I had a short tutorial with jon on the 21st, and displayed my progress with characterization. I'm basically heading in the right direction but its not random enough. I need to come up with some really silly stuff, for instance put two random items together and see how they interact; like shopping trolley and erm... bible. He also said i need to change my venue, stop being an agoraphobe in a hole of graphic design, leave my house, go out and make up silly scenarios down the pub.
ace!
tj -x-
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Sick and Twisted - Cartoons
When we think of characterizations we think of cartoons, so i asked my 12 year old cousin what kind of cartoons she watches. She came up with...
Skunk Fu
The whole basis of this cartoon is a Ninja Skunk kicking the crap out of other cute cartoon animals.
powerpuff girls
Where 3 violently disturbed girls kick the crap out of... anything really.
The grimm adventures of billy and mandy
I think its a cartoon about the undead?
anyways its all twisted, as cartoons usually are, i mean look at Tom and jerry!
actually thats far worse than anything we see today...
I also had a look at jhonen vasquez's animated series Invader zim... thats bound to be screwed up, he wrote Jonny the homicidal maniac!
hehe - loving the aliens reference, randomly that ties into my Release the beats idea quiet well!
oh and we can't forget happy tree friends when you're combining cute with ultra violence.
tj -x-
Skunk Fu
The whole basis of this cartoon is a Ninja Skunk kicking the crap out of other cute cartoon animals.
powerpuff girls
Where 3 violently disturbed girls kick the crap out of... anything really.
The grimm adventures of billy and mandy
I think its a cartoon about the undead?
anyways its all twisted, as cartoons usually are, i mean look at Tom and jerry!
actually thats far worse than anything we see today...
I also had a look at jhonen vasquez's animated series Invader zim... thats bound to be screwed up, he wrote Jonny the homicidal maniac!
hehe - loving the aliens reference, randomly that ties into my Release the beats idea quiet well!
oh and we can't forget happy tree friends when you're combining cute with ultra violence.
tj -x-
Pictoplasma - the character encyclopedia
In researching Characterization i grabbed a book called Pictoplasma - the character encyclopedia by Pictoplasma Publishing.
I made some notes;
Armed with this i'm going to experiment with characterization ready for Thursdays tutorial.
tj -x-
I made some notes;
"I like to switch back and forth between serious and silly to keep my brain from forming into a cute mushroom cloud."
"Similar to the visual logic of the logo, characterization operates through abstraction, metaphoric density and a play with visiotypes."
"Humans respond to the image of a body."
"It (characters) has always had the potential to transmit a wider sphere of reference and meaning."
"Solely outstanding graphical qualities makes these characters universal - along with tons of attitude, emotion and appeal."
- Fons Schiendon
"Viewers have to be able to identify with the character. Appeal is the most important thing. Its true for actors in film. its true for actors in animation."
"Plain cuteness + Blunt Violence."
"We know batman, pacman and mickey mouse better than we know any scientist or nobel peace prize winner. Our heroes are all fantasy."
- Friends with you
Armed with this i'm going to experiment with characterization ready for Thursdays tutorial.
tj -x-
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Market research
So I found some 11-18 year olds! that were willing to talk to me before donning hoods and bludgeoning me for my small change with lambrini bottles.
-
I enquired about the media they're exposed to, including TV, Music, magazines, and interactive media.
-
They seemed to be a big fan of E4 and bbc 3 watching shows such as the Mighty boosh, Skins, Friends and Scrubs. There's here in the fact that all 3 shows have a dark or surreal humour surrounding them, more obvious and light hearted in the case of scrubs than in say the very black deadpan skins, but all the shows exhibit a certain morbid quirkiness about them (apart from friends which is not at all morbid and more quirky... no, predictable).
Music channels included, Kerrang, MTV (2 and Base) and Q
Mighty boosh
Skins
Scrubs
TV commercials that stood out to them were the cadburys gorilla advert, The sony rabbits advert and the orange advert with the ribbons. Again all very surreal and slightly quirky.
sony clay Rabbit advert
Cadburys gorilla advert
Magazines were kinda brushed off, music magazines such as kerrang came up. non admitted to buying lifestyle magazines such as heat or nutz, but confessed to reading "a mates copy".
