Unit 9: Characteristics and Contexts In Media Communication (Fashion Photography): Part 2

Oops, It Happened Again.

Well shoot

Despite my best efforts to save on memory, I still ended up reaching the limit for part 1, so once again I'll have to split this into two parts. (good thing I had the snipping tool on my side to at least delay what seems to be inevitable):

But on the plus side, it does mean I'll no longer have to deal with this box popping up every 5 seconds when I'm at my house anymore

Yeah, so whenever I've been blogging at home as of late, there'd be this text box that would pop up every 5 seconds saying the post couldn't be saved due to network issues even though my home internet hadn't gone out at the time, I know this because when I hit Ctrl and S at the same time the post would suddenly save and I could refresh without losing any changes (so there's a potential hack to prevent yourself from losing work), this only seemed to happen when I typed directly into the blog however, as when I captioned images the box didn't seem to come up as often (which is why near the end of the first part I suddenly switch to mainly keeping the text to a minimum), but now that I'm in the second part it hasn't happened thus far. (so maybe the real reason there were network issues was that Wix was having trouble processing the whole thing at once) But enough complaining about techno-nonsense, here's the image I tried to put in the first part but couldn't:

Guyzo has turned out to have quite a unique shadow on his head due to the spanner on his head (or should I say Span-hair since it's made of his hair), as a result his head took the most time to shade out of all the characters. Now that that's been cleared up, it's time to add shading to final character in this image, that being...

Detective Griswold

One thing that'll likely make Griswold different from all the other characters is his trademark fedora, because much like Cartridge's hat, this means there'll be a shadow on his head. What makes the fedora different from Cartridge's... umm... Cartridge is that since the fedora extends outwards in all directions, it means there'll be a much bigger shadow in general as you're about to see in the next snipped screen cap:

I suppose shading his body just got a whole lot simpler than I expected

With that being said, it doesn't cover everything, so there is still some work to be done mainly with the hands:

at least that's what I would say, except I forgot that I gave Detective Griswold gloves too

yup, when I went to steal the base colours from the first image I made of Griswold, I ended up realising "oh wait, I gave him gloves!"

Luckily I was able to add them in by simply adding the glove area to one of his hands and colouring everything white and grey (since there are shadows now)

It was just a matter of colouring everything white or grey and removing all inappropriate lines

So remember when I said I could apply the method I used to change the colour of the letters to other objects?

Here, I've decided to use it to make the ring on Griswold's notebook a golden yellow colour so that it wouldn't blend in with the rest of the out line (to be honest, I think this method might be here to stay at this point)

And at long last, Detective Griswold is finally finished

you know what this means, I'm finally done with the first image of the lot for the time being (even though I finished it after I already finished the second one):

It's about time I got that done

This image ended up taking way longer than I'd expected it to because of all the characters I decided to throw in there at once and to be honest, I think maybe I should have saved this one until last because then I could have worked my way up to this, but it's out of the way now so I don't have to worry about it much again at least. (although because this took so long to do, I couldn't quite get around to doing the video during the weekend, I'll have to do it on Wednesday)

Here, I've decided to make Super Sheep's ears flap as he runs in order to add a little bit of realism to the situation

For this hand, I've decided to take what I drew and simply rotate it using the select tool and the free transform feature

The reason I'm doing this is to save myself from drawing the same hand over and over again (since doing that wastes valuable time)

Just applying a little squash and stretch to the ball here

The reason I'm doing this is to convey that the basketball is moving quite fast, a lot of cartoons apply squash and stretch in order to really sell the impact of a a given object and/or character (whether they be colliding into other objects/the walls or even just to give off the illusion of changing speed)

We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Another Project Management Update

look at that, it's the week I'm due to start cartooning

Luckily, I'm on my third image so far, meaning once I'm done I'll be a third of the way through the cartooning process. Thus far I'd say I'm still on track to finish, and once I get those basketball images done I'll be doing the studio pictures (where I'll be doing one character per image because it's supposed to be like they're all at a fashion shoot)

We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program

Here, I realised I made Ruff Bup too tall, so I decided to erase a piece of his upper body and lower the rest of it so that I wouldn't have to do all that work again

well this select tool is turning out to be quite useful

Here, I used it to select Ruff Bup's eye and then moved it so that it looks more like he's actually looking at Super Sheep as he steals the ball away from him rather than just staring straight ahead.

Ok, so now I have to go and erase pieces of the reflection to make it look more realistic

The reason I didn't do this last time was because the bottom of the image ended up covering most of the body anyway, but here this isn't the case as much so I have to go in and rub out a piece of the reflection using the eraser tool (specifically the softer settings so that the transition will look more gradual)

3/12 images finished, we're a quarter of the way there

this image wasn't nearly as painful to make as the first one because this time there were only two characters rather than seven of them at once, although I didn't think I would end up actually having to rub out a part of the reflection since I assumed the bottom of the image would cover the whole thing like it did on the first image but it did end up happening with Ruff Bup in this image so I ended up being half-right on a technicality, but overall this image was quite fun to make (much like the second image where Billy and Cartridge were doing that famous basketball shot) and now that I'm looking at Ruff Bup standing next to Super Sheep, he doesn't look as out of place as I originally thought he would (probably due to the the fact that he and Super Sheep both have shading on them, thus unifying the aesthetic a little bit more)

Once Again, I'm drawing the characters more up close and personal so I'll be able to get a lot more detail in there than I would if I was doing a full body shot

Because of the fact I want Cartridge and Billy to do a high five, I'm thinking about drawing both characters in the same layer rather than separately so that I can more easily make the characters hands seem like they're colliding with each other

Since I'm trying to replicate the fonts this time around, I'll need to use both the Slamination Studios logo and the logo I made for the Slam-Jammers, this way I can make sure that I'm getting the details right when I draw them in later

I couldn't quite find the logo I made so I opened word, selected the Ravie font and simply typed out the remaining letters instead

Unfortunately, I didn't quite manage to leave myself enough room to do the S and the exclamation mark but I think this looks ok.

