Over the summer I have being working on some of the skills we have learnt throughout the year, revisiting techniques and old work and creating more work to become more familiar with the methodology of working mainly in illustrator.

We created a Marilyn Monroe illustration in class, and given her prominence in the public eye during the 50's and 60's I decided to create a series of illustrations of american celebrities/public figures during 1960's from different realms of the american public's consciousness. Marilyn took care of film and television, JFK was possibly the most well known politician during the 60's (before being assassinated in 1963), Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack shows were massive in Las Vegas during the 60's and represents the music scene. Sports stars in 1960's America took a little more research but I found that one of the most successful and popular American Football stars was the Baltimore Colts Quarterback Johhny Unitas.

Original Marilyn Illustration

Former President John F Kennedy

base image
source: http://www.returnofkings.com/22635/5-life-lessons-from-jfk

Former Baltimore Colts QB Johnny Unitas

base image
Photo: Malcolm Emmons/TSN/Icon SMI

'Old Blue Eyes' Frank Sinatra

base image
source: http://therecordingrevolution.com/2013/09/13/even-frank-sinatra-recorded-in-awkward-places/

These were made using the same process as the Marilyn Monroe illustration of using the pen tool to draw the outlines of the key features within the image such as the head, face, outlines of the clothes and the facial features. Once all the features had been outlined with the pen tool it was time to add the fill colours. Once all the fills were in place I adjusted the layer stack so that the elements were in the right order so the objects that were on top of each other in the photos were on top in the illustrations.

I then added depth to the pieces by adding the shadows which were black layers where I turned down the opacity to give the illusion of a shadow. Overall I'm pleased with the outcomes of my Marilyn and Sinatra illustrations, I think that I learned a few things creating the Johnny Unitas illustration about depth and shadows, and adding the additional detailing such as the jersey stripes and numbers.

Creative Suite T2

In the final Creative Suite session of the term we were given a workshop on InDesign, based around magazine layout. Firstly we started with creating the header at the top of the page which would contain the title - Your DTP Monthly - and the associated bits of text. I made a blue box to fit within the margins of the page. I then added the magazine issue title, date and issue number to the same box, before rotating the Your to save space whilst maintaining a decent point size for the title. All these elements of the text is in Palatino.

I then added the picture of the cityscape underneath and to the left so that when text was added it was clear where you should start to read it from. The picture had to be crop in order to be the right size, in InDesign this can be done by altering the size of the frame over the content.

When this was in place we started to add the text across 3 columns, I chose a font to contrast with the serif font of Palatino, and as so I chose Arial. I filled the 3 columns as much as I could using the copy available around the picture. To make it look more professional I added a pull quote - pulling a quote from the article, and changing the format of it to emphasize the quote and/or break up longer pieces of text. I formatted the pull quote to align to the right hand side, changed the colour to match the header, increased the point size and changed the weight of the font. I also added more space above and below it to make it look less block-y.

Th next step was adding a bird picture, here it was pointed out that we could place Photoshop files into InDesign, meaning that with the file linked that you can continue to edit the image and update the link later on. With the bird image we added a run around or text wrap, creating a border around the image where the text would not enter meaning the two elements would not clash.

The final step of the process was adding finishing touches, such as the page numbers and the lines between the columns of text using the master pages, as well as spell-checking and formatting the text so that it all lined up properly and aesthetically.

The presentation version of Your DTP Monthly

The normal view version featuring grids and guides

Physical Studio S3 - Artist Typeface Transcription

After being inspired by the works of Josef Muller-Brockmann, El Lissitzky, and Laurie Rosenwald, and creating letterforms based on their works for the letters a,e,s,g and n, were tasked with creating full alphabets continuing this work.

Having worked on graph and tracing paper to create them, I scanned mine in to digitize them.

The next step after this was to trace over them in illustrator, to create vectors of each of the characters.

After creating the alphabets, I then went on to create posters featuring/highlighting the fonts I had made.

Photoshop Animations

We created animated GIFs using the photoshop timeline. Firstly we created a new file sizing it at 300 by 100 pixels, and opening the timeline by selecting it from the window menu at the top of Photoshop.

We then created the artwork, adding each element in a different layer until we had at least 5. I created multiple coloured hexagons of varying size and position within the frame, with the aim to create a chain of different colours as the shape moves bilaterally across the frame.

