Week 4

In this post I will be covering my choice of template for the DVD image itself. I am using Illustrator to create this, as it will be the program I use to create the finished piece.

I am looking at using a fairly basic template that includes bleed edges and guides for the stacking ring and the hub. It looks like this....

This is the basic template. The central ring is for the hub (The hole in centre of the DVD) and the ring outside of this is for the stacking ring (the transparent ring in the centre). The outer ring is the bleed area, and second outer most ring is the edge of the image for the DVD. The 2 lines that intersect the disc are primarily there to allow the other guides to be put in place easily, although they will also be helpful in making sure images are aligned correctly and do not look out of place when it comes to adding images into the disc.

To set up the horizontal and vertical guides, I used the rulers available in Illustrator and dragged this to roughly the place they needed to be. I then clicked onto these lines and this allows me to adjust the X and Y position to be exactly central in the template.

To create the 4 rings that will show where the image needs to be placed, and where it cannot were drawn using the ellipse tool. They were all created in the same way, holding ALT and single clicking in the centre of the template brings up a menu that allows you to set the diameter of the height and width of the circles. So following a guide for the sizes the holes etc I created a series of circles. For the central hole I used 8.7mm, this is the standard size for all DVD and CDs. I then created the stacking disc guide at 16.7mm. The outer two where 117.5mm for the edge of the disc, again, the standard measurement, and I used 125.5mm for the bleed edge. This is 8mm wider than the previous one, allowing me 4mm of bleed space around the whole circumference.

Once this had been done, right clicking on the path (the lines created by the circles) will bring up a menu allowing you to select Make Guides, this then sets that path as a guide. Allowing it to be locked and used to arrange the other images in the template into the correct positions.

This will be used as my starting point for the DVD template. Although I'm currently having issues with Illustrator, and it's stopped working. This might delay my updates for this section.

Week 3 / 4

This week I have fallen behind in my updates, although I have come a long way in organising my ideas and have a much clearer view of the finished product in my head. I started off collating all my ideas into a Mind Map. I used the Bubbl.us website to help with this, as it made the entire process easier. The mind map ended up as a mix of ideas, and tutorials and sample images I can incorporate into my final design. At this stage, the mind map looks as follows.

This, as you can see, has a lot of links included towards the right hand side, this is where I was mostly aiming for ideas based around the background, text styles, themes and specific ideas.

The main idea is to have a rather symmetrical border, of very similar if not identical images on each side. Then to have a central scene that will have the main image that will be linked to the plot of the film. I will likely try to stick to the general theme of the Archer introduction, a black background with coloured squares with images in, and silhouettes being used of the main characters.

The back of the DVD case will likely continue the theme from the front of the box, with a few images, the copywrite information, barcode and logo. This will be added in an later post.