St. Patrick’s Day is a holiday that combines both religious sentiments as well as highlights the fun elements. As such messages on St. Patrick’s Day ecards must reflect both emotions. Different sub-categories allow visualizers to choose the theme of the ecard and draft a suitable message.
Here are some quick tips to write the apt messages based on popular sub-categories:-
Happy St. Patrick’s Day:
This can cover a range of messages from blessings to fun and from cute to warm wishes. This is a generic sub-category where the audience is looking to wish people a great holiday! Messages can have references to popular St. Patrick’s Day activities such as parades, consuming green beers etc.
Love:
The messages for Love remain on the same lines as other romantic ecards but with an Irish context. They can be associated with Irish elements such as the Pot O’Luck or the lucky charm.
St. Patrick’s Day ecard by Ashupatodia
Irish Blessings:
These ecards cover religious blessings to popular Irish blessings. If one particular blessing has been used in a card it is best to use others as repetition will lead to user dissatisfaction. The quotes shouldn’t be used in isolation and must be in line with the concept and followed by a personal message.
Bit O’ Fun:
This section is meant for the funny ecards. The messages can be lighthearted, wacky or casual as suitable for friends. They should reflect good humor on the holiday.
The most important take away is that the cards must have a concept. Messages flow in with the concept and make it ideal to send to friends & family.
St. Patrick Day is an Irish holiday that is celebrated worldwide. It reflects Irish culture with parades, food, drinks and festivity. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade was started in New York. Currently there are over millions of US residents with Irish roots, hence it is celebrated on a large scale in the US.
St. Patrick’s Day ecard by Jothi
Shamrock:
This is a three faced leaf that was traditionally used as a metaphor for the Christian Trinity. It symbolizes good luck and is attached to Irish sentiments, hence are ideal to use in ecards. Many of the Happy St. Patrick’s Day ecards have these elements.
Color:
Green is associated with the holiday and comes from the use of Shamrocks. People adorn green outfits on the day. In ecards different shades of green can be used. You can use brown and other colors to break the monotony of green.
Beer:
Yes believe it or not this day is popular for Irish drinks and beer is the most important of all. This can be used to reflect merriment and fun with friends.
Pot o’ Luck brought in by Leprechauns:
Leprechauns are Irish fairies and according to legends they would hide pots of gold at the end of a rainbow. They are believed to bring in good fortune. These can be added to ecards to bring in the traditional flavors.
Irish Blessings:
Not just the one popular quote but other religious quotes and Irish teachings can be put together in ecards such as Irish blessings to appeal to the religious sentiments of people.
Irish words:
Craic is the Irish word for Fun, similarly other popular words can be used. This holiday is also popularly known as St. Paddy’s day so such informal language can be used for ecards to friends.
Irish Dance:
Step dancing is popular as Irish dance and many of our ecards portray leprechauns and other animated characters doing the step dance. Audience finds this cute and funny in ecards and can be used to attract their attention.
February was an exciting month full of events that wooed people’s hearts. During this month we ran a contest called “Fortnight of Love & Romance” and four visualizers made a huge impact by providing users with their most favorite ecards. We thank them for their unique concepts and heartwarming messages that gave life to these beautiful holidays.
1) Ashupatodia:
Ashu’s ecards always seem to do the trick. Whether it is the visual or the message, each component leaves an impression. She dedicates this win to her true Valentine!
“It’s often rightly said that there’s some encouraging hand behind every person. For me too, it would have not been possible to achieve anything in my life without the true love of my family & friends as all of them have been influential in my life in some way or the other and hence I am thankful to them all for their constant heartfelt love & support but of them all, there’s one and the most beautiful blessing in my life that deserve mention as my true source of motivation and energy. It’s my lovely daughter, Rishika. My world is in her innocent smile which inspires me to see the brighter side of life and always have a positive attitude. No effort in life goes in vain and every small experience counts. So, I would like to dedicate this win especially to her. She is the one that keeps me going! She is my true Valentine!”
