T354 - Week 1 - Spring 2008

Agenda:

• Course Introduction
• Pre-test
• Graphics overview, theory & application
• Intro to Photoshop
• File/pixel sizes
• Color Modes
• Play with Photoshop

What this class is about:

In T354 you’ll be making graphics and animations for television. By the end of the semester you should have built a portfolio of graphics and animations.

This is a production class, focusing on the tools and techniques used to make graphics and animations for TV. The main tools used will be Photoshop and After Effects with some Adobe Illustrator. If students express interest in some other topic we’ll try to squeeze it in.

Review syllabus, schedule, critique forms & assignments

Important note concerning graphics and audible/visual design elements: Please keep the design of your work 100% original and always maintain legal integrity. While there are times that it's appropriate to incorporate existing artwork into your projects (animating a logo for a company), please consider this carefully. Your projects must highlight what you can do- not what others can do. You must rely on your own creativity and design skills- not existing images and clip art. Except for the assignments where I ask that you to specifically incorporate other work, please keep your projects 100% original.

Student introductions

Pre-test & Bio

Please either write these down on a sheet of paper or type and print:

• Your name
• Academic focus / other interests
• One DVD, TV show, or movie with production design that you love
• One DVD, TV show, or movie with production design that you hate.
• Three specific things you’d like to learn in T354.

Answer five questions:

• What are the pixel dimensions of a standard-definition DVD-Video?
• What are the pixel dimensions of 1080i HDTV?
• What is the frame rate of an NTSC television signal?
• What are the three primary colors used to make video and computer graphics?
• What is the aspect ratio of a standard TV display?
• What is an alpha channel?

Give a copy to the instructor as soon as you are finished.

Intro to TV Graphics

What are we looking at when we see graphics in TV or in the theatre?

Is it a simple title underneath someone being interviewed, or a spaceship flying through an alien landscape? Maybe it’s something in the middle.

Generally tools used to make the graphics fall into a few categories:

Character generators allow for creation of text and graphics for TV (Inscriber, WriteDeko, Boris Graffiti) – they mainly focus on text with some support for graphics and still frames. The latest ones allow for incorporation of moving backgrounds and animations.

Paint & drawing programs let you create flat (2D) objects and artwork. Examples include Adobe Illustrator, Fractal Painter & Photoshop. Photoshop is probably the most useful and used piece of software in the world of web, print, multimedia and video.

3D modeling & layout programs let you create objects in three-dimensional space. You can create objects and place lights virtual cameras in 3D space.
If the object rotates and you can see both sides, chances are it’s a 3D object.

Movies like Titanic or X-Men rely on programs like Lightwave, Maya, Softimage and 3D Studio Max to create the ships, people and places.

Compositing and animation programs (such as After Effects) work mainly in 2 dimensional space, but are offering more and more 3D capabilities with each release. Even in 2D space, they can provide the illusion of working in 3D.

Color

Color can be objectively described in a number of ways. One of the most common methods is using the HSB model:

1. Hue (the actual color)
2. Saturation (the strength or intensity, or how far it’s removed from gray)
3. Brightness (how dark or light)

But you can also describe it in other ways- depending on what color mode you are working in. Photoshop lets you work in different color modes. The two color modes you should be most familiar are

• Subtractive Color (CMYK)
• Additive Color (RGB)

Subtractive Color

The subtractive color system is used in world of print and painting. The primary colors (think paints or inks) are:

• Cyan
• Magenta
• Yellow

Mix them all together and you get black. In Photoshop when you work in this mode you can change colors by adjusting the CMYK (K is black) sliders in the color picker window.

Additive Color

The additive color system is used for computer graphics, TV and lighting design. This is the color mode we’ll use to create TV graphics.

The three primary colors (think of them as light sources) are:

• Red
• Green
• Blue

If you mix them all together you get white. In Photoshop when you work in this mode you can change colors by adjusting the RGB sliders in the color picker window.

Vector and Bitmapped graphics

Paint and drawing programs work with vector or bitmapped images, or a combination of the two.

Vector graphics are made up of shapes, lines and curves defined mathematically.

When you draw a circle or create a piece of text with a vector-based application (such as Adobe Illustrator), it keeps track of the lines and angles that make up objects. From this mathematical data, it draws the display. We can scale a piece of vector artwork up to any size, and it will still retain its quality.

Bitmap or raster images use a grid of pixels to represent an image. Each pixel has a specific color and brightness. It is well suited for images with subtle changes in color and brightness such as photographs or digital paintings. If you were to enlarge a bitmap graphic, it would lose resolution.

Enlarging a small circle would produce jagged edges.

A vector-based program like Illustrator simply draws the circle bigger, so the edges would retain their smoothness

Photoshop can work with both vector and bitmap files.

File Formats:

Photoshop lets you work on and save in a number of different color modes and file formats.

