Fable II

I remembered this promotional website for the game 'Fable II' from a couple of years ago that I was impressed with at the time. The website told an animated interactive story in which the user plays the role of an adventurer growing up. The outcome of the story differs depending on the choices that you make as the character (e.g. Good/Evil, Greedy/Philanthropic) with quite a few different routes to choose from at different points in the story. It is a bit outdated now as Fable III was just recently released but I managed to find the old website. 

One of the things that struck me about the animation was the style in which it was animated. It uses a lot of layers and very little frame by frame animation that I can see, meaning most of it is just tweening of the existing layers (so for example, each arm part, leg part, torso and neck are on different layers that just move around each other). It also has a really strange mixture of a kind of collage look which makes it really cartoony. Stranger still is the way that the background design doesn't share the same style as the character design and neither resemble the actual game at all, yet it still works overall and is quite interesting to watch. It also has some pretty harsh points of violence in quite a black comedy kind of way which contradicts the connotations of the cartoon style but represents the game quite well. 

This same style of animation could be quite simply reproduced in after effects for the most part because it would just use layers and simple transformations over time which we have already learned about. This wouldn't have been made in after effects because of the amount of interactivity and its precision. This website would have been made using Adobe Flash as it can animate the more 'frame-by-frame' parts of the movie like the blood spurts but mainly because it would have been coded using ActionScript. ActionScript is a Flash-based 3rd level programming language used within the animations/movies/games which is there pretty much specifically to create really vast interactivity in the application. 

This is the link to the site so you can see for yourself: http://fable2.xbox.com/Experience.aspx

Here is an example of a small part of the animation on the website so that you can see the kind of style that i'm talking about.

Night by Night

I found this video on the Behance network and couldn't embed it so I had to do some stuff with Youtube to get it to work on here rather than with Vimeo.
This is a brilliant example of some relatively simple use of adobe After Effects to create a really nice composition. I really like the quite obvious use of layers and still images which make the animation look almost like an animated book rather than a sequence.

Nokta.

This video seems to be kind of like an advert to show off the skills that the designer ,Onur Senturk, has to offer to all potential clients (Which is fair enough as he does have a lot of skill to offer).
It shows a mixture of After Effects, 2D and 3D animation along with digital video capture all mixed together with a similar style.
This is another example of how AfterEffects can be used across different platforms relatively easily without any obvious transitions.

'A Short Love Story'

Again, content-wise this film is really cliched and kind of shallow in terms of emotional depth but it has still generated some really nice effects and shows a really advanced understanding of using AfterEffects along with some stop motion animation. It is a good example of how AfterEffects can be used across different mediums and media and can bring it all together to make one smooth animation.

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The content of the sequence is a bit embarrassing but it looks brilliant.
The use of colours and constantly changing opacity makes the composition really bold and interesting.

"Rubicon" Title Sequence

Rubicon is a US drama series set around an intelligence analyst who starts to think that his company is involved in a secret society that manipulates world politics. I think it is basically about governmental conspiracy theories and stuff like that.

I really like this title sequence and the whole atmosphere that it creates. Everything in the sequence is linked to the basis of the program and it all has that gritty kind of secretive feel about it with visuals like censorship.
I think that judging by the look of the video it will have almost completely been created on AfterEffects besides the photos imported into the composition.
This is a good example of the kind of complexity and professional look that can be created with the program.

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Atelier Martino&Jaña

The Atelier Martino&Jaña design project was started in 2000 by Joao Martino and Alejandra Jana and has grown in to a team of designers and collaborators. They are a Portugal based design company that who focus around design for print, usually magazine and editorial design.
They have quite a distinctive clean and simple design style which comes across as a with a really professional and considered look. They work a lot with incorporating photography in to their editorial design and clearly have a really good understanding of the use of type.

I'd like my double page spread to have the same kind of professional and well finished feel to it. 