Once the artwork was created we had to delete the empty/irrelevant background layer, before we selected all the layers and clicked create frame animation in the timeline box at the bottom of the Photoshop window, choosing the make frames from layers option from the timeline menu. After this we changed the frame rate of all of the frames to 0.1 seconds - meaning the duration of each frame was 0.1 second long before moving onto the next.

Once this was done and we were happy with the animation, we saved it, ready for the web. This was done by clicking 'save for web' rather than save, this opens a new window where you can change the file type, colours, the quality of the image, and in GIF animations case how often it loops before it stops. In this case we maintained the colour and quality, changed it GIF and looped forever.

We then also rendered and exported the GIF, going to file - export - render video opens a new window. In this window select Adobe Media Encoder, selecting Quicktime as the format, using a JPEG 2000 medium quality preset with a frame rate of 25FPS.

And this is what I created.

The second part of the class focused on a method called onion skins and is used mainly for digitizing hand drawn animations which have been drawn and scanned in frame by frame.

We set it up with a different document set up, using a 960 by 540 pixel canvas and a square pixel aspect ratio, and with the timeline open we added a new blank video layer from the layer menu at the top of the Photoshop window. With this new video layer in place, we opened the timeline window menu and changed the frame rate to 12 frames per second. We then opening the timeline menu again and turned on onion skins.

With onion skins on we added the artwork frame by frame, with onion skins on it reduces the opacity of the previous frame so that you can get the position of each of the elements right from one frame to the next, allowing for a smoother animation of any moving objects.

Once happy with the content of the animation we tested it out before exporting it to quicktime, using a medium jpeg qulity and a 24fps frame rate.

I think this particular gif animation could be a lot smoother with the motion of the circles.


The final part of the session focused on a method called Rotoscoping. We started by opening another new file, with 1280 by 720 as the resolution. Ensuring the timeline is open again, we added video from file, by going to the wideo layers menu in the layers menu and selecting 'new video layer form file' and finding the right file. In this case we were supplied with a few clips of breakdancers.

Again we changed the frame rate in Photoshop to 12fps, but this time we turned onion skins off, whilst turning the loop playback option on. We then had to draw over the video frame by frame, mine was a bit rushed so I just quickly drew a stick man over the break dancer's skeleton following the movement frame by frame. Once ready the video was exported and rendered using a JPEG medium quality setting with a 24fps frame rate ready for Quicktime.

As I mentioned before, my attempt is a bit rushed and therefore incomplete and untidy, given more time I would have liked to be more precise with my stickman, remove the background and obviously finish drawing over all of the video.

AfterEffects S3 - Title Sequence

For the final session of AfterEffets we were tasked with creating a title screen/start/end slate that used some of AE's 3 dimensional functionality, but first we had to create the assets in Illustrator.

I created a series of hexagons and a title (along the same theme) of HEXA, as with other AE projects each of the elements that I wanted to be animated separately had to be in their own layer within Illustrator, with most o the artwork being towards the centre of the board to avoid it running off screen between different viewing devices, and in this case the text had to changed to create outlines for the animation to work properly.

My illustrator artboard

Then we imported it into AE, and during the importation, retain layer size had to be clicked on. After importing the artwork and checking the composition settings, we toggled the switches and modes in the timeline, and activated the 3D layer option (symbolized with an isometric diagram of a box).

Turning on the 3D layer option adds a z axis to the standard x and y axis used in 2D work. X being the horizontal, Y being the vertical whilst the Z axis measures depth. Having done this I experimented with some of the effects available as well as the position of my hexagons within x,y and z fields.

Then we added texture and we did this by firstly selecting the element, and then selecting the pre-compose option from the composition menu. This creates a new composition, open this, and import that texture file before placing this at the bottom of the layer stack next to the timeline. Toggle the switches and modes again so that the mode options are available. Select the option that says TrkMat and select Alpha Matte, and this should add the desired texture to the desired element, in this case I chose on of my hexagons.

After this we added a vignette to the animation. This is done by creating a shape at the top of the layer stack, and dragging it over the top of the composition, leaving a border around the outside. We then changed the mask from add to subtract and feathering the edges to give a vignette effect around the outside of the frame. I chose not to include this in my final animation as I did not feel it matched the aesthetic I wanted.

hexa from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

Given more time I would have liked to have added a more fitting texture to my work, as well as add more depth to some of the individual hexagons.

