Ash.Mccague

School's over!

2011-05-05T13:44:00.003-04:00

Man it's been a long while since I updated. I finally finished up school and finished up my thesis. My thesis was shown at our senior show, which our entire senior class showed. It was a really amazing show, everyone did really fantastic work!

And of course for anyone who wants to see, there's my thesis. Hopefully now I'll be able to update more. Thank you everyone who was able to make it! There's another showing this Friday for anyone who's interested in seeing it again.

So in the mean time...

2011-03-22T20:40:00.003-04:00

I was working on my self promotion piece, I made the first one too small. Rather then waste the fabric, I fashioned myself a little buisnescard holder. Gives me the chance to show off the fabric that I got printed with my logo design.

Self promo stuff to come soon!

I'm alive update

2011-03-03T21:34:00.004-05:00

I wish I had super cool stuff to post about, but I really don't. I just have the character sheets I did for my motion video. It's coming along slowly but I actually finally started animating and there's like 15 seconds of motion in my minuet and thirty second long motion video.

I also need to get my business cards printed out soon. Ahhh. God, that feels pretty scary. Like I'm off being a real professional.

And god there's still my self promotion piece. My pins idea wasn't thought so highly of, but I'll have to figure out something for myself. It's tough thinking of something that isn't a book or a CD...but I'll think of something.

Style Frames: Thesis Edition

2011-02-02T11:27:00.004-05:00

So we're working on the style frames for our Thesis now, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turning out. But I think what might benefit it is adding texture. Maybe to the background or to certain parts, like the dragon.

Also Chris posted this interesting link on The Top 10 Most Beautiful Colors. Most lists are subjective to begin with, there's no reason as to WHY they're more beautiful, it's just someone's opinion. And with that, I find myself disagreeing with about every choice on there. Maybe #10. But that's just my opinion.

Late update!

2011-01-29T17:30:00.004-05:00

So it's been a while since I posted, it's been fairly busy since Christmas time. School has started again and now I start working on my thesis (for us Motion kids we get to do a PSA) and mine is on the "Dangers of not using your imagination", it's a pretty scary thing.

Enjoy a storyboard.

Other then that, enjoy a web layout I'm doing for a made up coffee website. I'm wonderfully happy with how the design looks. I had to do a quick logo for it as well (which tends to be not so much my strong suit) but it meshes pretty well with everything. Now it comes to actually making the site...we'll see how that goes.

2010-12-26T23:46:00.005-05:00

I got myself a brand new camera for Christmas. A Cannon EOS Rebel T2i, my first DSLR and I'm having a fantastic time with it. I'm not a professional by any means but I'm really enjoying learning how to use the camera and the different features, I have a lot more of the settings I still need to learn...

But for now, enjoy what I did take with it!

Enjoy!

Motion Videos: FInal

2010-12-14T08:47:00.003-05:00

Getting through finals. Sadly I never have a lot to post in between, but now that I finished my final videos for my motion class. So here I am to show off!

Based on the series of Wonder Pets, this one is based on stuffed animals coming to life and attacking each other.

And then for my motion class. An American Eagle ad; one for men and one for women. Probably my favorite project we've done so far and the one that turned out the best.

It was a learning experience with both. Hope you like!

QR Code

2010-12-10T14:53:00.003-05:00

Isn't this just dandy? It'll take you right to my blog. You know, the thing you're already viewing. Will also take you to my Facebook page as well. Now if only I had the smart phone to be able to do this. Ah well, maybe someone else does.

Video Game ADs

2010-12-03T16:33:00.007-05:00

Been a while since I posted. Blogs are a silly thing to keep up with, because I really don't want to say absolutely nothing. But after a speaker came into our self promo class I was more inspired to try and keep up with this blog a bit more.

With that I decide to go into Video Games.

Video games are a wonderful medium that within the recent years have been far more popular. It lead me to think about their marketing campaigns. Each one has done different things to sell their games, from commercials to ads. With this I just want to get into the different ads or campaigns that I liked the most. This is only going into the American campaigns, mostly because its the ones I've seen on TV or the internet the most.

Professor Layton
The game is a fun mix of story and puzzles. The art style and score is very original, while coming from Japan doesn't have the anime look that might be expected. The game was released in Japan in 2007 but didn't come out till 2008 in America. What was interesting was that initially the game didn't really get any kind of attention, not until they started this marketing with Lisa Kudrow.

What helped with Layton sales is that they marketed towards a slightly older crowd. It wasn't a game that young children could get into, but the target focused more on adults and women. Coming from someone who worked in a gamestore, we had plenty of adult and older women asking for the "Lisa Kudrow" game when it came out.
With the next game they don't use Lisa Kudrow anymore, but they keep the same format of someone solving a puzzle in the game. Same target audience.

For the third game they went a completely different route. Instead of the people playing the puzzles they made the characters come to life.

