2. OVERVIEW
Over the period of FMP
development I've been
working on the
development of an A5
fanzine exploring the start
of the 1980s franchise
‘Transformers’ and how it
holds up today.Whilst some
of the finer details from
planning and the proposal
were changed or scrapped,
overall it was successful and
went according to plan.The
name of the fanzine -
ORIGIN- was a continuation
of the ‘brand’ created in my
prior project.
4. Contextual research evaluation
■ As part of the preproduction phase of the project I looked at a few relevant media
practitioners, firstly looking at the Japanese sci-fi artist Noriyoshi Ohrai who was mostly
known for his star wars and Godzilla movie posters as well as his use of vibrant and
contrasting colours; I would say that this artist is the main inspiration for the aesthetic of
my project. Secondly, I looked at Robert McCall a conceptual artist who worked on star
trek, 2001: a space odyssey and murals for NASA; I mainly looked at this artist as his
aesthetic matched my original intention for the project.The other practitioner I looked at
wasAlex Wrekk; due to her social consciousness which is something I wanted to touch on
within the written content of my piece, as well as her distinct ’zine esque’ styling in her
work.
■ Looking back at this work I realize that there was a greater focus on practitioners that
would drive my aesthetic rather than the written content, this had positive and negative
effects. Some of the positive impacts were that I had a clear idea for how I wanted to layout
and style my visual content, with the aesthetic being pretty much nailed down; whereas
what I wanted to focus on for the written content was very much still up in the air
5. Research evaluation (existing products)
■ Firstly within my research, I focused in on two specific
existing zines in order to shore up my writing methods
and the phrasing of the articles for my project, as well
as proven layouts that work visually and technically.
The first zine that I looked at was FORGE, a zine made
by a Parsons school of design student. I chose this zine
as it had a distinctive style for each segment it focused
on and how it matched up with who the content was
focused on. for instance how the a monochromatic
grid and hand drawn title matches with a young
audience and the young artist focused on in the double
page spread chosen for analysis; it’s the small things
like that, as well as the text layout, that I took with me
into the production stage. The other zine I focused on
for research was Print Isnt Dead, of which the colour
scheme of the front cover and and the layout of the
double page spread served as inspiration for the colour
scheme within my own project seen with the sample
on the right
6. Research evaluation (theatrical posters)
■ This section of research was intended to look over at
components of professional official art that could be used
to inspire pieces for any visual assets created for the FMP.
The most noticeable methods I saw within these pieces
being the rule of thirds, triangle composition and general
colour theory within posters as well as iconography.The
use of opposing yet complimentary colours was directly
used within the colour schemes of each individual page of
my FMP and the rule of thirds was used constantly during
the production of each page. Generally this section of
research went best due to the detail I was able to go into,
and the analysis of such allowed me to better understand
and create visual assets
7. Audience Research
■ The audience research consisted of primary and secondary.The secondary research
was a look at the yougov page for Bumblebee. For the most part this research pretty
much came up to nothing other than the general audience information like their ages,
which –as a positive- did inform me on how I should phrase the written content of my
FMP.
■ The second piece of audience research is a survey that was sent out. Most of it is
standard questions to figure out who the audience was in my range of influence, for
the most part these questions had minimal effect on the final product, however they
were effective at making small tweaks that overall would make it more appealing to
the audience.The other questions were style and content based which were mostly
very effective and generally had a large impact on my final product in both written
content and visuals. Shown by questions like “Would you prefer the written content of
a fanzine to be strictly factual or personal” returning a 100% answers saying “a mixture
of both ” which I believe was met in my FMP by use of direct and indirect mode of
address.
9. Planning
■ My planning was fine; analyzing
the colours derived from the
mood board via adobe colour
wheel was very helpful, I used
those direct colours multiple
times in production by adding
the selection into Photoshop
and eye dropping the colours in
order to match aesthetically
with my desired style.These
colour swatches were present in
every page file I created, and I
believe majorly positively
affected the style of the final
product.
10. Sourced content, locations and finance
■ As a whole, these sections weren’t all to useful for my end
project, other than explaining a and nailing down some ideas
that were already quite well established. For example, the
locations section was always going to be a singular studio
location, and ,in hindsight finance was never going to be a real
concern since everything required was already owned and
would have no need to be bought.
■ The sourced content mostly held out in terms of how it would
be used however I don’t think I used as much content from pre-
existing media which arguably makes my piece more individual
and inspired due to a minimal reliance on existing content to
make up my visual assets and instead making much more
original visual content.