-
Myspace was a very popular website of choice, facebook isn't really "cool" as you can "pimp" myspace (ie customise it), and it has those flash games in the webbanners. MSN messenger is also a huge part of online communication. I asked about computer games they played as groups. answers were; guitar hero, paradise city and pretty much anything on a Wii.
-
Music was typically chart from the various genres; 30 seconds to mars, Rihanna, and Soulja Boy were three artists that came up across the genres.
Soulja Boy
30 seconds to mars
Rihanna
Moving on from music I wanted to know about the various tribes and how they view themselves. Its not 'cool' to be labelled a sterotype at that age infact terms like, chav, punk, scene and rudeboy all seem to be derogatory terms. Yet paradoxically it seems that you have to associate yourself with an image to be cool... you just can't give yourself a label. This is really making my brain hurt...
-
I then started to think about the installation and where it could be placed. So i enquired to where my target audience socialised, which was, coincidental, out side a music shop amongst others; such as the bus, E-block (the block furthest out from the main school body) and a playing field.
-
When asked if the installation was a good idea the reaction was a simple one word, one syllable answer... "lame".
It seems it wouldn't be cool to go and "have a go with some weirdo in a t-shirt running it", and that they'd only have a go if someone else did. I asked them is the "weirdo in the t-shirt" was replaced with with someone who associated themselves with the target audience such as a guy who wore hoodies and baseball caps or a girl with tattoos and skinny jeans. They said it's only work if it was actually ian watkins, dizzie rascal or Rihanna was up there running it.
-
nice
-
Using this info I decided if i was to do the installation, (short of violent threats) I'd have to use brainwashing... i mean clever marketing to get the audience to participate. So i'll need another promotional item to promote the installation. Or i could abandon the installation idea completely. lets see how things pan out.
Using the research i gathered, i created a visual mood board, which I can show other kids.
Lots of bright colours and characters seems to be the way forward.
tj -x-
-
I enquired about the media they're exposed to, including TV, Music, magazines, and interactive media.
-
They seemed to be a big fan of E4 and bbc 3 watching shows such as the Mighty boosh, Skins, Friends and Scrubs. There's here in the fact that all 3 shows have a dark or surreal humour surrounding them, more obvious and light hearted in the case of scrubs than in say the very black deadpan skins, but all the shows exhibit a certain morbid quirkiness about them (apart from friends which is not at all morbid and more quirky... no, predictable).
Music channels included, Kerrang, MTV (2 and Base) and Q
Mighty boosh
Skins
Scrubs
TV commercials that stood out to them were the cadburys gorilla advert, The sony rabbits advert and the orange advert with the ribbons. Again all very surreal and slightly quirky.
sony clay Rabbit advert
Cadburys gorilla advert
Magazines were kinda brushed off, music magazines such as kerrang came up. non admitted to buying lifestyle magazines such as heat or nutz, but confessed to reading "a mates copy".
-
Myspace was a very popular website of choice, facebook isn't really "cool" as you can "pimp" myspace (ie customise it), and it has those flash games in the webbanners. MSN messenger is also a huge part of online communication. I asked about computer games they played as groups. answers were; guitar hero, paradise city and pretty much anything on a Wii.
-
Music was typically chart from the various genres; 30 seconds to mars, Rihanna, and Soulja Boy were three artists that came up across the genres.
Soulja Boy
30 seconds to mars
Rihanna
Moving on from music I wanted to know about the various tribes and how they view themselves. Its not 'cool' to be labelled a sterotype at that age infact terms like, chav, punk, scene and rudeboy all seem to be derogatory terms. Yet paradoxically it seems that you have to associate yourself with an image to be cool... you just can't give yourself a label. This is really making my brain hurt...
-
I then started to think about the installation and where it could be placed. So i enquired to where my target audience socialised, which was, coincidental, out side a music shop amongst others; such as the bus, E-block (the block furthest out from the main school body) and a playing field.
-
When asked if the installation was a good idea the reaction was a simple one word, one syllable answer... "lame".
It seems it wouldn't be cool to go and "have a go with some weirdo in a t-shirt running it", and that they'd only have a go if someone else did. I asked them is the "weirdo in the t-shirt" was replaced with with someone who associated themselves with the target audience such as a guy who wore hoodies and baseball caps or a girl with tattoos and skinny jeans. They said it's only work if it was actually ian watkins, dizzie rascal or Rihanna was up there running it.