I like this ad the most. It was the most creative and fun out of them. I think it's probably the least safe of the three, it doesn't go for that same market of the older female audience. But this commercial is more fun, very fitting of the setting of the game.

Assassin's Creed
The marketing for the first game wasn't as strong as the marketing for the second game. The first game did alright in sales while the second game exploded in popularity.

The commercial for the first game was pretty basic. They played a song and showed off some of the gameplay. The song was familiar, being the same song as the opening of House MD ("Teardrop" by Massive Attack). Overall a pretty safe and dull ad.

The commercial for the second game is honestly a bit more frightening. Each of the targets are implied to be dead. They really don't show it in the eyes but its easy to guess who they are, the victims of main character at the end. It's more dramatic, dynamic and still shows off the game.

Here they go with the same dynamic that the previous did with the live action bits but still includes some of the gameplay, because they're selling the game. What was really sort of impressive was the viral campaign they did with the third game. They were far more aggressive with how they did it and I think it was successful in the hype of the game. Every so often they would include developer diaries, hints at a new multilayer character, just enough to tease the person into buying but not giving away everything.

Call of Duty Black Ops
This is a game that really needs little advertising to sell itself, it's one of the biggest selling games of all time. But the ad they did put out was entertaining and good to their own brand.

Other then the high production value, what I liked most about it was they showed the variety of people who do play the game. It's entertaining and true to the people who do play the game.

That's about all I'll go over for now. Maybe if I find a few more I like I'll point them out. But I think the marketing was a good part of how successful the game was. And how they took previous elements from their older ads and worked on how to improve them.

Doodles

2010-11-04T19:52:00.007-04:00

I have nothing really design worthy that I can talk about, at least for myself. I'm working on a few project. One of them involving toys, so it'll be quite fun to take pictures of the stuffed animals that I have...you know, for serious work, and obviously stuff for the style frames that I showed before. I instead have a series of doodles inspired by my mythology class.

See rather then completely pay attention, I like most, doodle instead. And I don't know what it is about this class but I keep drawing nude women. It might be because of the subject matter, myths and beautiful women. Some of it might be my interpretation of the women in there.

Granted, I'm more of a designer then I am an illustrator, so sadly I'm not as good as the people that I watch. I learned mostly from an animation type style, so I'm slowly working my way away from that.

And that's about it. I work slowly and improve a bit each day. Doodling is more of a side thing for myself, rather then design, but I always like to improve.

Style Frames

2010-10-29T00:44:00.002-04:00

I'm kind of excited about this new project for my motion class. We're working on a tv ad, where we can interchange the middle portions for an ad, but the beginning and middle remain the same. So we need to pick a company that sells a commodity, where the ad can change. I chose American Eagle.

It was probably one those times when an idea just sort of struck me, and I was really excited to go with it. I won't go into too much detail about it, but I wanted to show off the style frames that I was working on.

I think they fit the company well and it feels that I really got a chance to design something, rather then worry about the technical aspects of what the video would be. I can't wait to start working on this.

Here and Now

2010-10-22T18:00:00.005-04:00

So I thought I'd take the time and compare my new personal logo with my old one. As a designer I obviously need a way to market myself, and an icon is probably the best way of doing that. Making the personal logo was an assignment for school, each about a year apart.

First Design

Originally I wanted something more illustrative. I went completely literal and drew myself and a simplified version of what I looked like. So I did a simple drawing of my face. At the time I was really unsure of where I wanted to do. So I just went completely literal and drew my face. Not as creative as I really would have liked. But it does sort of show off the somewhat illustrative style I have.

And of course the new logo. With my new logo I tried to go a bit more daring then what I might normally do. I still incorporate my name so it sort of shows me as a designer, a way to market myself. I tend to lean towards pastels and really lighter colors, which is why I chose the purple. I decided it would be a bit more daring to try something more vertical facing then horizontal or box. There's a bit of a limit for positioning, but the shape is memorable.

First Post

2010-10-15T16:08:00.003-04:00

Alright, so here's my first post to my blog. I've kept several blogs in the past, for varying reasons, and a good deal of them have failed in the past. Mostly because you start to lose track of them, forget to update them or even forget you have them. You start off with a purpose or theme and you try and stick with it, if you end up picking something you don't know a lot about or there isn't much to say you end up forgetting about actually using the blog.

Like previously, this was for my drawings and doodles, to keep myself on track with drawing more (because occasionally I like to do that sort of stuff). But I never kept up with it. I ended up focusing more on stuff I needed to do for school and I really wasn't drawing as much as I'd like to.

So I think I'd like to make this blog just a mix of everything I can. Anything design wise, anything that I'm working on to show off the progress of a current project or even pick up again and start doing a little drawing. Maybe as I go the whole point of this may become a little clearer.