After Effects T2S2 Kinetic Typography

In this session we set about creating a 10 second long animation in which words would be the main focus of the animation.

We started with finding something to base our animation on whether this be a spoken word soundtrack, a clipping from a song, or some kind of written word. Having recently watched the 2009 film Zombieland I decided I wanted to use one of the rules from the film and perhaps recreate a similar type of visual effect as they do within the film for each of the rules when it becomes relevant in the story of the film. I chose rule number 32; "Enjoy the little things". I chose this because I thought it was longer than some of the other rules and would give me more scope to be creative with the effects.

After we had decided on the content we had to create storyboards for the animation, using illustrator - which was set up to the same dimensions as After Effects (1920 px wide by 1020 px tall). I created a board for each of the different segments of my video - making 4 in total.

My storyboards for a more minimalist animation

After this I then began to recreate each of these storyboards in AfterEffects, seen as my video was mainly based around the words there was no soundtrack or live action video in the background, so I began to use the text tool to copy and paste the text from Illustrator into AfterEffects. Once all this was in place I began to stagger the corresponding layers to get a better timeline of the when the elements would come into frame.

Once this step was complete I went about getting the motion and timing of each the different elements right. This was just a case of timing the entrances of the different bits of texts so that there was enough of a gap between them so that it was easy to read with a naturl flow, whilst trying not to cramp them into a shorter space of time, you have to be cautious as to not give it too much time in between that you disrupt the natural flow. The motion paths of the elements also had to be planned so that they didn't crash over each other and prevent a viewer from reading them.

I then began to experiment with various entrances effects and styles. Whilst I found some pretty cool effects to use for each of the elements, using them in conjunction with the others didn't feel right, so I chose a much simpler range of effects and animations to create a better harmony and match with the flat aesthetic of my piece.

Rule #32 from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

 If I had more time I would have liked to explored more of the effects to give the piece a more advanced look. I would have also liked to have reconsidered the exits of the pieces, again to give a more professional ending to the work.

Creative Suite T1S1 - Tree Light Bulb

Before

After

In our first session using the Adobe Creative Suite we were tasked with changing the picture on the left and making it look something resembling the one on the right.

Firstly we had to clean up the background on the base layer - the one with the bulb. I did this by creating a new layer above the bulb layer, then using a feather edged white brush I 'painted over the areas to the right hand side and to the bottom of the bulb to hide all the undesired parts of the background. I then placed the screw piece layer into position on top of the original image, adjusting the size and position so that it fitted seamlessly, before using the patch tool to remove all the filament from the bulb, as well as the rest of the layer surrounding the base of the bulb. The clone stamp tool was used to remove the stamp at the top of the bulb and replace it with ordinary glass from the area around the top of the bulb, the same tool was also used to remove the filament from the top of the screw layer - to make it appear as if there was never a filament within the bulb..

The trunk of the tree was then placed over where the filament would have been, before the magic wand was used to select the areas around the tree. These areas where then put under a layer mask to be hidden from view (white shows, black hides). The head of the tree was then put into position before the branches on this layer removed - to make the bits with the leaves fit with the other tree layer. 

We then proceeded to add the reflections of the tree to the inside of the bulb. This was achieved by duplicating the layer with the leaves in, adjusting the size before warping to match the curvature of the bulb and reducing the opacity down to around 30 or 40 %. A small section towards the bottom of the reflection was masked off to avoid clashing with the 'real' tree or appearing outside of the bulb. 

The lower reflection was made using a similar process but was first rotated through 180 degrees to give a realistic reflection.

I then played around with the brightness and contrast settings with the bulb to make the glass and metal bright and shiny. I also played with the hue settings of the tree layers to give the tree an orange-y tint to it.

If I were to reproduce this pece I would take more care with the background, as there is a clear difference between the right hand side which is very white and the middle and left hand sides towards the top of the image where still have a light grey gradient at the top. Also at the bottom you can see the effects of using the stamping tools.

And on closer inspection you can see where I have used the clone stamp tool on the screw element.

Creative Suite T1 S2 - Mazza

My attempt at an Illustrator portrait of Marilyn Monroe

My version of a portrait of Marilyn Monroe made in illustrator is relatively easy to imitate, and only really uses the pen tool.