11. Paginations
■ The pagination segment of planning was a bit of a
mixed bag, in the sense that the paginations were
quintessential to having my zine being arranged
and ordered which saved time overall allowing me
to focus on other production elements and just
have that element be taken care of before
production even starts.This was very effective at
the completion of production and was very
evidently used. However, not all the page designs
were used as they were just interchangeable
mockups; this could be considered an ineffective
use of time, but I disagree as having the various
options allowed production to flow smoothly
12. Fonts
■ The fonts selection of my planning document was helpful in the
long run, with 4 individual fonts selected for the more creative
written elements. Whilst not all the fonts selected were used in
the project, having that selection in place made the creative
process easier.The usage of the ‘Megatron’ and ‘Retronoid’
turned out really well in the final project and fit the aesthetic
that I laid out in my proposal.
14. Final concept
■ As a whole my final product reflects my proposal almost
directly, the only thing that was changed was the omittance
of a social media side of the project; however, this would’ve
been a very minimal part of the final product and ultimately
was later fitted into the presentation portion of the project
16. Production
■ Due to the production segment only being a singular
photoshoot there isn’t too much to talk about;
■ Essentially the successes of production were that
many of the photos needed turned out clear in focus,
were exposed correctly; leading to a vast selection of
high-quality images to be utilized in the
postproduction stage.On the smaller scale,
positioning and posing the figures and framing the
camera were easily some of the segments that went
best
■ Some failings were that there was a fair number of
images that went unused (not including those that
had to be discarded due to quality) either because of
running out of time, didn’t fit aesthetically or were
taken additionally and were simple ‘throw aways’
which could be attributed to a lack of thorough plans;
although I do think that a lack of strict planning
allowed for free-flowing ideas.
Examples of over exposed and blurry shots, in comparison to the more
successful versions
17. Post-production
■ The postproduction section was where the bulk of the practical work came in on.
One of the elements that went best were the images blended with realistic
settings.
■ Admittedly this segment of post-production was under utilized in the final result,
4 of these pieces took up less than a third of 1 single double page spread and
weren’t featured anywhere else; to be fair this could signify one of the downsides
of having a loose structured planning, that being that the creative work was
created without a plan in mind for it, but ultimately it had little impact on the
final result of my product.
■ A plus side to this segment of production is just how well it turned out these
reality blended assets look great and appear seamless.The colour grading,
‘lighting’ effects and artificial shading on the figures add to the quality of these
assets. The methods used to make these assets were very simple, mainly just
consisting of using multiple layers, hiding assets beneath those layers as well as
the stamp tool to fill in any gaps in the background to cover up any gaps and
make it look more natural
18. ■ Other asset creation during production was even
more successful as they fit the aesthetic of my
proposal and arguably are more visually appealing;
although it could possibly be argued that these pieces
are less original due to that they're highly edited
images of the figures. However, these pieces were
most rewarding to create, and I do think that they
look the best and flow with the overall end aesthetic
of my piece.
19. ■ Another side of post-production that went well is some
of the smaller effects like the use of 3d text as well as
the use of a gaussian blur which creates a ‘glowing’
effect; these small details help it fit with the neon 80s’
aesthetic which was clearly laid out as part of my
proposal
Something that didn’t turn out as great as it could as is the way the text
layout turned out overall. In the cases where it didn’t work as well is where
the text looks either plain and uninspired or overly busy and stretched.The
cause of this is probably due to a lack of time to go back and change these
parts to make them look more appealing.Another possible cause could be
that photoshop was used for the page layouts instead of InDesign, whilst
photoshop is infinitely easier to use, and more versatile for moving assets;
InDesign has a greater range for text options which could have improved
the visuals
21. Technical problems
■ Throughout the entirety of pre-production, production and post-production there
were next to no technical problems, the only one that sticks out is that the camera I
used had a preset which had a negative effect on the images, but this was solved
within minutes by factory resetting the camera to remove the preset settings
Management problems
■ Due to the fact that there was no other people (models, actors, etc.) involved in
production segments there were no management issues present throughout
production.
Emotional problems
■ Since there were no real problems in the production process there was no emotional
issues brought up.
22. CONCLUSION
To conclude I believe that
this project has perfectly
demonstrated the skills with
cameras and editing
software that I have learnt
over the 2-year course,
considering that I had no
idea how to work any of the
production techniques or
methods
