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ProjectDocumentation

A Day On Earth

Pincponc - International Design ProjectProcess Documentation

Kanchan DhankaniSemester 4 PGDPD Graphic DesignNID 2008-2009 Batch

Guide:Raija HolmWalter Hellmann

610 frames duration 3 min 46 sec motion graphics film

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CONTENTS

Summary 2

Starting Pincponc

what is pincponc

pincponc 5 brief

Process 5

Selection 6

Mood board

Constrains

Discussion with Hennng Ahlers 8

& Thies Schwarz

Story boarding

Characterizing

1st communication piece 10

Reply from professor

Analyzing and understanding 13

Developing concept 14

Interview and pictures 16

Transitions 18

Limitations, Working methods 19

Music 20

Learning, Results 21

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Summary

This project was executed in Germany. It was the first time when the NID graphic design student was a part of an exchange programme in Fachhochschule Hannover (FHH).

Pincponc is an international project for design universities around the globe, initiated and organized by the design studio Mintgold. The intention of this project is to investigate the cultural, emotional and artistic differences between the countries and also within the groups.

GERMANY

Hannover

Shipra Singh Rohit Parmar Kanchan Dhankani

Cira Evers Martha Srieler Matthias Lauche Kristian Groth

Snehal Pawar

NID-FHH Exchange students 2009-2010

Students of NID

Students of FHH

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Starting Pincponc

Along with the growing role of technology in our life, a lot of changes are taking place in the field of graphic design - growing international cooperations, new trends going around the world and our communication taking place more and more through the virtual platforms and communities.

We ask ourselves: Are there cultural differences in the work of design students in the time of globalization? Does such a thing like national design identity still exist?

In 2003 we started the international design project Pincponc.We invited students from different countries to work simultaneously on the tasks dealing with cultural identities.

The result exceeded all our expectations. The students work showed exciting approaches from their very individual point of view: serious examinations, humorous solutions and a lot of fresh design ideas.

Mintgold is working closely with the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover, Germany supported by Prof. Walter Hellmann. We are happy to present in the Pincponc-gallery artwork from different continents and are looking forward to the projects ahead.

Yours,Raija Holm and Sasha Ediger

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What is Pincponc?

Pincponc is a design experiment between design academies in different countries. The academies work together as they offer parallel classes. These classes take place in the same academic year and treat the same topic. The intention of the project is to investigate the cultural, emotional and artistic differences between the countries and also within the groups. International academies work together as they work simultaneously on topics dealing with social and cultural self-perception in different countries. The students document and comment graphically their visions of the particular topic. The results are shared at the end of every project in Pincponc web gallery.

A day on earthNothing is more thrilling than reality

Pincponc 5 Topic

Is every day life everywhere the same? Is a day on the southern hemisphere similar to one on the northern? We intend to document one day all over the globe. 24 hours in different countries, which allow us an insight in the other cultures.

First few experiences

Maze craze .... this is exactly how I felt my college here is. Silver rods and glass walls organized so well that you can get lost in them, room numbers run not only from 1 to infinity but also ‘a’ ‘b’ ‘c’ wings and not just that much, the room numbers are also in points eg C4.15 and god save you if you missed to see a little minus before the zimmer (room) number. Minus is the basement eg. Zimmer -C2.15 means its in - 2 and not 2nd floor. When you go there by lift you will be lost for sure that place looks like a chamber in NASA. Huge silver duct pipes running above your head and the temperature also falls down may be in minus in minus floors.Not only the building is so over organized to be confusing but also the system of courses. The best thing is that you can select courses for your semester according to your interest, but ‘Design’ and ‘Interest’ both are vast words and have extensions of their definition according to every individuals capacity and every one wants to explore them in their own ways. So one lands up not trying different things other then their interest

eg - if one likes illustration he will not opt for info-graphics and keep on doing courses in the same loop of illustration. So now the best part of the curriculum becomes the worst part also.

You will find the best of the best course timings clashing. If you miss even one class you will never see yourself in that class again.