Firstly we found a picture of Marilyn Monroe on the internet and placed it into Illustrator. Then we created a new layer and started tracing the outlines of specific features of Marilyn's head such as the shape of her head, hair, and neck, using the pen tool. To get the lines to match the curvy bits of her hair and body you would need to play with the arms that came from the anchor points when you clicked and dragging whilst keeping hold of the initial click (instead of just clicking). To make it easier you may need to drag away from the body and make the arm longer, or delete one of the arms by converting the anchor to a point with only one arm. 

Each element should have its own outline (ie the hair should be different to the rest of the head and face, which should be in turn different from the body and neck etc).

Each feature of the face should also have its own outline (the eyes, eyebrows and nostrils should be one each). The eye is made up of multiple elements. The iris and pupil are two different circles overlaid on top of each other as well as on top of the white of the eye. The general shape of the eye is made by lines and changing the curvature and the brush option to have a thicker middle and a thinner end, the same method can be followed to get each of the eyelashes but instead choosing an option that has a wider end at one end. The shape of the eye and the eyelashes are placed on top of the rest of the components of the eyes to hide the top of the circles.

Once all the elements have been drawn with an outline you can fill them with the appropriate colour. The shading is created by following the edge of one of the shapes that would cast a shadow (ie the head onto the neck, or the collar of the dress onto the shoulder) and following the line of the shadow from the picture underneath Once the outline is drawn fill with a grey or dark tone and I have chosen to turn down some of the opacity because I think it looks more realistic. 

I then gave the picture a coloured background to make it stand out.

The key to this method is handles, points, and layers.

If I were to reproduce this piece I would try to get the shape of the arm, nose and eyes closer to a more real shape, I would also try to add more depth to some of the features by creating more shadows.

Creative Suite T2- InDesign

Term 2's first workshop in the Creative Suite, was to do with InDesign, and primarly looked at getting used to using InDesign and establishing good design practices in relation to copy, as well as setting up paragraph styles.

We were asked to create a quick booklet in InDesign with no real effort being put into styling it, more effort should have been concentrated on the layout, so I decided to create my booklet around the American Football team The Baltimore Ravens. Here is what I created initially without much in the way of styling.

It features a two page spread with 3 columns on each page. It has the team name as a title in the top left of the page in all caps, the main body of the spread is 6 of the teams players. Each includes a picture, the players name, position and squad number, as well as body of placeholder text in lieu of a interview or in-depth player profile or bio. The title is in 36pt, the player names, position and squad number is in 24pt, and the main body is in 12pt. All text on this page is in default 'times new roman'.

So I set about styling the text using paragraph styles.

So I opened the paragraph styles panel, changed the style name to title (because I was going to use it to stylize the title) and it could be used for any other article title if this were a magazine in order to give a consistent style throughout the document. I changed the font (in this case to Performa, even though I later changed it to Agency FB with a bold style). I set the point size to 36, with the leading at auto (which at 36pt is 43.2pt).

 I then went through the little sub-categories in the list on the left hand side, tweaking some of the settings such as turning hyphenation of (leaving it on is considered bad practice, any hyphenation should really be avoided but if it needs to be done it should be done sparingly and by hand). I also changed the font colour to white as I feel that this is more visible on the purple background, white is also further up on the hierarchy of colours used by the team.

I then set new styles for the rest of the text such as the sub-headings (the player name, position and squad number) - which is in 24pt agency bold, with a 27pt leading and is in a purple colour to help with the contrast with the rest of the body.

The main body is in 12pt agency regular, below is how the spread looked after styling was added.

 The next step was to look at the layout of the body more carefully, and removing all the stuff that made it look unprofessional such as any widows (a line that is separated from the rest of the paragraph that it is a part of - this wasnt a problem as all my copy fitted within one column) and orphans (any one word lines at the end of a paragraph), as well as looking at the tracking and kerning to remove any large gaps (known as rivers). Adjusting the tracking and kerning within a paragraph can also help fill out a line and make the ends of lines within a paragraph look less ragged.

Doing this helps with the readability of the body copy by removing any large gaps between words or paragraphs, as well as making the shape of the copy look better to the eye.

Here is the final spread after all the adjustments and styling has been added to it.

Creative Suite T2- Illustrator

In our illustrator session of using creative suite, we were tasked with creating a rocket ship using only 5 shapes. We started with an ellipse for the main body of the rocket. We then adjusted the anchors at the top and the bottom to give the rocket a more traditional rocket shape with a pointier nose and a wider base at the bottom. We then adjusted some of the appearance attributes for the rocket - mainly the stroke settings. I made the stroke of mine orange, I also increased the weight to 5pt. I then added another stroke using the setting in the appearance menu. I offset this so that it was inside the main stroke, I then changed this so that it was a black dotted line.

