The document describes the process taken to create an advertisement GIF. It involved first designing the characters which was time consuming but an important first step. Background design and adding details like trees and shadows came next. Animation was added by creating a blue question mark appearing frame by frame in a footprint. Final touches included adding eyes that flash and a book release date. The overall process was more complicated than initially expected but the creator was happy with the final outcome.

1. Production Reflection
Your Name

2. ProcessIt was always my idea that the hardest part of
creating my adver-gif would be designing the
characters. With my limited amount of skill in
Photoshop and the knowledge that using
pixels could be difficult, it was best to start off
with the characters when I still had time to
focus on details. It was very time consuming
to do, but I eventually found myself happy
with the final outcome.
I started on the girl and took a
couple of minutes to find the
right colour schemes. Using
the pencil tool I started on
her face and hair.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten
that you could resize 1x pixel
art and had made her head to
big – so I had to re-draw her
to the appropriate scale. I
found the body very difficult
to design, but it became
easier once I realized shading
was key aspect to giving the
figures dimension. And
created new layers (which I
later merged) to turn the
opacity down on certain
pixels to make her figure less
harsh looking.
Having found a helpful
pattern to follow with the girl,
I created a new layer and
made the boy. I used many of
the same techniques and got
him done far quicker than I
thought I would.

3. Process
Next I started to design the
background. Drawing inspiration
from my style sheet I opted to fill
the background in one solid green
colour, and used different shades
of the same colour to add depth
and realism into the landscape. I
adjusted the size of my brush on
multiple occasions to make this
task simpler and quicker – which
worked very effectively.
After that I added details. Such as the
tree’s and shadows. I wanted to create
the sense that the gif is set in the
middle of the woods, surrounded by
moss and shadows and tree’s that
anything can hide in. I was very please
with this outcome, because I believe
the tree’s were done in quite high
detail due to the different shading
used.

4. Process
I knew from the beginning that I didn’t ever want to draw a
detailed big foot, because it would ruin the mystery of the
book. I used the brush tool in a dark brown to draw bigfoot
hidden in the tree’s, almost blending in with the shadows I
had drawn earlier. He almost looks like an indistinguishable
brown blob and nothing at all like a sasquatch – I wish I could
of put more detail into him, but hopefully by the end when
the product is finalized and the glowing eyes are added,
people will realize what it is meant to be.
Next I opened the text tool and chose a bold font and
wrote out the title of my product, choosing the already
planned out colour shceme. The text looked blurry
before exporting, which worried me at first, however I
realised this wouldn’t be how the text would look
when the gif was finalized.

5. Process
The next step was to make the sasquatch footprint. I picked the
pencil tool, selected the correct shade of muddy brown and
started to draw out the shape of the footprint. After filling in the
colour and adding toe prints separately, I chose different shades
of the same brown colour and started shading in parts of the print
to make it look more realistic. Once I was happy with the final
product, I merged the layers. Now I have realised that the Bigfoot
is out of proportion with with the foot print, but I could just that
down to depth perception.

6. Process
This part of the project was surprisingly less time consuming than I thought it
would be. Next was to get some moving animation into my gif. So, I created a
time line and, creating a new layer, added a dot into the frame – then, I repeated
the process over and over until 16 frames were made with the result being a fully
formed question mark inside of the footprint that appears blue pixel by blue
pixel. It was very meticulous work, but the result was very successful. When
planning my idea, I never thought to include the blue question mark. I wanted
sasquatch to move between the tree’s but I ended up not being able to make the
original idea work. However, I like the brightness that the blue question mark
brings to the product – it also reminds me of ‘Blues Clues’ a little bit.

7. Process
Lastly I added in some final touches. What should have been the
simplest part of the whole product (adding in yellow eyes) turned
into one of the trickiest. A hidden layer was blocking any vibrancy
from the yellow colour, and it took me a very long time to figure
this out. Once I had, I added in the yellow eyes to appear at frame
12 and flash on and off through 12 to 16. I also made the book
release date pop up and stay and frame 12 until the gif. ends.