-
nice
-
Using this info I decided if i was to do the installation, (short of violent threats) I'd have to use brainwashing... i mean clever marketing to get the audience to participate. So i'll need another promotional item to promote the installation. Or i could abandon the installation idea completely. lets see how things pan out.
Using the research i gathered, i created a visual mood board, which I can show other kids.
Lots of bright colours and characters seems to be the way forward.
tj -x-
Saturday, 16 February 2008
Feedback from Tutorial 14th Feb
I've decided to take a more professional approach to the tutorials, therefore I've decided to treat each tutorial as a pitch to a client, with clearly outlined visuals in a more presentable form than scribbles in a sketch book. On these two sheets I've first outlined the way the viral marketing from the installation will work with the web and mobile devices, and secondly drawn up some basic designs for the installation.
I then created a mock up animations of abstract visuals to sound, to demonstrate how the user will create thier visuals with the instruments
Its pretty basic, no where as good as some of the professional abstarct visualizations I've been viewing. such as:
Infact I'm pretty sure that I don't want to go down the Abstract Visual route at all, this is just a demostration to the client to get my idea across. Visuals havn't been worked out yet.
Right onto the tutorial...
Well... hmmm... Basically I kinda jumped the gun a bit, where is my research into visual language that appeals to my target audience? I made the mistake of grabbing an idea and just throwing myself into it with a blatant disreguard to for the audience. To be honest I want to do an installation because I want to apply for work experience at a company that do similar things. Not the best motive I think.
Start again Tom!
So its onto visuals, tone of voice of the project. What appeals to the audience, what do they accosiate with etc, how do you speak to 11-18 year olds?? Jon told me not to put all my eggs in one basket so the installtion idea is just going to be one of many solutions, I need to let the soloution be driven by the research, not drive the reseach with a solution in mind. Although I must take into account what I do and don't like to do, I don't want to be hating my project for the next 3 weeks!
Mascots seem to be safe territory as they can be used to fall back on if everything goes pear shaped. If the audience do not like the mascot, have them do stupid things, like fall into meat grinders or drink acid. I think humour will be a good way to reach out to this broad audience, and in todays climate it can be pretty sick to, i'm not saying that I'm going to create a character and push nails in their eyes, but a liberal amount of slapstick seems to be a trend these days, invader Zim comes to mind...
The tutorial finished off with Jon saying that getting appealing ot the target audience is like buying a birthday present for someone. Oh so very true... what do you buy 11-18 year olds?
I'm off to collect some visuals that are already aimed at this target audience, and write up a questionaire that will inform me of the lifestyles of the age audience... then i just need to find some 11-18 years olds that'll be willing to do some market research.
tj -x-
I then created a mock up animations of abstract visuals to sound, to demonstrate how the user will create thier visuals with the instruments
Its pretty basic, no where as good as some of the professional abstarct visualizations I've been viewing. such as:
Infact I'm pretty sure that I don't want to go down the Abstract Visual route at all, this is just a demostration to the client to get my idea across. Visuals havn't been worked out yet.
Right onto the tutorial...
Well... hmmm... Basically I kinda jumped the gun a bit, where is my research into visual language that appeals to my target audience? I made the mistake of grabbing an idea and just throwing myself into it with a blatant disreguard to for the audience. To be honest I want to do an installation because I want to apply for work experience at a company that do similar things. Not the best motive I think.
Start again Tom!
So its onto visuals, tone of voice of the project. What appeals to the audience, what do they accosiate with etc, how do you speak to 11-18 year olds?? Jon told me not to put all my eggs in one basket so the installtion idea is just going to be one of many solutions, I need to let the soloution be driven by the research, not drive the reseach with a solution in mind. Although I must take into account what I do and don't like to do, I don't want to be hating my project for the next 3 weeks!
Mascots seem to be safe territory as they can be used to fall back on if everything goes pear shaped. If the audience do not like the mascot, have them do stupid things, like fall into meat grinders or drink acid. I think humour will be a good way to reach out to this broad audience, and in todays climate it can be pretty sick to, i'm not saying that I'm going to create a character and push nails in their eyes, but a liberal amount of slapstick seems to be a trend these days, invader Zim comes to mind...