Next I created one of the fins. This came about by creating a fin like shape using the pen tool before following the same process as the body in terms of adding the multiple strokes. After this I then duplicated the fin, and flipped the copy so that I had a fin for either side of the rocket.

The next step was to create a pattern fill for the ship. this was made by creating a cross with two boxes of the same colour and a lowered opacity, laid on top of each other at 90 degrees. We then added this as a pattern swatch to the swatch pallet, applied this to the fill of each of the different parts of the shape and adjust the scale of the patterned fill until it looked good.

We then added a porthole to the ship, this was made by simply adding a circle to the body of the ship, and then adding a couple of different strokes. I added 1 white dashed stroke, before adding alternate strokes of orange and white (to match the stroke already on the outside of the ship and the accent colour in the pattern fill).

Once all this was done we grouped the parts of the ship together, before adding another wider white stroke and a drop shadow to finalize the design. And this is what I produced...

As part of the same session was also created a pear in Illustrator using some of the tools to make it look 3D realistic.

We started with a picture of pear off of the internet and put it into Illustrator, before creating a new layer on top and locking the layer with the original pear in it. In this new layer we began to trace around the outside of the pear using the pen tool (and adjusting the anchor/handles points to match the curved bits of the fruit). Once this done we added a mesh inside it using the mesh tool. We then moved some of the lines within the mesh to match the contours of the pear. After this we then added more points/lines to the mesh before switching to outline mood. Using the gradient mesh tool we started to add colour to the new layer. This was done by selecting the point on the mesh with the direct selection tool and using the eyedropper tool to select a point nearby on the real pear in order to give it a realistic colour and shading.

The same technique was then applied to the stalk.

Once this was complete as well we switched back to preview mode before adding a texture to the pear. The texture was found on the internet before being placed over the top and the blending mode changed to multiply or overlay, then going into live trace and altering the threshold to make it look like it was part of the pear.

And this is my food for the man in the rocket.

After Effects

After Effects T1 S1

Making Glass Cows from Assembly on Vimeo.

          A 'making of' video created for the use in the Anchor milk advert(s), showing each of the steps that led to the final product before being placed in context for the advert.

          This looks really good because the feel of the video is minimalist and the copy is very subtle and unobtrusive. The animators have realised the video will be viewed close to a monitor and as such not made the copy massive. The transitions of the text and between each of the stages is also very subtle with wipes and transitions. The texture and movement of the milk and the glass also looks very good.

After Effects T1 S2 & 3

          
          The second of the After Effects Sessions was used to familiarise ourselves with some of the functionality of the software as well as setting up our first project. We set up the project with a standard widescreen TV broadcast set up, making it 1920 pixels wide by 1080 tall with a 30 frame per second frame rate.

          After the project was set up we imported the sound tracks we had found, I wanted to use a track from freemusicarchive.org called "Impact Allegretto" by Kevin MacLeod. We put this into the timeline and began to search it for an appropriate 10 second period in the track to use for our short movie trailer. Once this was done we began to mark some of the beat changes that would be good to use as an audio Q to change the on screen visuals.

          This would provide a rough guide to the timing of the cutting of the audio and visual elements and the duration each element would be on screen for. The next step was to replace these solid blocks of colour with our own images that we had sourced and produced. This was done by importing all the visual assets into the workspace before placing them into the timeline and matching the cuts of the corresponding coloured solids. 

          At this point I decided the beat of my audio track was not fast enough so I merged it with another ("El Preso Numero Nueve" by Kathleen Martin - again from Free Music Archive), I added some more markers and added my images. This made my trailer better because it increased the tempo and that was the desired effect as I was attempting to make an action film trailer.

          Once all the audio and visual's were matched up I added some effects by making the trailer black and white. This was achieved just by adding a black solid and changing the blending/layer style to overlay and this made it black and white. I also added transitions such as fades to the start and end. The fade at the end allowed the end board to come in with the text. The end board was black but I adjusted the opacity so that the character behind was still partially visible, I did this because the final scene of the trailer was very short and the speed of this may have meant the viewer wouldn't have time to see and take in the final scene before the end board came in. 

