SnipSnip

For this I was just experimenting with imagery, I collected some hair from my Mums salon and didnt no quite what I wanted to do with it but I want to use it effectivly, I did want to make it into a typographic piece but this seemed more appropriate as it was more relative. I scanned in the hair and created the style in Photoshop and Illustrator and gave it some colour to lift the figure from the white background.

Research on Hair Typography and Illustration

These letter forms are created with real hair shown above which I think is quite effective and creates a clear form to show a clear outline of the letter.


These patterns look like they have been illustrated on the computer to create a equal and artistic pattern, I think these are lovely pieces of artwork and doesnt really look like strands of hair.

From the website SHCH graphics group most of the art work is very similar to one another using different weights of lines. I like this piece of work, a letter created around with lines and shapes to form a letter form it reminds me of flowing hair in the wind spiralling.


This poster I found on Google images when typing in Hair Illustration it came up with this as I think the small illustrations are fairly appropriate to my Christmas research of the outline illustrations that I did, I really like the different colours and hair styles and I think that this style of drawing is a good way to show a style of hair.

Shown below is an image that I found from Flick r It was showing a style of hair using arabic lettering which at first was something I wanted to include in my animation to not reveal to much to the viewer until the end frame I think this is a clever way of showing the subject of Hair Styles not only is it showing an image but it is showing type as well.

Other Websites

Here are a couple of websites that I have come across in the last month or two that have really appealed to me in the way they are laid out, easy access, complimentry colour palette, easy to read and find things on the pages, nice images and photography this is what I need to take in my mind for the design of my website.

Fonts for IWEB

Here are some fonts and colours that I have thought about using for my animation and website. Looking at a number of fonts I have decided to go with the Riseling font as to me as it reminds me of strands of hair intwineing with each and its curvious style.

The colour palette is going to be left quite simple and professional using a limited amount of colours.

IWEB Layout testing

Alongside my animation I will be creating a Website to show and document my development work, testing, research etc Here are a few layout designs that show the making in the progress of how my work has developed from the start.

Here is the title of my website called Hairy which I created in Illustrator




I chose this style as it reminds me of the flow of hair this is why I chose to have the type curved.

Here is a few ideas and development for my homepage.



Here is the first design I did on IWEB I chose to have a limited contrasting colour pallete of black and grey with a little use of white. These colours I think make it look professional also Hairdressers use these colours to create a simple look.

The Hair Illustrations shown below are the illustrations I will be including for my Homepage to have something visual alongside the typography and to show the visual side of my subject of Top 10.



This is the second design of my website which includes the illustrations shown as silohettes I think the colour palette works really well on the homepage.





This design is for my Research page which will show my primary research and my inspration, and the hair styles of 2009 and the 60s. Using the same colour palette and one of my images from my Christmas Research as the the front image for this page I think works well as an opening page.




In this snap shot you can see that I tried out the Riseling font to keep in consistent with my animation but you can see that its not easy to read at all so I think I should stick with Futura for the website because it is clearer and easy to read so the user will be able to access themselves around the website easier.


As you can see I have taken a few snapshots of the final pages of my website. I am really pleased with what I have achieved and the style of the site seems very professional.