After much deliberation about whether or not I should keep Billy and Cartridge in the same layer or not, I decided that it would be much easier in the long run if I just keep them in separate layers, since doing so will allow me to reposition the characters on an individual basis rather than doing both at once

Now to take a little bit of feedback to heart

So when I showed some of my friends the first image, one of them actually pointed out how the shadows on the nose wouldn't go all the way to the bottom of the face, so I'm going to take this into consideration from here on out and if I get time at the end, I'll edit the old pictures to fix this.

4/12 images have been finished

Much like the previous image, this one wasn't too much of a pain to make, in fact it was even simpler to make because I don't need to worry about doing a full shadow or the reflections of Billy and Cartridge because you don't get to see their legs in this image (it was just the ball I needed to do this for since it was so supposed to be far away from the camera, now that that's been taken care of, it's time to take a break from the image side of things as we follow up with what I did on that second fashion video (which isn't finished yet)

The Second Fashion Video

This was just an animation stream today because I forgot to put the background video files on Penfold (my pen drive for those of you that are new here), this might be a good opportunity to use Premier Pro to edit the whole thing together instead of Share Factory Studio for a change since Share Factory is quite limited due to only being meant for editing compilations of gameplay footage and let's play videos (so that'll be something to look forward to), but enough about editing software, let's discuss what I did in this stream.

Today, I did all of the animation for the 5 characters that'll be used in the second video (Elfrix, Ruff Bup, Captain Cartridge, Billy Billson and Super Sheep), I did this by animating each character in 5 separate 2 second scenes. (one character per scene) I was originally thinking of animating them all at once but before the stream began, I decided against doing this because when I was making the models, I made the sculptural detail on the bodies of the various characters as high as the game would allow in order to make the textures as high quality as I could, as a result, putting all the characters in the same scene at once without compromising the quality of the textures would prove to be impossible to say the least so I ditched the idea entirely in favour of giving each character their own separate two second pink screen scene... Well except Elfrix, he got more of a dark green background for his scene because his body is pink (so pink screen wouldn't have worked good), his hair is green (so it's a no on the green screen) and a blue screen wouldn't have worked well either because the text would have become see through. (so I figured the next best thing would be to make his background a solid dark green colour so that it doesn't ruin his hair by making it see through)

Doing the animations themselves proved to be quite a quick process since I knew I was only going to be animating around two seconds worth of footage for each character (which adds up to around 10 seconds of actual footage), this was to be expected since I'm animating very little compared to what I would be doing for a project like The Grand Lamppost Heist where I'd have to animate the characters doing all sort of actions such as running, jumping and all that jazz, where as here all I'm doing is having them stand there and strike a pose of some sort (which is much simpler by comparison if you ask me)

For the lighting of these characters, I did decide to make a few last minute alterations in order to take advantage of that update I mentioned about back in part one before I began (the one where they made the maximum sun brightness 1000% as a pose to just 200% before hand), speaking of that update, I found that one of the other new features to be quite helpful indeed. For you see, this other feature relates to the timeline gadget and zooming in in order to make the timeline bigger, as now when it's zoomed in far enough (when the timeline is set to "seconds" mode and not "beats" mode), it'll automatically switch from seconds and milliseconds to frame numbers (thus allowing for more precise animation control than ever before), while I didn't take advantage of this too much, I get a feeling it'll be really helpful during the "engaging with audiences" unit and the final major project for this year, since those are the only other units that involve any practical productions happening unfortunately (meaning only two opportunities to create new intellectual properties within my time at college), so I'm guessing that drama's been nixed after all, it'll be a major downer if it's true, as this would have been a really great opportunity to see if I've improved on that front since high school, but I'm getting off topic.

I can't wait to finish that second fashion video (preferably either tomorrow or during my four day weekend), as afterwards it'll be full steam ahead on the remaining eight pictures.

Editing The Video

Ok, so for this video, I'm going to be using Premier Pro to get the video edited together, that way I don't have to deal with the limitations of Share Factory (considering the fact that I'm going to want to add things like reflections into the video and Share Factory only lets me use so many layers:

Meaning I'll be using my creative cloud for the first time in about a year or two

Ok, so I seem to be a bit of an issue getting in right now

Even switching laptops doesn't seem to fix anything, so if I can't find a way to fix this I'll have to go back to doing the picture side of things:

I'm in!

Now I can start editing the video together:

This may be a little bit more complex than I initially thought

I've only got a very limited understanding of this particular software given how little I've actually used it on this particular course (mainly because of Video Games), so it'll be fun to edit something without the aid (or even the limitations) of a PlayStation for once.

So importing the videos and music is proving to be quite easy so far

Now then, let's see if I still remember how to do this

Remembering how to do this is turning out to be a lot more difficult than I'd initially realised so I gave up and asked a friend for help:

After she told me I needed the "effects" button, I then needed to add in the "ultra key" effect to Super Sheep, afterwards I went into "Effects Control" tab and then select the key colour and viola, Super Sheep's real

Ok, this is a bit of a problem

it seems I've failed to account for the camera's position for when Ruff Bup is walking

Luckily for me, I'm able to actually re-frame him so that it doesn't look like he's been pasted in as much

If this was Share Factory, I wouldn't really be able to do this unless I went back into Dreams and re-recorded the whole thing but with the camera in a slightly different position, but since this is premier pro, I can just reframe the clip as if it were a layer in Pixlr, even if it does mean Ruff Bup does end up a little bit blurrier than the rest if his friends. Of course, that's something one should avoid doing as much as possible, but since I'm trying to get this done quickly due to not having this software at my house (mainly because when I logged into my creative cloud at home about a year ago, my computer wouldn't let me use premiere pro because my hardware was too weak)

I figured out the text tool (once I figure out how to change fonts I'll be on my way to victory

With a little bit of help from my tutor (because I barely use this thing), I was able to figure out how to replace the text font since I want the text to be the same font as the actual text on the jersey so that it'll flow better with the branding of the actual team.

Although despite my best efforts, I can't seem to find the font known as "Ravie" (so that might be a bit of an issue)

Now for some reflections (and shadows too if I can figure that part out)

The reason I want to add in reflections below the characters is to make the whole thing seem much more real than it does at the moment

I figured it out

Turns out all I had to do was duplicate the video, flip it upside down and then mirror it, place it below Super Sheep and afterwards I could make it transparent in order to mimic the reflections in the real sports hall.

