Final Outcome

Dan Hodgson

Below is our completed animation for Dream Green Smoothies. As you can see, we have developed on the  simplistic line idea and storyboard motif mentioned before. Over the course of the video's production, various adaptations have been made. Most notably, the finished piece includes a new, more subdued stop-motion background to the one used initially. I also recorded a piece of backing music to accompany the visuals, performed on a ukulele with a light, upbeat tone to add a warm, tropical feel. Adding background music helped tie the piece together considerably; bridging gaps between speech in the voice-over, which was kindly contributed by Patrick Seymour, an artist from Newgrounds (http://seymour.newgrounds.com/). Below the finished piece I have posted two renders from the production stage, these help to explain the creative decisions described above; showing how the video looked with the original stop-motion background, how the voice over sounded without musical accompaniment etc.

Above: Finished Advert for Dream Green Smoothies

Above: Dream Green Advert Before Music was Applied

Above: Animation Test Based on Storyboard from Earlier Post

Market Research

Soraiya Gihawi
We set out to explore the marketing and audience appeal of current health magazines. By examining and comparing two, this enables us to have a much clearer idea of how to appeal to the health audience of which we aim to relate to. I created a collage from both magazines to fully compare and contrast features of both in detail. Elements being compared consisted of colour palette, image content and imagery, use of language i.e. syntax, lexis, phonetics, semantics, and grammar. From looking at this, we had a developed understanding of what appeals to what audience.

The two health magazines we compared advertising and content with were ‘Men’s Fitness’ and ‘Weight Watchers’.

Weight Watchers

Men's Fitness

Initially, we decided on the target audience of each, though it being a stereotype, it was decided ‘Men’s Fitness’ was aimed at 20+ males aiming to gain healthy and fit bodies, where as ‘Weight Watchers’ was aimed at 25+ females seeking to lose weight and gain happiness.

The two contrasts in largely, however have a few similarities.

MEN’S FITNESS;

What they used –

-       Plosive phonemes.

-       Imperatives.

-       Bullet pointing for impact.

-       Images of muscular men.

-       Technical vocabulary choices (predicting the readers already have a small understanding of the topic).

-       Imagery of war and violence.

-       Semantic fields of violence and pain ‘Power’, ‘Survival’, ‘Achieve’.

-       Facial expressions including serious/ determination/ pain.

-       Nature ‘Great Outdoors’.

WEIGHT WATCHERS;

What they used –

-       Phonetically soft

-       Floral imagery

-       Happy and healthy – ‘real’ women

-       Bright and colourful; yellows, pinks, reds e.t.c.

-       Repetition of personal pronouns ‘You’ (also emphasized by syntactical placing).

-       Semantic field of indulgence and care e.g. ‘hope’, ‘loving’, ‘luxury’.

-       Nature/nurture.

-       Happy facial expressions, smiles.

The two had various similarities, though in some cases portrayed in very different ways.

BOTH;

-       Imagery of nature.

-       Aesthetically pleasing food dishes.

-       Images of people working out.

-       Technical language but neither lexically dense.

-       No/lack of cartooned images

-       Appeal to audience with connecting stereotypical interests

In conclusion, this task gave us an idea of a middle grounding of both relating to men and women who are interested in health.

Grace Parker

Logo Ideas - Back to Basics

The project is very open to any kind of design or how the information is put across, whether it be animations, leaflets or bottle designs etc. I decided to look into logos and what could work well to show the organic nature of the clients product.
This was difficult in some ways as we have such a blank canvas that its difficult to find a start.
Rather than to look at the ingrediants or what feeling the client wants to put across by his advertisemnts i thought about what could portray the natural, organic nature of the product.

These were simply drawn and coloured in my sketchbook which i then added different effects over the top in photoshop to make it appear more professional. The soft pencil gives it that extra effect and shows a "natural looking"  symbol.

I looked into the competeistion of other busimnesses that used simplicity in their advertisements. Few of them used some kind of character or logo to help people to remember their product.
For example

Gaviscon use a 3d character to present their product, i felt tghis was relevant to our work as we have an idea for a "smoothie man" in which he is made out of the smoothie as is the gaviscon character

Innocent smoothies are another good example for what we wanted to create. This was a big inspiration for the process of our work. they also use stop animation and keep everything simple and natural. Our clients biggest competitor. However these smoothies are more for children, as the designs have different sketches over the top to show a different personality.

