Decisions, decisions...

Hello!

In this post, I will discussing the options I have to choose between for different parts of the assignment. The main decisions I need to make are in regards to what idea I want to choose and what file formats I will use; I will also talk about other decisions I have made that will affect what I create.

Ideas

As previously posted, I have been trying to decide between whether I want this assignment to have a 1970's film theme or Racing Videogame theme to it.

I have created two 'moodboards' to show the concepts for the ideas, they are made up of the images I either would like to draw inspiration from or they are the images I associate with those themes.

The moodboards contain images or related images I would want to use in the actual designs, but are the designs are not limited to just these materials.

For the 1970's moodboard, the reason I chose the images I did is because I would like to try and produce a movie package for a (fictional) movie that would contain a lot of action, explosions, luxury cars and 70's-style catchphrases- my perception of the movies of that period. The images in the moodboard capture the feelings of power and 'righteousness', I believe this is because the majority of the images showcase protagonists that show a lot of attitude and may not always fight for a moral cause (or gain 'good deeds') but they fight for justice of some sort like 'anti-heroes'. For example, the protagonist of 1975's 'Dolemite' is a pimp who, at the beginning of the film is serving a 20 year prison sentence before being broken out of jail by a friend; they then plot to get revenge on the rival pimp who set him up and caused Dolemite to go to jail in the first place.

This designs for this idea would involve explosions, cars and interesting shots of characters; I have an idea for a design involving a large as the main background of the DVD Wrap, referencing the modern-retro promotional artwork for Black Dynamite.

For the racing game moodboard, some of the images I chose are taken from the Need for Speed games that I wanted to include in the movie package, they are mostly shots of the main cars from their respective games or pictures that were used as promotional material when they were released. The other images (such as the illustration of the muscle cars racing at night or the boot-view of a car that has nitrous oxide bottles and a custom sound-system installed) were chosen because they portray a sense of excitement, speed and entertainment, feelings that I associate with cars and racing; this is what I want to portray in the fictional movie I produce if I were to choose this idea.

File Formats

When it comes to creating the wrap, label and logo, I need to choose file formats to which I will save the final productions as a 'render'. There are a few different file formats to choose from, each with their own 'pros and cons'.

The Joint Photographic Experts Group or 'JPEG' format is a file format that was developed in 1992 (JPEG, 2000), it is one of the most popular photo formats and is widely used as the default file format for saving pictures in digital cameras and software applications such Microsoft Paint. It is known for its ability to "compress images to a high degree whilst still retaining high image quality" (Digital image file types, n.d.). This is achieved by discarding information or parts of the image that is are not as likely to be noticed by the human eye. This in turn leads to quality images at a lower file size, but effects of this compression can be noticed if the image is not very good quality, or if it zoomed in on. The JPEG format is good for images that have continuous colours and smooth lines; the deterioration of .jpg images is noticed more on images with sharp lines or text in them.

Portable Networks Graphic or 'PNG' is what is known as a 'lossless' file format; this means that no information or quality is lost during compression, this is the opposite to JPEG which is known a 'lossy' file format. Because .png files are lossless, this also makes their file size much larger than that of a .jpg file (for example). The benefits of using the PNG format is that they .png files support transparency; this means that in a .png file, the background of an image is transparent, meaning that the picture can placed straight on to another image without a white background in the way. Because of their lossless nature, PNG files are great for text images or "complex images like real-life photography (if file size is not an issue)" (Tam, 2015).

TIFF or 'Tagged Image File Format' is a file format used usually in professional photography due to it being a lossless format. A TIFF file uses little to no compression with images, making for really good image quality. In fact, the .tiff format was created in 1986 as a way to make scanned images in an "attempt to get companies to use one standard file format instead of many". Because of TIFF's little use of compression, the file format is used for images that are going to be sent to print- the high quality and retention of detail mean that when the images are scaled, they will not deteriorate as badly. The only real issue with TIFF images is that a lot of internet browsers do not support them, this means that they cannot be viewed on a webpage.