8. Process

9. Process
Again, I assumed that creating the character would be
the most challenging task when making this product so
decided to prioritize character design. I started on the girl,
using a peach coloured pain brush at large but
manageable size. I then filed in the outline of the head,
added the neck and changes some of the colouring and
opacity on different layers to add shading and make the
head look more realistic. I then chose a candy floss pink
colour and proceeded to draw the hair –This was a little
more difficult as because I could not get the hair
to look as flowy and realistic as her face did, and
had to use some different shades and many
different layers to achieve the end goal. After
this was completed, I copied each step and
made the boy character in a similar vein, except
I used different colours entirely. Making the
clothes and the figures was the hardest part of
this section, it took much longer to get
proportions right than I ever thought it would.
And using the paint tool doesn’t help with
preciseness.

10. process
Hiding the characters, I dragged an image of pine tree’s
I had found using google/images to and resized it to fit
the entire page using the ctrl+alt+ keys and held down
shift whilst doing so the image doesn’t blur. Then, I
changed the style of the image and put an ‘oil paint’
layer over the realistic style in hopes to make it look
more painted, like the characters. After seeing that this
doesn't work as successfully as expected, I started a
very meticulous process. Using the paint tool (too
match what I made the character out of) I went over
the pictures of tree’s in different shades of green until
everything in the frame was completed – then did the
same to the sky and the mountains and merged all
mentioned layers. This definitely made everything
seem more connected.

11. Process
Now, there was only a few final touches to complete before my
product was finished. Making the characters visible, I moved
them into the correct places I wanted them to be on the poster.
I found a font that matched the care-free adventure aesthetic
from 101font.com and downloaded it onto my mac (the
problem being you could only use this font if it was downloaded
onto the specific computer you were using at the time) to use
for the main title and the release date. Then, using the paint
tool once again I drew the blue question mark inbewteen the
characters to evoke the sense of a mystery from the auduince,
and used the same font in a black colour for the slogan ‘Are you
going?’ to capture the attention of the audience and make
them feel included. Finally, I added hidded yellow eyes in-
between the tree’s to connote the big foot aspect and added a
best sellers sticker to the front of the poster to entice the
audience to look further into the product.

12. process
First of all I opened up a horizontal piece of A4
paper in photoshop and to make it look more like a
book cover I added a rectangle barrier in the centre
of the page to represent the spine. I the found a
picture of grass off google images and dragged it
into photoshop, and the went layered over the
photo using the oil pain tool. I then used the paint
tool to draw the big foot on the cover, and repeated
the same step as before by adding the oil paint over
the layer a couple of times until it had the muddy
affect I was looking for.

13. Next, I downloaded a font that I had
chosen in my style sheet from 1001
fonts.com and used the same colours
from my planning to make the font stand
out. I then wrote out the name of my
story with each word In a different text
box so I could move and modify the
words to fit inside of the foot print.
Creating a new layers I repeated the
same steps as before but instead made
all the words a light brown colour and
placed them behind their matching
word. Doing this I hoped to evoke the
image that the title of the book was
carved into the mud of the foot print by
adding depth to the words. Using a
different font and wrote out the author
name and used the arch to make it sit at
the bottom of the foot print and chose a
white colour to make it stand out.

14. I then went on google images
again and found this image of a
line notebook page and dragged it
onto photoshop where I then
placed it where the back cover
would go. I then found a font on
1001.fonts that looked almost
identical to real handwriting so
downloaded it onto my mac. I
then opened up a text box and
wrote out the blurb for my story.
Using a different more curvy font
that still looked like hand writing, I
wrote out some fake reviews and
used the colours red and green to
connote the sense that the book
had been graded.

15. Finally I added some finishing
touches to make it look more like
a book cover. I made the spine
the same brown colour as the
top of the note book (using the
clone tool) and used the same
fonts to display the name of the
book and the author on the spin
the same colours. I also found a
‘best seller’ sticker, a bar code
sticker and a the ‘Penguins
books’ sticker on google images
and dragged those into
photoshop, using the magic
wand to cut around the images
and make them fit perfectly onto
the page. I also found a drawing
of bigfoot on google images and
used it to fill in the gaps on the
back cover so it looked more
complete.