Ok, so Ruff Bup's turning out to be an unexpected issue because his reflection actually transcends the floor (likely due to how he went downward slightly in relation to the screen)

This looks like a job for keyframes! (if I can find them that is)

Ok, so after doing a quick google search, I found out the button is actually one of the grey clocks that's next to the names of the various effects in the "effects" panel

I also had my friends to help me out as well as we all tried to figure the keyframe feature out together (it was a difficult process but eventually the internet ended up coming in handy)

And now all the characters have their reflections

The Next logical step from there would be to add in the shadows too (this should be a more straight forward process now that I'm finding my way around Premiere Pro a little bit more)

I did it, I finished the video at last

as it turns out, doing the shadow was actually quite straight forward after all, not quite as straight forward as I was expecting since I had to copy the videos again and then turn off the uniform scale feature and only then can I make the colour correction black and then make it transparent, but I'll tell you this, it was a lot more straight forward than trying to figure out the keyframe tools and even remembering how to do the chroma key again. Now all that's left is to render the whole thing out, put it on Youtube, talk a little bit about the whole process in retrospect and then it's full steam ahead on the photo side of things again.

Ok, so I can't quite find "MP4" in the export menu

Right now I'm trying to figure out what the best alternative would be from all the options available with the help of my tutors.

Never mind, we figured it out in the end

Turns out, the best alternative was actually a file type called "h.264", as that file type essentially saves like it's an MP4 anyway as you can see from the fact that in the screen shot above it says "Introducing; The Slam-Jammers.MP4" and not "Introducing; The Slam-Jammers.h.264", while this exporting process ended up being more complicated than I'd originally anticipated, it's time to stick the final video on YouTube.

The Finalised Video

After a whole day, I did it! I used something that isn't a PlayStation for once.

So How Was editing This Video?

Well if I were using Share Factory Studio to make this, I would probably say that the whole thing was more or less smooth sailing and then this bit of reflection would devolve into me rambling on about how I wish I could have added in reflections and shadows but couldn't due to the limits of the software and all that wonderful jazz. However, this video is special because I didn't use Share Factory Studio to make this video for once, since I forgot to actually put the raw video footage on Penfold (again, this is the name I gave my pen drive for those of you that are new here), but I have to say that doing this has ended up being more of a blessing in disguise because it ended up being a golden opportunity for me to use more a powerful (and not to mention more conventional) editing software in the form of Adobe's Premier Pro, which makes this the first time I've utilised the creative cloud since the time I tried to make a lyric video as a contingency plan for in case my main "Escape From The City" music video ended up falling behind production wise, but I'm getting off track. (but this does go to show how a better editing software can lead to an overall improvement for the production value of whatever projects I decide to make in the future)

Actually using this software was certainly an interesting experience to say the least, as I ended up having a difficult time remembering how to do the Chroma keying at first (likely due to how I was so used to to doing this part in Share Factory Studio), but with a little bit of help from my friends I was able to really hit the ground running in terms of getting the characters in the real world and I have to say, I think it looks even better than it would have done in Share Factory Studio.

With that being said, it was a bit of a pain to figure out how to use the software again (specifically trying to add in the reflections, re-framing Ruff Bup so that he didn't look like he was pasted in there, ext) because I hadn't used it in so long but I think with enough practice and memorisation of the various features, I think it'll all be worth the struggle I went through today.

When I went to gather feedback, a lot of my friends and tutors seemed to really like the video, although one person did end up pointing out how the ball Billy was spinning was quite small (she ended up quite liking this fact but I just thought I'd mention it here), but I think I'll keep the ball like that because if I wanted to make it full size now I'd have to go back into Dreams, resize the ball, rerecord the animation and then replace the original footage with the new footage.

If I were to do this part again however, I would probably just take 5 more pictures using the stills camera because the shakiness of the footage kind of ruins the illusion of these characters being a part of the real world (although I must say the lighting looked surprisingly good in front of the backgrounds), and I'd try and give all the characters their own unique fonts that best suit their different intellectual properties (which was something I was actually supposed to do but then forgot to because I was too busy figuring out how to add in reflections and shadows and the like), but other than those areas, I'd say the video's pretty decent. (at the very least I can say it's better than the studio video on the virtue that I put a bit more effort into it)

That being said however, there is one big elephant in the room I'd like to address before moving on to the image side of things once again:

And it's right in the storyboards I made in part 1

You see, the original idea was that I would have Billy run across the court dribbling his basketball in order to show that he has the most experience with the sport (come to think of it, I also ended up accidentally changing Super Sheep's pose from what it was supposed to be too, this is the kind of thing that can happen when you forget to put your storyboards onto your phone, but I think Super Sheep dropping down from the air suits the character better anyway because it shows he's gained more of an understanding of the super hero landing since his Convention F-3 short), but since I forgot to actually record footage where the camera would move from one end of the sports hall to the other, I ended having to do something else instead which is why I landed on him spinning the ball instead. Now that that's been cleared up, it's time to get back to the image side of things.

Back To The Image Side Of Things

Since this'll be the last image before the first cover gets made and I've already been going through the process and discovering all sorts of interesting challenges, don't expect as many screencaps this time around unless I find even more interesting challenges along the way. (I know it's become a bit of a pattern for me to say this and then end up contradicting myself later on, but this time, I really don't expect there to be as many screen cam worthy moments this time around)

Here, we can see what happens when characters need to appear as if they're farther away

Much like how you draw the character bigger and more detailed if you want them to appear closer to the camera, if you want a character to appear farther away, you simply draw the character to be a lot smaller depending on the distance they're supposed to be from the camera. As such, this means the character in the background has to be detailed because the space between lines is a lot more cramped and thus everything needs to be simplified to the point where even the "Slam-Jammers" text just becomes yet another set of lines (this actually happens all the time in cartoons, with the new "Jellystone" show being a fairly recent example):

Here, we can see that Top Cat's gang are drawn fairly simplistically in this frame due to how natively small they are here

But then suddenly in the next shot (when the characters are closer), suddenly the characters are drawn with more detailing (I.E: they now have eyeballs instead of simple dots for eyes)

For Billy's whistle, I've decided to add in a few lines and the word "Toot!" in order to really sell that Billy's blowing his whistle at our hero for cheating the training exercise (and onomatopoeias are fun)

5/12 Images completed

Well then, making this image proved to be quite easy, but one of the parts I found most interesting was actually doing Billy's reflection, as I ended up finding a solution to that problem I was having with Ruff Bup and Elfrix where their reflections didn't quite line up with both of their feet. Turns out all I had to do was rotate the reflection slightly and it looked way better than I expected it to. (so that'll be something to keep in mind if I ever do this again in the future)

Now I can already tell this image will be different from the rest

The reason this image is going to be different from the rest is because unlike all the others where I had a horizontal frame to work with, this time I'll be delving into the realm of vertical imagery (which is something I typically never do)

The trouble was that I didn't know which dimensions to go with at first

After looking up what the typical dimensions of an average magazine cover on google and then translating it into pixels (meaning a size of 8X10.5 inches would become a resolution of 800 by 1050 pixels), I think I've finally got the means to begin doing the cover.

