Evaluation

For this project I was asked to create an IBook that tells a family story. Within this book we also had to have an interview that we recorded with animations that we made in After effects.

I really enjoyed this project, i enjoyed making something for another media type other than web and print, also the added fact of interactivity made it a much more fun project to work with. I had never used IBook author before but really enjoyed working with it, even if it was a little limiting. I quite enjoyed the process of learning this software and solving the problems that i came across.

I did not really like the interview part, I kept putting it off and that really affected the interviews in terms of animation, I would have liked to improve upon my intro video as i think that it is missing something and is a little short.

Looking at some of my research again and back at my Ibook there is a lot more i want to do to it. I would have liked to animate an opening book like in one of the videos i saw, i would have also liked to do a few more animations with 3D images. I really enjoyed using the HYPE app within my ibook and would really have liked to develop some more widgets in it.

If i were to do it again would started my interview a lot earlier. I think doing it so late really effect the piece and my animations as well as my book. I think as i had used after effects before i wanted to focus more on creating the the ibook within ibooks author as this was a new piece of software i had not used before.

Overall I think this is a really good project to do, I learned a lot when I filmed my interview. I really enjoyed using Ibooks author to create something especially for the ipad.

User testing

User testing wise I have watched people and had feedback on things that i may/will change within the IBook. One main one was the size of the roundels used in the pop over widgets, people found them a little to small to be able to easily click them. I have now increased the size of the roundels by an extra 6 pixels. This makes them a lot easier to click on.

When people got to the end of a gallery page they continued to swipe as if there were more images, however due to this the entire page then moves and users have to swipe back. I could potentially place a end of gallery image that would say that you have reached the end.

Another point that I asked was the legibility of the text. I found that most people said it was alright a few said it was a little hard to read but fitted in with the design of the book. I will probably keep the text as it is or find a similar font that is a little easier to read.

Crit

Feedback from Crit:

A point that came up during Crit was that I needed to have more of a narrative to my book. I have decided to move the interview page forward in the book as well as change the intro video so that it tells you what the book is about and why you are reading it.

Over than that i still have to do:

Overall:

Fix intersecting page joins

Decide on final font (Phoenix?)

Complete animation on interviews

p5:amend widgets, create 2 more widgets

p6: tidy up text, add more info/pics to map

p7: change btm left images, add audio

p8 done

p10: add audio

p11: fix video size, add more background images

p12: add curves to watch

I would also like to change a few of the gallery photos as when they are enlarged they do not fill the full screen which makes the design look bad.

Post crit

To do:

Overall:

Fix intersecting page joins

Decide on final font (Phoenix?)

Complete animation on interviews

p5:amend widgets, create 2 more widgets

p6: tidy up text, add more info/pics to map

p7: change btm left images, add audio

p8 done

p10: add audio

p11: fix video size, add more background images

p12: add curves to watch

Interview how to screen shots

For the slideshow between images in my interview I have staggered each image then added a fade in fade out preset.

For the plane zoom out sequence I had 3 images: Kenley airfield, Map of RAF sectors and Map of England.
I started by having each image zoomed in and then having it zoom out as i wanted, i added an opacity change at specific points so it looks as if each images faded into another.

For the cloud effect ii used a grey solid then applied a preset called fractal noise, once i had adjusted the settings i got a cloud effect in which I then animated so that it looked more real. In the end i used 3 of these layers to build up the image and added a small rotation to them, this way they looked more real.

The spitfire is a 3D model which i got from the google sketchup warehouse. By saving it as a .dae file and importing it into photoshop i could then alter colours and lighting. I then imported it into After effects and changed the camera angle unill i got the correct one for my scene.  

The planes over the map was a very simple tween movement for the plane images. The flags were an after thought as the video looked to empty. I gave the flags a wave warp pre-set which gave me the waving look to the flag.

The AA gun bullets were made from rectangles duplicated which then had a gaussian blur applied to them.

The lights were made with a shape layer then adding two sets of gaussian blur in which i angled in different ways. This way i got a longer and more spread out blur  top and bottom.

Adding multiple lights and changing their rotation and scale of each i got lighting effect. The planes again were key framed for the duration of the video.

I made two versions of the lights, one for one of my IBook pages and one for my 1080p interview.

Interview final animations

Part 1

This is the first part of my interview with animations. I decided that I did not want animations throughout the entire minute so at the beginning an near the end i have not done any. The reason for this is i want the user to be focused more on the audio than an animation on screen.

Interview editing software

To edit my video down to sections i have used final cut pro x, I have also used it to match my single audio track from the mic to the video footage.

I have cleaned up the audio as I could here a slight hiss in the background, I used final cuts audio tools to reduce the background noise.

Interview transcript

Part 1

In 1939 my Grandfather was a flight sergeant in the royal airforce.

He flew hurricanes out of Kenley aerodrome.

The airfield was attacked on numerous occasions during 1939 1940 the worst was on the 18th of august when a huge wave of german aircraft attack the whole of the south of England manly targeting RAF bases.

Kenley was in the forefront of the battle on that day. A lot of the airfield was destroyed including a lot of the hangers.

The 18th of august attack became known as the longest day, due to the amount of german planes continually coming over the south of England to bomb airfields.

My Grandfather was shot down on that day, he managed to crash land in Kent but his injurys meant that he could never fly again.

Part 2

As a kid we used to go upto kenley aroedrome and just muck around up there really, we used to go to the old firing ranges, this was the place where theaf planes used to test their guns by firing firing into a huge sandbank and we used to dig around trying to find all the old shrapnel which was the old bullets that were actually shot into this mound.

We used to get chased of by the military police who used to partol the place.

All the blast bays are still there today, some you can actually go into as part of the heritage walk around Kenley airfield.

Kenley arodrome is still used today its used to train pilots they use gliders to train them and if you go up there most days of the week or weekends you can seee them actually flying.

There is also a heritage walk around Kenley arodrome which is basically a history of what went up there.

I will be using this transcript to help with the timings of my animatics.

Interview footage

This is how the original video came out, looking at it i would have liked to  have it more like this:

I think that this is a lot more engaging than the previous image. The frame looks more condensed and looks more focused upon the subject. On the previous there is too much space.

This is the second part of the interview, overall I had two minutes of footage.

Interview

For my interview I thought that it would be beneficial to me to film it as well instead of just recording the audio. By video recording the interview I had more footage to work with. I also had not recorded an interview before so it was more of a learning process for me.

For the Video I shot it at 24fps at 1080p with a Canon D60. I recorded the audio on a ISK CRU-1 mic.