The tutorial finished off with Jon saying that getting appealing ot the target audience is like buying a birthday present for someone. Oh so very true... what do you buy 11-18 year olds?
I'm off to collect some visuals that are already aimed at this target audience, and write up a questionaire that will inform me of the lifestyles of the age audience... then i just need to find some 11-18 years olds that'll be willing to do some market research.
tj -x-
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Interaction
I want to create a interactive installation that helps young people with no background experience engage with musical instruments. This has been done before...
With guitar hero the user picks up the interface and mashes buttons in sequence, giving them the illusion that they're playing guitar. Its less time consuming than learning to play a real guitar, and loads of people from all age ranges have picked it up, most of them with no interest in making music, they play it for its virtual experience.
It would be nice if that sort of interaction could be used to create a lasting interest in playing an instrument.
The solution would be to use real instruments. Let the target users feel the weight of a guitar for example or how it feels to play a brass instrument.
The problem that I’m faced with is that people who have no musical training, generally sound horrible! Speaking form experience its not until you've mastered a few simple chords and can string a simple song together that things start to actually become fun. So I need a different type of reward system, something that will make the horrible sounds coming from the uninitiated not matter.
Case study Digit motoglyph:
Digit london Created an installation whereby the public could come along and draw onto a digital surface. This image was then given a code and when the code was entered into the Motorola motoglyph website you're given your own unique ringtone based on your image.
An example of the motoglyph in action can been seen on the Digit London Show reel, located on their (annoyingly) flash site.
Here someone who can't draw to save their life can still make some marks and get a ringtone as a reward. So what if I reverse it? What about having the sound create moving images. The user really does use the instrument to change their environment.
The bonus is that later on the user then has the opportunity to go to the soundstation website (a goal of the brief) and enter a code (given to them after they've visited the installation) and retrieve their image they made. As a social incentive this can then be shown in a facebook plugin.
Sorted.
tj -x-
With guitar hero the user picks up the interface and mashes buttons in sequence, giving them the illusion that they're playing guitar. Its less time consuming than learning to play a real guitar, and loads of people from all age ranges have picked it up, most of them with no interest in making music, they play it for its virtual experience.
It would be nice if that sort of interaction could be used to create a lasting interest in playing an instrument.
The solution would be to use real instruments. Let the target users feel the weight of a guitar for example or how it feels to play a brass instrument.
The problem that I’m faced with is that people who have no musical training, generally sound horrible! Speaking form experience its not until you've mastered a few simple chords and can string a simple song together that things start to actually become fun. So I need a different type of reward system, something that will make the horrible sounds coming from the uninitiated not matter.
Case study Digit motoglyph:
Digit london Created an installation whereby the public could come along and draw onto a digital surface. This image was then given a code and when the code was entered into the Motorola motoglyph website you're given your own unique ringtone based on your image.
An example of the motoglyph in action can been seen on the Digit London Show reel, located on their (annoyingly) flash site.
Here someone who can't draw to save their life can still make some marks and get a ringtone as a reward. So what if I reverse it? What about having the sound create moving images. The user really does use the instrument to change their environment.
The bonus is that later on the user then has the opportunity to go to the soundstation website (a goal of the brief) and enter a code (given to them after they've visited the installation) and retrieve their image they made. As a social incentive this can then be shown in a facebook plugin.
Sorted.
tj -x-
Spin - With music you can change the world
In this video the DJ can alter time and space with the aid of his decks in a very very "god is a DJ" kind of way. Its a cute little film with a happy ending and i love it!
The idea that music can change the world is nothing new, think about how musical movements have helped shape the political landscape of the past century.
I think that this would be a good angle to take, the fact that this age group, although unable to vote, can still change the world through collaboration in music.
tj -x-
www.youthmusic.org.uk
an obvious place to start would be the youth music website and see what they've done before.
There are some interesting case studies.
Sob story aside this one demonstrates that singing is a great way of getting young people involved in music as their is no additional cost, everyone can get involved and it can be done everywhere.
as natural 7 demonstrate
This clearly defines a target area of youth music (underprivileged areas), and may help me in defining my own location for promotion. If youth Music is looking to target kids who have no interest in school then school would be a bad place to set up shop.