Another good/bad thing is the flexibility of the first day - that is you attend the first class of every course and then enroll for it if you find it suitable. That means if you don’t like it you can leave it. So in that case students just keep doing 1st day class with as many courses as possible to find their best fit course and they land up spending a month just doing that.

So finding my way in this maze craze and getting appropriate classes was a big task for me.This was my second week of college and I still didn’t know my batch-mates and I still didn’t know how to start.

Isn’t that like a cherry on an beautifully decorated Christmas tree on an north pole icing situation welcoming me in Germany.

Process

• Select a person - a resident from the place where our university is located

• Interview & spend a day following him and noting his activities

• Concept building

• Brainstorming on different ways of documentation

• Explore different visual representation styles

• Select best suited way of documenting for the person

Given brief

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Prof.Walter HellmannGraphic Design professor at

Selection process Following people were shortlisted - • Classmates• Hostel maid• Tandem friend• Hostel neighbor• Prof. Walter Hellmann

Tandem programme - It brings you together with Germans who are learning your native language or want to learn about your country. During the tandem meetings you can alternate between German and your native language while discussing issues and topics of mutual interest. This is an opportunity to get to know Germany and the German people and try out your language skills.

I had participated in one of the TANDEM programme. It was a great opportunity to practise my language skills without pressure, in a casual way. My TANDEM partner and I became really good friends. So I got to experience the local student culture much more than other internationals.

So, I felt that she could be a strong contender but then I realized that I was already acquainted with students life and particularly with this age group. I had curiosity to know more about the life beyond the walls of hostel and more into the well settled person’s life style.

Prof. Walter Hellmann came next in my mind.

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Curious

Curious to know why do Professors carry a cabin bag to university

Spoke English &German very well

Stereotype check

Know him more and his roles

Life of well establishGraphic designer

Life of 30 years and above age group

Time schedule of professor were different

Why selected Walter Hellmann?Choosing Prof. Walter Hellmann for my project I had an advantage of knowing more about a well settled graphic designer and can peep into both the ends of his life - professional and personal life. Germany has altogether a very different family culture and living style. There were many things new to me and therefore many new thoughts came up. Strangest of all was - Why did Prof. Walter Hellmann always carry a cabin luggage bag to university and I always wondered why and what does he carry every time he comes to FHH

Initially, it was very difficult to meet Prof. Walter Hellmann (head of visual communication) as I wasn’t aware of his timings. He was available at very odd timings, on specific days only. Once while I was attending an open class I saw him coming with a luggage bag, the sight was worth capturing in a sketch. The static vertical and horizontal lines of wends and floors Prof. Hellmann. The movement looked like ones in the video games.He was the one who introduced Pincponc project to me in English and with this communication between us gained momentum.

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Every Thursday we had a class meeting where we put forth our queries and have an exchange of thoughts over the project. Raija showed us documentation of previous Pincponc topics and showed us variety and scope of the project. The class schedule and list of guest speakers are given below

DO 13-16 Clock30.10 - Guest Speaker: Thies Schwarz : Illustrator05:11 - Free talk12.11 - Guest Speaker: Henning Ahlers: Story Board19:11 - Free talk26.11 - First Presentation03.12 - Zwischenkorrektur10.12 - Zwischenkorrektur17:12 - Final Presentation

Thies Schwarz (guest speaker)

A freelance illustrator working in Hannover, Germany We got a good overview of him and his work. A few tips on illustration styles and character building gave a good thinking direction.

Mood Board

The impressions before approaching Prof. Walter Hellmann with this idea.This is just an outcome of whatever little I knew about him.

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One of his illustration is placed above. To view more log on to - http://tease-me.blogspot.com

After the talk, a small task of creating a character and giving a verbal description was given. “The Bin” was the character I made, who thinks that if he had hands he himself could pick up the garbage and keep at least the place around him neat and clean.

When I approached the Professor with this idea

It was a tongue tying situation for him. He could not wholeheartedly say “Yes” because of the constraints and responsibilities he had to handle, as he was the coordinator for this very project.