The main difference is that because I did the resolution beforehand, I had to copy and paste the background image into the main project

For this one, I think I'll draw the character before adding in the text, that way when it comes to adding in the text later, I can add it in around the character rather than drawing the character and altering the text as I progress with the character

In order to save time drawing a second M in the "Jammers" part of m.y logo, I decided to copy and paste it and move it somewhere else in the image (that way I don't have to draw it all over again)

So now I've finished Billy's pose, it's finally time to actually make this into more of a front cover by adding in the text boxes (which means it's time to add in a bunch of parody text)

And I've got the perfect name for it

I've decided to call it "Fashion-ation", I came up with the name in the same way I came up with "Slamination Studios", I combined the words "animation" and "fashion" into one single word, the reason I did this is because this is supposed to be like a normal fashion magazine but with the twist that all the models are cartoon characters that have been integrated into the real world (and I figured the name "Fashion-ation" would communicate this fusion perfectly)

Now that the name's been sorted out, it's time to pick a suitable font

I found the perfect font, it's called "Laudya Bloods"

I quite like how the letters look with this particular font because it feels quite cartoony while also looking somewhat professional within the context of fashion.

Now that I've found the font (and made it bigger so that it would be more readable), now I just have to pick a good colour that contrasts well with the background and Billy while at the same time blending in with the branding I've got thus far

oh, what's this now?

I decided to see what it would be like if the text had a gradient effect going on and I've got to say, I quite like the way it looks thus far because now that there's two colours fading into one another, I can more easily pick something that contrasts the background and Billy at the same time.

And now to add in an outline for it in order to make it contrast even more with everything else and it'll be time to work on the other content of the cover

And then I realised I forgot to add in the rest of his fingers, so I'm just doing that quickly and then it's back to the text

I made this new piece of text by duplicating the title, making it smaller and adding an orange background to it in order to maintain readability

Man, making a front cover for a fashion magazine like this is proving to be more difficult than I thought

I ended up having a little bit of trouble balancing text readability with character visibility (because on one hand, I don't want to cover the character of Billy with text that's too big, but at the same time I still want the text to be readable so that I can over-sell the contents inside), so I ended up asking a tutor for help and he suggested I try and make the background more transparent so that you can still see partially see the character. This was something I couldn't do using the text tools, so instead I got rid of the background, added two new layers, used the shape tools in order to re-add the background and then simply made those transparent instead. Afterwards he suggested I move the "Introducing The Slam-Jammers!" text further up because the original placement meant it was overlapping the writing on Billy's jersey, so I moved it up towards the wall and shrunk the text slightly and I think it actually looks a lot better there because now the empty space from before is getting used for something meaningful (by fashion magazine standards)

And because of the fact I made the backgrounds as separate layers, I could also erase some of the unneeded space (plus one for creative thinking)

6/12 Images completed (we're half way there gang!)

Integrating Billy into the image was relatively simple, although Billy at this big scale did end up taking a few attempts to get right likely as a result of the fact I rarely ever draw my characters at this large scale. (this is something I'll need to work on getting better at in the future in case I decide to add in any close ups in my 2D cartoons) Where things ended up getting difficult was adding the text into the image, because although adding the title and the fake copyright text was quite easy, it was the text that over embellished the contents inside the magazine that proved to be more of a painful experience because while I wanted it to be big and readable, I also didn't want it to cover Billy as a whole (because being able to see the main subject is important too), it wasn't until one of my tutors came in to help me that I ended up really finding my stride on this one, but I was able to get it done.

With this, I'm officially done with the sports hall images, so now it's time to move on to the studio pictures. I estimate that each picture should take me less than a day to complete and with it being six images, I estimate that I'll be done in less than a week from now (unless some major technical complications come up between now and when I get this done)

We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Another Project Management Update

Like I said before, I'm halfway though the cartooning process so I'd say I'm still on track to getting this project finished on time

We Now Return You To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Last time we left off, I was about to begin work on adding my characters to the other half of the pictures:

Ok, so it seems that the scale I want to draw Super Sheep at is way too big to fit in the frame, so I think I'll change the pose from a standing pose to a sitting one

Also, for this image I decided to draw the body before I draw the face because then I could use it as a reference for where the arms and legs should go in relation to the rest of his body, thus making those parts easier to draw out

Ok, this might be a little bit more of a challenge than I realised

So remember in the first image where I had one of Detective Griswold's legs face the camera? well for this image, I'm doing it once again.

The Select tool has come in handy once again (who knows how many attempts I just saved myself by doing this simple trick)

It's like the old adage goes, "if it isn't shown in the drawing, it doesn't exist"

Here, we can see this in action with most of Super Sheep's fingers (and a part of his index finger too), where they appear to go behind the stool but in reality, they simply stop existing past a certain point. This aspect of working in 2D is part of what allows artists and animators to animate the character in a way where they look good at the specific angle in which they're being drawn or even cheating certain aspects of the character depending on the angle they're being drawn at, I.E: Mickey Mouse's ears being able to change position depending on what angle you're drawing him from so that you can maintain his iconic silhouette or even the way I draw only one of Super Sheep's ears when I draw him from a 3/4th angle.

