Gestalt is a psychology term keyed by German psychologists in the 1920s, and means 'unified whole'. It refers to theories of visual perception and tries to explain how people organise visual images into groups when certain principles are applied.
Similarity
This is where we group items in terms of their similar characteristics, and this can be in terms of colour, shape, texture, size etc. We can bring attention to an object in a frame if we make it dissimilar or anomalous, as it doesn't stick to the standard codes and conventions of the other items.
Continuation
Continuation refers to how the eye is made to follow a direct linear line or route.
Closure
Everyone looks for closure in a picture, and we tend not to be satisfied if this does not happen. As long as there is a partial amount of detail, we will complete the image to something that immediately makes sense to us. For example, if the outline of a circle was not connected, our brains would naturally complete the circle.
Proximity
Proximity refers to how shapes are organised. Objects close together are associated with each other as being in the same group or category. Other groups that are further away tend not to be associated with them and seen as a different group.
Figure and Ground
The eye tends to differentiate between the foreground and background. The figure is that in the foreground like a silhouette, tree, bird etc and the background or surrounding area is known as ground. For example, when reading text, the human immediately assumes that the text is on top of the white; the text being the figure and the white being the ground. Complex figure/ground images can be created for a very interesting visual effect.
After looking a lot at text and typography, I read a chapter of Angie Taylor's Design Essentials about typography. Taylor says "One way you can make your designs stand out from the rest is by designing your own lettering". I agree with this. There are so many standard and instantly recognisable fonts on the computer, so to even have the slightest chance of standing out is to create a type font that is unique to your brand or company.
"Typography is the art of selecting typefaces, sizes, colors and textures, type elements on pages or screens, spacing, and alignment of words and letters."
Whilst reading about fonts downloadable from the Internet, Taylor reminds us that some fonts are not all complete, hence why they are normally free. A font is not just simply letters and numbers but are made up of characters such as punctuation marks, full stops, commas etc. She makes a valid point and I need to remember this when create text for my projects. I need to make sure that all necessary characters are included or else I will either have to combine to different font types which may not look very professional, or find and research a whole new font altogether.
Italic fonts are used when you want to highlight certain words or phrase from a block of text, as well as quotes and captions. They are slightly more curved and sloping, resembling handwriting. You can make any font italic, yet real typefaces normally have an italic font as part of the font 'family'.
Taylor also talks about ligatures, a word I had never come across. Ligatures are when letters together clash and make "ugly shapes". For example, an f and an i when put together can look quite difficult to read (fi). That is why some packages that support ligatures have a custom made letter for when these classes arrive. I find that extremely interesting and something that I am going to look out for in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
On page 190, Taylor talks about the certain choices you have to make when deciding on a font face. Firstly, you have to be aware of it's cultural associations for example old style calligraphy fonts would resembles medieval times, as this is what they used to use. Secondly, fonts possess a certain personality. Taylor used the example of have the words "The Big Butch Gym" written in a pink and swirly decorative font. This does not represent it at all and unless she was trying to provoke a reaction or sense of irony, then this is the wrong font style to use.
Overall I have learnt that there are so many different aspects of font you need to take into account. I need to make sure that for my project I research thoroughly into different fonts and also to ask for people's feedback to make sure that the reaction I'm trying to get is right.
This was my first ever project I created using Adobe Illustrator. I decided to try and replicate a frame from the 'Number 23' opening title. I downloaded a typewriter font from www.dafont.com which I felt was similar to the one used in the opening credits. I then imported an image from the Internet of parchment paper. However I struggled to find the tool for crop, as I didn't want the edges that were on the original picture. I researched thoroughly and found that the crop tool is not like the one in Adobe Photoshop but more of a selection tool and clipping the sections you do not want. It took me a long time and I eventually just used the crop tool in Photoshop. I feel that Illustrator is a great tool for drawing yet there are simpler ways in Photoshop to do things and if you know both software well enough, you'll know which ones to use and when.
I then researched the different brushes available and found default ink brushes which created the red splatters.
So far I have found a fair few opening title sequences that I like. Below is just a list of them so I can start researching them more and finding a few more titles by that particular production company.
Catch Me If You Can
Amblin Entertainment
Splendid Pictures
Kemp Company
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Prologue Films
Bored To Death
Curious Pictures
Any Human Heart
Huge Designs
Mad Men
Imaginary Forces Human Target
Imaginary Forces The Number 23
Imaginary Forces
In today's lab session (10/10/2012) we were introduced to the brief of which we will be working on for the year. I have decided to opt for the first brief which is to create 3-4 different opening title sequences based on films created by a certain film studio or designer. The order of the sequence must be the same and the overall theme must be recognisable to the film I have chosen.
