Storyboard Illustrator

These are my final story board for the opening of the film Sweeney Todd. To make these I went onto illustrator and used the shapes and pen tool to create the little animations. The colours I used were black, white, red and dark blue, to keep the style to Saul Bass I wanted to keep the objects as simple as possible and wanted to use a very basic but bold colour scheme. I'm really pleased with the outcome and feel that I was able to keep but also adapt the Saul Bass style.

Storyboard

These are some quick thumbnail ideas I drew for the storyboard of my chosen film. In the story board there will 12 different slides and each will have different objects and names placed on them, all in the style of Saul Bass. Creating thumbnails was a good way of seeing what my opening would look like and give me a brief idea of what would look good and what wouldn't work, these allowed me to look through and see if there was any work that needed to be changed before spending lots of time creating an actual story board.

After making thumbnails, i moved my ideas over to a story board. The drawings on this aren't very detailed but are a lot more developed than the thumbnails, and give me a better idea of what the finished product will look like. 

Featured objects illustrator

These are some of the objects I will be using in the opening of the film Sweeney Todd. To make these I went on illustrator and used the pen and shape tool. I tried to make the objects as simple and blocky as possible to fit in the Saul Bass style. For each object I tried placing them on different coloured backgrounds to see what they would look best on. I'm really pleased with how these objects worked out and think that they are still recognisable and still look like the Saul Bass style. 

Featured shapes

These are some objects from the film that i will be using in my opening sequence. I decided you use the charactes Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett as they are the main characters and are easily identifiable to the film. I will be using these pictures as inspiration and guidelines for making shapes in the Saul Bass style.

Featured shapes

This is a mind map I made of a few objects/characters that I could use in the opening sequence of the film. These are all things that came to mind when thinking about the film, the mind map includes things such as the famous Sweeney Todd chair, Sweeney himself and other objects like human pies and bottles of gin. All these objects are featured in and are important to the film.

These are a few designs I quickly made of a few objects from the mindmap. These are a few of the designs that will be used and featured in my opening. I decided that it would be good to feature, Sweeney Todd, Mrs Lovett, human pies, the street sign of where both shops are placed, the barber shop sign and cut throat razor.  I'm really pleased with how the designs have turned out, I tried to keep the detail and colour scheme of the objects very minimal. The Saul Bass style is a bit more blocky than how these designs are, when making these on Illustrator I will try to include the more blocky style so it fits Saul Bass style more. 

Making fonts on Illustrator

Because we would be making the shapes/storyboards/images on Illustrator, I worked on Illustrator to create a range of fonts that suited the Saul Bass style. I found it much easier to create these fonts on Illustrator because when making them by hand i found it hard recreate the block style and found it an unnatural style for me to work in.  I think these range of fonts work with the Saul Bass style much more than the hand drawn ones and think that I was much more successful with these. My favourite font of these designs is the first one (red with black boarder) as I feel it is the font that most represents the Saul Bass style and the sharp lines with the bold and contrasting colours fit the theme of danger and fear which is heavily used in the film. 

Finalised ideas

These are some of the fonts I designed (previous post) but finalised. I chose 5 fonts that I felt both worked well and looked good and spent more time working on the design and even added colour. For the colour I used mostly black like Saul Bass does and used colours that I felt worked well with the genre and theme of the film I will be designing an opening for. Because the film Sweeney Todd is a gory film I thought red would be the most fitting colour as it represents danger and can be made to look like blood that is used a lot in the film.  Out of the final designs my favourite one has to be the one where its Sweeney Todd's face and has no facial features, these are replaced by the name of the film. I think the illustration of the face works well because the hair with the white streak clearly shows who the character is and because its very simple, has no details and is kind of silhouetted fits in with the Saul Bass style. 

Hand drawn fonts

After looking at Saul Bass fonts online and digitally made, I looked at creating some by hand. I feel that this was much easier than finding already made fonts because I could apply the same technique and style Saul Bass uses and could be creative with my designs.    As Saul Bass fonts are usually all made up of straight lines, I decided to create some fonts that looked similar to his style but by allowing myself to use curves. I found using curves much easier and found it worked better when warping them in and around shapes (like the face) but didn't feel the outcomes supported the Saul Bass style as much as they could have. The curved and bubble style, while looking unique and creative, didn't follow the theme of Saul Bass. 

Fonts on Illustrator

After looking at some of Saul Bass work, we went on to font websites such as dafont.com and searched for and downloaded fonts that looked similar to the fonts Saul Bass uses in his work. To find these fonts I had to type in identifiable keywords such as, blocked, abstract, square ect into a search bar on the websites, this allowed me to filter through all fonts on the site and find some that would be similar to the ones used on the posters and in the film openings. I think the first font represents Saul Bass work the most, as all the lines are straight, un-even, have a mix of both straight and slanted lines and have the hand drawn effect that Saul Bass uses in most (if not all) of his work. 

Mood Board

This is the mood board I made based on the work of Graphic Designer Saul Bass. His work is very simplistic and usually silhouetted shapes placed on very bright and bold backgrounds. His work is usually very disproportionate and abstract. Most of his work is made up of straight lines which gives shapes and text the abstract look. The objects he makes are usually made up of lot of different shapes which don't always connect and are usually things that are easily identifiable to the film he's making a poster/opening sequence for. The usual colour scheme for his work is black/white and usually red or orange but does sometimes use other bright colours such as blue and green. 

Personally I don't find his work visually appealing, i'm not a fan of the mix and matched shapes that build up other objects or the use of mostly straight lines.  I think the idea of using a minimal colour scheme and having objects that are easily identifiable to the movie featured works well as it helps the audience see what the film may be about before seeing it and helps give the audience an idea of what sort of genre the film may be placed in, this can also be supported by the colours used on the poster.