Ok, this might be a bit more complicated than I initially realised

When I took those studio images back in part 1, I couldn't figure out how to turn on the lighting equipment so I simply used the camera to take the pictures in the default conditions (thus creating more of a grey background than a white one), this of course means that the characters would end up being more in the shadows than they were in the sports hall images meaning things may get a lot more complicated than I initially realized (at least the white arms and legs will actually get highlights this time around)

Here's another first for this project, me actually having to erase pieces of the shadow copy

The reason I need to do this is because if I don't, the shadow will seem like it's trying to transcend existence by existing on top of the stool rather than behind it (and then it'll look odd once I make it transparent)

7/12 Images complete (and just to reiterate for those of you that are joining us for the first time, these aren't the full resolution images because the grand majority of the work I've done since the music video has had to be split into two parts thanks to me adding too many images)

This image turned out to be a bit more complicated than I'd originally thought because of the dim lighting and the fact I actually had to rub out pieces of the shadow, but in the end I was able to put it together quicker than ant of the sports hall images. (meaning this image took less than a day to put together) The only part I didn't feel the need to add shading to was Super Sheep's eyes because I want them to stick out from the rest of his face since the eyes are usually one of the most expressive parts of a character besides the mouth (also when the screen is pitched black, the characters' eyes are usually the only thing you can see anyway)

Well this logo's text turned out to take up more space than expected

I actually ended up having to change the basketball line from what it originally was just to fit the words in there (this is one reason that most cartoons typically use squiggly lines when it comes to small text)

Well it still might not be the whole thing but at least I was able to stick an S in there this time around

I figured since Billy was much closer to the camera than Super Sheep was, I figured I could get away with replicating the font of the text on his jersey (with a word document besides me for reference of course):

8/12 images complete

At first I thought doing this picture would be a lot more complicated than it ended up being, but since this is a medium shot of Billy, I didn't end up having to worry about doing the shadow below him (meaning it was just a matter of drawing him in, colouring the whole thing in using the fill tool, covering the shading lines and I was done)

Because of the way Ruff Bup's face is constructed, I've been doing the eyebrows first

The reason I've been using this method a lot more lately is because it gives me a reference point for when Ruff Bup would be looking straight ahead (meaning if I place his eyes anywhere else, it'll look more like he's actually looking in a specific direction, be it left, right, up, down or even diagonal directions)

And once again I ended up needing the select tool to help me make Ruff Bup smaller because I made him too tall (I get the feeling this may become a pattern at this sort of scale)

Ok, so this leg is turning out to be more of a challenge than I initially realised (much like what happened with Detective Griswold's leg back in the first image)

Oh, and much like what happened with Super Sheep, I've had to change Ruff Bup's pose from a standing up pose to a sitting down pose because if he was standing up I would have to cut off a part of the head

So when shading Ruff Bup, I'll be dealing with the same issue as Super Sheep from the previous pictures but this time it's in reverse

Because while with Super Sheep I couldn't quite find a way to make Super Sheep's arms and legs brighter than pure white, with Ruff Bup, while I could theoretically make the blacks darker because I haven't done pure black, the main problem is that I can't go too much darker for the area that's cast in more shadow (meaning even darker colours than the main shadows)

9/12 images complete

I'll admit, I think Ruff Bup looks kind of weird when he's in the shadows like this because of the fact that he's a black and white character like those from the 20s (I.E: Mickey and Felix) rather than a full colour character like the rest but the shading process was a little bit simpler than I expected since I didn't end up having to worry about getting rid of the shading lines on his hair, arms, legs and even tail due to how the shadowy area ended up blending in with the shading line anyway. The only thing I would say I could improve upon at this point is making his leg look better. (specifically the one that's facing the camera)

To be honest I didn't think I'd get this image done as quickly as I did because usually these images take me about a day to complete but I was able to get this image done by lunch time (if I keep up this rate of work I'll be writing those articles and expanding on the lore surrounding Billy Billson in no time)

Since this is going to be a close up of Cartridge's back, I'll be drawing Cartridge to be ridiculously big this time around

And since Cartridge is going to be so close I can afford to give the text a little bit of thickness to it rather than leaving it as a one line thick piece of text

The reason for this is because once again, Captain Cartridge is so close to the camera that the space between the lines that make up his body are much bigger than it would be if this was a full body shot

10/12 Images Complete

I've finally hit a little bit of a stride, as now I've done two whole images in a single day! I didn't think this would even be possible considering I had to add in a shadow for Ruff Bup's image but since Captain Cartridge's image was more of a close up on his back, things ended up being quite simple.

Oh look, I've taken what will likely be the final new approach to drawing hands

for this approach, I've decided to draw the thumb first, then the bottom of the hand, and finally the index and middle fingers. The reason I'm taking this approach is because I feel it'll make Elfrix's hand look better when it's viewed from the side (mainly because drawing side facing fists is hard)

11/12 Images Complete

The reason this image took significantly longer than normal was because I was doing it entirely within my house (where I only really work at night because I'm busy gaming and generally relaxing and even then, I usually like to stop at 08:00PM because I need the time to just relax afterwards), but other than that it was pretty much the same as normal. (say for that fist that was difficult to get right, and even then I probably could have taken a few more attempts to get it looking better) With that being said however, I've only got one more image to go and then I'll finally be done with the cartooning process, and since it's another front cover, so I should be able to use the previous cover as a template for the new one. (just replace the sports hall with the studio and Billy Billson with Super Sheep and I'll be golden)

I knew saving the complete image as a layered file would come in handy later

It's time for a little bit of selective movement

here, I've actually had to move the word "The" upwards because when I wrote out the entire name the first time around, I found that there was little to no room for the player number, so I undid everything that wasn't the word "The" and moved that upwards so that the rest could be re-done around that instead of starting all over again. (mainly in an effort to save time)

And because I already turned the first front cover into a template before hand, I could simply change the text with next to no movement needed

With that being said, it can still be a bit of a pain to have to reposition everything slightly because here, I drew Super Sheep instead of re-using Billy (because no matter how desperate I may make the fashion magazine industry out to be, even they wouldn't be so brazen as to re-use a previous image on their latest front covers)

12/12 Images Complete

well folks, this is it. All 12 images for the photo side of this project are now finished and ready for their true purpose in life, getting used in a hypothetical magazine! While I'm glad this process is finally finished, I still had a lot of fun doing this process because it meant I could finally bring my cartoon characters into the real world in the form of images once more (which I haven't tackled too much since the lockdown project back in year one of this very course) and I got the chance to work on adding things like reflections without breaking the laws of physics like I did the last time I tried (which was during my taster days before coming to college), so while I am going to miss getting to draw cartoons all day, it's time for me to move on from this part and onto getting those magazines made (after a little bit more reflection of course)

So How Was Doing The Cartooning/Videos?

