Online mood board - http://www.pinterest.com/pigottlaura/kinetic-text-madonna-material-girl/

 

Some boys kiss me
Some boys hug me
I think they're ok
If they don't give me proper credit
I just walk away (echoed)

They can beg and they can plead
But they can't see the light (*that's right)
'Cause the boy with the cold hard cash
Is always Mister Right (echoed)

'Cause we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

Some boys romance
Some boys slow dance
That's all right with me 
If they can't raise my interest then I
Have to let them be (echoed)

Some boys try and some boys lie but
I don't let them play (no way)
Only boys who save their pennies
Make my rainy day (echoed)

'Cause we're living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl
Living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

Living in a material world (material)
Living in a material world
Living in a material world (material)
Living in a material world

Boys may come and boys may go
And that's all right you see
Experience has made me rich
And now they're after me (echoed)

'Cause everybody's living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

 

ah ah

Living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

 

 

 

 

KineticText001 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText001-color-theme-5339420/

This colour scheme is a mixture of complementary colours formed as a triad of one another. I based this colour scheme off this image from my moodboard. I really do feel these colours work well together, but there would definitely need to be a very neutral primary colour in the scene, to neutralise the somewhat high saturation of what appeared as more pastel tones in the original image. 4/10

 

KineticText002 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText002-color-theme-5339485/

Complementary colour scheme, with a pastel / sky blue added in to differentiate it slightly. These colours definitely evoke a sense of "world", as in the water, trees, grass etc as well as a sense of femininity through the pink's. I do this this colour scheme is a bit too literal, particuarly in the concept of the "world" colours, as I am planning on creating an alternative version of the world, but these colours may be good to reference if I want to be more literal with a particular enviromental element. 8/10

 

KineticText003 - http://color.adobe.com/KineticText003-color-theme-5339495/

This compound colour scheme is sort of a more modern version of my KineticText002 colour scheme. I was trying to stick with the earthen tones of the browns and greens, while bringing some life into the blue by increasing its chroma values. In retrospect, I really don't like the way these colours sit together, particuarly the blue and the green, although I do quite like the shade of the green as a stand alone colour. 1/10

 

KineticText004 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText004-color-theme-5339515/

The best way to describe this colour scheme is a stretched out version of an analogous colour palette, so much so that two of the colours are almost complementary to one another. I think this scheme is too playful, as well as too saturated, for this particular project. I also think that my choice of placements on the colour wheel breaks too many rules to actually justify this as a viable colour palette, primarily as this is a Typography based assignment, I feel that there would be alot of readibility issues with these colours. 0/10

 

KineticText005 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText005-color-theme-5339521/

This triadic colour scheme brings in a mixture of my previous colour scheme - soft, almost wallpaper like tones, with a contrast in tones. I love the dustyness of the pink and blue, particualry in contrast with the aqua-green. The two brown's are almost too simular to warrent two swatches, but as a whole I think this palette works well together. There's still something a bit boring about the colours, but I can't quite put my finger on it at the minute. 6/10

 

KineticText006 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText006-color-theme-5339532/

Complementary Colour Scheme, primarily blues and browns in a range of tones.

 

KineticText007 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText007-color-theme-5339556/

Again, as with KineticText004, this is an analogous colour pallet that's been stretched beyond it's normal realms, just in a more tinted version. I seem to be sticking to alot of dusty pinks / purples in alot of my schemes, and although I quite like each of these individual colours, they don't work particuarly well together. The tone of the blue is really nice, although it would definitely need some varying hues around it to make it interesting, although since it already looks like a chalky pastel colour, it may work well as part of the combination between KineticText006 and KineticText002 that I discussed earllier. 4/10

 

KineticText008 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText008-color-theme-5339606/

For this colour scheme I went entirely custom, and didn't intentionally adhere to any colour rules of  colour theory in particular. I basically selected colours based on their own individual merits, beginning with the blue, and then tried to find colours that I thought fit visually well together. I love love love this combination of colours, but I still feel that there is something missing, as again they are almost too literal to the idea of "world". I think I'm going to throw this colour scheme into the pot with KineticText002 and Kinetic006 and see what I can come up with. 9/10