Due to my fascination with the 'Dexter' opening credits and the tribute to Saul Bass by artist Ty Mattson, I decided to look at Saul Bass inspired opening sequences which is where 'Catch Me if you Can' caught my attention. It uses simple shapes and animation to depict the theme of the film. I really like the choice of colours, which is quite surprising as the colour palette chosen is quite limited. The blue for the airport represents the sky, the yellow in the next scene for the warm exotic landscape, reds for the intense business conditions of the factories etc; it's simple but still well thought out and it works.What I also particularly like about this opening sequence is how the text becomes part of the overall animation for example the words are stretched and become part of the doors that stop the characters from progressing forward. The way they are animated also can be seen as representing the overall plot the way they slyly move in and out of shots, similar to what the main character does in the film. I really find this opening sequence to be highly successful and something I definitely want to look into. I'm interested in the basic elements and shapes and want to explore the possibility of creating my own drawings to use later on in animation.
'CATCH ME IF YOU CAN'
'Catch me if you can' is distributed by the film company 'Dreamworks Studio', and produced by three smaller studios which are Amblin Entertainment, Splendid Pictures and Kemp company. Olivier Kuntzel and Florence Deygas were the designers of this particular trailer.
Below are some sketches I made just to get a feel for the shapes and positions of the main character animation. I also played around with some of the silhouettes within the opening sequence, such as the aeroplanes, stars and long elongated letters.
Below is a basic storyboard of how the 'Catch me if you can' title enters. As the plane moves underneath the words, the 'me' appears to be a cloud which then disappears almost as the plane passes underneath it. This may represent the actual plot of the film as one second you see it, the next it has gone.
'KISS KISS BANG BANG'
Whilst looking on the Art of the Title website, I came across a different opening sequence for the film 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' (http://www.artofthetitle.com/2008/04/03/kiss-kiss-bang-bang/). It is quite similar to the 'Catch me if you Can' opening in terms of the simplified shapes and figures and the basic use of colours. However I would say that this opening title has a lot more depth to it in terms of the camera movements moving in out and rather than just panning left to right.
My favourite part in particular of this trailer is between 1:12 and 1:20 seconds. I like how something enters every second. It is quite static and not smooth movements between the different elements that are added. I particularly like the use of text and feel that this looks extremely effective.
The production company are Prologue Films.
'BORED TO DEATH'
I found the opening credits for this film extremely interesting. It focuses solely on text, similar to the scene in 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' that I very much liked above. It explores the way the words move around the screen, focusing the audience's attention on certain words that reflect the story of the film. Although there is clearly a use of technology to create this opening, they look very much like hand drawn animations, similar to very basic cartoons. It must have been quite difficult with the amount of text used in the opening to highlight the cast's names, which is why they are only presented when there is limited text on the screen; something the designers had to take into account.
'Curious Pictures' is the design studio who produced this opening sequence, and Tom Barham was the director of the project.
'SUPERBAD'
I found this opening sequence while broadly researching successful opening title sequences. I thought even though it uses simple shapes and silhouettes, it is still visually interesting to watch. When the animation is this basic, the music becomes a key feature to the feeling of it; something I need to take into account. I feel that the credits when listed are not particularly a key feature of it, especially as the character dancing sometimes overlaps it. However, I like how that when a character does blend in with the word, it changes colour within that shape so that the credits are still readable. The colours used in the opening are extremely bright and contrasting which has quite a dramatic effect.
I found out that the distributor for the film are 'Columbian Pictures', however I found it extremely hard to find a designer or motion graphics studio who actually produced these titles specifically.
'ANY HUMAN HEART'
The opening titles for 'Any Human Heart' were created by a production studio called Huge Designs. What I like about this opening sequence is the basic colour scheme and how the use of silhouettes is extremely effective. The music suits the piece and purveys a mysterious atmosphere. I also like how the camera is constantly moving keeping the viewer's attention. The title sequence can be viewed here: http://www.artofthetitle.com/2011/02/07/any-human-heart/ . However, it wasn't until I did more research that I found out that 'Any Human Heart' is actually for a Channel 4 Television programme and not a film.
I still decided to research Huge Designs' work to see if they have created any opening title sequences for films. Unfortunately they work only with television opening titles but I particularly liked the one they created for the programme 'The Book Club', which is the last one on this page http://www.hugedesigns.co.uk/work/. The use of typography really fascinates me and something that I hope I can look into later on.