Well to be honest, I didn't think this part would take as long as it did, but at the same time, doing the whole thing in almost 3 weeks wasn't something I always thought was even going to be feasible, which is why I gave myself so long to actually put this part together just in case my initial judgements ended up being correct, not to mention how the fact the first image ended up taking an entire week to make by itself (due to all the main characters being there at once with all their shading, reflections and even shadows) certainly didn't help in the matter, so I was lucky to even be able to get those photo and video shoots done as early as I did as if I'd done all this even a day or two later I doubt I would have been able to get this done on time, meaning I would have to pull yet another Captain Cartridge and cut everything back and then maybe re-make the whole thing later on after I'm finished with Super Sheep's next cartoon. (luckily for us that didn't happen, so there won't be any cutbacks for this project)

As for the process of actually drawing up the characters and shading them, I didn't find doing this to be too much of a challenge since I've done it a few times before, but one unexpected challenge came in the form of making certain characters (I.E: Billy Billson) look good when they were really close to the camera due to how I almost never draw my characters to be so big you can't even see their legs, not to mention shading them would take slightly longer due to how much more space there is to cover than there would be if I drew these characters how I would normally, but other than that I found the entire process quite enjoyable, as I was able to challenge myself to improve upon what I did when I made images of a similar nature back before I became an official college student and I have to say, I think I've gotten a little bit better because this time around, the reflections don't actually break the laws of physics (for the most part) like they did last time, although to be fair, it was a lot easier to actually make the reflections this time around since all I had to to was duplicate my already finished drawings, flip them upside down and make them transparent. (and the odd bit of rubbing out if the bottom of the image didn't already cover up most of the reflection)

As for the video side of things, I'd say that was still the easiest part in this project because all I really had to do was put everyone in their basketball jerseys and then animate a few two second clips. (and in the case of the "Studio" video, this was even easier since it was one clip where Captain Cartridge didn't need to move an inch) In fact, I'd say the toughest part was actually composing the music that accompanies both videos because I more or less made it up on the spot once again, but even then I was able to get that finished quite quickly because I've been doing this since the Captain Cartridge remake.

The covers were relatively easy to make once I figured out the proper dimensions for such a thing, but adding a lot of the text (that wasn't the title) did prove to be a bit of a challenge (especially on the first front cover because that's where I actually had to put in most of the effort on that front) due to the balancing act of making sure the text was readable while keeping it so that you could still see the character on the respective cover. Luckily I was able to get a suggestion from one of my tutors and I decided to go from there.

We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Another Project Management Update

I guess that extra week wasn't needed after all

Hey, this means I can get a head start on actually making the magazines (and by extension, I also have time to expand on Billy's lore via interviews), although my attention is now divided between this work, my unit 11 and potentially even the analysis of random short films so I might not be able to update this post as often as I would like to, hopefully this doesn't have too much of an impact on things going forward and I'm able to stay on track for both units.

We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program: Making A Fake Magazine

And I'll once again be using the front covers I did as a base because the dimensions of a single page usually amount to being the same as the cover anyway

Oh, and I'm going to be starting with the sports hall magazine because then I'll be able to do the magazine in the same order as I did the images (I.E: first I added all the characters into the sports hall

After I deleted almost everything in the original base, I decided to just paste in one of my images, stick it in the middle of the page and then start writing a little introductory blurb about the Slam-Jammers

I've decided to let the title keep the same font as the one on the front cover because I think it'll help give the entire magazine (or at least the small section I'm doing about The Slam-Jammers as a basketball team) some sort of through-line and also branding purposes because if all the titles of every section were to use radically different fonts and styles then it would dilute the branding from the cover because the audience would have too many bits of branding to remember in one magazine (and by "too many different styles of branding", I'm referring solely to the actual contents of the magazine, not the adverts inside since those have every reason to be branded differently from the magazine itself since those are 3rd party advertisements)

And now I'm adding in a small section under the image that's dedicated to what all the characters are wearing

For those of you that remember back in part one, I took a brief dive into the contents of your average fashion magazine and found a sneaky little bit of advertising in the form of these little blurbs that inform you about what the person/people in the photo are wearing, who manufactured it and it's retail price (this is mainly an excuse to make up a brand new fake brand but it also happens to fit with the format of most fashion magazines so it's a perfect excuse)

Although I ended finding that the text would go over too many lines so I decided to stick the text inside the image

This proved to be a little bit of a balancing act because I didn't want the text to ruin the image by covering any of the characters but I also wanted to make sure the text was still readable (hence the colour change and outlines)

Here. I've gone ahead and added a third bit of text on top that pertains to what Ruff Bup's wearing (since he's wearing a black and white version which is technically a different outfit)

The reason this text is on the top is so that it doesn't end up leaking into the main body. (which I want to use to write out the intro blurb) Oh, and I decided to change the main manufacturer from "Clothex Industries" to "Clothstar Industries" because I felt the original was a bit too similar to "Honex Industries" from Dreamworks' Bee Movie

Uuuuuh... I seem to have run into a problem

So I seem to have written a bit too much for the page to even contain everything, so I'll have to make a few alterations to make everything fit

I've also decided to add in one of the other images (which I made as blurry as I could to make it look more abstract) as part of the background as a sort of sneak peek for those readers that happen to be observant

I did it. My first magazine page

This page was actually quite easy for me to put together since all I was doing was taking a bunch of images I already made and re-using them for the purposes of a magazine. The hardest part was actually writing out the article itself because I had to come up with a way to illustrate that these cartoon characters would be entering the Cartoon Basketball League (which is like the NBA but for cartoon characters), and since characters like Sonic and Bugs bunny aren't mine to begin with, I've had to omit their names and instead describe what kind of animal they are (that way I can hide the existing cartoon characters behind a layer of implication)