Bitmap or 'BMP' is an uncompressed file format that supports layers and transparency, meaning they are easier to edit but have much larger file sizes. The format was created in 1994 and is now fully controlled by Microsoft. Although it is not really used much nowadays, it was/is still a popular file format, widely used online.

The Graphics Interchange Format or 'GIF' is that uses up to 256 colours, this means images can be greatly compressed and lossless if the image use 256 colours or less, any number above that and the image may lose quality. GIFs can be used for animated images too, GIFs can compile a sequence of still images and play them one after the other, 'animating' them. Because of their smaller file size, GIFs are suited for internet image, logo and banner use.

Out of the formats listed above, I am deciding between using PNG or TIFF for the DVD Wrap; I want to use PNG because I am more familiar with it and as my wrap will include a lot of text and sharper lines, PNG has the quality advantage over a format like JPEG. However, as the wrap is supposed to be printed, TIFF sounds like the better option due to the almost zero compression of the images in the file, making them better for print use.

Design decisions

For the 1970's idea, I have chosen mainly White and Red as the colours I want to use for the wrap, this is because I want to give it an action movie theme but still keep it looking quite 'clean'. I hope to achieve this by using different shades and tones of red to produce a piece that look powerful and attractive.

The racing theme uses brighter and more varied colours to make it really stand out against other Wraps, similarly to how modified cars try to achieve this individuality. The silver colours represent the metal of the cars, and the blue gives the wrap a cooler colour temperature; I also feel that silver and blue combined represent speed because I think of fighter jets and aeroplanes.

I have thinking about fonts for both of the ideas, I wanted the pieces to have unique fonts and went searching outside of the default font library to do this. For the 70's design, I found fonts used in actual 70's posters such as Kabel Black, Motter Ombra and Pioneer. I hope to use these to give the piece a more authentic look. The racing idea also borrows fonts used in the Need for Speed games such as Most Wasted. The difficult part is choosing where to use the fonts for maximum readability and aesthetic effect.

Conclusion

I have decided to choose the 1970's film idea because I believe I can do more with it for this assignment; I feel as though the theme isn't something I've tried to replicate or make before and I believe that because of this, I will learn more by trying this idea. I also think that in choosing this theme, I can exercise my new knowledge (and knowledge I will gain) of the editing software I have to use for the assignment to a better extent.

Lengthy post, but that's all I can think of for now; stay tuned!

Hasnain

References

Text

JPEG, 2000. Available at: <https://jpeg.org/jpeg/index.html> [Accessed 5 March 2016]

Digital image file types, n.d. Available at: <http://users.wfu.edu/matthews/misc/graphics/formats/formats.html> [Accessed 5 March 2016].

Tam, K., 2015. Infographic: Everything you need to know about JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF and BMP file formats. Fstoppers. Available at: <https://fstoppers.com/education/infographic-everything-you-need-know-about-jpg-png-gif-tiff-and-bmp-file-formats-89432> [Accessed 5 March 2016].

caracaleo and Taheri, M., 2013. Graphic formats explained. Creative Market. Available at: <https://creativemarket.com/blog/2013/12/09/graphic-formats-explained> [Accessed 5 March 2016].

JPEG vs PNG vs BMP vs GIF vs SVG, 2016. Available at: <http://superuser.com/questions/53600/jpeg-vs-png-vs-bmp-vs-gif-vs-svg> [Accessed 5 March 2016].

Jamie, 2015. Image formats mega cheat sheets - all you need to know about JPEGs, TIFFS, GIFs, PNGs & BMPs. Make A Website Hub. Available at: <http://makeawebsitehub.com/image-formats-mega-cheat-sheets/> [Accessed 5 March 2016].

Images

n.d. Available at: <http://www.coolwallpapers.org/photo/25296/black_dynamite_wallpaper-2.jpg> [Accessed 5 March 2016].