He is indeed a very busy person and was already loaded with various activities.

Eventually, he got convinced, but I had to keep some constraints in mind while working on this idea.

Constraints

• He doesn’t like to be photographed

• Can’t give time consuming long interviews

• It is not much possible to spent a whole day following him

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Henning Ahlers(Guest speaker)

During his studies for graphic design at the Academie of Design & Medias in Hannover (Germany), from which he graduated in October 2000 with the Master’s degree in Graphic Design, Henning freelanced as a graphic artist for a vast number of companies.

Among those were clients like Volkswagen, K2, Euromobil, Bahlsen, Bree, Agfa, McCann - Erickson, Ogilvy & Mather etc.Beside his work in print and web-design he also worked for several production-companies and directors in Hannover, Berlin, Frankfurt and Los Angeles creating set-illustrations and storyboards for TV-commercials, short films and movie-concepts.

In 2001 he started as an illustrator on Germany’s first computer generated animation-feature“Back to Gaya” [aka “Boo, Zino & the Snurks” (UK) (USA)].During that production his position grew to the production designer and lighting supervisor on75% of the movie.

After designing the successful German animation movie “Urmel aus dem Eis”[aka “Impy’s Island” ] he worked on it’s sequel “Urmel voll in Fahrt”

Currently he is working on his fourth movie “Animals United” aka “Konferenz der Tiere”, and other projects.

Planned communicationTo kick start I sent a communication piece to Professor, requesting him to select a day in coming week with lot of work load and make a schedule of ‘things to do’ for that day.

1st communication piece

Beside the work on movies Henning built up the Illustration-Blog “DIE BILDERWUMME”.

With Henning we got good tips on story boarding and sequential images. Below is Harold Michelson’s storyboard of the film “Die reifeprüfung” which Henning shared with us after watching this part of movie. This gave us good knowledge about how a story board communicated every detail through important key frames and the whole scene is communicated in sequence of drawings.

After the talk he asked us to make a story board taking our selected person as antagonist.

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The story boardingand styling

Above is the story board I made in Henning’s class The first sketch I made had a good visual impact and so I thought of starting my story board with this frame, with a lot of grid and lines. I have focussed on Prof. Walter Hellmann having a very structured life with his strong commitments with time and schedule. I believe he is very busy and therefore the rigidness of the structured lines and patterns follows him throughout the story.

On the left there are a few impressions taken by using print making technique. I tried coming up with different variations in styles using this technique .

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5:30 Breakfast (TV, coffee, cigarettes,Orange Juice, toast with cheese)

6:15 answering e-mails, working onpapers for FH-Meetings this week

(iPod: Bach, Well Tempered Piano)

8:32 Travelling by train to Hamburg(iPod: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness)

10:15 Studio-Tour in HH (We're lookingfor new rooms for our design-studio

12:00 Appointment with my Lawyerat the train-station for a talk + coffee

12:55 On the way back to Hannover(reading Newspapers)

15:03 Back in Hannover. Drive by Carto the FH. Meeting with Prof. Nobel.

(lots of cigarettes, had a coffee + baguette)Try to make some copies of Docs for FH-

Meeting next Day. Copier out of Toner)

18:44 Driving to my Appartement,Hannover, Jordanstraße 51

(iPod: Rammstein, Völkerball!)

19:05 Bought some stuff at the super-market (Bread, Butter, Toilet Papier,2 Big Packs Cigarettes, Instant Rice)

20:15 Phone Calls to Italy {Friend},Hamburg {my Wife Lissy + my Studio},

Answering e-mails. Artwork on Laptop.

(iPod: Paris-Buenos Aires{Electro-Tango},Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd, Miles Davis)

00:15 Dinner (2 Bananas, Last Cigarettes,Fruit Juice}, Watching TV, I don't know

what, fell asleep)

Analyzing and UnderstandingI tried to plot him on map and trace how much did he travel. Another thing which had the potential was the information given about the music e.g. Well tempered piano during the start of the day and by the end of the day he switches to the Pink Floyd.

