Eden Pictures: Logo

Eden Pictures: Logo

For our production company, we needed to make a logo to present ourselves at the beginning of our film. Therefore, we decided that we were going to use Serif DrawPlus to make the logo as we had past experience with this software. This is how the logo and production name was created.

Early Planning: 
The first thing that our group did was individually come up with names for our production company. This was so we could bring our ideas together and create a name influenced by each other.
These are the names I came up with:

1. HummingBird Productions
2. MockingBird Productions
3. RedBreast Productions
4. Ship.McGuy Productions
5. Hornbill Productions
6. Sunbird Productions
7. Pintail Productions
8. Sirius Films

As you can see, I was keen on the idea of a bird inspired name as they represent beauty. I wanted our name to reflect upon the beauty within our films and the creative art that it presents. 

• HummingBird Productions was inspired by the beauty of the animal. MGM uses a lion as their logo so I got inspiration form their use of animals. The colours are vibrant and change within different lights. This suggested that our film would also be beautiful and creative on screen. Hummingbirds are also the only birds that can fly backwards, sparking up a unique feel to the name and our films.
• MockingBird Productions came from the bird theme that I had begun. MockingBirds mimic the sounds of other birds to create their own sound. Therefore, I liked the idea of this as it represented how we used other production comapanies to inspire our ambitions and films.
• RedBreast Productions was influenced by a Robin. This name was quite personal to me as I had a deeper meaning behind it. My nana, who sadly passed away two years ago, used to tell me stories of robins when I was a child. And, after she left us, I began to see robins when I didnt expect it or when I was facing difficult times. As my nana was a strong woman, who was creative and very influential, RedBreast Productions was a great name to represnt the strong and creative films that we wanted to make. I really liked this idea and the meaning it brought.
• Ship.McGuy Productions combined all of our surnames. I liked this as it represented the teamwork that was going to go into our films and it also showed the professional side as it was our surnames rather than our forenames.
• Hornbill Productions are threatened by extinction. I used this to symbolise how oringal and unique ideas are gradually decreasing as the media shoots them down. The hornbill seemed like a really good name as they are also unique looking to reflect upon our films.
• SunBird Productions came from DreamWorks. DreamWorks' logo is a boy fishing on the moon. The moon is the opposite to the sun so I looked for birds that relate to the sun. The sun represents light, warmth and happiness which we wanted to show through our films. Therefore, I liked this idea. From this I came up with Pintail Productions as the water in the Dreamworks logo inspired this as Pintails swim on water.
•  Sirius Films came from the contellalion and itwas also a pun for ''serious films'. I liked this idea as it was lighthearted with the joke. I also liked it as it represnted stars to show that we make creative films and that we 'aim for the stars' with our ambitions. It also suggested taht we are guided with our film making.

When the group came back together, we shared ideas.

Daniel's Ideas:

1. Native Pictures
2. Regal Pictures
3. Royal Productions
4. Imperial Pictures
5. Woodland Pictures
6. Bottled-dream Productions
7. Lighthouse Studios

Iain's Ideas:

1. Iridescent Films
2. Indigenous Pictures
3. Crimson Pictures
4. Peacock Pictures
5. Raven Productions
6. Forbidden-fruit Productions

I liked 'Lighthouse Studios' as  it represnted the British Seaside. I also like that it is a light in the dark so it suggests that our films would stand out from the rest. Although I really liked this idea, we came to a mutual agreement that there were too many deep meanings that didn't correspond with what our films were about.
I also liked 'Iridescent Films' as it matched my hummingbird idea he wings on a hummingbird are iridescent.)
Since the colours change within different angles, it suggested that people may have different perspectives of our films. I really liked this idea.

 After more discussion, we narrowed all our ideas down to three.

They were:

1. Iridescent Pictures (Iain)
2. Royal Pictures (Daniel)
3. HummingBird Productions (Me)
      

After further discussion, Iain then came up with a new idea: Stag Productions.

Me and Daniel really liked the idea of a stag as it represented power so we began to develop this idea further and added it to our final list. We felt the need for individuality so changed the new suggested name to WhiteStag Productions. A white stag seemed unique in comparison to the usual stag so we soon became very keen within the idea.

Our list was then narrowed down to two:

1. HummingBird Productions
2. WhiteStag Productions

    

These two names then began to cause issues, as Daniel was set on WhiteStag Productions unlike Iain who really liked Humingbird Productions. I was swayed towards WhiteStag Productions although I really liked the other option.

After a long argument between my other two group members, Daniel then came up with a compromise. Cleverly, he suggested that our moving logo image should be both a white stag and a hummingbird. The plan was then to have a stag eating grass, till its head raised, then a hummingbird fly in to sit on the antlers of the mammal. Iain was happy with this idea so we began to re-draft a new name that didn't single out either animal. Iain came up with Eden Pictures which was influenced by the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

I was really enthusiastic towards this name as it sounded individual and sophisticated. We all agreed that it symbolised power (God created the Garden of Eden with power), beauty (the amazing animals, nature and life) and knowledge (the tree of knowledge) so the name fit perfectly for a film company. 

New Idea:

Happy with our name idea, we then began to plan how the logo would look. We planned to draw out each frame for our stop-frame animation until we found a problem. As we planned deeper  we realised that it would have been too hard to sketch and animate a stag and small bird. This problem put us in a difficult situation but we had to make the decision to change our animation idea.

We drew out some sketches to inspire us:

 We then thought of our name, Eden Pictures, and began to think of what we associated it with.

The common thought we had was an apple so we worked from this. We simplified everything and decided that we wanted apple blossom to grow vines and an apple, leading onto the apple falling.

We then came up with this sketch:

This became our final drawing so we could begin to animate.

Making the logo:

The animation part of the logo was a long detailed process.
We began by transferring our drawing onto the computer and using it as a starting point. By using the pen tool, we drew out the outline from our drawing. We began with the lettering by colouring them with a gold. The gold was used  as it is a colour desired by most and it was used to suggest power and beauty .We also started on adding a pink colour to the apple blossom.




Pen Tool

Here is a video of us making the logo:

Since the font was gold, we decided to use black as the background so it looked sophisticated.
Once all the font was coloured and the background was added, it looked like this:

After this, we began to work on the flower. The colours we had already picked looked too pale so we decided to change them. Once this was done, we began to animate. Frame by frame, we added vines and allowed them to grow. This was the hardest part of the animation as the vines had to flow smoothly whereas the apple was rather simple as it only had to fall. Once the animation was completed, we converted it into a video file.
Finally, Iain found some music that worked well with our logo so we added it via Windows Live Movie Maker.

This was the finished logo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg9oJSpn-aY

After watching it a few times, Iain noticed that the vines weren't as smooth as we had hoped and that the quality was not to a good standard. Therefore, since I was the only one with the software at home, I volunteered to try and fix it. I started the vines and apple again from scratch and added more frames to try and help the vines to run smoother. I attempted to change the quality in several different ways but it would not improve so we decided to just stick to what we had.

Once done, this is how the new logo looked: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwungn48JCE

The group was pleased with the logo and so was I. I think the glow on the apple worked well and the music really compliments what is happening on screen. Overall, I think our logo went well once we got passed all the problems that occurred.