• AI: Adobe Illustrator document. Can contain both vector and bitmapped layers
• BMP: standard Windows compatible image format (no alpha channels)
• EPS Encapsulated PostScript: Can describe both vector & bitmapped graphics.
  Support by virtually all page layout and desktop publishing programs
• PDF Portable Document Format. Used by Adobe Acrobat. No alpha channel
  support. Notable as it's widely used for both web and print.
• GIF graphics interchange format: Developed by Compuserve for bulletin boards. (8 bit or 256 colors) Compressed. Basic GIF doesn't support alpha channels but GIF89a does.
• JPEG: joint photographic experts group (no alpha) use variable compression. Doesn’t support alpha channels. Do support 24 bit (true) color.
  • Lossy vs lossless: Whenever you open something (like a JPEG) and save it again it loses some detail. This is know as lossy.
• PNG: portable network graphics (Used for the WWW. Lossless.) Supports 24 bit color. Supports alpha channels)
• PCX: another PC based image format
• PICT: Suggested for and widely used on Macs (Supports alpha channels)
• PSD : PhotoShop document. Supports multple layers and alpha channels
• TIFF tagged image file format: Widely used by all image apps (Supports alpha channels)
• Targa (tga) Video format designed around Targa cards. Supported by most PC-based graphic applications. 32-bit color. Supports alpha channels.

Message

Graphics are a form of visual communication. They convey a message. The message should be decipherable by your viewer. Ideally it should be clear and easy to understand.

The graphics you make in this class should always have a message. This is because in TV we are focused on Applied Art, not Fine Art.

Aesthetics

A solid understanding of Photoshop & After Effects is a great place to start, but it’s not worth much without a minimal sense of graphic design skills. Obviously, the TV graphics we make should look good. But what is “good?” How do we identify a tastefully composed graphic?

Like painting or photography, TV is a 2-dimensional medium. Most of the rules that apply to classic art similarly can be applied to TV. Composition can be described as the orderly arrangement of elements within a scene.

• Static Composition deals with fixed images such as painting and still graphics
• Dynamic Composition goes a step further & takes time and motion into account.

Rules of composition and color are very useful to the video graphic designer. But the screens of our computer and television monitors emit light, and allow for movement. The entire color system that video and film graphics are based on (additive color system) is counter to that of the print world (subtractive color system).

Subjective and objective analysis for judging the aesthetics of TV graphics is weak. While personal opinions will always vary, I’ve identified some general guidelines that serve as a good starting point.

Make sure you are familiar with Jim's Graphic Guidelines!

Photoshop Tour

Main interface
Tools (keyboard shortcuts, foreground background etc)
Tool option bar
Windows (remember arrow on right hand side)
Navigator, options, info
Swatches, colors, brushes
Layers, channels, paths
Preferences: work in pixels not inches!
Color modes: Use RGB for video graphic work
Color picker
Layers
Text (kerning & leading)

In-Class Photoshop Exercise - 5 points

Create a DV-sized TV graphic that promotes a show or event using the following criteria:

• Use only two colors. (Try picking one color, then varying the amounts of saturation and brightness.)
• Use only shapes (circles, squares, etc.) and at least two separate text elements.
• Follow the technical guidelines in Jim's Graphic Tips
• Place a full-size copy (720 x 480) of your Photoshop document and a smaller-sized (320 x 240) JPEG copy in the week 1 folder in the OnCourse T354 Resources/Week 1 folder. Be sure to save both files named as your username. (I.E. jarkraus.psd & jarkraus.jpg)

A note about working with layers and saving copies- Always keep your original layers intact. You may need to manipulate these later & make changes. You can flatten copies for display or distribution.

Optional exercises:

If students are really struggling with Photoshop, they should work through some optional exercises. There is a good tour of the interface in the Photoshop CS Help PDF. There is also a good tour in the "help" section. If you have PS Classroom in a Book, work through “Tour” and “Working with Selections” tutorial. “Layer Basics” is also a good introductory exercise.

Vocabulary (know these)

• Kerning –Adjustment of the space between a pair of letters on the same line. Proportional fonts typically "auto kern". In this manner a small letter o can be tucked under the top of the capital letter T (To). Most design programs let you adjust the kerning between two characters by positioning the cursor between them and then holding down the option key while pressing the left/right arrow key.
• Tracking - similar to kerning in that it is a control of horizontal spacing. However tracking controls the spacing of a entire line of text, not just a pair of characters.
• Leading – the space between different lines of text
• Anti-aliasing – You can turn this feature on and off. It produces intermediately shaded pixels to smooth out the appearance of jagged edges

Homework (due next Tuesday):

• Burrows & Wood reading (Chapter 10 PDF file)
• Read chapters 1- 5 of Robin Williams' book, "The Non-Designers Design Book."
• Take a VHS tape & record your favorite commercial channel for 30 minutes or so in order to capture some commercial graphics. (Alternatively, you can take a few digital snapshots or screen captures of the graphics.) Find two examples of graphics that you find pleasing. Make sure one is somewhat complex and the other is relatively simple.
• Analyze these two TV graphics. Type 2-3 paragraphs about each one. What was its purpose? What colors were used? What can you say in terms of composition, texture, contrast, font selection, foreground or background elements? Were they effective? Why do you like it? Be sure to bring your analysis and VHS tape or digital snapshot of the TV graphics you recorded (Tapes should be cued to the graphic you used). HINT: You may want to consider some of the parameters outlined in the Williams book as you analyze the graphics.

 

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