Evaluation: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Completed Music Video

2nd Music Video Draft

From the previous draft, I have added effects onto the sequences which are not part of the story line so that it is easy to distinguish. I have also added some animation and plan to add more to help my story line develop to my audience. 

Evaluation: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Above are examples in which I think I have been consistent with a house style and have linked all my tasks in different ways.
On my magazine advert and digipak front cover, the image in both are the same which shows clearly to my target audience that these products are linked. I feel this would benefit sales as the reader, of the magazine featuring my advert, will be able to quickly know that the CD advertised is the one feartured in the magazine. If a media consumer were to see my music video and then the digipak cover, they would be able to know this is the CD featuring the song played in the video as the girl is consistent in both.
The backgrounds in both my digipak and magazine advert follow a house style. This is used to create an automatic connection between digipak and advert for the reader. As its definition states, a house style is important for consistency in media products and can be crucical for keeping the readers attraction. The consistancy of having both backgrounds in my digipak and magazine advert as blue will help consumers of my product to associate the two style together. I also used blue in my ancillary tasks to create the theme of calm and denote a summers day sky, which usually is a happy connotation for my audience.
Another house style is my use of font. In all media texts that are connected in some way to advertise or promote a product, the same font is used. I already knew that my products had to be linked to each other but it wasn't until I looked at a previous students work that I saw that even the font, that I thought was just a small detail, made a big difference to the products. Kelly Chester, in her evaluation, mentioned that she automatically knew that her products had to have an underlying theme to each other, for example colour, font and pictures. The use of her font which she referred to as 'indie', because of her genre, made a big difference in creating the link as it was visually pleasing for her target audience. However, I knew that my target audience is a niche group and I couldn't have minimalistic attributes, such as only having the artist name and release date, to my magazine advertisement like Kelly Chester's because her target audience was much larger from her chose of genre being Indie and made by Ed Sheeran. Learning from her example, I made my fonts consistent and made them all white to stand out aganist the coloured background.
The brightly coloured design on the magazine advert and digipak is consistent of the bright colours used in the music video. I decided to use a hyperreal style in the video by making the colours brighter than the original shots to make it look nicer and more pleasing to the eye. By creating a glossier and nicer looking video clip it, it makes it consistent of the editing used on my digipak cover and magazine advertisement with which I made my original image look completely different in light and added make-up onto the face of my talent.
The genre Acoustic/pop usually has a nature sense to it where it may be set in a woods or park and would connote a calm atmosphere and a sense of freedom. This is why I used a long image of a tree on the inside of my digipak, that was edited to have bright colours on the top to be consistent of the bright colours on the front of the digipak. I also had shots of trees featured in my music video to tie in with the theme of freedom and calm created in my digipak inside. I feel that this is a house style and is an effective combination of my main product and ancillary tasks as it links the themes I wanted to connote and is a visual connection for my target audience.
The last effective combination of my ancillary tasks and main products is my use of animation in both my digipak and video. Two hearts are featured in my music video and were created as part of a message for the consumer, to love yourself. The Red Heart is to represent the Heart character and the White Heart for the Girl. By drawing these hearts in both my video and digipak helps reinforce the link between the video and ancillary task and allows a 'cute' aspect to both my video and digipak.
I feel that all of the links between my main product and ancillary texts are effective as they combine similar, or the same features, and will help my target audience automatically link the products together and show a house style.

Completed Digipak

In addition to my plans, I marked out the folds of the digipak and where the CD would be positioned to make my design clearer.
I created a plain blue background and then used MyPaint to spread the orange from the front cover to the back. I then used PicMonkey to add the effect 'boken shapes', which created small heart shapes onto the background, similar to the hearts on my front cover. Still on PicMonkey, I added the same text that is present on my first digipak draft.
I then used MyPaint to draw the two hearts onto my digipak. As I had already added the text I tried to avoid it when drawing the line between the two hearts.
What I like about this version on my digipak is that all aspects of it link with the music video- the trees which are featured in parts of the video, my talent who is acting in it and the animated hearts.