Michael Caputo

Michael Caputo is a graphic artist and illustrator who works across a range of formats and practices.
His work that caught my eye was the graphic illustrations of women screaming in horror movies.
They have a nice style to them which represents the kind of old style horror film and the images are bold despite being in just black and white.
He also uses this angular style with blocky triangles as a kind of hatched shading which gives them a pop arty look. It is a very interesting idea to create shadow detail.

Alexandra Dolgopolova

Alexandra Dolgopolova is an artist and illustrator from Togliatti in Russia. She uses a mixture of painting inks and illustration to create her work. It gives a really nice effect to have the extreme detail of the illustration contrasted by messier ink splashes. She work with some colour but tends to stick to monochromatic illustration which is relevant for the illustrations that I am creating.
Dolgopolova focusses mainly on faces but also works with some full body illustrations. I have not seen any of her work that strays from reproducing the human form but she does have a lot of talent for illustrating it.

Interesting in-flight meal packaging

I found these examples of some of the more interesting inflight meal packaging around. These examples keep everything together and look better than usual as well. This is the kind of thing that I want to achieve.

This example below is from Quantus Airlines. they are one of the worlds leading airline companies and they really expensive flights so you would have thought that they could produce some good results. The example below is a good start at creating better inflight packaging. It is much simpler than conventional packaging and keeps everything together which makes it more environmentally friendly and less hassle to deal with. It looks as though it is made from a polystyrene material so it is likely recyclable.
The only issue with the packaging is that it doesn't look very nice. In fact it probably looks less inviting than the conventional separate packaging of in-flight meals.
It is a good start but it could do with some more designing.

These examples below are from Hawaiian Airlines and show a much more considered approach to designing. The packaging is made from 200% recycled materials and the colours and textures work well to communicate jungles and trees and connotations of hawaii. This example just has space for the main meal part (sandwich) and the desert on the right. This helps to keep it simple and the packaging is a nice format to work with. I should consider the possibility of simplifying my designs like this to keep them effective and not too busy.

This example below is another Hawaiian Airlines meal but this time it is more separate. It still works well as a meal setting because everything fits inside the tray almost perfectly and it has obviously been considered, although the packaging above probably works better overall.

Finally these examples below are from Singapore Airlines and show a design that has clearly been thought through. The design is sleek and elegant and looks almost more like a gift than a meal which I think works well to make it inviting and almost forces audience interaction. 

The packaging is neat and keeps everything together and the food inside is laid out to fit well inside the box. I think that the box shape could be more compact, especially considering the amount of space left inside the box but in terms of graphically considered packaging this is probably the highest quality of the meals that I have seen. 

Existing examples of airline meals

These are some existing examples of airline meals.
it is obvious that is little order to the trays and the whole thing looks like a mess. I want to design a simple net that can be turned into a box that can hold each part of the meal and promote the campaign at the same time.
From the examples below you can see that a meal will generally consist of 1 main meal box, 2 smaller pots and a drink or two (water/juice/coffee).

Adam Haynes

Adam Haynes is an illustrative designer from Oregon in the US. These illustrations stood out because of their detail but also because of the impressive perspective angles used in each design. The designs are created from the first person perspective of the subject which makes them relatable and the images sustain attention.

This design in particular fits in well with my idea for printing on stairs or escalator steps in airports as a method of promotion. It shows how the design can work and relates to the other perspective drawings, only this time it is the viewer that has to view the design from the right position to achieve the right perspective. 

Dan Marino - Corporate Identity

After looking through more of Marino's website I found this corporate identity which he designed for a charity called "Million Miles for Memory". Million Miles for Memory raises money and awareness for Dementia and Alzheimer's through a selection of different sports. For every mile completed more money is raised for research. the ultimate goal is to reach one million miles.
I am currently working on designing brand identity with the brief so it helps to see the process of how it is usually done. Luckily Marino has an example of the detailed process that he went through to create this identity.