This is what has come before in promotional material, but its clearly not aimed at 11-18 year olds.
The rest of the case studies detail initiatives that youth music has implemented. Its all about getting involved, so why shouldn't the promotional material give the audience a chance to get involved? I'm going to go down the interactive route, The audience are now users.
Strangely enough Youthmusic doesn't seem to have an "action zone" in Nottingham, so visiting them is going to require a rail card to Northhamptonshire or Lincolnshire.
its worth noting the partner website soundstation has some examples of work produced from the scheme.
tj -x-
There are some interesting case studies.
Sob story aside this one demonstrates that singing is a great way of getting young people involved in music as their is no additional cost, everyone can get involved and it can be done everywhere.
as natural 7 demonstrate
This clearly defines a target area of youth music (underprivileged areas), and may help me in defining my own location for promotion. If youth Music is looking to target kids who have no interest in school then school would be a bad place to set up shop.
This is what has come before in promotional material, but its clearly not aimed at 11-18 year olds.
The rest of the case studies detail initiatives that youth music has implemented. Its all about getting involved, so why shouldn't the promotional material give the audience a chance to get involved? I'm going to go down the interactive route, The audience are now users.
Strangely enough Youthmusic doesn't seem to have an "action zone" in Nottingham, so visiting them is going to require a rail card to Northhamptonshire or Lincolnshire.
its worth noting the partner website soundstation has some examples of work produced from the scheme.
tj -x-
Intial Reaction to the brief
A new project A new problem to solve, so I need to ask myself some new questions to get the ball rolling. The target audience is key for this project, its such a broad spectrum of attitude though, I've got to be engaging without alienating people, which will be a challenge due to the fine line of association the age group positions itself in, and the diverse array attitudes which means that what may be 'cool' to one 'tribe' may be a grandmas picnic to another. Most importantly I have to not be patronizing.
The Audience:
I have to really look into the life styles of my audience Where are the audience located? Where can the promotional material have its biggest impact? School is the most obvious answer, but what do kids think of things that school tells them? same goes for parents, can you realistically target the parents and expect the kids to listen to them? If any of these routes are taken It'll have to look like the information is not coming from a figure of authority.
So maybe its better to target areas that the audience congregates? Teenagers have a knock of colonizing areas whether they be skate parks & the backs of warehouses, or in the case of Nottingham the market square. Transportation; how do my target audience get about? Promotion on public transport and its peripherals such as bus stops or train stations.
What types of media is my target audience exposed to?: How literate are they and what publications do they read. The brief mentions Myspace, so web 2.0 would be an obvious place to promote Youthmusic, I know my little sister spends half her life glued to MSN messenger and Facebook. Perhaps a computer game could be a good vehicle for promotion?
TV Commercials perhaps? What do the target audience watch?
How Have Other people communicated to this broad audience? Not just in music.
What do the Target audience associate themselves with? what don't they associate themselves with? How do they see them selves?
What kind of promotional material appeals to the target audience? Apparel? posters? Web media? Presentations? mini festivals even?
tj -x-
The Audience:
I have to really look into the life styles of my audience Where are the audience located? Where can the promotional material have its biggest impact? School is the most obvious answer, but what do kids think of things that school tells them? same goes for parents, can you realistically target the parents and expect the kids to listen to them? If any of these routes are taken It'll have to look like the information is not coming from a figure of authority.
So maybe its better to target areas that the audience congregates? Teenagers have a knock of colonizing areas whether they be skate parks & the backs of warehouses, or in the case of Nottingham the market square. Transportation; how do my target audience get about? Promotion on public transport and its peripherals such as bus stops or train stations.
What types of media is my target audience exposed to?: How literate are they and what publications do they read. The brief mentions Myspace, so web 2.0 would be an obvious place to promote Youthmusic, I know my little sister spends half her life glued to MSN messenger and Facebook. Perhaps a computer game could be a good vehicle for promotion?
TV Commercials perhaps? What do the target audience watch?
How Have Other people communicated to this broad audience? Not just in music.
What do the Target audience associate themselves with? what don't they associate themselves with? How do they see them selves?
What kind of promotional material appeals to the target audience? Apparel? posters? Web media? Presentations? mini festivals even?
tj -x-
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