2) Jothi:
Jothi has been the most consistent and has earned a spot as a diverse visualizer. The first to be a part of the platform she has evolved as a designer. Her valentine dedication goes to her parents. “My father, Sureshkumar, and my mother, Lakshmi, are the greatest support for me who motivated me at all times. My parents never compelled me to learn for grade, they just allowed me to do what I love, which is animation. That motivation made me hold on to my ambition and achieve these accolades.”
Romantic ecards created by 123Greetings Studio Visualizers[/caption]
3) Simpydesigns:
Moumita‘s work appeals to the audience as it is unique and powerful. Her Valentine dedication goes to her mom, Maitreyee De.“I thank her for all her support love and care. She always believed in me and encouraged me to max my potential. She consoled me when I was nervous and appreciated my work when I started new. Her positive approach inspired me and through the love that she has given me I could reflect that in my ecards.”
4) Freecards4dearone:
Nitin Kothari needs a special mention in this blog. His ecards have done well under the contest and he has climbed up the leaderboard rapidly. His dedication goes to his lovely wife Vidya. “When I first received a greeting card from my loving wife I was really impressed with the flowers, the art work, the message and the convenience of sending an ecard. Since then I started designing ecards. My wife inspired me a lot in making ecards. She was my best critique and gave valuable suggestions that helped me improve. Without her inspiration I would never have won such contests. I would like to convey my special thanks to her.”
Welcome To the Year of Sheep! Chinese New Year is the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar. The celebration for this holiday expands over days and people travel from different parts of the world to be with their families. The year 2015 is the 4713th Chinese year. Each year is signified by an animal and each is said to have its own personality traits. Sheep is an auspicious animal in Chinese tradition. It is considered to bring in luck and prosperity. It stands for the element of earth in the 5 distinct elements Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Ether. So it is the year of Earth Angels that bring in stability and fortune in life. Let’s identify the positive and earthy traits of a sheep – calm, composed and graceful.
Chinese New Year Ecard by Jothi
So what are some important elements associated with this holiday? We’ll cover some that are also important to be represented in ecards.
1) Color – Red. This color symbolizes good luck or fortune and is widely used by the community not only for the festival but at any auspicious event. Hence cards must reflect these colors for people to appreciate them visually.
2) Symbolic Animal – Each year is represented by an animal and that signifies the personality of the people born in those years. 2015 is the year of the sheep and hence ecards must encompass this important element in them.
3) Fireworks:Fireworks are integral to new year and the same applies to Chinese New Year. Apart from fireworks what is popular in their tradition are air lanterns that float in the air.
4) Family reunions – This is customary with the Chinese. People travel long distances to be with family on this holiday. As such ecards must have wishes that can be sent to family and be able to express their emotions aptly.
5) Food – No family reunion is complete without food and as such family dinners and feast are a core part of the holiday. Ecards can represent such traditions in their ecards such as tossing of the salad to be unique and traditional in some way.
6) Chinese symbols – For the ecard to be authentic in look and feel they must include Chinese symbols such as the Chinese year – in this case 4713, Mandarin symbols, dragons, lanterns etc.
In last week’s post we looked at the production aspect of creating an ecard. In this post we’ll cover the post-production aspect. This involves some crucial steps that can determine its success rate.
7) Music:
Music in the card is important to set the mood of the card. Music must correlate to the type of card. Soft tunes or instrumental music would go well with romantic ecards, whereas, cheerful, peppy music would go well with a Birthday ecard. Ecards for events should depict the emotions or regional taste of the origin of the holiday.
8) Edit:
This is a crucial step. You may have put everything together but you now need to get rid of extras and polish your card. So check for clear boundaries, grammatical errors, play replay buttons. Ensure that images are not pixelated; improve the font, color, contrast, shading effects etc. In the ecard below Daftoons has used vibrant colors with a shading effect in the background and clean drawn images. To cut down on editing and rework have a clear concept right from the beginning so you work is on track and you can avoid the extra hours that go into editing.