I had been to hamburg and therefore had experienced the environment there. Then I looked back to my picture album to bring out the essence of the place.

CharacterizingFrom the reply received from the Prof. Hellmann, I picked up the key points which could the substantiate the character and the narrative.

• Lot of travelling and movement• A lot of smoke and coffee• Music accompanying • TV news + newspaper = updated and aware• Planned day• Getting up at 5.30 & sleeping at 12.15 indeed a long tiring day

Hannover

Hamburg

The distance between Hannover to Hamburg is approximately 159kmApproximate driving time From Hamburg to Hannover - 1 hour 30 minutes

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Developing the conceptLooking at a graphic designers day, I felt I should highlight the brands and the logos he encounters in a day. Of course the logos and the brands does not matter much in a regular life of a person, but in this way I could bring in the essence, character and the flavour of the place and people.To me the brands and the logos are the touch points where the audience get a gateway to compare their life.The big or small decisions of choosing and using a brand is influenced by many factors. But you might have noticed designers value and therefore prefer Lamy pen more than any other common man. In the same way, I see Indian designers and design institutes are increasingly preferring Apple Mac instead of any other computers. It is not correct to completely believe in these kind of statements but it is doubtless that our association with brands have become stronger e.g. I say “Colgate is over“ instead of saying “Toothpaste is over”. Highlighting brands while documenting his day, will allow people to associate and relate better with the place and the person.Few brands are internationally famous and few brands are local brands. The international brands will help people all over to relate and the local brands will help plotting specific places and give a flavour of local environment. For example - Deutsche Bahn (DB) will help plotting the story in Europe and the Hansebacker will talk about exact place in Hamburg.

TreatmentI thought the treatment and stylizing of the film couldn’t be restricted to one specific style as I believe a graphic designer has various ways of looking at the same thing. As a professor, I am sure, he might be looking at many different styles of students and the whole environment around him might be full of mixed feeling. So I thought of using vectors, hand illustration, photographs, typography, mono chrome, textures, patterns etc in the movie.

The movie LogoramaA world colonized by brands is the theme of a new film by French designers and filmmakers H5. Logorama is a slick 17-minute-long animated movie that appears to lampoon both the Hollywood blockbuster — violent, crude and adrenalized — and the world of branding, a world where logos festoon every surface and where it is customary to be exposed to brand activity at every turn. I saw this movie much later, after I came back to India. They have narrated the story through brands which is very similar to my concept and I also completely agree to the way they have visualized the world colonized by brands.

Still from the film Logorama by H5

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Brainstormingon different methods of documentation

• Video film

• Animation film

• Book

• Flip book

• Puzzle

• Personal diary

• Bloging

• Graphs and charts

• Info-graphics

• Records

• Audio

Selecting the best documentation method for my project

Flip Book

I thought of making a planner book of Prof. Hellmann and it will show short moving images when flipped the pages of the book. Different sections of the book will show different incidents of the selected day’s schedule.There will be a clock that will show the time constantly in progress throughout the sections in the book.The starting page of each section will have written information of the incident. and the animation will be showing an important part of the written incident.

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Interview & PicturesAs I froze on concept of highlighting brands and logos, I needed detailed information of the same. So, I lookedout for products where I could highlight brands andmade a list of it.

Questions I asked in the interview - (with reference to the schedule which was mailed to me)

• Which brands of : coffee, cigarette, juice, toast, cheese, news paper, butter, car, e-mail domain, TV channels, printer, laptop, studio, phone service• Where does he stay (Hannover + Hamburg), where is his studio, his college• Why did he have the appointment with the lawyer

• What roles did he play in the college

I clicked a few pictures in his office after the interview whereI followed the constraint of not clicking his photographs.For reference, I need few of his photographs also, so I asked Prof. Walter’s assistant Dana for some of his pictures.