 

KineticText009 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText009-color-theme-5339581/

This is basically just KineticText008 with the shaded green swapped out for a more tonal purple. I was just experimenting to see if I could inject some life into the theme, while still maintaining the nice contrast I had achieved in the previous example. Although I like the ashyness of the purple, it definitely has taken something away from the palette overall, and I definitely think it worked better as it was in KineticText008. That said, if I had come up with this scheme originally, and didn't have the previous version to compare it to, I do think I'd be soring it marginally higher. 8/10

 

KineticText010 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText010-color-theme-5340049/

This pallet is a combination of KineticText002 and KineticText006. Although the combination of the pinks and blues (in simular tones) works well, I really feel there need to be some green mixed in. Ideally, the more that I look at it, I would like to just combine these two palettes in their entirety, although I think nine colours would be a bit too broad as an overall colour pallet. I know I will definitely be pulling reference from these regardless, as I keep getting drawn back to them. 8/10

 

KineticText011 - https://color.adobe.com/KineticText011-color-theme-5340098/

Finally, I think I'm almost at a combination I could be happy with! This is KineticText010, which was a combination of KineticText002 and KineticText006 anyway, combined with KineticText008. I've intentionally shaded the green to a greater extend than the other colours (although the dusty blue is a close second) to create some contrast in the palette. 9/10

 

Conclusion - I'm going to come back to these palettes again in a day or two and see which one jumps out at me. I can't really name a top three right now, as so many of them are combinations of one another, but I think KineticText011 and KineticText008 are currently in the running.

 

 

These are my first attempt at style frames for this project. I decided to go with the KineticText010 colour scheme, as it's the main one that jumped out at me today. I'm currently using the Helvetica typeface, as when I began experimenting with more literal versions of my interpretation of the song, such as Patchwork Alphabet, I realised that I needed to pick one strong typeface that would support the entire animation, and then if I do decide to use a more comical font, to do so with care and possibley build it in to a prop or element that it could sit in to, as opposed to trying to let it stand on its own.
The top two images represent the same style frame, just with an experiment with including black (which I'm still unsure about as it takes away from the softness of the palette). The idea would be that the composition would begin in the centre of the spiral, and spin outward as the words appear, culminating in the spiral becoming the dot ("tittle") of the "i" in the word Girl. The spiral surrounds a diamond, which will "ping" in some way.
The bottom left image is of a spinning world, with continents made stitched fabric. The phrase above the world will spin up from the right and revolve around the planet, while the "Material World" phrase will spin around the world as it turns.
The bottom right image is an experiment with the "cut-out" effect I was discussing in my mood board, where the two primary colours in the scene give an effect of the elements being cut out of one another. I don't think this is anywhere near how I want this effect to look, but I feel this may be due to the flatness of the scene. Adding a camera move and some depth to the image may help bring this out further. I'm also conflicted about the text element now, as I had to change the colour to try and make the descenders of the character stand out some bit from the colour underneath. This colour change wasn't enough to make a dramatic difference, so it begs the question as to whether I should just go for a capitalised font (to remove the issue of the descenders altogether), although this is a design choice I would need to consider carefully as I'm not sure I want to work in all caps. I will take it under consideration though.

 

 

Today I focused on trying to get the "cut-out" effect looking a bit clearer, as well as trying to bring some more movement into my style frames. I decided to stay away from camera moves for the moment, as I feel this would involve skipping a big step between defining a style and actually creating the animation. The top two images were an attempt to allow the words themselves to create another word ("girl"). I was originally using the word for reference, but I now like the effect of them actually sitting in it. I might combine these so that the words build but and eventually the word "girl" appears.

The bottom left image represents a spiral of the words, which begins zoomed in on the word "you", and spirals as it zooms out to reveal the rest of the lyrics. I like the sense of movement in this frame, but I could definitely see a difficulty in how I would animate the timing, as the pace and rhythm of each syllable varies greatly, so the speed and the rotation of the spiral would need to reflect this, which could make the whole thing look jerky and less polished (as the smoothness of the spin would be comprimised).