Valentine’s Day ecard by Daftoons
9) Effects:
In this step you can modify colors, contrast, add effects such as falling objects, cursor effects and so on.
10) Distribution:
In this stage, plan out your marketing strategy. Trailers and teasers are preludes to movies that work as their marketing strategy. You can also build a curiosity around your ecard by sharing what’s coming next via social media. So create a buzz around your work.
11) Release:
This is the time to promote your cards after it is made live. Use the marketing plans. Promote extensively on social media, blogs and artist communities. Use Pinterest as its users are our target audience. Use hash-tags so you are a part of a group or community and helps with search. Share your cards with friends and in turn ask them to share it. Promotion is the key as it lets people know that your card is available to be sent.
Post this the job is done you can sit back and relax!
As promised, here is the gist of our second webinar. This webinar has been broken down into 2 posts to take you through the important steps of movie making. Yes, we said movie making because we think our ecards are just as glamorous as hollywood flicks!
1) Concept:
Now you can’t start a movie before knowing the theme or concept that you want for the movie. You have to be sure of this right from the beginning. So decide early if you want to make a romantic comedy or action flick or a thriller or a fantasy movie, but ensure that the concept matches the chosen category.
2) Storyline/ Script:
After you’ve decided on the concept you should plan out the entire flow of the ecard – scene by scene. Sketch/detail out everything so you know how to proceed.
3)Dialogues:
In this case dialogues refer to card messages. Punch lines steal the show and in this case we can’t stress enough on the importance of effective card messages. It is important to have great personalized messages in your cards. Below are some pointers that we’ve discussed before so here’s a quick recap.
Identify the sender – card copy to convey his emotions
Identify the receiver- card copy to connect with his emotions
Visuals attract but COPY sells.
Valentine’s Day ecard by Ashupatodia
4) Location:
We don’t have to go to Switzerland or a beautiful location in Europe to make an ecard. We can bring them right here to us. You should decide the feel of the card and decide on its background. You may choose an autumn backdrop or a winter one or have a morning scene or a night one. You can also choose to display an indoor scene vs an outdoor one. For example in the above ecard Ashu chose a rich satin background to illustrate the emotion of love. Whatever image you choose it must be available to be used for commercial purposes and you must check for any copyright concerns.
5) Cast:
You can choose to include self-drawn cartoons i.e. character animation or model images. For model images you need a model release form to abide by copyright laws.
6)Direction:
Direction is putting it all together. Different techniques and softwares need to be used for different type of ecards. So this will depend on whether you are making a postcard, an animated card, a video card or a flash card. Adobe Photoshop is one of the most user friendly tools.
In next week’s blog we’ll cover other steps that will help make your ecard a blockbuster!
Following copyright laws and preventing any sort of infringement is important in our industry. Many a times we need to tread carefully before selecting resources for our ecards. Here are some guidelines that will shed some light on gray areas and help 123Greetings Studio visualizers to understand copyright policies, as it is important to abide by them, to protect themselves from reputation damage, monetary loss, and lawsuits.
To begin with let us understand what Copyright is – Copyright legally protects the original work of a creator. Copyright applies to individual card components such as images, music, text and font and also to the overall concept and presentation of the storyline. Copyright Infringement on the other hand includes a violation of the rights that the original creator holds. This includes but is not limited to: • Use of an image without permission (partly or whole). • Use beyond the scope of a license or permission. • Modifying an image without permission of the creator. The above also applies to copy/ texts and music.
123Greetings.com complies with DMCA – The Digital Millennium Copyright Act : On the basis of this act, 123Greetings will remove all content if properly notified that such content infringes another’s intellectual property rights. To know more about DMCA please read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
Here are some important pointers to remember while using/ purchasing images:
An image found on Google search is not free to use. You need to acquire the license to use the image.