Reply5:30 Breakfast (TV: Channels N 24 and CBS, coffee: Tchibo Brazil mild, cigarettes: Gauloises Red, Orange Juice: Paradise 100 % pure, toast: Golden Toast Whole Grain with cheese: middle aged Gouda cheese from farmers market, no Brand!)

6:15 answering e-mails, working on papers for FH- Meetings this week (iPod: Bach, Well Tempered Piano)

8:32 Travelling by train: ICE Intercity Express to Hamburg, (iPod: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness)

10:15 Studio-Tour in HH (We’re looking for new rooms for our design-studio: any.way graphic partners (see www.any-way-net.de)

12:00 Appointment with my Lawyer at the train-station for a talk + coffee: Lavazza Cappucino at Hansebäcker coffee shop located at Hamburg-Dammtor train station.

12:55 On the way back to Hannover (Reading Newspapers: der Spiegel (News Magazine), Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Daily Newspaper), Brand Eins (business magazine)

Plotting story The movie needs a brief before I start as I wanted to go exactly according to the given schedule that is starting from the breakfast to ending with sleeping on couch before TV. So, before the video begins I had to give a summary about the story in the beginning. So I prepared hand-outs of the schedule given by the professor and an short introduction.

The story begins with the breakfast scene followed by the work scene. Here I did not want to introduce the character in the cliché way by having him in the first scene itself. So, the story building starts at the second scene where only the name is typed and the face is not yet revealed.Step-by-step appearance of character helped the story to be more attention-grabbing. The scene where Prof. Hellmann works on the computer, I thought it would be the best time to reveal the name of the character. In this way it would look natural. The focus on name becomes very important as my video has no dialogues and the scene of entering user name gave a good gateway for revealing his name.Google Earth search engine helped locating the area and directed to understand the scenes ahead.

Tracking with photographsIn the next meeting we all had to bring detailed information about the person and series of photographs of his/her’s usual day.In my case I had to follow the criteria of not clicking his pictures & so I have more of his environment photographed in the series.

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Transitions

My first transition release kick started on how I could create interesting transitions and connections in between the two scenes. I started with the transition in between the breakfast and work series first. I made two sketches, one framing the breakfast scene and the other for the work scene. Now, I was looking for the sketches for a common point which I can link and will help transition between the series. I soon pointed a common visual link that is “Apple”, the “Mac” logo. This had a good connection with the food or say breakfast. So, I looked for a similar visual clue from the breakfast scene and I found the juice and the leaf-like logo of Tropicana could morph into “Apple” logo. This worked well and looked very interesting. So, I decided to have similar interesting transformations throughout the story.

Limitations of the chosen method of documenting a. Too many frames carried too many information which were difficult to grasp in the flip book planner.

b. Frames may exceed 500 in number and so flipping 500 pages will not be practical.

c. Cutting down on frames will result in losing the detailing of each scenes.

d. It is important to keep and maintain the story and the sequence which cannot happen in the flipbook method.

Alternate solution – Film was the next possible option to move on with. I had already worked on visuals and frame-by-frame layout sketches were ready. Making a film, classic frame-by-frame animation, would adapt the same storyboard.

This is how I shifted from planner to making animation film.

The only change I thought would be better on the story board is the loop. I connected the end with the beginning and formed a loop for the story which would play in a loop.

Working methods a. Illustrator frames madeb. Export JPEGsc. Cropped in Photoshop

As I was comfortable with Illustrator software, I made all my frames in Illustrator. Then I exported the whole series in a JPEG format and cropped individual frames and numbered them in Photoshop. Therefore, in all there are 610 frames put together in flash. All this needs a lot of file management and numbering system. When I exported series (consisting many frames in the right order aligned in a straight line) I numbered them a, b, c…. When I cropped the frames individually, I numbered them 1a, 2a, 3a….This helped me to test run the individual scenes.

Limitations of working in this style I. If there is a mistake surfaces during the test run, I have to work all over again from the Illustrator files to the long procedure of cropping the frames.II. Even to run the small series part-by-part and to test the forward and backward movement, I had to export the JPEGs, crop and then test how it looks. All this made my job very difficult and tedious.