           Another effect I added was to one of the scenes, I added a red overlay to it because the victim was bleeding and this bit of colour was emphasised because it was one of the few occasions where colour was used. I also added an audio effect of a gun shot (from Cute Stock Footage, but to match this I changed the visual to a blank black background - meaning that the viewer would pay more attention to the audio track.

           For the final bit of editing I did, I added the end board and placed some text on top of it. "The Plumber" split across two lines, all in caps in Helvetica Neue. I increased the point size of the word 'plumber' and changed the colour to red to make it stand out more. On another line in a smaller point size but also in caps and Helvetica Neue I adding "coming soon" but in white this time.

           Once all the video was ready we then had to export it to view on Vimeo and QuickTime Player. We added it to the render queue and rendered with the best settings available. We set the output module to 'Quicktime Movie' (but if we were wanting to just export the audio we would need to select MP3). We also had to change the format options by changing the video codec settings to Apple ProRes 4444, with the audio output on, this allowed the file size to come down without drastically effecting the quality of the final video. 

           We opened the exported video in Quicktime before exporting it in 720p HD for use on Vimeo. Once the video had exported we uploaded the 720p version to Vimeo, because this was still a good quality to use and wouldn't take a long time to upload.

"The Plumber" After Effects Project 1 from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

After Effects T2S1

The second term workshops in After Effects were 4 hour workshops, meaning that after each session there would be a product - a ten second clip, before starting a new 'project' in the next workshop.

The first session required us to have brought a character, made in Illustrator, to use in After Effects. Each element of the character had to be in a different layer, so that it could be animated independently of the other features. My character was made using simple geometric shapes such as hexagons and polygons, and in the end looked like some kind of rocky turtle. 

We then set up the project using a widescreen HD format (1920 x 1080 pixels) and began to experiment with scale, rotation and position of the different elements of the character, before adding in additional assets for aesthetics, such as a background and a texture to make it more visually interesting. Once we added these elements I added a solid block of black over the bottom part of my background to distinguish this as the foreground for my character to walk on. Over the textured background I added a block of color (blue) and changed the blending option to give the background a blue tint. 

character 1LowRes from Matt McGough on Vimeo.

My animation shows my character walking across the screen before stopping just after halfway. The character is then seen to raise his hand, shake it a couple of times before continuing his journey across the screen.

I like what I have achieved with this animation but it could be improved drastically. The motion of his feet could be more fluid and realistic, and if I had more time, I would have added another character to demonstrate that my character is playing rock, paper, scissors, and I would have also finished of the animation of the feet to match the body as it leaves the screen. I would also like to change the background, as currently I don't feel that it matches the narrative of the animation.

You can see a more polished, more complete and a slightly longer version of this here.

Physical Studio

Physical Studio Term 1 Session 1 - Creative Copy-writing 

We were tasked with crating a 2 page story using 5 stories we had found from newspapers as inspiration and what I crafted was a story incorporating fraud, assault, vinegar, and a few famous faces.

Here is what I wrote:

“Six forty, please mate” I said to the customer as I rang up his order on the till, as George (my assistant and shop hand) was putting the two portions of fish and chips, one portion of chips, and a small pot of curry sauce in a bag to takeaway. The customer gave me a five pound note and a two pound coin. Seven minus six forty leaves sixty-pence in change – an easy bit of maths for a Saturday night.

“You seen that mate?” said the customer whilst gesturing towards the television in the top corner of the shop. I turned to look at the ten o’clock news that was coming towards the end of its scheduled slot. The newscaster started with the ‘...and finally...’ story, the light hearted story used to lighten up the tone from the usually depression bombardment of depressing news stories associated with today’s current affairs. “Hertfordshire born singer George Ezra has been left slightly embarrassed tonight after [the shot then cut to a shot of Ezra’s ‘Budapest’ music video] admitting he didn’t quite know who Denzel Washington is. The singer songwriter was introduced to Hollywood actor Denzel Washington[the TV then showed some footage of Denzel Washington on the red carpet for some glitzy film premier] last week but later admitted to knowing the name but not what the ‘Taking of Pelham 1-2-3’ star looked like.” The editor of the programme then cut to a third shot, George Ezra was talking to an entertainment reporter about the meeting. He was explaining that he knew the name of the star but hadn’t seen any of his films. “All my friends and the people around me were having a good laugh at my expense about it, but I didn’t bowl up to him going “who are you”, Denzel was really nice about the whole thing.”

