Origami
This month’s Playdate is Origami. You know those moments when you get so bored that even the all-knowing internet fails to amuse you anymore? Then maybe it’s time you get off your desk, unplug your computer, and go back to basics – and by that we mean go back to traditional sources of entertainment – like origami, for example. What is Origami? If you’re not familiar with origami, origami is the popular Japanese art of paper folding. It is still disputed whether the art of paper folding is actually Japanese in origin since there have been earlier references to paper folding in China, known to Chinese speakers as “Zhe Zhi,” not to mention that modern paper itself was invented in China and was just later introduced by Buddhists monks during their travels in Japan, but it is a widely recognized that the art of paper folding started to gain international attention after a book on how to fold origami models was compiled by Akira Yoshizawa in 1954. How do you do origami? The appeal of origami mainly lies on its simplicity and the large number of designs that you can make with just a piece of paper. Yup, that’s right – just a piece of paper — and an optional pair of scissors if you want. What kind of design you’re going to used would depend on your experience and the amount of time and effort you’re willing to put in, but since we have a t-shirt business on the site, we thought it would be fun if we’ll try some clothing-related designs. Origami Designs We found a great site that offers plenty of tutorials on clothing-related designs, but since we’re no experts at this, we started with the simpler ones first like this t-shirt design first. The t-shirt design was fun to make, but an outfit would not be complete if there won’t be no skirt to match the top, and so we made this skirt: We already have a top and a skirt, so we decided to move on to a one-piece outfit, and since we’re doing origami, we thought we shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to make something Japanese such as a yukata. We’ve already done three kinds of clothes at this point, two more than what we originally planned to, but we had more fun than we expected that the team requested to make one last design before we wrap things up. This time, we chose a rabbit design with clothes. Pretty cute, huh? We wanted to try a couple more designs after this one but we ran out of time, so we had to save them for next time. Anyways, if you have more time than us, why don’t you check out their list of other designs and try them for yourself? Happy folding! (^_^) Source: Origami. (2012, September 05). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 05:43, September 05 2012, from...
read moreSnow White and the Huntsman
This Month’s Playdate: Movies and copyright Howdy guys! After last month’s Playdate on which we had enjoyed fun under the sun (swimming, that is), this time, since most of us loved watching movies, we have considered seeing a flick as a topic for our Playdate. So for this month, as we had our popcorns and drinks ready, then its movie time! Oops! Before anything else, we have to pick up a good movie first. And because everyone’s inclined to see “Snow White and the Huntsman,” we have decided to watch that movie. So off to the cinema we go! We arrived a little too early for the scheduled time of the film showing, but nevertheless, we bought the movie passes. And while waiting for the time to pass by, some of us went to the arcade, while some just took a stroll around the mall, while others bought some snacks. Shortly after that, all of us meet up then we went inside the cinema. We have enjoyed watching the movie and its special effects as well as the “twists” that were not “originally” present on the fairy tale, especially the fact that Snow White was now regarded as a heroine and not just the traditional damsel-in-distress-waiting-for-prince-charming anymore, although the main elements of the Snow White fairy tale (i.e. the poison apple, magic mirror, the seven dwarves, and the wicked witch) were still there. After watching the flick, we returned to the studio and discussed the brief history, or rather, evolution of Snow White; from the first Grimm’s fairy tale, to the Disney’s animation, to the various movies and theatre plays, to video games, up until the latest Snow White movie, and that is “Snow White and the Huntsman.” We have also discussed the copyright terms and trademark ownership of the said fairy tale. That’s it for this month’s Playdate! Do watch out for more in these coming months!...