3rd Magazine advertisement draft

On this version, I much prefer the proportions of her face to the previous drafts and I like the font used for 'New album' and 'Out now on iTunes'. However, this writing is not the same as the font used on the front of the digipak and so does not fit a house style. I then applied the font, used on the advert only, to the digipak front but it didn't fit as well as the first cover, as it was too bold.

What I don't like on this draft is the large gaps of pink between the edge of the page to the writing and from the image to the writing. I tried to resolve this matter by making the writing bigger but then the spacing was inconsistent.

I plan to resolve this by applying the font from my digipak to my magazine advert and reviewing with audience feedback.

Completed Magazine Advert

 

After numorous shades of blue and green were tested, this was the shade that the majority of my target audience prefered.

I feel that the close up photography of my talents face reflects the sense of calm suggested by the background colour. I chose this shot for my Digipak front cover and Magazine advertisement as my talent seems as though she is gazing into the distance and is easily indentifiable, from the profile, of the girl in the music video.

The name of the artist is small and positioned to the left hand corner of the page because I didn't want the name to become a big feature of the advert. My intention of the advert is to showcase the release of the album and the genre of which is it. Because of my target audience being niche and my artist not being well known, I thought it best to not try and promote the artist largely as it wouldn't really be a selling point.

4th Magazine Advertisement draft

 

I much prefer the layout of this draft as there is little space between the picture and boarder. However, from audience feedback it was clear that the colour pink was considered "too girly" and didn't reflect the acoustic part of the genre very well. My target audience also felt that the pink would put off the latter of my intended age range because they may percieve is as 'for the younger girls'.

To improve this, I asked a small number of my target audience which colour background they feel would more appeal to them. The majority stated a 'blue or turqouise' as the best option as they both connote relaxation and a sense of calm.

2nd Digipak draft

Although not finished, this is the second draft of my digipak. I have put the digipak inside upside down so that when it folds it is the right way. I have also added the front cover on the right side for the same reseason. From what is completed, I personally like the way that the album inside and front cover both have bright, multi-coloured features of them. I believe this would appeal to my target audience because the genre is Acoustic/pop, which typically feature happy and uplifting songs. A lot of different colour and the lack of black also appeals to my audience as it shows that this is not a Rock album, as black is associated with that genre.
The next steps for my digipak are to create the back and middle, where there is currently an empty space, and to get feedback on my product from my target audience.
In my first digipak draft I drew on the Sad Heart and Red Heart featured in my video. I liked this feature as it showed a house style between the video and the digipak. On my final digipak draft I will have the same image as my first (the hearts communicating by string) but make it neater.

Making my animation

As you can see, it took a lot of separate shots to create my main animation. I started off by drawing out the body of the Red Heart using a program called MyPaint and then slowing dragging it higher onto the screen, to create the effect that it was moving upwards. I then changed aspects of the main image, the Red Heart, to create the part where it waves and walks.
Firstly, I erased the Hearts right arm and redrew it at, about, a 90 degree angle from the elbow. I then redrew this arm and had the hand up at about a 45 dregree angle. I put these two images together and repeated to create the waving animation.
Secondarly, I erased the legs and redrew the left leg at a a 45 degree angle, whilst leaving the right leg straight, and then repeating this but with the right leg at an angle and the left straight.
I wanted the Sad Heart and the Red Heart to be the same in size and limbs and so I erased the colour from the Red Heart and drew on a sad face to the white heart.
To show the Red Heart getting closer I copied both hearts onto Paint and moved the Sad Heart closer to the red by small steps. To avoid Paint saving the whole picture (with both hearts being present at all times), I print screened the image onto another Paint window and saved it there. After moving the Sad Heart closer and closer to the Red Heart I realised that I had only used the image of the Red Heart where the left leg was at an angle, and so ruining the walking animation. To fix this I opened up Paint again and replaced every other image, for the walking sequence, with the image of the Red Heart with the right leg at an angle.