Magazine Skills Profile

I have now created my magazine front cover and contents page, there are a number of skills that i have used in this module that i used in my film poster work.  For example i used the apply to shape technique (the way i did this can be described in my photoshop skills profile on this page).  I also used the overlay and soft overlay technique.  I used this to make my mast head stand out on both the front page and the contents page, i feel this gave the magazine a much better look and when it would come to launch it would look great on a blown up banner.

Firstly when putting together a magazine this is the industry i would love to move into, so i spend hours looking at existing magazines covers and at what age group they appeal to.  I then looked at the common conventions such as typography, colours, images, and the overall layout of the magazines.  This is something that i had never done before, but annotating the covers soon realised that there are more conventions that first thought.

It was then time to start to put together the sketches for the final idea, we did sketches for when we did our DVD menus at the beginning of the year.  So creating sketches were the easy bit, but these needed to be detailed giving reasons as to why we included what i did.

Because creating a magazine cover, contents and double page spread this would mean that i would need to really organise the way i put together the pages, for example the folders and naming the layers.  This could have been a problem but placing them into folders once i had finished a section seemed to help this.  There were a couple of problems that i came across one instance was were i was putting the images on the double page spread but so they didnt go outside the recipe box, see below...

Encore Skills Profile

We have been working on our Encore workshop in our lessons this week, i have worked on a previous project at home so i understood the basics.  There were however a few things that i didnt know about Encore.

I didnt know that there was codecs for things such as motion stills for menu scene selection.  you need to have the code (%) in order for it to become a thumbnail, and when you link that button to a video timeline it takes the first frame and uses that as the picture, this can be used to different chapters in the same way therefore making a scene selection menu easy and effectively.

For homework i will try this by downloading a movie trailer and chopping it up into chapters and then making a single page scene selection where you can click in the image and then skip to that part within the trailer.

After Effects Skills Profile

I know nothing about Adobe After Effects, i have been browsing the web to see what you can produce and this is the best i have seen.  Dont ask me how you do it, i will learn that over the next few weeks of playing.



Over the weekend i started watching Adobe Encore and After Effects tutorials to try and self teach myself the basics in DVD menu making and authoring.

Dreamweaver Skills Profile

As the same as Photoshop i have self taught myself how the basics in Dreamweaver, i know how to do php scripting for forms, how to put do a contact form online (normally cost up to £40.00 to be included in a web design package), Div tags, floating Divs, rollover images etc.

I would love to find out more about structuring and how to add a website search bar (instead of using Google search).

Although i did not design the website, i played around with the CSS (cascading style sheet) to change the link colour, font type, and line spacings.

Photoshop Skills Profile

Over the past few months i have managed to self teach myself the basics in Photoshop.  I spend hours looking at tutorials on TutVid and YouTube, looking at layers, hue saturation and brushes.  I have produced different posters and leaflets for a local Rounders Club and now hope to apply my new skills into the iMedia course.

I have recently stumbled across how to put an image inside a shape, for exmaple i have put together a collection of screenshots and explained how i did it.

Step One:

I put a simple image onto photoshop, i choose the chichester college front enterence.

Step Two:

I put a image of a pentagon, this appeared onto of the image.  It looks unsightly at this stage but with two clicks we can put the image inside the pentagon.

Step Three:
I placed the pentagon underneath the chichester college image, i then hovered the mouse between the two layers pressed the (ALT) key, you will then see the cursor change.  Left click the mouse and the image will appear inside the shape.

Step Four:
I then applied an inner glow using the blendingh options, i had the colour as the same as the background.  So to have the effect as the image blending into the background.

Time Taken = 2 Minutes

I know that you need to have a 300dpi for printing posters and leaflets.

I would love to find out about how to apply my own brushes and different blending effects.

Here are some examples of my work on photoshop recently.

These leaflets were for Sussex only Rounders club to help advertise and use the reverse as a signing on form.