As the report drew to a close the director cut to a shot of the newsreader in the studio, and I turned back round to the customer who had remained behind to watch the report and gather my reaction to the story. ‘I guess it happens more than you think’ I said to the customer, ‘especially between disciplines like music, film and literature, I bet there’s load of authors I know the name of but couldn’t pick them out of line-up”.

The customer replied “yeah same here.” despite him easily being 20 or 30 years younger than me, and much more in tune with today’s popular culture. He then grabbed the bag and made a motion to leave “cheers mate” he said as he picked it up and lifted it from the counter top. He turned and took his leave of the shop, and suddenly the shop was void of customers for the first time since about 6:30, but this being London on a Saturday night it wouldn’t be too long before the footfall picks up again. We needed to take advantage of the quiet before the storm and stock up. “George; fill up the salt and vinegar bottles whilst we are quiet please mate.”

“Yeah, I will do in a minute” he snapped back, whilst moving some fish out of the fryer and into the section that keeps it hot without cooking it.

I took the opportunity to grab some more trays and bread cakes from out of the back. I picked up a big stack of polystyrene trays, comfortably enough to deal with the evening rush of boozed up costumers and clients of our fine nation’s capital nightlife recreational establishments, who happened to occasionally fancy a British food institution before hoping in a taxi and making their way home. Many chippies would have closed long before kicking out time, but I saw a niche in the market and decided to take a chance on opening my fryer later on Saturday’s to capture more of the market and make more money for myself. Initially it was slow going but it soon picked up as word spread that my establishment was the only one offering fish and chips within 5 miles.

I placed all the trays on the side of the counter next to the stack of paper used to line the trays and wrap the orders. I took a glance at the vinegar dispensers across the counter and on top of the fryers. All, nowhere near full enough, to deal with the oncoming flood of clients. “George, I told you to fill the vinegar bottles,” I said firmly and assertively, “They need to be filled before the rush starts otherwise there will be no chance to fill them!”


“I said in a minute” he retorted.
“Make sure it gets done”.



I went back to get the bread cakes. I picked up a few packs, it probably wouldn’t be enough to deal with all the traffic but they are quick enough to restock that it wouldn’t be a problem. I also grabbed the big bottle of vinegar that George was going to use to fill the rest of the smaller dispensers.

When I returned to the front of the shop there was a group of 3 twenty-something males talking to George, the three had obviously been out on the town. Slurred speech, excessive volume and rowdiness all symptomatic of the intoxication so fondly sought by today’s youth. There seemed to be a lot of fuss caused over the identity of one of the youths and his lifestyle. I approached George and asked him what they had ordered and I started processing it; putting the chips in the fryer, the fish in the batter and then in a different fryer, all whilst George was talking football with the customers. George, 22, was obsessed with Chelsea and appeared to be star struck by the names being dropped by the man in the middle of the 3 on the other side of the counter, I couldn’t stand football and much preferred following the cricket or the rugby.

Taking a moment to look up from the fish in the fryer I saw the blue lights of a police car fill the night sky. It wasn’t only me who had noticed it, everyone else had as well, including the two men who had just entered the shop from their night out on the tiles, but the most noticeable reaction was of the man in the middle of the huddle. Suddenly the joy and happiness on the man’s face was tinged with nervousness and panic as he realised what it was. Suddenly a police car slowed to a stop outside the store, and another, and another. 5 fully uniformed officers, and one in plain clothes (but with a police stab-vest other the top of his jumper) all got out of their cars and made a bee line for the front door. All the conversation in the shop stopped dead, the sound of the TV filled the store but nobody took notice of it. All attention was on the 3 officers who made it into my establishment. The plain clothed officer began talking to the man who was obviously scared by the presence of the law.

“Are you Medi Abalimba? Also known as Gael Kakuta?” The officer said.

The man nodded.

“I am DS Tom Perkins from the Metropolitan police; you need to come with me please.” Abalima complied with the officers whilst the other two uniformed officers arrested the other two people for conspiracy to defraud. The men were loaded into separate police cars as everyone in the shop watched on in stunned silence as they were all driven away. As the cars disappeared from view, it took a moment to realise what had happened.

“Right then, who’s next please?” I said allowed to get some sort of normality restored. The two men who had entered before the police had gone and stood down the other end of the store whilst the action took place. The moved up towards the counter, “two large portions of chips please mate”. George started to explain what had gone on whilst I took the chips out of the fryer and onto the trays.