And after quickly checking what two times 1080 is (because the next page is going to be a double spread and I only need to double the width and not the height) it's time to move on to the next page

But before I begin doing anything, I need to make one last preparation:

You're probably wondering why there's a thick line dividing the two pages

Well you see, in a typical fashion magazine (and to an extend magazines in general), the pages usually tend to distort a little bit in the middle because of the way the magazine is put together, meaning anything that happens to go over the middle line will look slightly weird:

Image sourced from Earth 911.com

In the image above, we can see that a part of the graphic actually goes over that middle line and ends up looking... Less than stellar to say the least. The reason I'm putting the black line on mine is so that I know where not to place the images and text

Here, I'm actually going to place in all the images first

The reason I want to do things this was is so that when it comes time to write in all the text I'll be able to simply type my text around the images instead of constantly having to re adjust the images as I'm writing

Now that I've finished getting the images in, it's time to write the text (the formatting of which I'm copying over from the previous magazine page for the sake of consistency across all the pages

This brings us over to what I'm doing for the text

For the text, I had to figure out how to have two different people talking via the medium of text and the solution I settled on was having the interviewer just use normal text while the interviewee (in this case, Billy Billson) is signified by the fact that there are quotation marks at the beginning and ending of their block of text. I figured this would be enough, but then as I continued writing, I figured "hey wait, with how much text I'll inevitably need to fill the page, I think making the interviewer and interviewees just use alternating lines would be less confusing in the long term," so I changed it in order to make things less confusing. The format itself was inspired by how interviews were conducted for the characters in an old PS2 game I played when I was a kid called SSX Tricky by the now defunct EA Sports: Big:

Image sourced from a video uploaded by Hiro Kondobu

You're probably wondering why I decided to have Super Sheep answer a question regarding his hands and feet being confused for shoes and gloves, well you see, whenever I would show the character of Super Sheep to people, some of them would assume that Super Sheep wears shoes and gloves when in reality, it's just supposed to be how his hooves look (although with the way I draw most characters' shoes as if they were skin tight, I can't say I blame people for it), so I figured that I could turn it into a running gag where characters in-universe start assuming he wears gloves and shoes even though he doesn't

I did it, I completed the main double spread

I've got to say, that black bar I put in near the start has really helped me format this article because now if it were ever to get printed into a real magazine, none of the text or graphics will end up looking weird (since the background image is so blurry you probably won't notice the distortion and the words were carefully spaced so that nothing would get lost in the middle of the magazine), not to mention the interview itself which I personally found to be a blast to write out. Could I have used stock copy text to fill the page out and save a bit of time? Yeah, but doing so wouldn't have allowed me to actually give Billy Billson a little bit of backstory (which this unit serves as a good excuse for me to do), so I think I'll try and avoid it where I can because then I'll be able to give Ruff Bup and Elfrix more backstory in the interview segment of the second magazine.

Near the end of the writing process for Super Sheep's round of questions, I did have to remove a few lines of text in order to fit the whole thing onto the actual canvas I was working with but this wasn't too much of a challenge for me because I didn't have to rewrite anything in order for the whole thing to make more sense.

Feedback Implementation

So after showing my main tutor what I did yesterday, his main bit of feedback was about how the text actually needed to be moved slightly away from the edges of the pages, so quickly moved the text away from the edge, I even had to go and re-format the text slightly but other than that, it was super easy. I think the text does look a bit better this way because now there's a slight bit of space between the edge of the page and the text itself, now that I've cleared that up, it's time to move on to the next magazine page.

Making A Fake Magazine 2: Now There's A Studio

I predict this magazine will be much easier to make because I've already worked out the dimensions the first time around and I've saved the originals as layered PXZ files (meaning I can just re-use the formatting from last time and change the images and text surrounding it for the sake of brand consistency)

Yup, it's literally just a matter of pasting one image over another (with a bit of resizing) and replacing the text with something new

To be honest, I can't quite come up with much else to write on this page, so I've decided to have the rest of the page get taken up by an ad

For those of you that have been here since level 2, this colour scheme should seem very familiar to you if you've seen my work for the advertising unit:

That's right, Sello-Man finally makes his grand return

I know Sello-tape has nothing to do with fashion in general (unless someone's made an outfit out of sello-tape that I don't know about) but I figured this advertising space could be used as an excuse to bring back this character I haven't used since Level 2.

Because this is an advert for an unrelated product, I'll have to pick yet another font

The one I've decided to settle on this time is called "Maxton", I picked it because I quite like how distinctive it looks when contrasted against the normal font I went with for the regular magazine (the font I chose for the normal text is called "Arial", and unlike most of the other fonts on Pixlr, it also exists on word by default)

And now the first page for my studio magazine is completed

Making this magazine was relatively easy since I'd already made the template beforehand, although I couldn't quite think of enough text to fill the whole page so I decided to mask it by adding in an advert. This turned out to be quite fun and it was a good way for Sello-Man to make his way into this project since I cut him out of the big group shot due to wanting to maintain a good compositional balance (a lot like how I brought back Ceevil Norms and Rogo Renstive from my "Stairdevil" radio drama, although doing so does create a continuity error because it took place in 2025 and both characters died in the end and yet here they are doing interviews in 2030), the hardest part for me (well, by comparison anyway) was actually drawing the new tape graphic but this was only because everything else was so easy (besides maybe changing the brand name from "Sellotape" to "Super Stape-ment" because "Sellotape" itself is an existing brand)

And since the next page is a double spread that uses the exact same format and layout as the one on the previous magazine, I've opted to use numbers to remind me where each part is supposed to start (with the idea being that once I'm done writing the new text for one section, I can move on to the next one with no issue and get rid of the numbers one by one until I reach section number 10)

The decision to do Ruff Bup's interview or Billy's ended up being some what difficult

The reason for this is because earlier when I was talking about wanting to give Elfrix and Ruff Bup a little bit more back story, I'd forgotten that on the studio cover, I specifically mentioned an interview with Super Sheep and Billy (not really sure how I could have forgotten that little detail since I'm the guy that made the cover in the first place), but as I was doing Super Sheep's interview and looking back at the front cover for reference, I ended up realising that I said the interview would cover pages 20-30 (and I've already used all my material on this double spread), so after doing a little bit of thinking, I've decided to go with Ruff bup's interview and simply address the error by stating that the rest of the team's interviews will happen over the course of the next several pages (none of which will actually exist because I've already used the remaining four studio images on this double spread)

And after all that, I finally completed the second magazine

Coming up with the new text was a little touch and go for a while, but luckily I managed to come up with enough content to fill both pages so there was no need for any additional advertisements for unrelated products.