The bottom right image again is based around how the text is actually going to move. In this frame, the men (which will be animated to walk) are marching continously in opposite directions, all identical to one another - as this reflects the way in which the song treats men as disposable and interchangable. At the same time, the lyrics will also be panning across the frame, in opposite directions, so that they almost line up to show all of the words at any one time.

 

 

 

 

As I began developing my style frames I became concerned that the fabric/material feel that I was originally planning was becoming lost as I was mainly focusing on the typography, colour scheme and movement within each frame. I am currently playing with different methods of adding texture to my graphics. The first image is an original version of one of my previous style frames which I am using for comparison.

The top right image was altered using the "Texturiser" filter from Photoshop's filter gallery. The Scaling is set to 136% and Relief to 5. I like the way the original hue, tone and brightness of the frame has been preserved. The effect works well overall, but the pattern is possibly a bit too uniform.

The bottom left image was created using blend modes and a seperate image of a fabric which I felt had some nice texture to it. I scaled this image so that it would fully cover this frame, and then desaturated it so that the fabrics colour would not interfere with the original colours as much. I then set the blend mode to "Vivid Light" and the fill of the layer to 50%. I really like this method as it means I can take pictures of many fabrics and materials and create my own unique textures. The colours have been preserved quite well, and although the purple appears a bit darker, this is merely due to the additional shade being created by the texture above.

The bottom right image was created in a simular way to the previous one, except that I did not desaturate the fabric image, and used the "Luminosity" blend mode, with the fill of the layer set to 50% instead. This method has definitely reduced the overall saturation and sharpness of the image, and even with adjustment layers applied to both the original and fabric layer, the colours have just been pushed too far to rectify.

 

 

I'm still working on the original style frames I created, but trying to bring in the texture I discussed previously. To create these images I took pictures of a variety of materials such as jeans, scarfs, cardigans, the inside of shoes and anything else I could lay my hands on. The images were taken using my phone so the quality isn't the best (I've learned to appreciate the joys of being able to focus an image correctly so dealing with auto-focus again was a struggle!).

The top two images are one in the same. The top left one is the composition containing all the graphics for the "world", and the top right image is that composition in the form of a sphere. I'm really happy with how the world turned out, although now I kind of like the opened out version more than I like the sphere!! 

The bottom left image contains pre-composed text and men, which have had a scarf material placed over them, blending mode set to "Hard Light", opacity to 80% and "Preserve Underlying Transparancy" turned on.

The bottom right image contains some denim material, applied in a simular way to the previous image, but without the need for "Preserve Underlying Transparancy" to be turned on as this is a background layer.

Overall I'm definitely feeling a bit more confident about the direction this project is taking. The addition of texture had definitely brought the look back to where I originally imagined, but I still feel there is something missing.

 

 

Today I spent some time creating a rough version of the song, with plain unanimated text used to work out the general timing for each section. I found this to be an extremely usefull process as I now have a fully working main composition where I can drop in the different sequences as I complete them and play the song through as a whole, which is definitley helping me to see new ways in which I could bring each sequence together. I particuarly like the section between 2:58 and 3:05, as the way the vocals were sung gave me a direct link to the way in which they could be animated.

 

 

I don't think the spinning text works well as it becomes very illegible due to the speed I had to move it to keep up with the song, but I do like the idea of how it's laid out. Possiblty I could find another way to achieve this effect. I do however like piece after the word "Girl" appears, which I have exported as a seperate clip below.

 

 

This was an attempt at creating some interesting movement during the instrumental parts of the song. I really like the way the textures are coming in and out of the shot, but would definitley like to find a way to bring in something to mirror the sound of the guitar in the background.

 

 

I like the movement in this, but I'm still not sure about the speed. I feel the text doesn't become obvious until it slows down and settles, but the overall effect is close to what I am going for.

I'm trying to find a way to blend the robotic-ness of the male vocals, with the playfullness of the female vocals in the background. I'm liking the movement, although I'm not completely sure about the colour yet. I'm trying to break away from the original colour scheme slightly, without loosing the overall look of the rest of the piece