Only images available in public domains can be used for free as this content is not owned by anyone.
If you purchase an image then follow the licensing agreement and keep a note of its expiry date.
To protect yourself from any legalities it is best to source your image from a supplier that offers legal protection with its images. Examples include model release forms or property release forms. ‘Indemnification’ is the terminology that is commonly used with images that offer legal protection.
For all trademarked images you require a property release form. Trademarks can be on images, logos or a product. They may also be on architectural or historical monuments such as the Empire State Building or Eiffel Tower Lights.
You must always check the license agreement and ensure that images can be used for commercial purposes. Images may be accompanied by different kind of licenses for commercial or personal use.
Mostly free images do not come with any form of legal protection and if you use that image then you are responsible for any claim on it.
Free images are usually over used and may not offer the unique feel that you are looking for.
Send a Hug Day ecard copyrighted to 123Greetings.com
How do you identify whether an image/music/text is copyrighted or not?
Check the terms of service of the website which is the source of the image.
There are few websites that offer public domain images. These sites such as Wikimedia Commons, Morguefile can be preferred to select images from.
Don’t assume ROYALTY FREE means the image is free for use. Check the license details for Royalty free images.
Images of popular personalities like actors, models, politicians etc should not be used. Note apart from copyright laws the rights of famous personalities are governed be personality laws wherein for any commercial usage, a relevant permission is required from them.
Images of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa etc. can be used in the right spirit where the content is intended for a social cause meant to inspire on a particular note.
Usage of images from famous movies, famous paintings or TVCs is prohibited.
While you use text, avoid the use of lyrics of popular songs. Note that these are copyrighted to respective production companies and also to the lyricists and composers of the songs.
Avoid using vocals as part of the music unless the vocal is your own. Also note that if you are singing a popular song of a famous movie and using it in your ecard, then too you are infringing copyrights since it leads to the creation of a derivative work of the song without prior permission from the original owner.
Any creation goes into public domain 70 years after the death of the creator. Hence if you know the original creator then you can verify at your end if his/her creations are in public domain. For example the works of Charles Dickens are now in public domain. So copies based on his write-up can be used. But in such instance the name of the author needs to be quoted.
Please keep these pointers in mind before producing your next ecard.
You are probably thinking that Valentine’s Day is still a month away so why are we talking about the season of love? Well, the season has already begun. Holidays such as Whisper ‘I Love You’ Day, Send a Hug Day and Compliment Day mark the advent for the beautiful period of ‘love’.
All visualizers should make use of this opportunity to test their card popularity before we approach the second biggest holiday for card-sending which is Valentine’s Day!
Send a Hug Day ecard by Ashupatodia
What you should do in preparation:
1) Upload cards for events such as Whisper I love you Day (Jan 19), Send a Hug Day (Jan 21), Compliment Day (Jan 24). 2) Remember that love not only refers to couples but also extends to friends and family. 3) Flowers go hand in hand with occasions for love so try your hand at making lovely January Flowers ecards and inculcate flowers in other ecards. 4) The statistics from these cards particularly the conversions and the ratings will help you assess your strength in this area. Love is an emotion and hence the card message has to be the selling point. 5) Research on love quotes or take a day off to write your own. Have a collection ready in advance. 6) Be mindful of the colors. Avoid shades of yellow, brown and other dark colors. Use soft soothing pastel shades to enhance the emotions expressed. 7) Use cute images. Just like flowers, other cute visuals such as that of a teddy always seem to do the trick. Remember that if you are using a teddy it must be a proper image. An unattractive teddy will have just the opposite effect. 8) Remember visuals attract but copy sells!
In February, romance will be the flavor of the month. Prepare yourselves and submit cards early for important card-sending events such as Rose Day, Smile Day, Teddy Bear Day, Promise Day, Hug Day, Kiss Day and Valentine’s Day!