Yakult advertisements are brilliantly done, very simple yet incredible striking and to the point, which is exactly how we want our work to come through to the veiwer. They use the actual bottle and give it character by bringing it to life. One simple idea that looks great on screen.

After looking at these examples i started work on our "smoothie man" to see how it would turn out.

Here are a few clips i created of our smoothie man

Elliot Train: Storyboard to alternative

whilst we came to conclusion that our production would be using the minimalism approach. we all decided that our initial idea would be used as a back-up. For this, i devised an alternative storyboard to the one Dan Hodgson posted previously.

some of the main influences used for this piece would be the more cartoon styled pieces from the early 00's such as the "fruit winders" advert or "Frubes". mentioned before, the bizarre themes used in those adverts can be used to gain a wider audience.

hopefully these ideas may shed some thought into the group and help us advance with our work, if any critical inputs need to be said, don't hesitate to say otherwise.

Elliot Train.

Adam Grubb

One of our main ideas for the Integrated Project involved fruit and veg working hard at the gym while be trained, shouted at and pushed by a fitness instructor through a screen. We were planning on using real models for this, such as clay or Plasticine, this idea mainly came from the popular personalised cards 'Violent Veg'.
From this I decided to try and make my own version of this but instead through 3Ds max to experiment with different methods for our film. I was quite happy how they turned out, with the eyes and mouths looking very similar to the violent veg look. However I would have liked to spend more time on the lime texture to make it look more realistic.

From the feedback of , we decided to revert to our line idea which is very similar to the direct line advert. With the lines traveling across the screen and forming the outline of the picture. In our storyboard we show the fruit dropping into bottles with the flavors of the smoothies appearing after. We could either simply use 2D bottles or 3D, so for experimentation, I again used 3Ds max to create some different shaped bottles. I am reasonably happy how they turned out. I struggled to create a clear plastic material for the bottles, but the glass texture I used instead for good enough for an example. My first bottle is the similar shape to the original Coca Cola bottle, and the smaller wider bottle, I got the idea from the Oasis bottle. Finally the smallest size bottle I was aiming for a more sporty look, such as the brand Lucozade.

 

Storyboard for Line Idea

Dan Hodgson

Below is a storyboard for the 'Simple Line Animation' concept mentioned earlier on in this blog. This is currently our primary concept as we feel the simplicity of the visuals combined with the motif of organic growth conveys Dream Green's ethos of using only natural ingredients. We are still maintaining work on a secondary idea - a surreal piece featuring personified fruit attempting to get healthy in the gym (Dream Green's target demographic being gym goers) with disastrous consequences. This alternate idea's zany and absurd humor would appeal more to the viral market, whereas the line idea is very much based on current trends in television advertising for similar products, most notably Innocent Smoothies.

The storyboard below follows the same design principle of the example I posted earlier, in that a similar paper overlay will be used as a background - although I intend to make the overlay for the finished piece much more subdued in terms of how much the image flickers - and the animation will still be hand drawn with live action images of fruit composited over the top. I have attempted to keep staging here relatively static in order to imbue the piece with a feeling of calm, reflecting the benefits of supplementing a workout with a Dream Green smoothie, hence a lot of central positioning with minimal panning and camera movement. I also considered potential sound effects here, however these will only be added to augment the voice over, which is yet to be recorded. As such it is difficult to say at this stage if certain sound effects will help or hinder the solidarity of the piece, it will become apparent during the final render whether or not sound effects need to be vetoed.

By the time of the client's next visit, this piece should be fully animated with a preliminary voice over script and we will also have a 'Fruit at the Gym' storyboard to present in order to receive feedback regarding any alterations which may be required as well as to gauge the client's response to both ideas to ensure we take forward the most promising concept. Following this we will be able to finalise any design ideas and record a voice over track.

Click Here to View Full Size Image

Grace Parker Character Design (Smoothie man/Spinach)

Grace Parker Character Designs.

We discussed towards the beginning of this project about creating some kind of smoothie man character (mascot) and when the client said he liked the idea of this we decided to pursue and start on a small animation to introduce the smoothie.

 I imagined him to strut across the screen and leave behind him bits of the smoothie that will form into Dream Green

 

Inspired by the Frubes advert and the Cheese String advert this is what i came up with..

I also did some designs for the spinach and how I imagined it to look. At first i could see it dragging itself across the floor, then I did a more "jabba the hutt" look, which I also liked. I wanted it to give the effect of its face almost drooping down its body, yet keep it friendly looking and appealing.