“By the sounds of it, they were arrested for fraud, and the main man was pretending to be a guy in the Chelsea academy called Gael Kakuta.”

“Oh right, fooled me” said me, as I didn’t have a clue who he was.” I gave the two men their chips as George told them the cost of their order. I turned by back as George handled the money from that transaction as I began to deal with the bread cakes I had brought through, but hadn’t had the chance to deal with properly before Kakuta or whatever his name was came in.

As I was putting the packs on shelves I heard one of the men pipe up ‘you got any more vinegar mate, all these are empty?”.

I turned around; “George, I told you to fill them up”. As I continued to turn round I saw George pick up the bigger bottle of vinegar from the side of the counter, and he raised it up above his head as he turned to face me.

I could tell from the look from his face something wasn’t right.

We both continued to turn towards each other, and within a split second he was bringing his arm down, and thats the last think I can remember.



I woke up in the ambulance, where they explained that George had hit me in the head with the vinegar bottle and knocked me unconscious.

I was later informed by the police that George had been arrested for ‘a salt and battery’.

Physical Studio T1 S2 - Moodboard

We were then tasked with creating a mood board of appropriate images to accompany our story which would serve as inspiration for selecting images that would accompany the copy in newspaper or magazine spreads.

My mood board 

The focus of my mood board was around fish and chip shops, and fights as this is the main event and setting within my story, but I have also included images of the police and a few famous faces that also appear in my story.

Physical Studio T1 S3 - Layout Thumbnails

The third task of the Physical Studio sessions was to produce thumbnail mock ups of potential page layout ideas.

Firstly we had to sketch out a selection of a variety of a ideas for layouts onto a sheet of A3.

Then we took a selection of these ideas and made them full page A3 thumbnails, using grid/layout paper and tracing paper over the top. Using the grid underneath the tracing paper meant we could get the proportions right for the number of grids as well as the width of these grids and the gutter between them.

Physical Studio T2 S1 - Letterform Creation

We were supplied with a variety of different reference materials by various artist and instructed to pick out shapes and create letter forms based on the shapes we had picked out from the reference material. We were required to make 3 different styles, for the letters a, n, e, s, and g, and the results could be in either upper or lower case.

I picked out works by Joseph Binder, Wolfgang Weinhart, El Lissitzky, Lauri Rosenwald, and Josef Muller Brockmann.

The works by the latter three artists were the main inspiration behind my ideas, which I sketched down on graph paper.

For my first set, I was inspired by Muller-Brokmann's use of arc's of concentric circles which gradually extended beyond the one inside of it, and how these different segments combined together can make a shape, or in this case, a letter.

My second set was more inspired by Rosenwald's work that used perfect, concentric circles. I used sets of three or four concentric circles - which were created using a compass - to ensure that I got the proportions right as well as maintaining a perfect circle or curve for elements of the bowl, lobe and ears of the different characters.

The third set was inspired Lissitzky's work, and I wanted to incorperate the triangle in the above reference material into at least one of the my letterforms, such they are all as angular and geometric as possible. I think that this reference is clearest in the A on the right hand side of the page.

Overall, I think that the second set is probably my favourite as it looks the most professional even though the one on the left is the most fun to make, whilst the one on the right is the easiest to create.

Physical Studio T2 S2 - Making alphabets

The second session was based upon the letter form styles we created in the first session, and the task in the second session was to expand these styles and make up the rest of the alphabet using each of these styles.

Overall, I am quite pleased with how this step of the process went. The second set was the easiest set to create the rest of the alphabet because of the style was easier to replicate across the different shapes involved with the other letters. The other styles were a little harder to replicate due to the style being quite random/ dependent on the shape being created. Certain letters were particularly challenging to create, mainly the x's, s's, k's and the q's. The u's and v's were also difficult to create in a way that the two looked apart and wouldn't be confused with each other whilst adhearing to the same style.

Physical Studio T1 S3 - Layout Thumbnails

The third task of the Physical Studio sessions was to produce thumbnail mock ups of potential page layout ideas.

Firstly we had to sketch out a selection of a variety of a ideas for layouts onto a sheet of A3.

Then we took a selection of these ideas and made them full page A3 thumbnails, using grid/layout paper and tracing paper over the top. Using the grid underneath the tracing paper meant we could get the proportions right for the number of grids as well as the width of these grids and the gutter between them.