read moreSwimming
This month’s playdate is Swimming! Yey! Summer has been here for two months now, but we almost missed it because we’ve been having so much fun working on the projects that we were assigned with this month. Luckily for us, we were able to find a way to mix business with pleasure by throwing in some swimming time on our monthly Playdate. If you’re wondering what swimming has got to do with the creative workshops we officially dubbed as our BNP Playdates, you’re not alone because we’re wondering about that too. But hey, who ever said artists are all about art? Besides, what could be a better source of inspiration for our next projects than the feeling of floating on water while letting your thoughts run free… if you can float, that is. Unfortunately, we eventually discovered that most of us have an unsettled love-hate relationship with water, so we had to do some prepping up before we stepped into the pool (it was impromptu, okay? ;p). First; the swimwear You may think that this was easy, but since we showed up for work unprepared (we had work in the morning and the impromptu swimming lesson in the afternoon), we had to scramble home to get some decent clothes (pictures of which shall be omitted to preserve our dignity). Second; the swimming demonstration Most of us have a love-hate relationship with water, but apparently, one has been in a long-term relationship with it. Since few were willing to volunteer for the task, he had no choice but to fill the role of the designated instructor. Third: putting what we learned into practice Watching from the sidelines, the swimming styles demonstrated by our designated instructor didn’t look particularly challenging, but putting what we learned into practice proved to be a different story. We did try our best to imitate what we were taught, but after several near-death moments (kidding!), we gave up and stuck with our own primitive ways of surviving in the water. The conclusion Reading how we didn’t get to actually learn anything, you’d think that we would’ve been frustrated, but considering how much power pools and other bodies of water typically hold over people both swimmers and non-swimmers alike, we ended up spending way too much time on the water that we had to be fished out of the pool by our more restrained teammates. Of course, that’s not the end of it, so, for now, we’ll just practice our swimming skills while we plan our next impromptu trip. Until...
read moreDigital Art
This month’s Playdate is Digital Art Most of us are already familiar with image editing programs. In fact, their use has become so widespread that the name of a particular program has become synonymous to altered photos. Some people’s awareness of the power of image editing programs are usually limited to cropping unwanted objects or the removal of pimples and other blemishes, though, so for our BNP playdate this month, we’re going to share how we used image editing programs to create whimsical art using a combination of photographs and drawings. Materials Used: Digital camera Strobe Lights Black backdrop Reflector Graphics tablet Headdresses for the mermaid and merman Sketchpad Pencil Computer Programs Used: Adobe Photoshop (for the background and photo manipulation) Adobe Illustrator (for the supplementary drawings) Estimated Duration: Depends on familiarity with photo shoots and image editing programs, but for this activity, it took us about a day for the photo shoot and the required preparation before that and another day for the actual photo manipulation process. Estimated Difficulty: Moderate. The activity required a fair amount of editing, so you would need to be familiar with the different tools commonly used in image editing programs. Number of People on the Team: Ten people assigned with the following roles: Illustrator Make up artists Hair Stylists Costume Designer Digital Artist Photographer Production Assistant First Phase: The Photo Shoot A good number of people who manipulate photos usually use stock images in order to save time and effort on producing the photographs, but since we wanted to get a feel of the whole process from the very beginning, we decided to work with a photograph that we’ll be taking ourselves. The concept: an underwater scene featuring a mermaid and her son. To give the activity a jumpstart, we had one of our illustrators do some sketches of the poses that would be done, and after we’ve picked the ones we liked, we started to prepare the things we’re going to need. The staff was recently joined by four more people, so dividing the work amongst ourselves had come easy with some acting as stylists and costume designers while the others work on setting up the backdrop, strobe light (for additional lighting), reflector (to spread the light evenly), and tripod (for steady shots). With everything finally set up, we proceeded to do the actual photo shoot by taking pictures with different poses. We then picked the photo that we liked the most and saved it for the next phase of the activity. Second Phase: Photo Manipulation Day 1 saw us preparing the photographs that will be used for the photo manipulation, but now that we’re done with that, we proceeded to the next phase – the photo manipulation. We mentioned before that we decided to work on an underwater theme, but at the last minute, we decided to make the subjects only partially submerged underwater so we can play with the background and subjects more. We did this by cropping out the lower body of the subjects and replacing them with tails drawn by one of our illustrators and attaching them to the upper body of the subjects later. Our digital artists then started to do some retouching, starting with the removal of blemishes up to the balancing of hue and saturation. We started drawing the background with the use of an image editing program and a graphics tablet. You might want to note that this wasn’t particularly difficult because our artist is accustomed to using these programs and devices, but if you’re not that comfortable with image editing programs and graphic...