And with all that finished, I can officially declare this project to be finished at long last.

Fashionable Evaluation

I'll be honest, at first I didn't think I would even be able to pull off what this project brief was asking me to make without having to learn an entirely new skill set (especially when you consider the fact that I've almost exclusively been making animations this entire time), but as luck would have it, my tutor actually decided to give me a little bit of leeway to add in my cartoon characters into the project, meaning I could cut using real models and using real brands out of the equation entirely. (the only bit of live action content left would be the backgrounds)

With this in mind, this project would end up becoming a great excuse for me to pull a "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and stick my cartoon characters into the real world again, since I did dabble with this back in my pre-college days and during year 1's lockdown project, but this time instead of just doing 2D illustrations, I could also add the 3D models I made in Dreams in order to get a little bit of 3D work in there. (meaning now I've technically done a few CGI effects too) Doing this did prove to be quite a challenge, especially on the photo side of things, but if I can be honest, I think this would have been easier than using real models (like what a real fashion shoot would do), in part because I didn't have to actually spend a lot of time on the legal side of things since I own the characters and the brands used in this production, plus you don't have to sign any model release forms when all your models technically don't exist outside of cartoon land. (especially if you're the one who made the models in the first place) The only thing I will say is that I wished I actually made a conventional shot list for this project since I ended up forgetting to do so (I should have known that not doing it for the personal project would catch up to me sooner or later), but I did at least put what type of shots I wanted in the storyboards. (but even then, this was just for the images, the videos didn't get this treatment)

Along with that, I was also able to use this as an opportunity to finally give Billy Billson a little bit of a back story, which I'd been meaning to do for a while since the old logo project where I made him as well the entire Slamination Studios brand, although I would have to wait until I'd actually made it to the part where I turn the pictures into a fashion magazine before I could write the whole thing out (which I did via an interview with the character), the only thing I would do differently if I were to write up a magazine again is that I would make sure I pre-plan what I'm going to write about so that I don't end up having to make up everything on the spot like I ended up having to do this time around because to be honest, I wasn't even sure I'd make it that far.

Would You Do Something Like This Again?

If I had to do an actual fashion shoot with real people, I would most likely say I wouldn't want to go anywhere near the fashion industry ever again, not because of the models or anything, it's just that I don't actively care enough about the world of fashion enough to think I could even do anything all that remarkable with it.

With this in mind, due to my circumstances being a little bit different from everyone else to the point where I could use my characters instead, I think I might want to try something like this again in the future. Of course, my next attempt would be detached from the fashion world entirely so that I could actually tell a little bit more of an actual story. (but I do like the concept of "The Slamination Slam-Jammers", so I'll likely expand on this in the future by adding in my other characters such as The Night Pig and Bitris 16 in my personal time)

Would You Say You Met The Brief's Requirements?

I would say that despite the fact I decided to use cartoon characters instead of real people wearing basketball clothes (because doing that can get expensive fast), I'd say I managed to barely meet the brief requirements because I did make the characters wear different outfits from what they normally do, and I did also touch upon things related to what the characters are wearing, even if for just a few brief moments. (I.E: who made the jerseys, whether or not Super Sheep wears shoes, ext) With this in mind however, the entire project would slowly become just an excuse to add cartoon characters to the real world and finally give Billy Billson a backstory after creating him back in creative media level 2 before the world was ruined by COVID 19.

As for the studio video, I can say that I more closely met the brief because the focus was more so on what Captain Cartridge was wearing rather than the character himself and the video itself is only 10 seconds. The other video meanwhile is around 15 seconds in length and acts more as an advert for the team rather than the clothing line (even if I did include a picture of the 2D jersey at the end)

In terms of the research meanwhile, the fact that I had to do it all within the first two weeks did throw me off my A-game since I couldn't quite go into as much detail as I wanted to (specifically about the inside of the Thrasher Magazine) but this will hopefully become less of a problem as time goes on and I do more of these projects but only time will tell.

So How Was Using Premier Pro Specifically?

Now that I've had a little bit more time to look back on Premier Pro, I actually enjoyed using it to make the sports hall video because of the extra creative freedoms that using Share Factory on my PlayStation simply would not allow I.E: Adding reflections and proper shadows to the footage in order to make the green screen effects more convincing and even adding more than two layers worth of videos to create said reflections. The reason for all this added creative freedom on Premier Pro (plus even more that I hope to take advantage of in the future once I properly get the hang of Premier Pro in the future) was likely because of the fact that I was using it on a computer with a full "Qwerty" keyboard rather than on a PlayStation console where I'm using a controller with fewer buttons. While having fewer buttons can make everything simpler because there's (often) fewer functions to memorise in general, but having a full keyboard and mouse functionality as standard (as is the case with most computers) can allow the software engineers to add in even more features and options thanks to the added button commands.

I will admit that things did get a little bit complicated, specifically with figuring out the key frame function and trying to remember how to do chroma key effects in general since it'd been a while, but thanks to my determination and (more importantly) a little bit of help from my friends, I was able to use these features to hit the ground running and really allow the characters to appear more real than they would otherwise. The only thing I would really do differently is that I would either try and keep the camera from shaking as much by getting a tripod or by just using pictures instead for a more convincing effect. (in part because the still background would have no effect on the animated characters' ability to move anyway)

In Conclusion

While I enjoyed doing this project overall because of the fact I still got to worm my animated characters into it (plus it was nice to finally give Billy a little bit of backstory), I don't really want to delve into the world of fashion magazines again unless it's for a cartoon that riffs on the fashion industry (you can probably tell from the way I barely touched upon the FASHION aspect when I was writing my FASHION magazines) because the medium doesn't interest me nearly as much as the medium of animation, but with that being said, I liked getting to do something that was inspired by Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Space Jam series and even Looney Tunes: Back In Action.