We are thrilled to present a tutorial written by our very own Gloria Williams – popularly known as RedHeadsRule. This is her debut on 123Greetings Studio Blog and we hope there are many more to come. As a quick introduction we’d like to share why we chose her for this particular tute. Over a period of time we’ve tracked her portfolio to understand what works best for her. It has become evident that her forte lies in writing card copy. The audience connects with her messages that are both meaningful and personal. Her style is simple yet effective and beautifully lays down the key message.
This is what Gloria has to share with us. “When Ashton first came to me and asked me to write a tutorial on ‘How to Write the Perfect Card Message’ I was very much taken aback. However, his persistence won out, and here I am sharing my style of writing. Some of this will be for the new visualizers we have, who may not yet know the basics, and I will close out with a technique I personally use when writing copy which may prove beneficial to even some of you seasoned artists.
1. Determine who your target audience is:
This is important because your language style may be different when writing a card for a coworker than it would be when writing for a sweetheart.
2. The “Me To You” message:
There is an excellent article regarding this very important rule on 123Greetings’ Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/studio-by-123greetings/me-to-you-message/529556923754795. The gist of it is that when you write your message try to write what the sender would want to say to the receiver. It should be personal enough that the sender feels like it was written just for them and says something that they themselves didn’t know how to put into words, but should be generic enough to pertain to as many people as possible.
Love ecard by RedHeadsRule
3. The message shouldn’t be too “wordy”:
Remember that you are writing a card message and not a letter. You want your message to be sentimental, but not too wordy. You want to say what the sender may be feeling or thinking in as few words as possible, but without losing the heart of the message. So make your sentences short, yet effective. It is also important to have a connect between your sentences. So the first sentence should lead up to the second and so on while finally delivering the key message. My above ecard from the “Madly in Love” section illustrates these points.
4. Keep a notebook or word doc of phrases or quotes that you see and would like to incorporate into a card:
Now here’s where we come to the part that is just a personal technique that you may, or may not find helpful. I keep a Word doc (or you can use a notebook that you write in) where I keep record of phrases that I either think of, or come across on the internet that I think sound nice for a certain occasion. I have one of these documents for each holiday and for birthdays and anniversaries, etc. When I decide I want to make a card, I open up the document associated with the type of e-card I am going to make and I read through the different phrases and sentences. I combine different ones, shorten certain ones and re-word them until they are uniquely mine, but with inspiration taken from several different places. Remember to not just COPY someone else’s message from the internet; that’s plagiarism! You have to make it uniquely your own while keeping in mind rules #1-3; Your audience, me-to-you message and it can’t be too wordy.
I hope you all picked up a few tricks and enjoyed reading the blog!”
Author of the post: Gloria Williams, 123Greetings Studio Visualizer
Now that you have learnt how to draw characters and props, it’s time to dwell into the next step of making these characters and props move – Yes we are talking about Animation!
After the great feedback from the last tutorial, Paul is sharing his expertise for Part 2. Here it goes!
“Before I get down to the nuts and bolts of how to animate in Flash, I thought that a quick word on drawing might help those who feel that they are not very good at it. The fact is that you don’t have to be great at drawing to create fun and engaging characters. The important thing is that your audience can easily understand what is going. Therefore, even a poorly-drawn stick man can be as effective (or sometimes, even more effective) than an elaborately designed character. The secret is to use expressions and strong, interesting poses to tell the viewer what your character is thinking.
Fig. 01
Expressions are very simple to produce. You will see from Fig. 01 how easily you can alter an expression just by changing a character’s eyebrow position and/or mouth shape. Whilst Fig. 01 uses a very simple character head, the same expressions would work just as well on a more detailed character. If you can master a relatively small number of expressions, you will be amazed how easily your characters will spring to life.