'MAD MEN'
The Mad Men opening credits I feel are quite interesting in a sense they use a silhouette of a man but juxtaposed with a colourful 3D background. The text used for the names is a sans serif font and uses only two colours, red and black, which makes it look quite sophisticated. Within the opening title sequence, there are different 1950s posters on the sides of the buildings. I personally really like the style of these images, as the photographs look very much like painted illustrations. By having them in the sequence, it sort of brings history and modern day CGI together and is very effective I feel.
'HUMAN TARGET'
I actually came across the opening titles for 'Human Target' whilst researching the design studio Imaginary Forces in more detail after looking at the 'Mad Men' sequence. I was drawn to the ink effect used within the scene. Unlike other title sequences where the ink looks as if it is splattered on top, this sequence makes it look as if it has much more depth; you can feel the ink moving around the screen. I would be really interested in learning how to create this effect.
I also very much like the use of harsh colours within the scene; I think it is very effective in purveying a certain mood. I specifically like the bright yellow as seen in the image above, and also the dark red used further on in the sequence. The camera movements are extremely 'jerky', constantly twisting 90 degrees and moving in and out. This makes the opening very fast paced and really shows that they are the opening credits for an action programme.
'THE NUMBER 23'
I really enjoyed this film starring Jim Carrey. Imaginary Forces were also responsible for the opening titles and you can see the similarity in camera movements between this sequence and 'Human Target'. The movements are quick and sharp and create an uneasy atmosphere. I very much like the use of typography within the scene, as this is something I am interested in generally. The text looks as if it has been created by an old fashioned typewriter, and the amount of ink used for each letter makes it look as if the buttons of the typewriter have been pressed down harshly by a character who is deeply frustrated.
As the sequence progresses, blood splatters seem to appear and cover the letters and numbers that are typed on the sheet. This reminds me of the ink effect in the 'Human Target' sequence and also the scene from 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang', and I feel it is really effective. Towards the end of the sequence, the blood no longer looks like red ink but far more obviously blood seeping across the page, which I feel shows the increased frustration of the character.
In the Motion Graphics lecture yesterday, we looked at two very different motion graphic artists, Saul Bass and Kyle Cooper. Bass is considered to be one of the earliest motion graphic artists creating the opening sequences for films such as 'Psycho' and 'Vertigo'. Although he uses primarily simple shapes and animation, he still manages to create the right mood through the use of these 2D animations. By being able to do this, he has become extremely successful and is seen as an idol for younger film directors.
Kyle Cooper is considered to be one of the most influential motion graphics designer. He has created opening title sequences for hit films such as 'The Mummy', 'Seven' and 'Mission Impossible'. After watching his interview in the lecture (http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00170-Kyle_Cooper_interview_pt_1_2) I was fascinated by his work and also respected the fact that he enjoyed using natural man-made objects to achieve effects that sometimes just cannot be reproduced by technology today, for example "shooting through broken glass". After he said this, I was reminded of one of my favourite opening title sequence for the American drama 'Dexter'. Created by Eric Anderson, it features the character Dexter getting ready in the morning. However, it shows the normal steps in his daily routine as extreme close ups and the effect of this is much more sinister.
"Everything, no matter how mundane or beautiful, has an undercurrent of violence to it. It is just a matter of how closely you look. We are conditioned to see a blossoming flower as beautiful. But if you look closely, if you look differently you will see it more like an explosion. Here we see a mundane morning routine illustrated in extreme close-ups showing the underlying tension found in everyday situations making violence a part of everything."
Although the 'Dexter' opening uses limited motion graphics, it is still quite interesting to watch, especially the typography used. Below is the opening sequence as found on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej8-Rqo-VT4&noredirect=1). As you can see at 0:20 seconds the title of the series is presented. It is shown in red clearly to symbolise blood and the overall plot of the story. At 0:21, blood appears to splatter just below the letter 'R', again running with the overall theme. The other letters slowly fade downwards in a darker shade of red as if to represent blood running down a surface. The type font is a very simple sans serif with quite sharp lines and edges, which possibly reflect Dexter's brutal character.
Ty Mattson is an artist and created not only a video tribute but several posters in the style of those seen in the image I posted above. Below is the video created by Mattson as found on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9adZ0HRuo4) and this is his link to his portfolio of work: http://mattsoncreative.com/. By looking at his online profile you can see that there is a strong theme that develops. He clearly enjoys working with bright and bold colours as well as exploring with simple shapes and interesting forms of typography.
