WEEK COMENCING 4 th November 2013:

During the first week I began looking at existing EStings and getting more of an understanding of the channel E4 online. I produced a short PowerPoint presenting my findings.

WEEK COMENCING 11 th November 2013:

Due to my own fault and my inability to keep track of time I uploaded my PowerPoint a week later than I should of. During the duration of this week I began the ‘ideas generation’ task. I developed a mood board filled with drawings of all my initial ideas before coming to a conclusion on which one I wanted to do. I uploaded the moodboard to my blog on time. If I had worked harder I probably could of elaborated on my ideas more.

WEEK COMENCING 18 th November 2013:

The planning part of the assignment took me a lot longer than I expected. I started devising my storyboards mid-way through the weeks, however after handing them in I realised I had done them wrong and had to re-start them.

WEEK COMENCING 25 th November 2013:

The planning process continued into the second week; it was four weeks into the assignment before I managed to scan and upload the storyboards and all the relevant paperwork. Whilst I was a week behind on the planning process, I did manage to start the production stage.

The first thing I needed to do was convert all the files of my drawings to jpegs.

I wanted all my drawing to look hand drawn and have a cartoon feel to them so I decided early on that I would be using my own images for my Esting and drawing them in Adobe Illustrator and using After Effects to edit the Esting together.

Creating the drawings was quite a simple task, however it was very time consuming. During this week I created the first set of drawings for scene 1 of my ESting.

I simply scanned in the first ‘shot’ of my storyboard into Adobe illustrator onto a single layer and then place another layer on top. Using the pen tool I was the able to trace my drawing, before using the eyedropper, paintbrush and stroke and fill tool to colour it. During the first scene my trees were going to move, so I had to ensure I traced them on a third layer to allow me to do so.

It took me the entire week to complete the full drawing.

WEEK COMMENCING 2 nd December 2013:

The first thing I did during this week was edit the first shot of my ESting on After Effects which I had drawn the previous week. I wanted to be working on both at the same time so I didn’t fall behind.

Editing it was something I struggled with quite immensely at first- I had quite a bit of assistance of my teacher before I was able to get the hang of it. I dragged and dropped each layer of my drawing into After Effect, before changing the scale and opacity on the trees to ensure they came in at the right time.

Once I had completed this I moved on to beginning the second ‘shot’ of my storyboard by following the same process in Adobe Illustrator. Tracing this next layer took a little longer since there was more detail in the drawings- I also discovered that I could change the width of the pen tool line which helped me greatly.

Since both the cats would be moving and I would be adding a laser effect to the ‘warning’ lights I require three layer; one for the background and vault, one for the two cats, and one for the lights.

WEEK COMENCING 9 th December 2013:

This should have been my last week working on the Esting, however I was very behind.

At the beginning of the week I started working on editing my second shot in After Effects. I followed the exact same process as the previous week- in inserted each layer in order and then scaled and positioned the cats so they zoomed in on time and in the right spot, then changed the opacity of all the layers.

I wanted to add laser effects to the ‘warning’ light so they flashed, however I was not sure how to do so. I spent a while looking at You Tube tutorials before discovering that I simply had to draw a transparent circle on top of the light and insert the ‘strobe’ effect. I was then able to position the lighting as I wished so it flashed how I wanted it too.

Later on in the week I began working on ‘shot’ number three in Adobe Illustrator. There was going to be a lot of movement in this layer so I required a total of 7 layers- one for the background, one for the cow, one for the lolly, one for the E4 logo, one for a set of balloons and two more for the other balloons.

Once I got started it didn’t take me as long as I expected to complete the drawings and import them into After Effects for editing. I was now becoming more used to the software and a lot more confident using Adobe Illustrator.

Once I Had placed the layers in the right order I simply had too scale, rotate and position the images before changing the opacity so that they fade out ready for the next scene. The pogo hoping cow took me a little longer than the other images to position since I wanted him to actually be pogo hopping were as the balloons were simply moving in an upward motion.

WEEK COMENCING 16 th December 2013:

I was now a week behind schedule, so I spent the majority of this week focussed solely on my Esting.

I still had two more ‘shots’ to draw, however I managed to find an easy way of doing it. I drew out the first set of drawing using four layers- one for each of the space ships, one for the background and one for the roof of the building.

Once I had completed them, I imported the into After Effects and edited this part of the sequence together by rotating and positioning the space ships and the changing the opacity of the roof so is fades out and disappears.

I wanted to give the impression that the spaceships were flying away with the E4 logo, so the ships and background were going to stay the same. All I had to do was go back to Adobe Illustrator, remove the roof layer, draw earth on the same layer and then import it into Adobe After Effects.

I then repositioned the spaceships to give the impression of them flying away. This save a lot of hassle for me since it met I didn’t have to do doubles of each drawing.

I then simply changed the opacity on the image and faded everything out other than the E4 logo. As the images faded out I re-sized the logo so it filled the screen. My Esting then completely faded out.

By Friday afternoon I had completed, rendered and uploaded my Esting to my You Tube and blogger page one week late.

WEEK COMENCING 27 th January 2014:

I completed my review as soon as I got back from half term; however I forgot to upload it to my blog. So it was over a moth late before I remembered and had time to upload it.