Poses are very important, particularly in ecards. Whilst it would be wonderful to have the luxury of animating every part of a character for each movement in a lavish, Disney-esque style, it would take a very long time. Placing your character in an interesting pose whilst only moving an arm, or a mouth, or whatever can really help. It’s a technique that was spearheaded by William Hanna and Joseph Barbara when TV took over from film and reduced budgets meant that full animation was no longer cost-effective. Their new “limited animation” gave us the joys of “The Flintstones”, “Yogi Bear”, etc. If it was good enough for them, it’s certainly good enough for me!
Birthday Ecard by Daftoons
So, let’s get animating.
Fig. 03
There are several ways to animate an object in Flash. The main two that I use are “tweened” animation and “frame-by-frame” animation. Let’s look at tweened animation in this tutorial. The term “tween” comes from the job in traditional animation of drawing frames in-between the main positions or “keyframes” in a movement. It used to be an arduous task. Fortunately, with careful planning, Flash can do all the hard work for you. Let’s say an arm starts in a backward position and we want it to swing forwards into a forward position. Fig. 04 shows both of the keyframes for the movement as well as the 10 in-between frames (assuming we want the movement to take place over 12 frames).
Let’s go ahead and create this animation in Flash. If you followed the last tutorial, your library should contain a symbol called TurpleArm01. There are 5 stages to completing a simple tween (Fig. 04).
Fig. 04
1. We start with a blank stage. You will see that the timeline contains a little white circle on layer 1, frame 1. The white circle represents a blank key frame – a single frame with nothing in it, yet.
2. We go to the library and get TurpleArm01 (click and drag it on to the stage) and move it into the starting position using the scale and rotate tools (see the last tutorial for how to do this). Don’t forget to move the pivot point to the shoulder. You’ll notice that where we had our white circle (blank keyframe) on the timeline, we now have a black circle. This indicates that it is now a keyframe – ie; there is something on the stage on layer 1 frame 1 (ignore that it now says layer 2 on Fig. 06 – that’s my little faux pas from when I put together the graphic. Doh! It will still read ‘Layer 1’ on yours. In fact, you would be well advised to change the name to ‘TurpleArm01’ or similar by double-clicking on the ‘Layer1’ text).
3. There are several ways to complete stage 3, but an easy one is to right-click on frame 12 and select ‘convert to keyframe’. Flash will look back along the timeline and duplicate the last keyframe it sees (frame 1 in this case). Frame 12 will effectively now match frame 1. However, being a keyframe, you will be able to change it without affecting the previous keyframe. Go ahead and move and rotate the arm into our finishing position. If you were to play the animation now, you would see our starting position held for 11 frames, with a quick jump to our finishing position on frame 12. Go to ‘control’>’test movie’>’test’ to check it out. You’ll notice that the frames between our keyframes have turned grey. These are regular frames. They will play whatever is on the preceding keyframe until the playhead meets a new keyframe. Now we can add our tween.
4. Right-click on one of the grey frames and select “create classic tween” from the menu.
5. You will now see that the frames between your keyframes have turned purple, indicating a classic tween. If you test your movie again, you’ll notice that the arm moves smoothly from the starting position to the finishing position. You’ve now created a simple tween. Magnificent!
You can do all sorts of things to refine your tween, particularly ‘easing’. When we move a body part, we don’t do so mechanically at a constant speed, but rather we start off slowly, picking up speed as we get into the movement. Experiment with the easing controls that are available in the Properties panel when you click anywhere on the purple tween on the timeline. Easing really adds a sense of life to what would otherwise look very robotic.Tweens can be used in all sorts of ways. As well as animating body parts, you might use them to move backgrounds or props. But always remember that the more tweens you use in one go, the harder the viewer’s computer has to work and the more danger there is of hanging and/or jerking. A wonderful, smooth movement might look terrible. We don’t want that. As Spiderman’s uncle said, “With great power comes great responsibility!”
Wow! Let’s leave it there for now. I don’t want to overload you and my typing finger is in need of a breather. More tutes soon (if you want them).
Happy Flashing!”
Author of the Post – Paul Solomons, 123Greetings Studio Visualizer.