Changing work method In between the movie I even got the chance to change and try another working method. This was “The newspaper to enter FHH series”. Here I had decided to work on sketching style using the ink on paper. In this series I drew 20 slides on paper, flipped it like a flipbook to test the scene and make corrections. The digital work was only scanning the JPEGS and placing them in the movie. This went much faster and easier.Another change of visual style gave me one more chance to try different working method. This is the “Office scene” where I have used the photographs I had clicked while interviewing him. In this way my working method adopted the visual style and treatment needs throughout the movie.

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Music

Finally the frames were put together and the movie was done. Now, I was looking for the music that would justify the story. I collected all the music pieces that he had mentioned in his schedule and from them I chose the song “Pink Floyd – Time” for this movie. It gave a good ticking sound that synced with the stop motion kind of effect (jerks) perceived throughout the movie.

The words – a. “Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way” - is the best fir words I could place when the printer runs out of toner and Prof. Drives back home near to the end of the day.b. “Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town, waiting for someone or something to show you the way” – in these words the sound fades-off as the car moves far away. Slowly it gains back the ticking sound again.

The alarm sound is placed exactly where the movie gets looped back to the first breakfast scene. The alarm sound here plays an important role to narrate that the night is over and another day has began.

Learning

a. I learnt to work under the limitations and constraintsb. Adapt to new working methods of workingc. Learnt to develop method of organizing filesd. Learnt persistence of vision at times doesn’t work the expected way. For example – I wanted the arrow in the scene below, to blink while it clicks. Below diagram shows the work around for this situation. But, instead of blinking it looked like it goes back to the corner, from where it had come in the previous scene. This happened due to more time was given to the frame where the arrow comes inside as compared to the frame where the arrow blinks. The problem of easing-in & easing-out was detected here which I realized much later.e. Learnt to handle many softwaref. Learnt to bring consistency even by using many different usual styles in the film

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Resultspincponc 5

Dear participants,

The jury has convened and we are happy to congratulate the winners of pincponc 5!

Many thanks to all the participants! The best works will be presented in Brussels from Thursday, the 25th of March 2010.

You are warmly welcomed to join us! For further information please see the invitation below.

Best wishes,Raija Holm & Sasha Ediger

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The jury

Prof. Dipl. Des. Walter Hellmann, Fachhochschule Hannover, Faculty of Media, Information and Designany.way Graphic partner

Dipl. Des. Peter Kirchhoff, Agency Jung von Matt/Elbe GmbH

Dipl. Des. Alexandra Ediger, pincponc: Initiator and project managerDesign studio mintgold

Dipl. Des. Raija Holm,Assistant lecturer, Fachhochschule Hannover,pincponc: Initiator and project managerDesign studio mintgold

The winnersA day on bike Glaeser, Kai Germany, Hannover Fachhochschule Hannover · Faculty of Media, Information and Design

No title Houssiau, Laure Belgium, BrusselsÈcole nationale suprieure des arts visuels de La Cambre

Rooms of Memory Miranda, Joana. Neto, Alice. Neto, Cátia. Torres, Francisca Portugal, LisboaFine Arts University of Lisbon

No title Othman, Ekram USA, ChicagoUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, School of Art and Design

A life called musicTolxdorf, Andreas Deutschland, Hannover Fachhochschule Hannover · Faculty of Media, Information& Design

Hugo the catTostevin, JulieEngland, Cambridge Cambridge School of Art at Anglia Ruskin University

The Catalogue The catalogue featured stills of this project Titled °Prof. Hellmann°

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“Don’t do what a camera can do - do what a camera can’t do!” - Emile Cohl

Process documentation of a 3 min 46 sec cell animation film on graphic design Prof. Walter Hellmann in FHH Hannover, Germany.

By Kanchan Dhankani Sem 4 PG Graphic Design,NID 2008-2009 Batch