read moreUsing Color Schemes
Have you ever looked at a colorful painting and wished that you can extract all those vibrant hues and use them on your own project? If only things were that easy, huh? Well, actually they are. That’s what we learned during our Playdate this month when we experimented with Kuler and color schemes. Kuler is an application that helps you generate and create color schemes for just about any project like business cards and invitations, web pages, and even the motif of your brand new house or wedding reception. We’re afraid brand new houses and wedding receptions are still a bit far-fetched for us, so we had to settle for something more low-key like the miniature dream houses that we previously drew. Playing with color schemes was fun but not particularly challenging, though, so we thought of raising things up a notch by seeing who can make the most colorful and most beautiful house within three minutes. Since not all of us were familiar with the application, some of us tried it for a bit before starting the game. The cool thing about it is even if you know next to nothing about color schemes, you can still generate magnificent colors simply by uploading a picture you like or browsing through the thousands of photos on Flickr and picking the one whose colors you like best. It will then show you the dominant colors that were present in the picture then you can experiment with them by adjusting the general mood that the colors evoke such as bright, colorful, muted, deep, and dark. With everything all set, we started taking turns coloring the houses that got randomly assigned to us, laughing all throughout the game, because although we picked photos whose colors we thought were really good, using them at random proved to be not a very good idea because we ended up with psychedelic houses, ominous clouds, blue lawns, and other things that would probably look a little too out of place in the real world. Still, we guess that’s the fun part – getting the opportunity to stray from the usual path and having fun with it. And had fun, we did. You’ll probably have too.. Good luck! Related Links Kuler http://kuler.adobe.com/...
read moreChristmas Jingle
December at last, and just like what we promised in our last post, we’ll be sharing the product of our year-end challenge for this year. Presenting: Jingle Bells featuring BNP Design Studio! A little plugging for our baby project – Talk@tee too! Pretty neat, huh? Okay… Maybe not… Just kidding! But really..Please don’t take us seriously We were just tinkering with some drawings when the idea crossed our minds. If you want to produce a music video like this for fun, though, here’s how we did it: The Drawing Part This was probably the easiest part of our experiment. The BNP staff is mainly composed of illustrators and digital artists, so coming up with caricatures of the gang came easy, not to mention that we already have our original talk@tee characters to work with. Don’t be discouraged if drawing isn’t your forte, though. Caricatures don’t have to be visually stunning or technically accurate, so just have fun drawing what you want. The Recording Part Nope, you don’t need a recording studio and recording equipment for this. Of course it would be great if they’re readily available for your use, but in our case an electronic keyboard and a regular headset were more than enough. We just used the microphone of the headset to record our voices and the keyboard to play the sounds of the various instruments we used in the music video such as the drums, guitars, cymbals, and shaker. The Editing Part Sound editing may come across as an intimidating prospect for some, but it’s not really as difficult and complicated as it sounds unless you’re aiming for a commercial CD. It doesn’t have to be costly either as there are several decent sound editing software that you can get from the internet for free and there are also those that you can use until the trial period has expired. With some cutting here and some pasting there, you’ll be good to go. The Animating Part The complexity of the animation process would depend on what kind of animation you want to do (traditional or 3D) and how realistic you want your animated illustrations to be. Since we just wanted a simple traditionally animated video, our efforts were mostly focused on recreating multiple frames of the same illustrations with some slight alterations and combining them in a way that creates the illusion of movement. Post Production Most of the work we had to do was done during the recording and animating part, so there wasn’t much left for the post-production stage. We just combined the animated illustrations and background music together, added some credits, uploaded them on our social networking sites, crossed our fingers for luck, and that was it – mission completed. b ^_~ d Resources If you’re curious about the programs we used for this project, you can try them out for yourself by checking the list below. Adobe Illustrator (Illustration) Adobe Audition (Sound Editing) Adobe Premiere (Animation) Macromedia Flash...
read more